| Practicing is the key point for improving
your game. You know the saying among dart players: "Three rules for
becoming a good player? practice, practice, practice!"
But practicing is not only tossing darts on a dartboard for several
hours with an automatic getting-better result. Athletes may gain muscle
power from repeating the same brain-killing exercises over and over,
but darts is not some martial art; it's skill and touch that matters.
So dart practice is a different matter, and I want to give you some
tips here on how you should do it. General notes on how you should plan and handle your practicing sessions But how many people have 8 hours or more per day they can use for practicing darts? Answer: Maybe the pros and some of the unemployed, but hardly anyone else. So you get your personal answer - use as much time as you can or are willing to afford. If this is 8 hours per day, great. If this is 1 hour, okay. However long this time is, you should use it right. 1 hour of intense, aware and motivated practice is better than 8 hours of boredom and so-so arrow tossing. And, as in the headline of this paragraph, frequency is more important than quantity. An example: Player A does 7 or more hours of practicing each Sunday and nothing during the rest of the week. Player B practices half an hour on workdays, 2 hours on Saturday and then enjoys a lazy Sunday. Guess who uses his time better... yes, frequency is more important than quantity, so player B's regime is much better. Try to practice each day of the week, with not more than 1 or two days off. Even if you can only spend 20 minutes on workdays this is good practice, although you should then plan at least one longer practice session on weekends, let's say more than 2 hours if you are serious about improving your game. The frequency postulate can also be used for doing two or more short practice sessions on one day. E.g. play for 15 minutes during lunch hour if you have the chance to, and for another 15 minutes when you come home. German top player Andre Welge used to get up 20 minutes earlier in the morning to get some additional practicing before he went to work. Not anybody's strategy (at least not mine, I REALLY hate getting up early), but a good one. Then, not only is frequency better than quantity, intensity also is.
Do your practice sessions on a concentration level similar to your match-play
level. If you find your concentration or motivation dropping during
a longer session, go for a pause. Again 15 minutes up to half an hour
are okay for such pausing. You can and should also pause if your motivation
drops during a practice session, and also when you are unhappy with
your game. Better stop and try again a while later with new motivation
and awareness. Unconcentrated and unmotivated practice is bad practice.
Pro Rod Harrington told me he doesn't practice when he has no fun doing
it. In darts there is no use for forcing oneself to practicing. If you
don't want to, don't do. But of course, if you aren't eager to get to
the board again after one or two lazy days you will hardly have the
personality to become a strong player. In many other sports self-torment
(mostly to gain muscle power) is a necessity, but not in darts. Darts
is touch and coordination, not physical suffering. practicing alone is the best way The reasons behind this are not really obvious, especially because many players experience that they are doing well in solitaire and (relatively) suck in match play, so they are thinking it's the lack of match-play practice that causes that. That is, however, wrong. As a matter of fact every player plays worse in match-play than he does in practice. It is of course hard to believe, but even the pros do. And this not only in darts, it is valid for any other sport. To increase our match-play performance to NEARLY (exactly of course would be great but it is in fact impossible!) the level of our practice performance we must mainly use sports psychology, because the mental aspects of match-play are the reason for this phenomenon . And note - if you are one of these rare players who say they do better in match play than they do in practice, the reason (and the ONLY reason!) is the following: You don't practice enough, period. But it is still not clear why solitaire practicing is that important.
