As a counter to this I have found 771 very helpful for 7. I learnt it afterward (I think), but find if I warm up with it my 7 balls is a lot better. I rarely work on 7, so this may mostly be useful as a way of warming back up for it without getting frustrated, and meaning that my actual practice with 7 is more productive for the time spent on it.
I think the main use for me comes from the fact that due to it being with two less balls, I can spend a lot more care making the rhythm good and focussing on throwing good 7s. Then, when I work on 7 I've already warmed up the useful throws and am working more on the rest of the pattern. With any below pattern it will practice bits of the harder pattern, and let you get away with other parts, so the trick is either to find those that let you get away with bits you are good at, or be very disciplined (hard).
I like it enough that I'm now working on 771 with clubs because I think it will give me some practice for attempting short runs of 7 clubs. I certainly didn't try it before 5 on triples, 7777700 and so on though!
by Brook Roberts, in response to this post 2015-07-06 14:59:14