so the other day my wife and i were throwing around and mentioned something about she thought she was getting worse. she said that her scores were down and she felt like she was missing a lot more than normal. so after watching her for a while i figured out what was happening.
the whole time we played i watched her get so many 22, 26, 15, 7, 11, etc. so what i realized was that she was actually improving to the point where she was no longer getting those luck-up T18s and T12s. her skill level had finally improved to the point where she was all over the 20 zone. it took me a while to explain to her that this was a good thing.
once you get to the point where your misses are extremely close, then its all about getting in dialed in. unfortunately thats where a lot of players stop improving because they dont want to go through the hassle of tweaking or changing anything. in their mind they are doing everything right, they just missed. but in reality this is where having a good training routine and working on your mechanics will separate you from the average dart players.
all those players you see with funky wind ups, quirky grips, and weird looking stances and follow throughs? well they almost always peak in this stage. sure, they will continue to get a *little* better the more they play, although thats pretty much all muscle memory and not ability.
its at this point that when you are a doing a drill such as A1 or doubles or whatever that you should be more concerned with developing proper mechanics and less concerned with getting the dart to land in the intended spot. the ultimate goal for drills like that is NOT getting your dart to land in a certain spot. you can luck up and do that and it wouldnt have taught you anything. you can throw at each double until you hit 10 of every single number and if you are only concerned with hitting that double and nothing else, then you have learned nothing. you should be learning from every miss, not celebrating every hit.
there is one thing that separates the guys on TV from you, and that is the ability to completely replicate every small and subtle move that happens during a dart throw every single time. the only way to get closer to achieving this to recognize the things you are doing wrong and having the mental ability to diagnose these things and correct them. our minds give us the ability the compensate to a certain degree, so even if your mechanics are awful you can put in enough practice time to compensate for that up to a point, but eventually you'll stall out and wont improve anymore.
just remember this: practicing is a long term strategy for getting better. the whole idea is to improve at a rate where you really dont even notice it much. you just think to yourself one day "wow, im a whole lot better than i was at this time last year". but dont forget that throwing doesnt equal practicing. the goal of practice is improvement and if, while you are practicing you cant find anything to improve, then you are practicing wrong. it reminds me playing golf. every time ive taken someone out who either had never played before or was a beginner it always ended up the same way. every shot they were swinging trying to knock it out of the park. this what they did when they "practiced" hitting balls at the range. in reality it has very little to do with how hard you swing and everything do with balance and "touch", which together equal technique.
sorry to turn this into rant but hopefully someone who is struggling will read it and get a deeper level of understanding what the big picture is all about.
thanks guys for taking the time to read.
MC
the whole time we played i watched her get so many 22, 26, 15, 7, 11, etc. so what i realized was that she was actually improving to the point where she was no longer getting those luck-up T18s and T12s. her skill level had finally improved to the point where she was all over the 20 zone. it took me a while to explain to her that this was a good thing.
once you get to the point where your misses are extremely close, then its all about getting in dialed in. unfortunately thats where a lot of players stop improving because they dont want to go through the hassle of tweaking or changing anything. in their mind they are doing everything right, they just missed. but in reality this is where having a good training routine and working on your mechanics will separate you from the average dart players.
all those players you see with funky wind ups, quirky grips, and weird looking stances and follow throughs? well they almost always peak in this stage. sure, they will continue to get a *little* better the more they play, although thats pretty much all muscle memory and not ability.
its at this point that when you are a doing a drill such as A1 or doubles or whatever that you should be more concerned with developing proper mechanics and less concerned with getting the dart to land in the intended spot. the ultimate goal for drills like that is NOT getting your dart to land in a certain spot. you can luck up and do that and it wouldnt have taught you anything. you can throw at each double until you hit 10 of every single number and if you are only concerned with hitting that double and nothing else, then you have learned nothing. you should be learning from every miss, not celebrating every hit.
there is one thing that separates the guys on TV from you, and that is the ability to completely replicate every small and subtle move that happens during a dart throw every single time. the only way to get closer to achieving this to recognize the things you are doing wrong and having the mental ability to diagnose these things and correct them. our minds give us the ability the compensate to a certain degree, so even if your mechanics are awful you can put in enough practice time to compensate for that up to a point, but eventually you'll stall out and wont improve anymore.
just remember this: practicing is a long term strategy for getting better. the whole idea is to improve at a rate where you really dont even notice it much. you just think to yourself one day "wow, im a whole lot better than i was at this time last year". but dont forget that throwing doesnt equal practicing. the goal of practice is improvement and if, while you are practicing you cant find anything to improve, then you are practicing wrong. it reminds me playing golf. every time ive taken someone out who either had never played before or was a beginner it always ended up the same way. every shot they were swinging trying to knock it out of the park. this what they did when they "practiced" hitting balls at the range. in reality it has very little to do with how hard you swing and everything do with balance and "touch", which together equal technique.
sorry to turn this into rant but hopefully someone who is struggling will read it and get a deeper level of understanding what the big picture is all about.
thanks guys for taking the time to read.
MC
