I have been without a computer for a while so have had to change my routine and not film practice sessions. This slight drift in focus has led to the inevitable tinkering with my stance and throw etc. This is a dangerous road to travel as many darters know it is easy to lose your feel for a good throw if you try and adjust too many variables at once. I have mostly been experimenting with my trailing foot position for three compelling reasons:
1. When I bring my trailing foot behind my front foot my head lines up more with my arm.
2. If I look in a mirror at this stance it looks more inline from dog arm elbow, to front elbow, to dart
3. John Lowe stood like this in his prime and had a fantastically smooth throw overall
The problem I am having with this method is that it is just not as stable as pushing the back foot out a little bit to form a more standard wider foot stance. In fact I can feel unbalanced with the John Lowe method depending on which shoes I am wearing and it can lead to a rocking a little bit as I throw the dart. Last night I went back to widening my stance on warm down and immediately felt more stable and balanced although an immediate return to a tight pain in my hips reminded me of another reason why the more in-line stance may be of long term benefit.
The other issue of balance I am having problems with is balance in terms of time management. I am struggling with long term health issues which drain my energy and an increasing need to simplify and re-prioritise everything I do in my life. Darts sessions have become shorter and slightly less frequent and since my laptop got sick (it is currently booted, but for how long I don't know!) I have been recording less stats and not playing vs the computer on dartscorer. I am looking to buy a house at the moment though so things will settle down in a few months, when I will have the joy of setting up a permanent dartboard on the wall instead of using my dartmate!
My last batch of FTS statistics are as follows:
88,100,90,81,100 on 20s for 91.8% mean (a PB mean!)
90,67,81,76,90 on bull for 80.8% mean ( a new stat on bull shots for me and a lot of variance, so work to be done here)
Saturday, 28 May 2016
Sunday, 8 May 2016
The reality gap
Somewhere between a darter's actual ability and his/her belief of that ability is a murky mental space I have come to call the ability gap. I sketched a line to illustrate this during a frustrated moment when I threw and filmed a series of scoring darts that felt great but were revealed on playback to be below par by my current standards:
I was surprised when my darts felt good and flowing but on playback my head was bobbing, my throwing arm sagged on the pullback and my follow through was erratic and looked different each time. I believed that my ability was my 'A' game but in reality it was my 'C' or 'D' game.' What had occurred was that my growing self confidence had created a reality gap and if I had not been filming I would have carried on throwing with a false sense of security.
The difficulty for darters is that success relies on an unshakeable belief in your ability to hit the target: if doubt exists then the chances of success diminish. The further difficulty is that to improve in skill level is to somehow realistically appraise one's weaknesses (in order to work on them) without letting them become fuel for doubt. Raymond Van Barneveld for example is a darter whose reality gap is wide, since his insanely high level of skill is often at odds with his negatively skewed view of what he is capable of. A total beginner at darts who has a natural flair for hand-eye coordination has a small reality gap and consistently amazes themself about all the cool check outs and trebles they keep hitting! If you read Wayne Mardle's autobiographical account of a year on the PDC circuit his reality gap is non-existent because he actively tries not to think about his level of ability and puts it down to forces beyond his control. This last example demonstrates an extreme reaction to the mental problems darters develop as their skills improve: you often lose your natural instinct to point and throw and become too aware of the small details and what you think you are doing wrong. Poor old Wayne never came to terms with the mechanics of learning and did not develop his talent as far as it could have gone because he could not, or would not realistically appraise his own ability level. Think for a moment how much more of a contender Wayne could have been if he had studied his own mechanics and worked out the reason why his darts drifted to the 5 bed in moments of tension?
So what does all this over-intellectualising mean for me then? Well the simple answer is that I was doing quite well improving my scoring darts, I struggled to develop my doubles and then spent a couple of weeks practising inefficiently, not filming my throw as often, but throwing with loads of confidence. My latest batch of FTS statistics are: 76,90,72,86,86,90,86,100,90,90,95,90,81,81,100. for a mean FTS percentage of 87.5% which is an improvement on 80% last time I measured. I am happy with my overall progress when it comes to throwing straight and I have proven this in a recent game in the pub where I surprised myself with a 24 dart leg straight out the blocks and took three legs in a row when my opponent became very frustrated at chasing every leg. The mental strength I possessed on this occasion was that I was expecting to throw fairly straight in the scoring phase, and I was also expecting to spend quite a while on doubles. My opponent on this occasion was too frustrated to notice (and therefore exploit) how long I was taking to check out in the second and third legs, and for my part I was calm about missing lots of darts at doubles because I was expecting to. The challenge for me now is to analyse and improve my darts around the board so I can expect to hit other areas besides the 20 bed. I must however remain aware of the potential for the reality gap to widen and I want any confidence I feel to be a product of actual ability and not false confidence which can grow when you do not have enough feedback and do not come to terms with your actual mechanics and results.
The difficulty for darters is that success relies on an unshakeable belief in your ability to hit the target: if doubt exists then the chances of success diminish. The further difficulty is that to improve in skill level is to somehow realistically appraise one's weaknesses (in order to work on them) without letting them become fuel for doubt. Raymond Van Barneveld for example is a darter whose reality gap is wide, since his insanely high level of skill is often at odds with his negatively skewed view of what he is capable of. A total beginner at darts who has a natural flair for hand-eye coordination has a small reality gap and consistently amazes themself about all the cool check outs and trebles they keep hitting! If you read Wayne Mardle's autobiographical account of a year on the PDC circuit his reality gap is non-existent because he actively tries not to think about his level of ability and puts it down to forces beyond his control. This last example demonstrates an extreme reaction to the mental problems darters develop as their skills improve: you often lose your natural instinct to point and throw and become too aware of the small details and what you think you are doing wrong. Poor old Wayne never came to terms with the mechanics of learning and did not develop his talent as far as it could have gone because he could not, or would not realistically appraise his own ability level. Think for a moment how much more of a contender Wayne could have been if he had studied his own mechanics and worked out the reason why his darts drifted to the 5 bed in moments of tension?
So what does all this over-intellectualising mean for me then? Well the simple answer is that I was doing quite well improving my scoring darts, I struggled to develop my doubles and then spent a couple of weeks practising inefficiently, not filming my throw as often, but throwing with loads of confidence. My latest batch of FTS statistics are: 76,90,72,86,86,90,86,100,90,90,95,90,81,81,100. for a mean FTS percentage of 87.5% which is an improvement on 80% last time I measured. I am happy with my overall progress when it comes to throwing straight and I have proven this in a recent game in the pub where I surprised myself with a 24 dart leg straight out the blocks and took three legs in a row when my opponent became very frustrated at chasing every leg. The mental strength I possessed on this occasion was that I was expecting to throw fairly straight in the scoring phase, and I was also expecting to spend quite a while on doubles. My opponent on this occasion was too frustrated to notice (and therefore exploit) how long I was taking to check out in the second and third legs, and for my part I was calm about missing lots of darts at doubles because I was expecting to. The challenge for me now is to analyse and improve my darts around the board so I can expect to hit other areas besides the 20 bed. I must however remain aware of the potential for the reality gap to widen and I want any confidence I feel to be a product of actual ability and not false confidence which can grow when you do not have enough feedback and do not come to terms with your actual mechanics and results.
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