American Darts Blog

Beginner Practice Routines

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• Author: admin
• March 10, 2009
• Category: General

We have some fellows who are shooting the dart league for the first time, and they qualify as beginners.  Sure, they’ve shot before, somewhere in a past decade.  Or, they’ve shot “English” darts, but they haven’t been shooting American darts regularly in some time.  And, it shows. 

Not that everyone has to be some sort of excellent shooter in order to play in a tavern beer league.  They don’t.  But these guys want to get back to where they feel like they’re shooting like they used to.  And, in trying to get there, the topic of practice routines came up. 

Obviously, the more you shoot, the better your chances of getting better.  But, darts are like anything else.  If you’re working at something, you’ll see results.  If you’re playing around and passing time, you’ll spend a lot of time without any actual improvement.  And remember, we’re not talking about shining up your game to take on Mark Weurstle, or Darin Young.  It’s just a matter of going from maybe one red an inning to sometimes two reds an inning. 

So, here is the practice routine that I was given when I started shooting, and later I’ll post some routines that are more advanced.  I won’t be talking about improving any dart throwing technique, just practice routines.  To start with . . .

ALL AROUND THE WORLD

Charlie Dusendshine told me to start out by setting a goal for the inning.  The goal can be as simple as landing a dart anywhere in the inning and getting a point, or as complex as landing all three in the trips.  I’ve never bothered with the trip shooting, but I do recommend being very interested in shooting the reds.  So, I set a goal of landing a red.

You start at the first inning, and shoot at it until you hit your goal (for me, it was a red).  Then you move to the second inning, and shoot at it until you hit your goal.  And on and on until you reach the final inning for which you’d like to practice.  For a lot of people that is the ninth inning because that’s how long a regulation “baseball” game of darts lasts.  Others keep shooting through the tenth because they like to be familiar with the tenth inning in case the game goes into extra innings. 

Other people want to become familiar with the entire dartboard, and shoot all 20 innings.

The great part about this routine is that you can set your own goal.  Mine grew from hitting a red, to hitting three points.  Then it grew to four points, then two reds (specifically - if i accidentally hit two trips, I’d have to reshoot the inning), and on to five or six an inning.

For anyone just shooting the innings one through nine, I recommend starting at the nine and going backwards as often as you start at the one and go forwards.  If you only ever go in one direction, you risk becoming very good at the first few innings, and dropping off when the game draws near a close.

I think that if you’re learning to be good at a certain game of darts (like baseball), this is a good place to start.  I’m sure after time you can spice it up with little twists like having to start over if you black out, or using it as a game to play against friends.  Perhaps each time you need to reshoot an inning, you toss a dime in the cup.  The first player to finish the appropriate amount of innings wins the contents of the cup. 

The upside of this practice routine is that it gives you the chance to concentrate on a single inning until you are comfortable enough with it to proceed.  That’s so much better than saying something like “i stink at the seven”, then throwing poorly at the seven and moving right on past the problem spot without actually ever improving.

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