As a personal summary, I'd say this: "Practicing with partners,
no matter if they are better or worse than you, forces you to raise
your limit above theirs. Practicing alone constantly forces you to raise
your limit above yourself, and this limit is higher than you might dream
of!" So you can nearly infinitely improve your game only by always
trying to beat your limit. No matter how good you are, you can always
be better. No friendly or rivalry match play practice can do this when
your opponents stick to their level. To say it literally - the only
way to make your current personal limit your future standard is practicing
alone. which practicing games to play and why Many player's practice is mainly hammering 60s, then going around a few doubles or bulls and then back to 60s. This is of course nonsense. In many X01 leagues or tournaments you will see players scoring great but missing on the double. Unless you play on pro levels, most games will be decided on the double, not on score. So the main weakness of 'normal' players is hitting doubles. This means the most important practice for all kinds of players below pro level is practicing doubles in any form, and for beginners additional practice on singles is required. A good practicing game must be:
I will give you some nice games later, but at the moment I want to give you some more notes on the 'encouraging, fun and competitive' point. This is very important, because as stated above your practicing sessions should be motivating. So you have to give yourself some aims in practice, especially for your longer practice sessions. This is done best by monitoring your progress in some way. Monitoring of course requires that one thing few of us are able to keep when they are monitoring themselves: OBJECTIVITY. The best way to remain objective is writing down your achievements in a notebook (or, as we are living in so-called modern times, keep a spreadsheet or database). To do this the results of the games you are choosing must be available in the form of measurable quantities (thanks to Galilei's view of science: measure what's measurable, and make measurable what isn't at present) - less sophisticated this reads: your games must have a point system or you must invent one for them. For more information on how to run such 'scorebooks' read alt.sport.darts Games FAQ. There also are some practice games and regimes available. Many games can also be found on The Most Complete Collection Of Dart Games On The Web And finally here are my suggestions for practice
games: Round the board can be played in exactly this form with doubles and trebles. If you don't find it boring, it is a perfect game for practicing. One alteration I was using heavily is this: shoot
3 darts at each number's treble from 1 to 20 and bull. Hitting the number's
single scores 1 point, hitting the treble 3 points. This game is simple
but very good, because it lets you go round the board, lets you group
darts around trebles and lets you always aim at a new high score. If
you are beginner - average you will find your high score first around
or beyond the 60 region. When you get better you will have 70+. 80+
is great, and above 100 is expert/pro level. This game is a good practice
for trebles (cricket), but unfortunately doesn't do anything for doubles
(except generally improving your accuracy). Example: throw 1: 60 - not finished throw 2: 59 - finished throw 3: 69 - not finished 4: 68 - not finished 5: 67 - finished 6: 77 - not finishedand so on. Just see how far you can get. This game is less worthy for your scorebook, but it is encouraging and demanding. A danger is it may lead you to frustration, so if this happens play a different game. Very good practice for X01 and doubles. This
is a very tough game suitable for good players. You start from 25 points
and shoot 3 darts at each double from 1 to 20 + bull. Add hit double's
values, and subtract the double's value once if you fail to hit with
3. If you fall below 0 the game is over (lesser players can play with
minus points allowed or start with more than 25 points to avoid frustration).
If you reach bull and have a considerable score afterwards this is very
good. I think there is an old world record above 600 points or so for
this game.
Example: Throw 1: D1 hit once, 27 points (25 + D1 = 27 + 2) 2: D2 missed, 23 points (27 - D2 = 27 - 4) 3: D3 missed, 17 points (23 - D3 = 23 - 6) 4: D4 hit twice, 33 points (17 + 2xD4 = 17 + 2x8 = 17 + 16)and so on. Great game for good players, very good double practice and very competitive. And of course, any other game you like that meets the requirements is great. The above games are mainly meant for your longer practice sessions
(1 hour and more), with 170 being an exception. This game is also very
good for your short term practice. You can also play just one or two
round the board variations in short term practice, but generally it
is better to get for some often needed doubles, then going for some
score and then go back to doubles or trebles just as long as you get
some 'feeling' for the dart and your throw. In a short term practice
session it is not so important how much you actually hit. Concentrating
and getting the right feeling are much more important. how to get prepared for a match Once you know your most common problems you will develop your own warm-up routines, like hitting each double at least once or twice or playing round the boards and so on. Of course warm-up is also a situation where you may and should go for increased scoring practice, but still doubles (or trebles for cricket) are more important. If diddle for middle is the rule or if cricket will be played of course bull is important, too. Remember before the tournament or league it still is solitaire that rules! It is especially dangerous here to stick too much to match-play for warm-up because warm-up is a situation where you need to get rid of possible technical problems as soon as possible. This requires your full concentration, and warm-up matches are very likely to put your concentration on winning them instead of fighting your problems! You can of course switch to playing them once your feeling and technique are set for the day, but not earlier. There is one routine I have developed for occasions where I don't have
much time to warm up for some reason. I start with throwing my darts
on D20 or even above D20. This because the high darts require a good
follow-through, and usually this is my main technical problem. |