The last post, PPD and MPR training, was about how much pros practice. This one is about adjustment: how they pull themselves back together when form dips, and what's actually going through their head when they change gear. Same rule as always: verified sources only, and we say so when we can't find one.
When form dips, the mental fix comes before the technical one
PDC player Stephen Bunting has spoken publicly about a rough patch: "A few years ago I was down on form and I was going home, taking it out on my family and locking myself away." He later worked with a sports psychologist and did a lot of visualisation work ("lifting trophies and things like that"), saying "he changed my career." Japan Tour player Tatsunami Mitsuhiko describes a mental shift rather than a technical one: he used to punish himself with "what are you doing!" after a miss, and it took years to realize that didn't help; switching to "enjoy the moment" instead brought better results.
Nasu Yohei's mental switch: letting flight color decide how much to overthink
Japanese PERFECT pro Nasu Yohei (a nurse by day) has a more concrete method: when he's off form, he deliberately switches back to the most basic flight shape, to "return to basics and reassess." White flights make the dart's flight path easier to see, good for when he wants to carefully check his form; when he'd rather not overthink the details and just throw loose, he switches to black. For him, gear isn't just about performance; it's a mental switch he flips on purpose. If you want to try the same trick, pick up a few flights in different colours from the flights section of our online darts shop (the shop is in Chinese).
Changing gear is really about fixing things you can't see
Japan Tour player Yamamoto Shun wrote a rare first-person breakdown of his own equipment logic on his blog: for barrel weight, he'd heard heavier is more stable, but found that adding weight actually made him overthrow, so he settled on 19g for a looser release; for shaft length, he switched from 260mm to 440mm because his takeback was too wide, and the longer shaft corrected it; for flights, he moved from a Shape-style to a smaller Bullet-style because the original flight was blocking his face and his line of sight. Each of the three changes solved a different, specific problem (release power, takeback size, sightline), not a blanket swap-everything-at-once.
Stephen Bunting's real equipment change: 12g to 18g in 3-5 days
Bunting used to throw 12g barrels. Dart maker Target asked if he wanted to try an 18g version; he was skeptical at first. In a test session he "hit two nine-darters and missed double 12 for a third" and decided on the spot, "these were the darts for me." He says getting used to the new set "didn't take that long, about three to five days." Target makes soft tip darts too, and you can find them in our shop with a search for Target.
Coaching: some players are all in, others hold back
PDC pundit and coach Wayne Mardle believes darts is coachable: "Darts is coachable... they just need the odd tip here and there." What he finds hardest to teach isn't grip, it's rhythm. His method: confirm what a player is already doing right, then suggest one or two changes they can actually execute, not a full rebuild. There's also an ongoing conversation in the PDC about a "coaching revolution" as prize money rises and players become more willing to pay for coaches, though not everyone's on board: Marcel Althaus has said copying another player's technique doesn't work, because that technique was built for that specific person. Honestly: we couldn't find any Japanese soft-tip scene case studies of a named coach working with a specific player and describing the actual adjustments made; the darts school sites we checked were mostly recruitment copy without concrete detail, so we're not filling that gap in with a guess.
None of these are formulas: Bunting leaned on a sports psychologist, Nasu Yohei on flight color, Yamamoto Shun on breaking gear down piece by piece. The methods are all different, but each of them was clear about exactly what was wrong and exactly what they were adjusting. Being able to say precisely "here's where I'm stuck" probably matters more than which piece of gear you swap. To track your own numbers, see PPD and MPR training; to find somewhere to practice, AI DARTS runs 24-hour self-service, see here. Menu's here.