tl;dr Do you think reviewing practice games would be helpful?
I know for most sports watching their game footage helps players improve their game. For those of you who have watched your game play after an event, did you feel it was helpful? If so, what was helpful. The commentary? Analyzing your decision making? Something else?
I’m toying with the idea of recording some of my practice sessions, but before I go buy a camera rig I figured I’d see if others who had experience with this think it would be useful.
Analyzing my own play doesn’t seem to help. It might have when I just got into it, but years later I have a good idea on what I should or shouldn’t be doing, and I usually walk out of a match or a game knowing exactly what I did wrong or why things went wrong.
I find old personal practice footage interesting just to see how far I have come, not necessarily as a learning mechanism. I learn more from watching other players play, not watching myself play. Commentary is not necessary and I can look at a better player, see their techniques, and go, “Hm, that’s interesting,” then learn to apply it to my game.
I bet it would help me, but I think I’d get much more bang for my buck by just writing down my mistakes after each ball (and putting into a spreadsheet)…particularly how I drain. If I had been doing this over the last year, I probably would have been more quick to correct “slap save into the bottom of other flipper”, “missed upper flipper shot”, and “double or triple drain while missing jackpots during multiball”.