✋ How to backswing

[See other posts in the category how to throw a boule.]

A key aspect of effective throwing is getting your arms back. That means getting your non-throwing arm back for balance. And it means taking a big backswing.

Many players learn to play in clubs where casual play is the norm. They may not have a role model to show them what a big backswing looks like, and probably nobody has ever coached them about their form. That’s unfortunate, because you need a good, healthy backswing to get the power you need to shoot au fer or to throw a high lob. In addition, a big backswing can improve your left-right accuracy.

It’s not difficult to acquire a good backswing. You can see players and their backswings in photographs and Youtube videos, and once you’ve seen a big backswing, it’s relatively easy to do it yourself. (As Aristotle said, we learn by imitation.) The trick is to practice doing it regularly and consciously. With practice you will acquire the muscle-memory and shoulder flexibility that you need, and soon you will be doing it automatically, smoothly, and effortlessly. (It is actually easier to throw with a big backswing. You’re letting gravity help you do the work, and you have a longer distance across which to accelerate the boule gradually.)

So let’s look at some young players with a good backswing.

These young men have beautiful— and rather extreme— backswings… they actually bend forward in an effort to get a larger backswing. This kind of exaggerated backswing— torso leaning forward, both hands far back and very high— is what some of the world’s great shooters use to power their shooting. Consider the remarkable Didier Choupay—
… or the no less remarkable Pascal Milei—
Still, you don’t need to be that extreme. For most players, getting your throwing arm back until it is horizontal is enough to do the job.

One of the world’s great shooters, Philippe Suchaud.

Photo envoyé par Pascal Delfosse.

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A good backswing will give you enough power to shoot au fer. It will also give you enough power to throw a high lob, even when squat-pointing.


Here is a great photo of Celia Crittenden showing how it’s done.
You don’t always want to shoot or lob, so you don’t always need a big backswing. But sometimes you do want to shoot or lob, and that’s when you must have a big backswing in your tool bag.

✋ Lobbing — how to do it

Recently I stumbled across a Youtube video that really spoke to me. It is only 15 seconds long. What it said to me was— Watch!! THIS is how to do it.

Marco Foyot shows the same thing in this coaching session; his first boule (at around the 15 second mark) is a beauty.

When lobbing, do NOT come up off your heels and onto your toes like the student is unconsciously doing at the beginning of the video. He thinks he’s imitating Marco’s form, but he’s not. (This is where a coach can help.) Marco’s feet stay flat and firmly planted on the ground at all times; his heels never leave the ground. Your feet are your base; you want a solid foundation for your throw. You throw with your arm, not with your toes.

✋ Where to aim when you’re shooting

updated 2023-07-05

My friends and I would like to become shooters, and one question that we discuss is “Where should you aim when you’re shooting?”  We’ve proposed a number of different theories. The best answer, I think, is—

Aim for the spot on the ground immediately in front of the target boule.

Go to the target boule and put your boule on the ground directly in front of it, so that the two boules are touching. That’s where you should aim; that’s where you want your thown boule to hit the ground. Here is a view from above; the target boule is on the left; the ghostly circle on the right is where you want your boule to hit the ground.

Here is a side view. You can see the thrown boule coming down from the right at approximately a 45 degree angle.

There are a number of reasons why I believe this strategy works.

1. When you’re shooting, you’re ignoring the target boule and aiming for a specific spot on the ground. This means that shooting is no different from lobbing. In both cases you’re doing the same thing— aiming for a specific spot on the ground. So if you can lob, you can shoot.
    
2. It produces a solid hit. If the target boule is hit directly on its side (pleine bille), the maximum amount of momentum is transferred horizontally from the thrown boule to the target boule. The thrown boule will carreau sur place and the target boule will go flying. This is the principle behind Newton’s cradle.
   Recently I discovered a Youtube video of this process in action. In these photos, the thrown boule is coming in from the upper left.
   
   
    
3. It offers a generous margin of error. (See the diagram below.) If you throw slightly long, you still have a reasonable chance of hitting the target boule higher on its front side. If you throw slightly short, you have a decent chance of hitting the ground in front of the target boule and then bouncing up and hitting the target boule.

