I LOVE standard – but premier made me a better axe thrower

I’m a Standard girlie. Through and through. It feels more like the spirit of axe throwing to me: immensely fun, not-so-serious, and forgiving of little mistakes. Point in fact, I didn’t even bother with Premier as an axe thrower until I was forced to via IATF tourneys away from the Meadery. Performance in those tourneys was mixed (well, okay, not really “mixed,” – I was/am fairly not good at tourneys as a constant), and they didn’t have that same spirit of goofy fun.

But my nearest, dearest axe house started doing Premier leagues, so I joined in. Two, so far. And now I find myself in my first Standard league after those two Premier leagues and…sheesh.

Sheesh.

The difference is hella noticeable.

Premier working its magic

Let’s go to the tale of the tape:

^^Above is my last Standard league before throwing in two Premier leagues^^

And ^^here^^ is my current Standard league showing. Still early days, but just by peeping the high score and average, you can see how things shifted.

Now, to be clear, I still am not crazy about throwing Premier. It’s fine I guess, but I find rounds are more filled with stress than just goofy fun, you know? Premier feels like it’s something to accomplish, whereas Standard feels like it’s something to experience–does that make any sense at all?

Why i’m jabbering about it

So why am I going on about this? Well, to put it in a nice little package for the media excerpt: Even if you aren’t super excited about Premier, it’s a hell of a good way to get better at Standard. Point in fact, once I switched my thinking on Premier (this is training to become stronger at Standard), I started enjoying Premier a bit more. Or maybe: I stopped getting as stressed about Premier.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m still pretty stoked on how well I’m doing in my Premier league, currently, and I’m not there to only practice for Standard – but that sort of reframe helped me not take every loss (or every bleeding bull) as seriously. And that’s nice for a guy who stays awake every night thinking about mistakes I’ve made through ever decade of my life.

What a treat.