Awareness

For years I had a throw that worked well enough to hide the problem. Not every time, and not always badly. Pressure was not the issue; I have usually trusted myself in big moments. The leak was quieter. When I was tired, hurried, or trying to force the distance, the boule could come out too hard. Long one end, short the next, and I would be left judging the result without really knowing what had happened.

The change did not start as a technical rebuild. It started because two books made me suspicious of how little I was actually noticing: With Winning in Mind, by Lanny Bassham, and The Inner Game of Tennis, by Tim Gallwey. Neither book gave me a pétanque answer. They just made me ask a better question: what is my arm actually doing when the boule leaves my hand?

The answer was simpler than I expected. I was using more arm than I needed. The distance was not coming from a clean finish through the fingers. I was pushing for it.

So I gave myself one cue. Not the score. Not the landing spot. Not whether the boule was good or bad.

Watch the speed of the arm.

That was enough. Less force. More wrist. A quieter finish. The boule still had to travel the same distance, but I no longer had to bully it there.

The old throw still comes back. It appears when I am tired, when I rush the routine, or when I try to add force instead of trusting the finish. But now I recognise it sooner. That is the real change. I do not have to wait until the boule lands to know something was off.

This is why awareness became the first habit for me. Not as an idea, but as something practical: a way of catching the throw while it is still fresh enough to learn from. A few notes after practice. A few slow boules. Enough attention to feel the finish instead of only judging the result.

Week 1 of the Pétanque Performance Journal is Awareness for exactly this reason. The page asks for very little: a focus word before you warm up, and the three shots worth repeating when the session is done.

My throw was not broken. It was good enough to keep using, and good enough to keep fooling me. It got better when I finally started paying attention to the part I had been skipping.