My friends and I also discuss the best way to produce a carreau sur place. I’ve heard a lot of such theories. Personally I doubt that there is any One Best Way to produce a carreau, and I’m skeptical of theories that involve putting a lot of backspin (retro) on the thrown boule. My own theory is that hitting the target boule on its front side this way, while playing on relatively soft ground, is the most likely way to produce a carreau sur place.

✋ Tip: the physics of petanque shooting

Are you a petanque player who is interested in learning how to shoot, or in learning how to shoot better? The WIRED web site has a new video that you will find interesting. The video is about “shooting” a basketball (making free throws), but the considerations involved are basically the same as those in petanque shooting. In both cases you are trying to launch a ball toward a very small target with consistency and accuracy. The video is HERE. It is full of stimulating ideas that you can apply to your own shooting practice.

I’ve been interested in techniques for learning to throw for some time. In particular, I’ve identified consistency and the height of the throw as especially important for practicing shooting, so it was interesting for me to see the video confirm (and improve) my crude insights.

If you’re interested in more information about some of the people in the video, here are a few useful links.

Steve Nash’s HOMECOURT AI is an Apple (iPad and iPhone) app. Its web site is www.homecourt.ai. I wish there was something similar for petanque shooting!

Larry M Silverberg is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University. You can find a podcast interview HERE. His article (“Optimal release conditions for the free throw in men’s basketball”) is available HERE, but it is very technical and I doubt that it has any practical usefulness for petanque players.

You can easily find a lot of information about Bob Fisher, the free-throw wizard, on the Web. Just google “Bob Fisher basketball“. His book is Straight Shooter: A game-changing new approach to basketball shooting. His web site is secretsofshooting.com

✋Throw like a girl

A lot of women players struggle to throw boules to longer distances, so when I saw this photo on the Facebook page of Celia Crittenden, I just had to re-post it.

Good form is the key to gettting distance on a thrown boule. And in this photo Celia, one of the top U.S. women players, shows how to do it. Aside from the fact that she is squat pointing, note the full backswing of the throwing arm, which supports a strong throw. Note also the full backswing of the non-throwing arm, which keeps her balanced as she throws.

✋ Where should I look when I lob?

Players who are working to improve their game sometimes wonder: Where should I be looking when I throw a lob? Should I concentrate on the donnée, the spot where I want my boule to hit the ground? Or should my eyes follow the boule through its high trajectory in the air? Instructional books and videos say that your attention should be on the donnee. But if you watch Youtube videos of world-class lobbers, you can see that their eyes are following the boule through the air. Which is right? What should I be doing?

✋Working on your form: torso torque

A throwing form that allows you to throw effectively is something that you can work on. In this post we look at one aspect of effective form— torso torque. The expression refers to the way a shooter twists his torso while throwing. (See Byron Putman: Pétanque: The Greatest Game You Never Heard Of (pp. 82-85)— highly recommended.)

When you watch world-class shooters you will often see this…

• Before the player starts his backswing, he is basically standing upright, with shoulders level and chest facing forward toward the target.
   
• As the player begins his backswing, he leans forward slightly— this allows for a higher backswing. His throwing shoulder drops a little and moves backward, causing his torso to twist backward slightly. At the same time, his non-throwing arm starts to move backward so that at the height of the backswing both arms are raised behind his back, balancing each other.
   
• The player begins his throw. During the throw, his throwing shoulder dips slightly, so that during the throw it moves forward gracefully in a shallow U-shaped dip. At the same time, his torso starts to untwist, so that at the end of the follow-through his throwing shoulder is in front of his body. At this point his posture is “open”— an observer standing to his non-throwing side can see the front of his chest, as in the photo of Marco Foyot at the top of this post. (For more pictures, see How to throw a boule.)

Here is a sequence of clips from the Youtube video of Ledantec shooting during the final of the Masters de Petanque 2004.

Pre-throw.

Start of backswing.

Continuing backswing. Player leans forward slightly. Non-throwing arm starts to swing back.

Approaching full backswing. Non-throwing arm is as high a throwing arm.

At the height of the backswing and just beginning the swing. The throwing shoulder is just starting to drop lower than the non-throwing shoulder.

