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.

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