Reaching or struggling?

An important element of successful practice is to be working just outside of your comfort zone and reaching for new highs. The trick when deciding what and how to practice is setting targets to be just out of reach but not impossible: so called SMART target in education circles (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, Targets).  My goal for this year of determined darting was to get to a regular 51 average which in January did not seem impossible and was perhaps achievable if I worked at it. I am nearly a quarter of the way through the year and in some respects I am reaching and improving almost every practice session and in others I am struggling, frustrated and feel like it is back to square one. If you love your darts I think you know what is coming next: it's double trouble!

I have made decent progress improving my stance, return point, rhythm and am now working on follow through every practice session. In games this more solid foundation of a throw has allowed me to hit the 20 bed more comfortably and more often. In practice sessions I can film my follow through, critique my throw and make tiny adjustments so I am always reaching to improve. The trouble is that if I want to work on doubles I am instantly struggling and quickly become fed up. The reason for this is that hitting such small targets is literally too difficult for me at the moment and I need to break the task down into steps or change it altogether. Conventional darting wisdom, in my opinion has the method of practising doubles all wrong. I cannot simply play Bob's 27 (or a similar doubles drill) until I get better for the following reasons:

1. Repeatedly missing small targets is disparaging and I want to feel positive when practising
2. Merely aiming at a double does not simulate normal game conditions, the high pressure of a double to finish is not there when you can have three or more shots at it from cold
3. Doubles drills do not reward close attempts in practice, so do not positively reinforce progress towards the eventual goal
4. I do not have a totally reliable follow through yet
5. I do not have a totally reliable aiming point with the dart yet
6. Repeatedly aiming at the same target does not necessarily make you better at hitting that target

The last three are the most pertinent to my situation and my current ability level and the last point is possibly a wee bit controversial if you have not come across it before. The fact is that to get better at hitting one spot you need to modulate or vary your muscle movement around the spot: or to put it another way you need to be able to miss on purpose! If I could already follow through beautifully and aim reliably then there may be more sense in practicing doubles drills and even more so on high pressure finishing games, but I am not that far down the line with my skills development. All of which leaves me undecided on how best to progress. I have tried replacing full legs of darts with just finishing from awkward numbers like 2 and 5 which is o.k because it is good pressure practice, but it still leads to a lot of frustration and not much success within an individual practice session. I am just spit-balling here but maybe I could:

1. Practise single numbers until perfect then think about doubles later
2. Invent a near-doubles game such as 'put all three near the wire' (story of my life lol!)
3. Use post-it notes on the doubles as targets and try and group the darts as an initial target
4. Stick to the most useful doubles 20-16-1 and vary my oche pos'n to work on muscle modulation and film my follow through
5. Develop my aim point on a more familiar part of the board such as treble 20 or bull until it is reliable, then try aiming at doubles

As you can see I am undecided about how to best approach this problem so watch this space!

PS My latest follow through stats when aiming at the 20 bed are:

78,83,81,66,76,81,80,86,62,71,100,88,71,86,74,96,86. Mean 80% which is moving nicely towards the 90% I theorised would be possible, and enough to see significant improvement in my scoring. I even surprised myself with 100% one time! And the other day I hit my 3rd 180 of the year, which was nice:)