Week 6: Review. What Do Your Pages Show You?

When you ask yourself whether your game has improved, it’s easy to think only of the last time you played. Look back through your notes and compare an early session with a recent one where you were practising a similar shot. What were you trying to do, and what did you notice?

Start with that comparison. Whether you’re using the journal or your own practice notes, you’ve got somewhere to look for what has changed and what still needs work.

Start with your original question

What did you want to find out at the beginning? Read it before looking at the results. Otherwise it’s easy to judge the six weeks against something that only started bothering you last Sunday.

Find notes from sessions where you worked on that question. Compare the same kind of shot at a similar distance and on similar terrain. A point at six metres and one at nine ask different things of you. If you counted successes, compare how many you managed out of how many attempts, using the same definition of success. If you measured distance from the jack, use that measure again.

Look at where the boule landed as well as where it finished, if you recorded both. You might be reaching your chosen landing spot more often while still learning how the ground will affect the boule afterwards.

Keep your other observations alongside the results. Recovering more quickly after a miss, preparing the shot more consistently and enjoying practice more are worth noticing. They tell you about different parts of your game.

If the notes are patchy, use what’s there. Where a detail is missing, leave it as a question for the next session.

What could you find again?

The three best shots give you some throws worth revisiting. Read the setup, what you committed to and how each throw felt. Then look for occasions when you found something similar again.

If you’d noticed a relaxed release during slow-arm practice, was it still there at your normal rhythm? What happened when you came back another day, or played at a different distance? Those are the questions behind The Throw That Comes Back. A feeling you found late in one session gives you somewhere to start; finding it again tells you more about what you’ve kept.

You may have used a word such as soft to remind yourself of that feeling. The word is useful because it means something to you about a throw you’ve experienced. Read the note beside it: what did soft mean on that occasion?

Look beyond the selected good shots where your notes allow it. Did the same word accompany misses? Were there good throws without it? That can help you decide whether it’s a useful reminder or just a word you’ve got used to writing.

Look at the decision as well as the result

The Trust article asked you to try something in a situation where it mattered. Look back at the shot you chose, your preparation and what happened.

You might have missed the point but chosen the landing spot and followed the routine you’d practised. Or the boule finished well after you’d rushed into the circle without choosing the landing spot. Keep both the preparation and the outcome in view when deciding what needs practice. One attempt can’t tell you how dependable a routine has become.

For a shot at a boule, look at what it achieved as well as whether you hit. Did it remove the boule you needed to remove? With a team, did everyone understand the shot you were playing? After a miss, did your next decision account for the changed position?

Be careful with the explanation you give a result. A note saying the boule finished short records what happened. A tight shoulder is a feeling you remember. Deciding that the tight shoulder caused the short boule is a possible explanation. The note alone can’t settle that.

Which habits helped?

Look through the tracker: mental rewind, slow-arm practice, your pre-shot routine, the session log, and reading and reflection. Which helped with the things you wanted to work on? Which fitted into your week?

A tick tells you that you did something. The notes help you decide whether it helped.

Perhaps you usually wrote the log while your boules were still out, but rarely managed it once you got home. That’s a useful change to make: keep the journal with your bag and write a few words before you leave.

Keep chosen rest separate from a habit that repeatedly slipped. If you wanted to practise but couldn’t fit it in, look at when you were trying to do it. A shorter session at a time you can manage may be easier to return to.

What will you work on next?

Choose one question that your review has left open. Keep a word or routine that helps, and let go of one you’re using only out of habit. You don’t need a new cue to begin the next cycle.

Suppose your notes say that points at eight metres kept finishing short. They don’t say where the boules landed. Next session, choose a landing spot for that shot and watch where each boule lands as well as where it finishes.

Was it short of the spot, or did it reach the spot and stop sooner than you expected? The first gives you a reason to explore reaching the landing spot. The second asks you to look again at the ground and the shot you chose. Keep enough detail to revisit the question another day, rather than deciding from one boule.

You can return to an earlier theme too. Awareness and Slowness give you time to notice the throw. Play asks what happens when you take it into a game. Choose the one that fits what your notes have shown you.

The Pétanque Performance Journal gives you somewhere to keep those comparisons as you begin again. Finish your review with a sentence about the player you’re becoming, grounded in something you’ve recorded.

A player who chooses the shot before entering the circle. A player who can miss and still be ready for the next boule.