Sunday, 28 February 2016
Process not performance
I have just come out of a period of recording some mediocre results (even for me) every day. I was in a way practising to practise and not to get better I suppose. Effective practice is measured for sure, but the essence of what you are trying to achieve when developing a skill should be to concentrate on the mechanics, the process. On my determined mission to improve this year I have distilled this skill into steps and as I am now relatively happy with my stance I am now concentrating on the follow through. Today, when shooting fat 20s I achieved a 36% success rate on proper follow through of the shooting hand. By 'proper' I mean the hand continues with the throwing motion and extends forwards after the release until it is completely flattened out before dropping off. In Barneveld's throw for example this is a soft follow through which I think of as 'patting the dog' and MVG throws with an exaggerated curl of the hand to whip the darts in a straighter trajectory. My throw is often awkward with a twitchy after-thought of a follow through, so I must now work on this skill daily to get my percentage over 76%. If I can follow through successfully more than 2/3 of the time this should result in more 60s and less 45s and 26s when aiming for the 20 bed. As it stands my low success rate explains the part of the darting process I am missing the most, and which contributes to my wildly inconsistent results.
Thursday, 18 February 2016
Injury, time off and the weight of darts
I woke up the other day with a terrible pain in my right bicep. It hurt so much that I could barely lift my arm above chest height and took a few days to get better. I managed one practice session using light darts and one with my regular darts before man-flu set in and I have been resting up since! I have had to miss a game with friends because of this unfortunate turn of events and I will probably not be able to practise for another day or so whilst my head is so full of snot:(
When my arm was still sore I threw a brief session with light darts it was surprising to me how little difference they contributed to my throw. I am used to the thunk of 23g darts hitting the board but when I picked up my 18g knitting needles I expected to have to make major adjustments. My initial throws were a bit flighty and the darts were entering into the board at all kinds of angles but after a quick change of flights to a larger style the angles became more consistent and I was happily throwing straight at the 20 bed with the lighter arrows. Of course I was terrible when it came time to hit a double but that is not unusual even with my regular darts.
This experience has taught me (or at least reminded me of ) a valuable truth: the next time I desire a new set of darts and imagine they will transform my game and take me to the next level I am going to save that £25 and spend it on something better, because we all throw darts our own unique way and the darts are effectively incidental to the end result. If you want further proof of this go and watch archive footage of Taylor or Barneveld who have both messed around with their darts' style and weight over the years: both players have hit the heights and thrown spanners with their various types of dart and when it comes down to it your state of mind, and your arm have a much greater effect.
When my arm was still sore I threw a brief session with light darts it was surprising to me how little difference they contributed to my throw. I am used to the thunk of 23g darts hitting the board but when I picked up my 18g knitting needles I expected to have to make major adjustments. My initial throws were a bit flighty and the darts were entering into the board at all kinds of angles but after a quick change of flights to a larger style the angles became more consistent and I was happily throwing straight at the 20 bed with the lighter arrows. Of course I was terrible when it came time to hit a double but that is not unusual even with my regular darts.
This experience has taught me (or at least reminded me of ) a valuable truth: the next time I desire a new set of darts and imagine they will transform my game and take me to the next level I am going to save that £25 and spend it on something better, because we all throw darts our own unique way and the darts are effectively incidental to the end result. If you want further proof of this go and watch archive footage of Taylor or Barneveld who have both messed around with their darts' style and weight over the years: both players have hit the heights and thrown spanners with their various types of dart and when it comes down to it your state of mind, and your arm have a much greater effect.
Friday, 12 February 2016
Progress report
I have had a few ups and downs in practice recently, and in the past couple of days it feels like more downs than ups. I have settled on a stance I am comfortable with which is wide foot (Martin Adams- esque) right of centre stance tucking my elbow in and setting the arm vertically to throw. I am still concentrating on developing a straight throw and trying not to get caught up in the idea that I should be covering the whole board in practice sessions. I have explained my reasoning behind this in an earlier post and I am confident that I will be able to translate the basic throw around the board once it is steady and straight. The problem I am having is the perennial inconsistency and bouts of total frustration.
Flicking back through my practice diary on recent days I have had 4 solid sessions just working on the follow through and filming results, plus 4 solid sessions working on straight throwing and recording progress. I think this methodical approach is useful and I may repeat the pattern again next week and return to working on my follow through, which is often erratic and only totally smooth every 3-4 throws or so.
