After purchasing your perfect set of darts, installing your dartboard correctly, it’s time to start to practice your accuracy with some dart practice routines.
A solid practice session should include a mix of darts practice routines; scoring, hitting doubles as well as honing your combination shots.
make it count
Taking your time and focusing on each throw is also very important. Don’t just randomly throw darts at the board, make each set count. It is also extremely useful to keep a record of your darts practice sessions. Not only how long each session was, but also your performance in those sessions. Graphs and charts will show your progress, which is a great motivator. They will also highlight areas for improvement in your game too.
Regular darts practice, say an hour a day, will be far more beneficial that playing for 8 hours on a Sunday with your mates. As with many sports, muscle memory needs time to develop. Practising every day will certainly help you improve in this area.
warming up
To make the most of each practice session, having a warm up routine is vital. Spend a good 5 – 10 minutes. The focus here should be to get your arm loose, your concentration levels up and your eye in. Don’t just throw aimlessly at the triple 20, but try to hit different parts of the board. Some players have a very set warm up routine which works for them. Others are a little more relaxed about which targets they aim for, but focus on their throwing action.
dart Practice routines
JDC Challenge
The JDC Challenge consists of 3 parts: –
Part 1: Shanghai 10-15:3 darts at each number in turn socring only on that number. (i.e. S10, S10, T10 = 50 Points). If you hit shanghai you score a bonus of 100 Points
Part 2: Round the World Doubles: One dart at each double in turn. i.e. one dart at 1, one dart at 2, one dart at 3 and so on round to the bull. Scoring 50 Points per double hit and 100 points for hitting the bull
Part 3: Shanghai 15-20:3 darts at each number in turn socring only on that number. (i.e. S15, S15, T15 = 75 Points). If you hit shanghai you score a bonus of 100 Points
Bobs 27
You start this practice darts game with 27 points. You throw 3 darts on every double segment from 1 to bull. If you miss a segment with all 3 darts, the double value of the according segment is subtracted from your score. Every succesful throw adds the double value to the score.
If you drop to or below 0, the game is lost.
For a full explaination, click here.
Scoring
Round the world scoring
try to reach so many points as possible.
Game 420
You start this game with 420 points. The objective of this practise drill is to reduce your score to zero or less. You aim 3 darts at every double on the dartboard, from double 1 to the centre bull. For each double successfully registered you take the score from your total. (If you hit 2 double 1’s in your first throw, you would subtract 4 points from your score. 420 – 4 = 416).
You aim 3 darts at each double from 1 to centre bullsuccessful hits that you have off the score of 420 (i.e. if you hit 2 double 1’s you take away 4 from the score of 420 leaving you 416).
If your score is greater than zero after you have thrown at the centre bull, then try again. To win the game overall you have to finish the games with less than 63 thrown darts.
Catch 40
The goal is to checkout all scores from 61 to 100 with a maximum of 6 darts.
Checking out with 2 of 6 darts earns 3 points, finishing with 3 darts grants 2 points and a 4 to 6 darts checkout rewards 1 point. The exception here is 99 where a 3 darts checkout rewards 3 points since it cannot be done with less.
The darts 4 to 6 are thrown at the remaining value, e.g. your finish is 90 and you get 50 points with your first three darts, you’re left with 40 points to checkout with darts 4 to 6.
Becoming a good dart player
Practice makes perfect is a very old cliche, but one that is spot on in the game of darts. if you want to become as good as possible, then you must take your practice sessions seriously. Focusing on your technique to make it feel as natural as possible is one aspect. Another is to identify your weaknesses and work on reducing the impact they are having on your game. As previoulsy mentions, there is no point in getting down to a double if your can’t hit them.
Try setting up a camera, even if its your smart phone, to record your throw. You will soon be able to spot why that third dart flies differently from the first 2.
Let us know which are your favourite darts practice routines by leaving a comment below.
1 thought on “Darts practice routines”
Practice from hitting triple 10 to 20 and see how it works for you.