Awareness

For years I threw the boule too hard. Not every shot. Often enough that I couldn’t quite trust it. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes the boule sailed long, or dropped short, and I couldn’t have told you why. That throw had won me plenty over the years. I just didn’t understand it yet.

Two books changed how I looked at it. With Winning in Mind, by Lanny Bassham, an Olympic shooter. The Inner Game of Tennis, by Tim Gallwey. Neither says a word about pétanque, and both point at the same idea. The throwing is run by a quieter part of the mind than the thinking, and it learns from whatever you show it. Years of play had trained my arm well. I had simply never watched it work.

The adjustment, when I found it, was small. I didn’t need to throw the boule so hard to make the distance. Less arm, more wrist. The boule leaves the fingers, not the shoulder.

I changed what I was paying attention to. Not the boule. Not the target. Not the line. The speed of my arm. That was the whole adjustment.

It changed everything quietly. My trigger changed. My pre-shot routine rebuilt itself without me redesigning it. The old throw still visits, when I’m tired, when the score is tight, when I’m not really there. Habits that old don’t leave overnight, and they don’t have to. The new one is winning more weeks than not.

Eighteen months in, I know it isn’t a mood. I can feel the finish now. The boule rolling off the fingers. The arm moving at its own best speed, the one I used to override.

That watching is now a habit I keep on paper as much as on the piste. Two minutes a day replaying my best shots. Six boules at half speed. Nothing clever. Slowing down was never the training, it was the seeing.

None of this needs your throw to be broken. Mine wasn’t. It was good, and it got better the day I started watching it. If you’re curious what your arm is actually doing, slow it down and have a look. Start there.