Tuesday Tip: Keep it all as comfy as you can.

Axe throwing isn’t necessarily a highly-physical sport. You get yourself into a marathon — sure, you’ll be sore after. But during a league night? A tourney? You’re likely to get more exhausted by the walking and standing. If you’ve got your standard issue sort of body, you’ll be absolutely fine. But here’s the thing: axe throwers often find themselves over-stretching/over-extending/over-whatever-ing, and it leads to big complications down the road.

Now, I’m not meatspace doctor. I don’t understand what goes on inside of there. I’m pointing to my body right now. BUT I do know one thing about bodies, in general: they don’t like being uncomfortable. It makes them get tired or sore or grumpy. Medically I think the term is grumpy. Grump-bod. Gropdy.

Even so, throwers will often stretch themselves out, pre-throw, so they can get closer to the target. Or they’ll do some simply wild stuff with their wrists or hands or fingies. It’s like the most singularly-purposed dance routine.

When doing all of that odd movement stuff (because that’s what your muscle memory demands, or because you slipped into moving like that one day and just never corrected it), you’re typically losing your comfort. And when bodies lose comfort they often also lose stability.

This might sound like a clarion call for moving like a robot. And frankly, as soon as I wrote that sentence, I realized how cool it would be. So yeah, I’m not calling for that — but if you want to, please do. Just one of you please start bleep blooping around so I can enjoy it. Anyway — what I’m suggesting is this:

Consider what parts of your throw are uncomfortable, and try the comfy option.

Discomfort while throwing is likely the first indicator of something that needs addressed. I’m not talking about pain, necessarily. If you notice your shoulder feels tight, or your step leaves you in a position where it’d take very little to knock you down — things like that. Those little tightnesses/strains/wobblies are pointing to elements of your throw which aren’t sustainable, in the long run. They are failure points, sooner or later.

It’s a simple sort of checklist. Start from the top (The head/neck relationship, as Mr. Alexander would often say), and work down from there. Really feeeeeeeeeel your throwing process. Figure out what parts of your delicious body are moving oddly/uncomfortably, and figure out how to make those parts of your throw more comfortable. Not more elegant. Not more stable. More comfortable. Because when you figure out comfort, you’ll also be figuring out stability and strength and every other good thing, more or less.

But also don’t be an idiot: the most comfortable throw is probably one where you lie down on a bed and just throw while inclined on a bunch of pillows. You gotta work within the scope of “comfort while still hitting the target where I mean to,” of course.

So give it a try: do a tip-to-tail examination of your throwing movement and figure out what can change for more comfort. I think you’ll find with just a few, little changes, your overall longevity and accuracy will bump up a bit.