Throwing shoulder approaches bottom of U-shaped dip. Note the angled slope of the shoulders. Torso has started to untwist. Note that the non-throwing arm has continued to move backward, balancing the throw.

Almost ready to release the boule. Torso is almost fully untwisted as throwing shoulder moves forward.

Release of the boule. Throwing shoulder is starting to rise after the lowest point of the U-shaped dip. Note that the non-throwing arm remains behind the back, counter-balancing the throwing arm which is now in front of the body.

After release. Torso is fully untwisted. Throwing shoulder is almost finished rising at the end of the U-shaped dip.

Here is the whole sequence as a slideshow.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Almost all of the great shooters (to a greater or lesser degree) demonstrate this ideal form of torso torque. And you will see it (again, to a greater or lesser degree) in pointers as well as in shooters.

Why do players move this way when they throw? Byron Putman calls it “torso torque” because he thinks it is a way for a player to use torso rotation to add power to his throw. Personally, I find that the motion of my body is more natural, and my accuracy is greater, when I twist my torso and bring my throwing arm forward while throwing. I suspect that shoulder anatomy is coming into play here, but I don’t know enough anatomy to be able to say exactly what is happening.

Note that when referring to a player (of unspecified gender), I use “he” and “his” as abbreviations for “he or she” and “his or her”.

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✋Improving your form

See also our other pages on technique “how to”s.

If you are trying to improve your throwing, start from the basic premise that there are two fundamental and different aspects to throwing well— form and consistency. They are different, and you need to do different things to improve them.

• Bad form is form that prevents you from throwing effectively. The crouch is bad form because a player who plays from a crouch will never be able to shoot or even lob effectively. Acquiring good form— le beau geste, form that allows you to throw effectively— is of course a matter of practice, but what’s important about good form is that it is something that you can consciously think about and work on.
   
• Consistency means being able to do something in the same way, over and over again. Consistency in throwing a boule is primarily a matter of muscle memory. This is something that you can’t acquire by thinking about it. It is unconscious, and can be acquired only through repetition. That’s the way muscles learn.

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We’ve already talked a little bit about effective ways to practice. Now we will look at how you can work on your form. Here are a few ideas that you can try.

1. The first step in improving your form is to become consciously aware that there is such a thing as form, and that great players are great (at least in part) because they have good form. Watch Youtube videos of great players in action. Study their form. Look for the way they move their bodies as they throw. Develop your own conscious theory about what good form looks like, and about how you want your body to move when you throw.
    
2. Human beings learn by imitation. If you watch someone do something, you will find yourself unconsciously imitating what he does. So a useful technique is simply to watch other players doing what you want to be able to do. For example, when I was trying to improve my high lob I found it helpful to watch Claudy Weibel during this marvellous singles competition.
    
   
   Claudy stands, and when he lobs no part of his body moves except his right arm. When I practice my lob, that’s the form that I try to imitate. Simply watching him do it makes it easier for me to do it.
    
3. Play solitaire. While you’re playing, consciously try to pay attention to what you feel your body doing— your hand, wrist, arm, torso. If you’re having consistency issues, look for a pattern that might provide a clue to the cause in your form. If your boules sometimes go to the left and sometimes to the right, then pay attention to your follow-through, your grip, and to making sure the boule is coming straight off your fingers. If the boules are sometimes long and sometimes short, pay attention to the height of your throw and to keeping your arm straight (not bending at the elbow). And so on.
    
4. Find a fellow petanque player who knows what good form looks like (for pointing or shooting or whatever you’re working on) and play a few games with him. Ask him to watch you as you throw and to tell you if he sees you doing something that you might want to change. You may be surprised at what he can see you doing (or not doing) that you’re not aware of.
    
5. A useful technique is to get a friend to make a video of you while you are throwing, so you can watch yourself and see what you’re doing. A cell phone or digital camera will work, but a labtop or tablet is better because you can immediately watch the video on a relatively large screen, see clearly what you’re doing, and experiment with changing it. (I learned this from Artem Zuev, the Technical Director of the Los Angeles Petanque Club. Thanks, Artem!)

Finally, if you’re reading this and have an idea, story, or tip based on your own experience, I’d like to invite you to share it with others. Drop us a comment.

