Frustration, Disappointment and Anger

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When I stand back as watch players throw and miss I often see them react in these emotional ways. I tend to feel them as well and finally came to the conclusion it comes from the human species natural drive to do well.

Doing well ties into my personal philosophy of human survival drives. It also ties in with the group dynamics of our base drive for group status in the drive for group survival.

I needed to come up with something that I could use in a mind-state that would, at a minimum, curb those feelings so the natural human adrenal chemicals released under their influence would not dampen my personal natural throw.

You see, when our emotions are triggered, click and whirr, our brains trigger our adrenal glands and release our monkey brain from its cage and all kinds of disruptive effects raise up to obscure and disrupt our abilities to act, to throw good darts.

So I decided to become, and train, a mind-set of the "Deadman!" A bit like killing the monkey and ignoring those irritating emotions when the darts don't fly true to my target.

How do I do this? Well, as a dart deadman I ignore the emotional reactive responses from a bad throw and just believe the miss is just an opportunity to practice my personal throw. 

I aim for a T20 and miss means I have opened an opportunity to practice my throw targeting my T20 again or to practice and train my brain to mental re-calculate a means to double out another way with the remaining darts in my hands.

The moment I miss I redirect my thoughts to, ‘ok, more practice’ or ‘ok, calculate and focus’ rather than allow emotional tidal waves to inundate my mind into throwing more and more bad throws. Look at it as a means to refocus away from the monkey’s efforts to use emotions to derail my efforts and use a mindfulness, a mind-no-mind, to immediate curb the emotional effects by breathing properly, relaxing the shoulders and face and then to immediately, without hesitation, recalculate. 

I have caught myself missing and immediately saying, ‘crap’, and then feeling that emotional turmoil taking control of my body often to cause additional throws to go awry so my training now is to hit the ‘recalculate’ button or take a mind-set of, ‘hey, more practice shooting at this target until I hit the darn thing’ mentality - dependent on if in practice or competition. After all, if I missed and if I allow the monkey’s emotionally dominance then I will just miss again so why not? Why not simply say no to the monkey on my back and recalculate, breath, refocus on ‘my throw’, target and toss.  With practice and experience it could mean the difference from mastery or just social darts. 

Just call me ‘Deadman!’ Deadman tossing here, deadman tossing!

Finding Your Throw

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As one might understand better this relates to the golf philosophy of ‘finding your swing’. As with professional tours of the world one must know their swing, own their swing and can work out any kinks in their swing and in the dart arts this is the same, ‘one must know their throw, own their throw and must be able to work out any flaws in their throw’. 

The dartist must know what makes their throw tick. It is a personal thing that must be mastered by the self for no others can throw darts for you and not dart guru can teach you anything other than fundamental principles behind throwing darts. To achieve mastery one must find their throw and then practice the throw until it becomes a ‘primal conditioned response’. You can look to gimmicks, you can achieve fitness, feed your body nutritious food, stretch and visualize, mental work, and practice a throw but to consistently throw darts well takes something else.

Others can show you everything you need to know, to mentor one to throw good darts but it is you, the individual, who must find your throw and then use it, practice it, apply it and gain experience through your throw. It is about developing instincts and understandings in the dart throw. You must develop the feel for your throw. You have to apply physiokinetics along with technique but you cannot lose sight of theories and philosophical esoterica that attribute and contribute to the best personal dart throw. 

Dartist: Practice vs. Competition

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This is similar to the chasm a self-defense practitioner must overcome when facing violence for the very first time. Even with a ton of confidence built in practice along with lots of practice when it comes time to face off against an adversary/opponent/competitor the stresses that come from that still take over until you are able to step that first time, often many more times to encode that into procedural primal conditioned response tapes/coding. 

Here it is, when you train you gain confidence; when you train your encode a certain amount of primal conditioning that permeates both the mind and the body (body as in what is falsely termed muscle memory). Regardless of how long, how much and to what extent one practices and trains when it comes time to deal with the adrenal stress-conditions of either/or violence and/or competition those very training and practices may or may not trigger.

