Chris Henry
Chris is, arguably, the best snooker coach in the world. Among the professional players he has coached include the current, and 4 times, world champion, Mark Selby, former world champions Shaun Murphy, Graeme Dott, Stephen Hendry, and Peter Ebdon, and ranking event winners Ali Carter, Matt Selt, Mark Davis, Michael White, Jimmy White, Ding Junhui, and Fergal O’Brien. At the 2021 World Championships, he coached both finalists, Selby and Murphy, a unique achievement. He has also coached professional golfers.
In recent years, Chris has studied personal development, mental coaching, psychology, philosophy, goal setting, neuroscience, neural conditioning, visualisation and quantum physics and has incorporated these subjects into his coaching, developing techniques to enable participants to positively re-wire their beliefs and habits at the subconscious level for the long term, these two key elements controlling our lives. The innovative and neuroscience based technique developed by Chris is the Neural ReWiring process.
Neuroscience-based Coaching: Neural Rewiring
A few years ago, Chris gave a talk to a group of World Snooker Coaches, and it blew my mind. When he subsequently announced he would be running a course to teach these techniques to coaches, I signed up immediately. The course was held in Belgium, where Chris lives, seven coaches attended, with just myself travelling from the UK, and was a fantastic experience, more than meeting my expectations. One to one access, over dinner, offered me a unique opportunity to gain some fascinating insights into Chris’ methods, and the course covered aspects of technique mechanics, visuals, alignment and sighting, cue ball physics, and mental coaching in amazing depth.
Neural rewiring, which is a neuroscience-based subconscious approach, to, basically, create different neural connections in the brain, which then relate to self-belief, self-image and ultimately self-confidence, I believe takes snooker coaching to the next level.
The Balls
Chris has developed The Balls, a pair of snooker balls which are extremely light, 17g compared with the 142g of actual snooker balls. This means that, when striking the light white ball, the slightest inaccuracy will cause the ball to move off line, giving immediate feedback as to the issue. Similarly, using a light red ball will give immediate feedback as to the accuracy of the line of aim. The Balls are an integral part of the rewiring process to coordinate effective mechanic and effective visual habits.