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✋ Left arm back for balance

Suppose you’ve been playing for a while and you’re thinking about how you might improve your game.

Here’s a suggestion. Pay attention to your left arm. (That is, to your non-throwing arm. If you’re a leftie, pay attention to your right arm.)

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Here are some pictures. In each picture, look at where the player’s left arm is.

As you can see, these players aren’t crouching or bent forward. (We’ll talk about crouching later.) Their torso is basically upright. They keep their left arm straight. As they throw, they swing the left arm back, extend it back behind the torso, and hold it there while swinging the other arm to throw the boule.

The left arm, extended back, is a counter-balance for the right arm as it swings forward to release the boule.

If you don’t extend your left arm back this way, you will be unbalanced when you throw. As you follow through, you will find yourself almost falling forward. To compensate and to maintain balance, you will have a tendency to lift your left foot off of the ground. Which is, of course, a foot fault.

This is fixable. If you find yourself lifting your left foot off of the ground when you throw, it is an indication that that you aren’t using your left arm to provide balance. Change your form— stand up straight and start using your left arm for balance— and you’ll lose the need to raise your left leg.

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Things to watch for as you practice your form

As you practice your form, there are a couple of things that you should watch out for. You may do them without even realizing it. Ask a friend to watch you and give you feedback on your form. Or even better yet, ask him or her to take pictures of you, so you can look at yourself later.

One thing you should watch for, and try to avoid, is putting your left hand in the small of your back.

A lot of beginning players instinctively imitate what they see experienced players doing. They see that their left hand should be behind them, so they hold it against the small of their back.

This is better than nothing, of course. It’s a step in the right direction. But when the arm is so close to your body it doesn’t provide the amount of counter-balance that you’d get from fully extending your arm back behind you.

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When players aren’t using their left arm for balance, many instinctively and unconsciously go into “the crouch”. This is where you keep your balance by sticking your butt out. In order to get the butt back far enough, the player has to crouch down. Crouching can be difficult, so the left hand usually ends up on top of the left thigh to add support and stability.

The crouch isn’t inherently bad. It can be a useful stance when you want to point a long, low, rolling boule. But you don’t want the crouch to be your ONLY way of throwing a boule. That would be really limiting. You can’t lob or shoot from a crouch. That’s why it’s better not to crouch. Stand up straight and use your left arm for balance.

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✋ Learning to shoot – form, consistency, accuracy

Recently a friend asked for suggestions for learning to shoot. Here are some thoughts, based on my own experience.

Personally, I find it helpful to practice shooting with three different goals in mind. I devote one part of my practice session to one of the goals, another part to another of the goals, and so on. My three goals are form, consistency, and accuracy.

When I first started practicing form and accuracy, I noticed that even though my form wasn’t too bad, my throws were wildly inconsistent. Some were low; some were high; some were short; some were long. I saw that I needed a third goal— consistency. Instead of thinking of consistency as hitting the target (accuracy), I began to think of it as a matter of control— of consistency in the speed of my throw, and consistency in when I opened my hand to release the boule.

1. Form
On the grounds that no one will ever be able to throw well if his/her form is bad, my first goal is to get my form right. That means doing two things.

• Learning what good form looks like.
• Learning how to throw with that kind of form.

A good way to learn what good form is— how experts move their bodies while they shoot— is to watch Youtube videos of world-class shooters. Some good videos are HERE, HERE, and HERE. As you watch, ignore the game and pay attention to the shooters’ form as they throw. What are they doing with their feet? Their knees, their shoulders? Their backswing, their follow-through, their non-throwing arm? No two players have exactly the same form, but there are a number of things that most world-class shooters do. Watch for those things, and create a mental image of your ideal throwing form. Better yet, if you find certain players whose form looks good to you, watch them a lot. They will give you a concrete picture of what you want to imitate.

A DailyMotion video of a recent match shows an expert shooter in full backswing. Note the position of his shoulders, torso, throwing hand, and non-throwing hand. A good model to imitate.

To really learn how to imitate that form— to learn how to do with your body what you see experts doing with their bodies— you need feedback on your efforts. Ideally you’d have a coach to watch you and give you useful feedback. If you don’t have a coach, enlist a friend to watch you and provide feedback. If you have a cell phone or digital camera, set it up and make a video of yourself while you’re practicing. Then you (and a friend or coach) can watch the video and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your form.

