Yesterday was the fourth week of our Wednesday league. A day, dear reader, that I normally feel is a little special. A little treat during the week where I get to do something I'm fairly good at, enjoy the company of fellow goofs, and get the chance to do something that makes me feel accomplished and competent without the weight of the world on my little, badgery shoulders.
But last night. LAST NIGHT?! Man, I wasn't feeling it. Zero good-time chemicals were released from my brainbits.
And the reason, truthfully, was a self-realization about my throw that's thrown me for a big loop.
The no good, very bad throw.
The short of it (everything with me is "the short of it" HAHAHAHAHA IT'S A HEIGHT JOKE!):
I noticed I do a weird thing with my throwing process, and now it's all I think about.
Basically, when I draw back my little arm to throw, I bring my axe flat against my upper back, then when I'm completing the throw, I twist it back to face the target and release. It might be easier to show you:
So, you see that? How I kinda lay the axe against my shoulder and then throw? I didn't know I did that for a long time, but then I saw a picture/video of me doing it, and it got to me. I haven't seen any other thrower do that, ever, and it made me feel (I think, correctly) that it's not a great move.
With that in mind, I've been working on, you know, changing my throw. I'm trying to not bring the axe behind my ear when I'm drawing it back to toss it, and my babies, it's not going well. The trouble, outside of breaking the muscle memory, is that I'm thinking about how I'm throwing each time I do it, and it messes me up. Messes me up real bad.
And while I've noticed it messing up my process in the past, last night it really got to me, specifically when I was going for clutches.
100% clutch is great. Losing matches because of it is not.
Now, I'm not gonna say anyone who decides to have a 100% clutch league for themselves is morally superior than someone who's just trying to win matches. Your game is your game, my game is my game. But, last night, I lost a match I certainly could have won, had I just stayed down.
My first reaction was to get pissed at the injustice of it all: my opponent should have gone up with me, to be sporting. To be fair. To not get the "easy win." But, of course, that's all absolute bullshit. My (and by extension, your) lane buddy has absolutely no obligation to do anything. There is a certain level of...I don't know...being sporting about it all? But even then, I made a personal obligation (as I have for the past few leagues) to go up for clutch every single time. My opponent didn't.
Once my pissy, baby-like response passed, I knew I was the only person to blame for that unexpected loss (plus, you know, it's axe throwing. Who gives a damn, really). Naturally I still needed to put that grump somewhere, and like all people of my particular ethnic group, I put that hatred and loathing directly back into my self. What was I doing wrong? How did I let myself down.
And it was thinking about my throw. My gottamn throw. Ugh.
I'm an axe thrower who's lost their throwmagic.
I've started stuttering in my otherwise smooth-flow throw routine. I am trying to force myself to stop bringing my axe behind my head, which makes me kinda jitter whilst throwing, which makes me lose accuracy AND power. And it blows.
When I notice that happening, I revert back to my little pat-self-with-axe-and-throw move, which makes me think about how not good that routine is, which makes me lose focus on the throw altogether.
Rinse. Repeat.
It's been this way for at least two leagues. My last Thursday league? May have done better calling it turdsday league, cause that's all I was throwing. Yeah, I wrote it. I don't even care. I'm the bad boy of axe-throwing bloggers.
So what's to be done? I can't keep getting a big grump on because I don't like my throw, because that sounds like a great way to lose my enjoyment of this funtime sport. But I also can't just hope I suddenly develop a new throw that 1. doesn't promote cutting off my own ear and 2. helps me actually hit the target where I mean to.
Unlearn to relearn.
I've decided to look at this whole mess as an opportunity to experience the joy of learning how to throw...again.
I've got to un-muscle-memory my current, weird throw, then rebuild myself, phoenix-like, from the ashes. I reckon it's gonna take time, and very focused practice, but it's kind of fun to get the chance to start from...well not zero, necessarily, but something like zero.
I've got the experience, I've got at least some working philosophy about the sport, and now I just need to get my throw itself up to a level that is a bit more consistent, a bit less wibbly, and something that doesn't make me stop to think about it every match.
Maybe what I'm trying to get at with all of this gurbling above: there's no shame in throwing poorly, and there's no shame in reworking oneself even after years of axe throwing. I guess what I realized last night was just how much I need to really think and analyze what I like about my throw and what I don't, then spend some near-clinical-level time making it (my throw) into something I feel better about.
[[I don't know how to end this blog post so just imagine I had some sort of Carrie Bradshaw level quip here. Thanks.]]