Adrenal chemical floods are often because of a slight shift in intent and danger to the person who is trying to make use of the discipline. In truth, there are no ways to train and practice for violence or competition adrenal effects because in training and practice you are not exposed to grave bodily harm or death or even, which is the same in our lizard brains, the facing of an opponent who is often an unknown in a competitive arena. 

There are ways, in self-fense training, to expose practitioners to the adrenal stress-conditions that would hit you in a violent situation but even so, there is still a divide between the reality based adrenal stresses encountered in ‘training’ vs. ‘reality’. When you use that type of training you reduce the effort to step across a smaller chasm to reality. In competition tho, you can expose yourself to some reality by competing against others in training but in the realm of the dart arts, a dart’ist must expose themselves to actual competition where they face off with others that are not a part of the training regimen. Like the self-fense example, there is still that smaller step you have to make to get into the flow and throw to win. 

You can gain a ton of experience in practice and you have to realize that regardless, when you hit the competitive arena, or reality of violence for self-fense, you’re still going to be affected. As to how much and how much that effects your ability and proficiency is all up to you. As with anything, the more exposure you get the more experience and the more confidence that will overcome the adrenal stress-conditions that will have an adverse effect on your applications.

Last night, after about twenty-two or more years, and after a few months of practice and training I exposed myself last night to a competitive environment with mostly strangers who when I observed warming up all threw darts well. My training did help me but I still had to deal with the newness of the environment along with the stresses that come with all of it. My practice and training worked, to a degree, and I was able to throw moderately well but I could tell that my focus and such was not up to par with what I trained. I threw some, about half I think, darts well and then I choked. I could feel and see at times my hand do the adrenal dump shimmy and shake and I could tell that I failed to adhere to some of my mind-physical connections such as elbow position, confident throws through the cycle of the actual throw and my posture and structure tended to fall off from optimal but just the same I did well my first time out. 

The lesson I learned here is to train more and to expose myself to competitive environments and stresses. I already planned on darting at this location every week, Thursday evenings. There is enough, for now, attendance and changes in dart’ists that I will get exposed to more proficient and unknown entities so that I can finally train my mind for the adrenal stress-conditioned dumps that come in such situations and I expect to increase my proficiency in throwing, over time and exposure and experiences. 

I have also found, from the social parts of the dart arts, that the other dart place is also with more skilled dart’ists who, when the time is right, can challenge me to improve and grow in the dart arts. Turn over is also a great exposure to new dart’ists who can challenge one’s abilities toward constant and continuous improvement so I look forward to throwing darts at those places. 

In closing this article, it was especially enjoyable to find out that the person running the darts last night to be the same couple who ran it when I last threw darts over twenty-two years or more ago and that one person last night was actually an old acquaintance from the time I worked at the Station in that area so very long ago. It took me a while to realize and recognize him during play. It goes to show, you never know who will come knocking on your door years later in your life, cool!

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My Second First Time

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It has been in excess of twenty years since I tossed darts in a competitive way, with others that is, and tonight will be my first foray back into the world of darts. So far, my initial delving into darts does not say just how much has changed except those sources for supplies has disappeared and the many venues of competition have diminished. 

I expected to find more in the google search, especially in my area but alas there were only three available unless I ventured toward San Fran proper or as far away as Sacramento. It appears as to on-line sources that most of darts has circled the wagons back and around British shores or so it seems to me. 

I am a tad nervous, not because my darts are not just out of practice but also a bit squeaky due to the aging process for I was a bit younger then. It is nice that my first jump back into the deep end of the pool, by chance, is at the very location I played lo those many years ago at a place called “Paddock Bowl“ in Concord. I am a bit nervous and yet not because age does temper the mind a bit.

It would have been awesome if the bowling alley about a mile from my home had darts … it was not to be. I will write up my experiences when I get back to the blog tomorrow (the tourney is tonight at 8pm Cali time). I feel confident I will throw well and if things are similar I expect a wide range of talent at the Bowl.