Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
In my recent articles I have presented for your review, analysis and disposition things martial as they would apply to the dart arts. As a long time martial artist, i.e., Karate, Tai Chi Chuan and Chi Gong, I have a good deal of experience in that discipline. My dart arts have been on hiatus for about twenty years so they are kind of out of play so to speak.
The lesson to learn here, as taught all the time with martial artists who find themselves moving from one system or style to another that even with a good deal of experience it can be a bit discerning to find that you have to go back and go through the novice to student to practitioner levels all over again even to get those fundamental principles adjusted to the new way of doing things. Now, this can be a bit off-putting and yet it is how things work regardless so it means getting back to the basics of acceptance, embrace it and then practice, practice and more practice.
In my current state of darts all that I have written to date is still true, relevant and beneficial to the dart arts. I find myself falling into old habits you would have thought were long gone but the old gray cells tend to hold on to things pretty much for ever and ever so when such things are triggered now they will still try to implement those old things until you train it away and the rub to that is this - IT takes a lot of practice; a lot of work; a lot of mindfulness to achieve that goal for reprogramming something like this takes, wait for it, LONGER!
Now, lets add another factor some of you won’t have experienced yet, your age and state of health and state of fitness. As a long time practitioner of the martial arts I am healthy, fit and yet in my winter years (meaning I am over sixty years of age). The first two tend to help a lot while the third one can present other obstacles necessary to overcome or work with to gain back a level of expertise necessary to be competitive.
It takes even longer to reprogram so the advice is this, “Accept the facts as irrefutable; Embrace your age, health and fitness levels; slow yourself down and then implement a plan to reprogram to overcome and create, synthesize, a new model, method and conditioning that will allow you to consistently and accurately throw your darts.
I have found over the last few weeks of practice that I tend to slide into old habits so now I need to program myself to stop, slow things down, focus back on the strategies and tactics to create, synthesize, a new “way of the dart arts” to be consistent and accurate in my efforts. It means catching myself when I slip, stopping, meditating on the new way, visualization of the new process then actively practicing that process until it becomes a primal like conditioned response every time I stand at the oche line.
Good darts!
p.s. Since I am actually starting all over again I intend to write about my efforts with both successes and non-successes as I travel this path back to good darts for myself and writing about it just in the remote chance readers would find it helpful in perceiving ways to improve their dart arts.
p.s.s. Oh, and as to my current status in dart arts, lets say that I have been in a really huge ’Slump’ these last twenty years and my efforts and changes are all about overcoming that slump and achieving even better dart arts. :-)
Bibliography (Click the link)
“In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter.” - Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal (ret)
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