How to Throw a Dart: Throwing Technique for Beginners

Dart throwing technique at a glance

A clean throwing technique is made of a few building blocks that run the same way on every throw. None of them has to look perfect. What matters is that you repeat them reliably.

Stance: side on or angled to the throwing line, 70 to 80 percent of your weight on the front foot.
Grip: thumb plus two or three fingers, just behind the dart's centre of gravity, only as firm as necessary.
Throw: the upper arm stays still, only the forearm draws back and accelerates forward evenly.
Release and follow through: all fingers open at once, the arm swings out toward the target.
Aim: eye, dart tip and target sit on one line, and the dart starts from the same spot every time.

The sections below go through these building blocks in the order you set them up at the oche.

Stance: find a position and keep it

There is no correct stance, only one you can repeat reliably. Three variants are common and all three work.

In the front on stance both feet stand parallel to the throwing line and the body faces the board. It is the most intuitive option and the best starting point if you feel unsure. In the side on stance the body turns roughly 90 degrees and the front foot points at the board. That position is stable and common among professionals, but it loads the hip and takes getting used to. The stance at 45 degrees sits between the two and is the most sensible compromise for most beginners.

Whichever variant you pick, roughly 70 to 80 percent of your weight rests on the front foot. The back foot only stabilises. It stops you tipping forward.

The practical part many people skip: mark your foot position. A strip of tape on the floor is enough. Beginners unconsciously stand slightly differently each time they warm up, and that shift explains a large share of their spread later on. Fixing the position removes one source of error entirely without changing anything about the motion.

Grip: hold the dart loosely and the same way every time

There is no anatomically correct grip. Only three points are relevant at the start.

Fingers: three fingers, meaning thumb, index and middle finger, is the most common variant and a good starting point.
Pressure: the grip has to hold the dart, nothing more. A cramped grip blocks the fingers on release and the dart starts to tip.
Spot on the barrel: at the centre of gravity or marginally behind it. Further forward the tip drops in flight, further back it rises.

More important than the ideal point is repetition: same finger, same spot, every throw. The different grip types, how to find the centre of gravity and how to test your own grip are covered in detail in the article on how to hold a dart.

The throw: only the forearm works

The motion itself is simpler than it looks in slow motion. The upper arm stays still, the elbow is the pivot, the forearm draws back and accelerates forward. Nothing else happens.

During the backswing the elbow stays where it is, as if fixed to a wall. How far you pull back is a matter of taste. Some players barely move the dart, others bring it almost to the ear. Both work, as long as the distance is the same every time.

The acceleration runs forward evenly rather than in a jerk. The most common misconception early on is that more force brings more precision. A dart needs very little energy for 2.37 metres. Extra force creates tension in the arm and makes the motion harder to control, not more accurate.

On release every finger involved opens at the same moment. If one stays on the barrel longer, it deflects the dart sideways. The arm then swings out toward the target with the fingers pointing at the board. That follow through can no longer influence the dart, but it tells you whether the motion before it ran straight.

Aiming: eye, dart and target on one line

Aiming a dart is not sighting a rifle. The aiming line consists of three points: your dominant eye, the dart tip and the target field. If they sit on a straight line, the direction is right. Most players keep their eyes on the target and see the tip only as a blur.

For beginners two rules are enough. First, before the backswing the dart sits at the same spot in front of your face on every throw, otherwise the line moves with it. Second, the aiming phase stays short and even, roughly one to three seconds. How to find your dominant eye and what exactly to look at is covered in the article on how to aim a dart.

The typical beginner mistakes

Four patterns show up in almost everyone who starts out. They have little to do with talent and can be dealt with early.

The first is too much force. Throwing hard tenses the shoulder and forearm and costs you the feel for the release point. Throw deliberately softer than feels right.

The second is constant switching. Beginners often change stance, grip and motion within a single session because a few darts miss. That never leaves enough repetitions to tell whether something works. Stick with one variant for at least two to three weeks before judging it.

The third is the head. Many players push the head forward during the throw or follow the dart with their eyes. That changes the perspective on the target with every throw. The head stays still until the dart is in the board.

The fourth is the missing routine. A fixed sequence before every throw, meaning step up, take the dart, fix the target, throw, creates identical starting conditions. Without it every throw begins from a different state.

Setting up board, distance and equipment

Before you fine tune your technique, check the wall. A board mounted at the wrong height makes technique work worthless, because you train a compensation that has to disappear again on a correctly set up board.

Two measurements matter. The bullseye sits 1.73 metres above the floor. The throwing line, the oche, is 2.37 metres from the board, measured horizontally from the wall rather than diagonally from the bullseye. The diagonal distance between oche and bullseye therefore comes to 2.93 metres. Use that figure as a check and your setup is right.

Equipment needs little at the start. A set of steel tip darts between 21 and 24 grams covers almost every type of player. Lighter darts need more force and forgive less, heavier ones fly more calmly but ask for slightly more impulse. Start in the middle of that range and only switch once your motion is stable. Changing hardware in the first month simply hides whether a change came from you or from the dart.

More important than barrel shape or flight design is that you always throw the same set. Every switch resets your calibration.

Practising sensibly in the first weeks

Beginners almost always play doubles too early and practise repetition too rarely. For the first weeks a different approach works better.

Throw series at a single field, usually the 20 or the bullseye, and pay attention not to whether you hit but to whether the three darts of a visit land close together. A tight group next to the target is technically far better than one hit and two strays. The group shows a repeatable motion, the hit may be chance.

Three to four sessions a week of 20 to 30 minutes each achieve more than one long session at the weekend. The motion is automated through frequency of repetition, not through total duration. As soon as concentration drops you are training mistakes along with everything else, so stopping early beats pushing through.

Warm up for a few minutes before each session. The first throws of a session are measurably less settled for almost every player, and counting them into your judgement leads to wrong conclusions about your technique.

When technical detail starts to matter

As long as stance, grip and the basic motion are not in place, detailed questions gain you little. The exact elbow angle at release or the finer points of aiming only become relevant once the motion runs reliably.

If you are at that point and consistency is still missing, the next step is narrowing down specific faults. How to read your grouping to work out which part of your technique is drifting is covered in the article on improving your dart throwing technique.

Making your own motion visible

The underlying problem in technique training is that you cannot see your own motion. What feels right while throwing often looks different from the outside, and early on you lack the experience to notice deviations by feel.

mydart captures the throwing motion through the camera and automatically measures what you cannot judge yourself: the elbow angle across the whole sequence, how still the upper arm and shoulder stay, how straight the arm travels and how much consecutive throws differ from each other. How to use these measurements over weeks of dart training is shown on the overview page.

For beginners the last point is the useful one. It answers the question you have most often in the first weeks: is my motion actually becoming more even, or does it just feel that way?