Take a peer at our `coach` trip to Eastbourne
There is one area in particular which is vital if you are trying to detect strengths and weaknesses in a sports competitor or team. For example,
you may be searching for any tiny flaw in the technique of a cricketer playing a forward defensive shot, a golfer driving their ball off the tee
or what about a dart player throwing his dart? The area that can help find any flaw is video analysis, it is a vital tool in achieving a much
better understanding of how a technique should be performed.
The Darts Performance Centre was established to try and give darts players the physical and mental preparation ideas that most other professional and grass-roots sports competitors take for granted. For whatever reason it is, we all have theories about this, darts if the forgotten `sportī when it comes to player assistance, advice, training aids, practice regimes and the like, or to use one word to encompass these areas, coaching. We have been working on a way to bring darts coaching to the fore and trialled our ideas at the Eastbourne Open this weekend. Here is a summary of our exploits.
I (Paul Gillings) was assisted by two extremely knowledgeable and capable coaches. That is the first vital ingredient of effective coaching. Andy, who has recently graduated with a sports science degree that centered on golf and in particular the bio-mechanics of golf, came down from Lincoln. Knowledge of bio-mechanics or in other words the study of the different parts of the body and muscles that have to work together to perfect the ideal golf shot or in our case the perfect darts throw is crucial . The second member of the team was Pete, he is the UK agent for Silicon Coach, which is the video analysis software we used. Pete has twenty years experience of coaching professional cricketers as well as youth and `for fun` players. We had a team that any sport would be happy to take advice from, but what would dart players make of the darts coaching gang at the Eastbourne Open?
There was of course some scepticism. Two of our first two clients openly admitted that after their session when we asked them to fill out a questionnaire on their experience. Father and son Ian and Leigh Godfrey both set aside their concerns, paid up their cash and went under the `spotlight`. After analysing Ian we questioned him about his face on stance. The reason for setting up this way was due to a shoulder injury he has had for many years, however, the main concern we had was the stance he took was not giving him any stability leading to a rocking motion as he threw. We tried several back foot positions and settled on one that Ian confirmed was comfortable. The transformation was instant. The rocking vanished and the darts started grouping in the twenty. He left reflecting on what might have been if we had been around twenty years earlier.
His son Leigh was next up. His technique seemed sound and to be frank we were baffled for a few minutes as to why his third dart in particular was going astray. Pete, who was observing the video clips called us over. He had detected a flaw with Leigh`s breathing technique. Leigh would draw breath before he brought his first dart back and then only breathe out when he had thrown his third. The video clearly shows Leigh almost ` expiring` on the oche as his lungs wanted more oxygen but he was only interested in throwing his darts. If you can imagine trying to throw a dart whilst literally gasping for breath then you can also envisage the effect this would have on the accuracy of the dart. We came up with some suggestions to combat this and we had another satisfied customer whose scoring had improved immediately.
Overall everyone we saw went away very happy. There are many more case studies (equally as fascinating), feedback from players as well as some interesting reasons why players would not come onto the oche to relay at a later date. We will be putting some before and after video on the web soon. Please register (it is free) to the Darts Performance Centre newsletter and we will let you know when it is available.