When you are practicing your form, don’t worry about how close you get to the target. Hit or miss, it makes no difference. Pay attention to how you’re moving your body. That’s what it means to practice your form.

2. Consistency
Once your form is workable, your second goal is consistency. To help practice consistency, I have rigged up two ribbons across my shooting pit, just above head height. And then I practiced throwing between those two ribbons, trying to throw to a consistent height. My theory is that if I can throw to a consistent height, then I’m gaining control over the point in my swing where I’m releasing the boule. And if I can throw to a consistent distance at the same time, then I’m gaining control over the strength (speed) of my throw.
Practicing with the ribbons helps keep me aware of the height to which I am actually throwing. And it helps me to get a better idea of what is a good/desirable height for my throw.

3. Accuracy
Once your form is workable and you have enough control to throw consistently, your final goal is accuracy… putting the boule onto the ground where you want it to go (i.e. immediately in front of the target boule). The only way to learn this is to practice a lot. When you throw, pay attention to where your thrown boule lands with respect to the target boule. Assess the accuracy. Did the boule land where you wanted it to? Or was it long? short? left? right? Then throw again. Throw, watch, repeat. A lot.

Sometimes it is helpful to stand at a fixed distance and just throw and throw until you get the distance down. But don’t do that all of the time. Practice throwing in rotation. Throw a few boules from one distance, and then move to a new position and throw from a different distance. During real play you will need to shoot from a variety of distances, and practicing this way helps to prepare you to do that.

Note that practice isn’t just a matter of mental learning; it’s a matter of physical training. When you practice, you’re building the muscular strength, flexibility, and reaction-speed that you will need in order to throw a boule all of the way from the circle to the target.

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✋ Aim small; miss small.

When you’re throwing, it is important to focus on a small, specific target.

Byron Putman describes it this way in his book Petanque (p. 64).

Great au fer shooters have “the eyes”… for several seconds they lock their gaze laser-like on the target boule as if it were the only object in the universe…. For some shooters locking their vision on the target boule is not enough. They create a more precise bull’s-eye by staring at a single point on the target.

This is called target focus. It is as important for accurate pointing as it is for accurate shooting. Focussing on a small and very specific spot for your donnée is important. That’s why, in the “mental” part of our page on How to throw a boule, we emphasize picking the donnée and paying attention to where the thrown boule lands.

Your mantra here is

Aim small; miss small.

Here’s a good explanation of how to do it.

✋ Two ways to hold a boule

I’ve been mulling over these ideas for a while. I’m not sure they are right. Or, if they are, I’m not sure they are anything new or significant. But I decided to write this post on the grounds that some player, somewhere, might find these ideas useful.

After watching videos of world-class players on YouTube, I think I have noticed that there are two different techniques for gripping a boule.

• Using the vise grip you hold the boule in the palm of your hand. You close your fingers over the boule so that you are clasping the boule between your fingers and the base of your palm, like you have it clamped in the jaws of a vise. Because you have a firm grasp on the boule, if you turn your hand over, the boule will not fall out of your hand.
   
• Using the cradle grip you slightly cup your fingers and cradle the boule, letting it rest on your fingers (not in the palm of your hand) rather in the way that a beach ball might come to rest in a hammock. Because the boule is merely resting on your hand, if you turn you hand over, the boule will fall out of your hand.

To illustrate the difference between the two grips, I’ve taken a few pictures. Notice that in the pictures on the left, the fingers are closed over the boule. In the pictures on the right, the fingers (beneath the boule) are almost fully extended. In the pictures on the left, the fingers are pressing the boule against the fleshy base of the palm. In the pictures on the right, the boule is close to the tips of the extended fingers, and you can see a noticeable space between the boule and the base of the palm.

Vise grip (boule clasped in palm of hand)

Cradle grip (boule rests on top of fingers)

In the picture on the right (below) you see a hand posture that I’ve noticed in several “cradle-grip” players. The boule is held so far out that it seems almost to hang from the tips of the fingers. The thumb rests lightly on the boule, stabilizing it and keeping it from falling out of the fingers.