Results wise in the last week or so I had one really good session on scoring and double top throwing; a good session on bull throwing scoring 325 on 'kill bull' http://www.winmau.com/practicezone/videos/#prettyPhoto[gallery]/40/; a close attempt at 3 bulls in a throw (pictured-the 2nd dart was 25 although I couldn't tell when throwing the 3rd because of a shadow!); regularly hitting single or double 3 in the first few visits and I also had a session sustaining 51+ ave scoring for 8 visits in a row.
The inconsistency I have suffered has affected around 3 practice sessions and has led to frustration and me spontaneously changing my action and randomly throwing at improvised targets for periods of time. My problem is likely one of expectation: hitting the highs such as the near 150 shot above, and 2 x 180s last month has raised my hopes to unrealistic levels. I want to be throwing these sort of darts more often but if I did that I would be a professional, or league player rather than a solid pub player which is my aim. Sometimes I begin a practice session with an aimlessness that I need to eradicate because it is easy to think "I am throwing badly today" if you are not focused on a target or goal. I think I need to redraft my routine to include a more useful warm up and include more short games that I can quickly measure progress with. I will stick with my stance and action and continue only making minute changes that I then film for a period to see how it is working rather than rely on the instant feedback of 3 darts.
I am competing against old rivals soon and based on experience I know I will probably get beaten yet again, so this is also weighing heavy on my mind. I am still a long way off regular 30 dart legs and I always get nervous and throw even more erratically when the pressure is on, so even if I go ahead in legs my doubling will often be scrappy. One of the reasons for this is that the people I play against do not practice so much and do not have the hang up of expectation when they throw. I need to also shorten my practice sessions and when I have time for longer sessions maybe split them into 2 bouts of filming, then games/measuring with a break in between so I do not tire out my mind and my arm. I think it will also do my confidence some good to develop skills on a double other than double top so I will experiment with and phase in a double 16 game into my routine in the coming weeks.
Flicking back through my practice diary on recent days I have had 4 solid sessions just working on the follow through and filming results, plus 4 solid sessions working on straight throwing and recording progress. I think this methodical approach is useful and I may repeat the pattern again next week and return to working on my follow through, which is often erratic and only totally smooth every 3-4 throws or so.
Results wise in the last week or so I had one really good session on scoring and double top throwing; a good session on bull throwing scoring 325 on 'kill bull' http://www.winmau.com/practicezone/videos/#prettyPhoto[gallery]/40/; a close attempt at 3 bulls in a throw (pictured-the 2nd dart was 25 although I couldn't tell when throwing the 3rd because of a shadow!); regularly hitting single or double 3 in the first few visits and I also had a session sustaining 51+ ave scoring for 8 visits in a row.
The inconsistency I have suffered has affected around 3 practice sessions and has led to frustration and me spontaneously changing my action and randomly throwing at improvised targets for periods of time. My problem is likely one of expectation: hitting the highs such as the near 150 shot above, and 2 x 180s last month has raised my hopes to unrealistic levels. I want to be throwing these sort of darts more often but if I did that I would be a professional, or league player rather than a solid pub player which is my aim. Sometimes I begin a practice session with an aimlessness that I need to eradicate because it is easy to think "I am throwing badly today" if you are not focused on a target or goal. I think I need to redraft my routine to include a more useful warm up and include more short games that I can quickly measure progress with. I will stick with my stance and action and continue only making minute changes that I then film for a period to see how it is working rather than rely on the instant feedback of 3 darts.
I am competing against old rivals soon and based on experience I know I will probably get beaten yet again, so this is also weighing heavy on my mind. I am still a long way off regular 30 dart legs and I always get nervous and throw even more erratically when the pressure is on, so even if I go ahead in legs my doubling will often be scrappy. One of the reasons for this is that the people I play against do not practice so much and do not have the hang up of expectation when they throw. I need to also shorten my practice sessions and when I have time for longer sessions maybe split them into 2 bouts of filming, then games/measuring with a break in between so I do not tire out my mind and my arm. I think it will also do my confidence some good to develop skills on a double other than double top so I will experiment with and phase in a double 16 game into my routine in the coming weeks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)