Through Quality: Equipment, Knowledge & Conditioning
Darts Excellence
There are three parts to excellence in darts and they are equipment, knowledge and conditioning. You must have all three to have any consistency whatsoever. Unless you have all three, you are not going anywhere, and the best you are going to be able to do is average. Remember that famous bell curve? Well, to me, average is in the 89 percentile on down! A chess master friend of mine has a saying, “I never, ever, beat a well man.” Another chess player, that I am sure you all know, Bobby Fisher, had a saying, “no one is interested in your loses.” Personally, I don’t play for anyone but myself and my enjoyment. To me enjoyment is playing well, but secondly, enjoyment is winning. I would rather lose every game but play well, than to win every game and just get by throughout the course of the game. Everything needs to be put into perspective! Performance should be paramount!
Equipment
If you are playing pool and you are playing with a broomstick, winning isn’t going to happen. If you happen to be a good player, that has had good success in the past and the only stick that is available to play with is a broomstick that just happens to have a great tip on it, then, I would say that there’s a pretty good chance that you’re still going to WIN just the same! The best equipment makes performing so much easier. Why beat yourself up by playing with equipment that only makes performing that much harder? The game is difficult enough! There is a cue stick that’s made at this time, and it is not a Balabushka, that will make a shot, that has a difficulty rating of 9 (out of 10), more like a 5! If you are starting out in darts and really want to play the game well and enjoy the success (winning) that comes with playing well, then you need to get the best possible dart when you first start playing! The last thing you want to start with nickel, silver or brass darts! The dilemma in darts, is that probably 95% of all darts that exist on the market today, are just a waste of money and this includes most all of the tungsten darts as well. Make it a point, if you haven’t done it already, to read Darts Equipment Class 101, for an in depth analysis of darts and all the components that make up a dart. Almost all of the information you will read on darts in other printed materials will not be as detailed and informative in nature as in Darts Equipment Class 101. They usually will state things like, “This is a dart, this is a barrel, this is a shaft, this is a flight, etc.. I don’t know how you feel about this type of information, but I feel that it insults my intelligence. There ought to be a law! The LESS that darts shooters know about darts equipment the better for the darts manufacturers! We at DartSmarts.com are going to change the future of darts. Remember this always: One is only as good, as the equipment that they play with, allows them to be!
Knowledge
Knowledge is power! You don’t have to have much experience IF you have knowledge. Knowledge comes with education as well as experience. If someone does their homework in educating themselves in a specific area of concentrated study, they indeed, will be just as informed and even better than the person that has had ten years of experience, because they will have learned the material at a fraction of the time, plus, learning it in a more logical and understanding sequence. In chess, you first want to learn “Combination and Tactics” so you can learn to coordinate your pieces so that they can work well together. Orchestrating a band, begins with coordinating the different instruments that work together first! Doesn’t it? So why is it that everyone that starts learning chess begins with learning the openings? Knowledge will prevent you from making common, as well as advanced mistakes, and thus will save you not only the time taken to develop these bad habits, but, knowledge will also save you the time needed to “recondition” these bad habits out of your “game.” DartSmarts.com has also, just invited some of the best darts shooters in the world, from the P. D. C., to contribute to our web site for the sake of advancing shooters excellence in the game. Stay tuned here for the information that I’m sure will follow!
Conditioning
Conditioning in darts is the art of interlocking quality knowledge, equipment and a well designed, sequential physical activity into a desired consistent response. In other words, one needs to first, do as much of the mental preparation game as possible, before, initially starting the activity. Next, with a better understanding of equipment including the mechanics behind the equipment, obtain the proper darts and dart components and then, later, proceed forward to the conditioning stage. Conditioning is the most important step in development as a competitive darts shooter. All the knowledge and best equipment isn’t going to do you any good if you are not, 1.) objective/adaptable, 2.) coachable to yourself and others that are self designated and 3) relentless about increasing your performance which also includes being relentless about winning! Excellence is achieved one game at a time! The next time you find yourself in a game that you are losing, become a pressure shooter, and focus totally on every dart in order to turn that loss into a win!
The Secret to Performance: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel!
Watch any professional sport. Watch how the players perform. They all seem to perform the same feats in very near, the exact same way. There isn’t a player amongst them that has an unorthodox method of performing the exact same action that works just as well. If you know something works one way, why beat yourself up by trying another approach? Don’t reinvent the wheel. If there were a more proficient way of doing what ever you are doing, the pros would be doing it and in essence, they are! If an unknown comes along and can pretty much duplicate, mimic, copy, duplicate, copy, exactly what the best players in the world is doing, then they are just as good as the people they are mimicking. If someone can watch what these players are doing and just repeat it, then they will save countless years of practice and training and get some instant and excellent results quickly on a not so pressured competitive level. If what the pros are doing works, there is no reason why it won’t work for someone else. Once a person develops a certain level of skill and maintain the consistency of it, that person can fine tune their technique to one that is more individualized for them personally. This process is an “on going” modification transposition. The real challenge here lies in having enough objectivity and self control to not stray away too far from the “norm.” Please ignore all of this if you are a masochist.