One of the most distinctive things about petanque is the way that expert players flex their wrists back and under their forearms. The standard theory is that this unique gesture helps a player to control a boule by giving it backspin.

While it may be true that the purpose of the wrist flex is to put backspin on the boule, I suspect that it serves another more important purpose for cradle-grip players. If you use a cradle grip, you are not actually holding the boule in your hand — if you turn you hand over, the boule will fall out of your hand. Therefore, in order not to drop the boule during the backswing, you must strongly flex your wrist, hand, and fingers back under your forearm. Together, they form the enclosing cradle that allows gravity to keep the boule in the hand during the backswing. That is why a vise-grip player may or may not flex his wrist, but a cradle-grip player will ALWAYS flex his wrist in this dramatic way. For a cradle-grip player, a consistent and serious wrist flex is a necessary component of effective throwing form.

 

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GRIPS OF THE STARS!

If you watch world-class players in YouTube videos, you will see that some of them use a vise grip while others use a cradle grip. It doesn’t appear that either of the techniques is inherently superior to the other. Some top players use one grip, and others use the other.

I first noticed the cradle grip in videos of Philippe Quintais pointing.

Philippe Quintais

Philippe Quintais

Philippe Quintais

If you go looking looking for the cradle grip in YouTube videos, you quickly learn to identify a few distinctive hand gestures. As I’ve said, if you carefully watch a cradle-grip player preparing to throw, he doesn’t appear to be holding the boule at all — the boule seems almost to be hanging from his fingers. Once I identified the cradle grip, I went looking for other players who might be using it. I found several. You’ll probably recognize some of them. Marco Foyot and Christian Fazzino seem quite clearly to be cradle-grip players. (Mouse-over a picture for the name of the player. Click on a picture to go into slide-show mode and see slightly larger versions of the pictures.)

Christian Fazzino

Christian Fazzino

Marco Foyot

Marco Foyot

Marco Foyot

Bruno Boursicaud

Unidentified player

A Moroccan player

A Moroccan player

A Moroccan player

 

During my search for cradle-grip players, I found many players whose grip-type I was unable to diagnose, and I also found vise-grip players. Here are just a few players that I think are probably vise-grip players.

Diego Rizzi

A Madagascar player

Damien Hureaux

Damien Hureaux

A Spanish player

A Spanish player

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Grip type and boule size

I suspect that boule size is important to a different degree in the two types of grip.

For a vise-grip player, boule size is important. A vise-grip player does NOT want a boule that is too big. If the boule is so big that it is hard to wrap your fingers around it, it will be difficult to grip tightly. A big boule will tend to slip out of your grip. You will need to grip the boule harder, and this will produce tired and aching muscles in your forearm. So it is important for a vise-grip player to use a boule that is small enough to be gripped easily.

For a cradle-grip player, boule size is less important, perhaps even unimportant. The cradle-grip player is holding the boule very loosely, just barely cradling it in his fingers. For him (or her) there isn’t much difference between cradling a medium-size boule and a large one. This means that a cradle-grip player can comfortably play with a much larger boule.

This means (perhaps) that learning to throw with a cradle grip might be a useful strategy for women players. Actually, it might be useful for players (of either sex) with small hands. Or even players with large hands, if they play a lot and are tired of having aching forearm muscles.

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Updated a few days later (2015-03-15)
By chance I just ran across a post from 2007 on the Petanque710 forum. Someone noted that Philippe Suchaud and Christian Fazzino play with small boules— 71mm. Another commenter ventured the opinion that la facon de jouer avec des petites boules est très différente qu’avec des plus grosses car on joue plus avec le bout des doigts car elles ne tiennent pas toute la main (regarder fazzino jouer , il les tient du bout des doigts). “The way one plays with small boules is very different than with larger ones because one plays more with the fingertips because [small boules] do not take up the whole hand (watch Fazzino play, he holds them by the fingertips).”

So I have one concurring opinion that Fazzino uses a cradle grip. I doubt, though, that Fazzino uses a cradle grip because he uses a small boule. As you can see from the pictures above, a number of top players (notably Marco Foyot) use a cradle grip and a large boule.

