Filming straight throws and fine tuning

Today I worked on the pure mechanics of straight throwing and decided to film myself again as the instant feedback this provides should in theory override any imaginative and spontaneous ideas I might have about how to modify my throw. It is all too easy to throw tonnes of shots at the 20 bed and lose track of what or how you are practicing and I need to make better use of time, not least of all because I am a long term sufferer of both rsi, back pain and sciatica.

I set about a three part practice session: part one concentrating on only one aspect of the throw at a piece of paper on the board with my performance target written on it; part two was to video a few minutes of straight throwing at the fat 20 bed and part three analysis and note taking. In a previous recording of my own throw I had diagnosed problems with drawing back the dart too far and pausing before release so I started with the idea of drawing back less far and releasing in one smooth movement.

After I had watched my first playback I noticed that my worst throws were the result of slight body movement and that my slightly sketchy drawback was present in both my best and worst visits to the board. The logical conclusion I drew from this (albeit small) sample size is that my drawback may be problematic but if I cannot keep my body still I will be fighting against drifting darts forever more. I also noticed that my chin is not pointing upward and therefore sometimes the dart does not sit below my eye line. I almost anticipate the throw with a lean forward and slight head tilt downwards as I move through the shot which is subtle but may well be the root cause of issues with accuracy in the vertical plane as well.

I decided on a second round of practice to lean slightly less far forward and in fact to sink back a little in my stance so that if I relax my torso after the first dart, my body will remain in the same place for the second and third. I figured that a slightly sunk back and yet still upright stance would provide a little more resistance to the forward momentum of throwing than the leaning method. I videod a second round of throwing and was pleased to note that out of all the throws I made in a few minutes around 7 were quite smooth with no overly-paused drawback and I even hit a 140 with my new sunk back stance. Both of these features represent improvement in my throw but the jury is out on whether the stance it is ultimately limiting sideways drift in the dart.  I will proceed with the new stance method in my next practice sessions as it takes some of the tension out of my setup and I think a relaxed throw will be a smoother throw with hopefully less body movement.