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✋ The height of the throw

I’ve been watching YouTube videos of great shooters, trying to analyze what they’re doing so I can try to do what they’re doing. One thing that (I think) I’ve noticed is that when they are shooting, they are very consistent in how high they throw the boule.

From an FFPJP training video on Youtube

Almost every player that I’ve watched throws his boule so that, at the top of its trajectory, it is about head-height. If a player is shooting at a longer distance (say, 10 meters) then he throws a little higher, so the boule goes a foot or two above his head.

Marco Foyot gives a shooting demo at the Zanesfield Petanque club

This suggests that the great shooters are pretty consistent in the force (or speed) with which they throw the boule. And that means their form is probably pretty consistent — the height of the backswing, the speed of the throwing arm, and so forth.

The difference between shooting at a short distance and shooting at a long distance is therefore the height to which they throw the boule. For a short throw, the boule is released fairly early and follows a lower trajectory — about shoulder height at the highest point. For a longer throw, the boule is released later and follows a higher trajectory — above the player’s head, perhaps, at its highest point. In both cases the path of the boule has the same shape — a gentle arcing curve.

Thinking this over, I realized that I was wildly inconsistent in the height to which I was throwing, and that I should try to be more consistent.

On my practice area I rigged up a frame half way between the circle and the target boules. From the frame I stretched two flexible tapes. The tapes are wide enough to be visible, and loose enough to slip out of the way if I hit one of them. One of the tapes is at about head height and the other is about 18″ higher. With this apparatus in place, sometimes I practiced with the goal of throwing my boule between the two tapes on its way to the head. Sometimes I practiced with the goal of simply getting the boule between the two tapes.

I’ve been doing this for a while, and it seems to be helping.

In the process, I found something that surprises me. After I practice shooting for a while (usually with a low percentage of success), I switch from aiming for the target boules to aiming just to get between the tapes. When I do this, my percentage of success (in hitting the target boules) is often higher than it was when I was aiming at the boules! I’ve noticed this several times, so I think the phenomenon is real. But I have no idea about how to explain it.

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✋ Effortless throwing

You can’t do many accurate low, hard, flat tir au fer shots if you are straining your body and muscles to the limit. Similarly with those high, high lobs that come straight down, drop and stop. One of the most important secrets of effective throwing, therefore, is how to throw powerfully with a minimum of effort.

One of my favorite posts on this topic is Artem Zuev’s post on Effortless Gameplay, in which he tells you to think of your throwing arm as a pendulum, a ball on a string.

Today, quite by accident, I stumbled across a YouTube video that makes Artem’s advice more concrete and more useful. The video is, of all things, How to Effortlessly Generate Powerful Tennis Serves. It opens, interestingly, with a demo of… ball on a string.

The bottom line is that the secret of both an effortless tennis serve and an effortless petanque throw is momentum — understanding it and learning how to use it. If you read Artem’s post, and then watch this video, you can see that everything that the instructor says about the momentum of a tennis racket translates directly into a lesson about the momentum of an arm holding a boule. What the instructor is doing is inviting you — when you practice — to think about your throw in terms of momentum, and to try to be aware of — to feel — your body as a tool for generating and using momentum.

The video is a bit long and verbose, but it is worth watching all the way to the end. The instructor makes an important point, starting at 7:20 (“One more tip…”). While your brain is learning what it feels like to generate and transfer momentum, don’t try to aim. Just let the ball go… wherever. You don’t want aiming to interfere with your free swing.

This advice reminds me of Zen in the Art of Archery. Herrigel, under the guidance of his Zen master, practiced the motions of drawing the bow and loosing the arrow literally for years before his Master felt he was ready, and they moved on to the next step… aiming at a target.

✋ Putting a spin on the ball

To watch a master in action, watch this video of Marco Foyot giving a class in Zanesfield, Ohio in September 2013.

The basic idea is that the boule will tend to bend in the direction that your palm ends up. So if you are a right-handed thrower—

• If you want the boule to curve to the left, your hand should finish with the thumb pointing up, into the air.
• If you want the boule to curve to the right, your hand should finish with the thumb pointing down, to the ground.

As Marco points out, making the boule curve to the right is difficult for a right-handed player, and you can see how awkward his throw looks when he does it.

✋ How to throw a high lob

As a new petanque player, interested in improving his throwing form, I have a question.

When do you unwind your cocked wrist?

When you throw a high lob, during your backswing your wrist is really cocked — the hand holding the boule is curled up toward the underside of your forearm. And when you finish your throw, you’ve uncoiled that curled wrist so that your hand is open and your fingers are pointing up and out. Uncoiling that curled wrist is how you get backspin, retro, on the boule.

My question is

When does that cocked wrist get uncoiled?
Does it gradually uncoil as the swing progresses?
Or does it stay coiled during most of the swing, and only uncoil quickly at the end of the swing?

The answer (or at least, one answer) can be found in a YouTube video of a clinic that Marco Foyot taught at Amelia in 2012. In the video Marco demonstrates the motion of throwing a high lob. You have to watch closely. The demo starts at 4m 38s, and it is over in about 3 seconds.

Here are some stills from that video.

For the high lob, Marco doesn’t take a big backswing. (In fact, he doesn’t ever seem to use a big back swing.) He starts with his throwing hand and the boule low. In this picture, he’s just starting to raise his arm — he looks as if he’s going to hit the lady in the background with the back of his wrist.

The swing progresses. Higher. And higher. Note that in picture C, even when his wrist has been raised above his head, Marco’s wrist is still cocked.

A

B

C

Only when his arm at the very top of the swing, does Marco snap his wrist.

So that pretty much answers my question — the wrist uncoils at the end, with a snap.

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Studying these pictures, I’ve noticed a couple of other interesting things. One of them is that Marco’s hand is very high — above his head — when he snaps his wrist and releases the boule. Here is a picture from a clinic he taught in Zanesfield, OH in September 2013.

The other is that Marco’s arm doesn’t seem to be moving in a swing or an arc from his shoulder. If you look at pictures A, B, and C, you will see that his hand is moving almost vertically straight up. That means that most of the force of the throw is UP — there is relatively little OUT.

That makes sense, but I’m going to have problems digesting it. I’m a big fan of Artem Zuev’s Art of Petanque blog. His advice to think of your throwing arm as a pendulum (a ball on a string) makes a lot of sense to me, and is a style that I’ve been trying to achieve. But Marco’s definitely not doing “ball on a string” when he throws a high lob.

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One of the things that is hard to realize is just exactly how high a REALLY HIGH lob is. On YouTube, there is a nice video of Bruno Leboursicaud demonstrating a fantastically accurate high lob. In the video, you can’t see how high the lob is, but from the time it takes to come down, you know it must have been really high.

 
Fourtunately for us, Zanesfield Petanque has posted a video on its Facebook page showing Marco demoing a high lob during his clinic there. On his second throw (which you can see in the photo at the beginning of this post ) you can actually see how high his lob is.

Here is Marco at the World Championships in Thailand, in 1993.

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✋ The first step in learning how to shoot

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Here is a suggestion for how to take the first step on the journey of learning how to shoot.

This little exercise is called “chasing the geese”. It will help to overcome your reluctance to shoot by showing that you can shoot, and even occasionally hit your target. It will help get you started on the road to shooting, practicing, and slowly improving.

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Each morning, get up early. When the day is still new, go down to the park. A big open grassy area (like a soccer field) is ideal for your purpose. Take two boules with you.

When you arrive, throw the first boule a short distance. Shoot at it with the other boule. After you’ve made your throw, walk to the closer boule. Pick it up and shoot at the other boule. Then do it again. Walk to the closer boule, pick it up, and shoot at the other boule. Keep doing this.

When you throw and miss, next time move closer to the target boule and throw from a shorter distance. When you throw and hit, next time stand farther from the target boule and throw from a longer distance.

Pay attention to your form. Listen to your body. Notice what you are doing with your body when your shots work, and what you are doing when they don’t.

Do this for as long as you enjoy it and see yourself improving.

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As you do this, you will start to have questions like “When I throw, what am I doing with my non-throwing arm? What should I be doing with it?” Ideally, a coach would answer those questions for you. If you don’t have a coach, read our post about how to throw a boule and watch Youtube videos of world-class shooters. Develop a theory about what you want to be doing when you throw. Then consciously try to put that theory into practice as you chase the geese.

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