I agree that if your goal is to sling accurately with any stone off the floor, then practicing with varying weights is useful. However, if you can't hit anything with consistent ammo then you'll never hit anything with inconsistent ammo. Jaegoor is right. You must have the basics down. Though it is foolish to rely on random ammunition. A survivalist doesn't rely on random kindling. They acquire it and carry some around. Same with water or anything else.

Well I think the main thing is to sling.
The more you sling the more chance you have to improve.
Definition of what you want to achieve and success will be subjective and varying.

I think there’s plenty of good points in this thread already so I’m not gonna repeat them all.

My only addition would be to consume yourself in slinging. Take in as much slinging content as you can. This will open your mind to ideas and possibilities. Try talk to other slinger etc.

Just to reiterate dont expect that you will do vastly more than whats been done by others if what you are doing is the same as others. Thats a fallacy thats often seen in newer slingers.

You are not going to be practicing more than the guys who have come before you. So where the best are right now is about what you can hope for if you are doing what they are.  Yes, there is potential for upward skill drift but dont expect huge increases without some radical change in whats being understood or done.

That requires a big change in paradigm "somewhere". Hence my original rhetorical question. Define what you call success. If its what you have already seen than you already know how to reach your goal because increasingly theres plenty of people even on this forum who are at or near those top levels. Therefore you have your answer already.

If it's beyond or even far beyond those levels well now you have a question that's really intriguing. Now if your answer is far beyond whats currently being done, lets say for the purpose of this post it's 10 soda cans in a row 1 through 10 in order with no misses from 15 meters. That seems both possible but extremely difficult. It's certainly far and away better than anyone has ever done as far as Im aware.

More than that Im not interested in just a once in a life time feat. It should be reproducible with some degree of consistency even if just once a week of heavy slinging. Fine. Theres our hypothetical definition.

One of the biggest difficulties in slinging at this level is the amount of practice needed to reach high levels of precision and how difficult it is to stay at that level even while you are currently there. Every shot seems to be holding onto the ragged edge of whats possible.

This is a problem. We need to reassess why what we are doing is so variable that even in the midst of heavy training months maintaining those groups is so difficult from shot to shot instead of accepting them as just a part of slinging. This is key: the fact that even during heavy training months its so difficult to maintain tight groups for even 30-40 shots means the baseline of what we are doing is flawed. We are trying to rise so far above a flawed baseline we are peaking below where we would like to be just on average. That, if I had to sum it up, is the key problem. And since that peak is at the very edge of whats possible we see constant fits and starts of genius only to have it disappear.

This may require making some very in depth looks into biomechanics as IronGoober has suggested or I suppose I would suggest it might require us to look into variations of sling throws which are not as popular and see if we can tweak them for very high control and repeatability.

One thing is clear- do what everyone else has done and get what everyone else has got.

My opinion;
practice is not important.
Slinging is important.

Both arguments have validity.
The technical information just isn’t there to really be able to prove a correct style or technique.
This forum probably holds the most amount of data on slinging and we can barely agree on any fundamentals.
So that’s why I’m more towards being active and trying to sling.

I personally have improved from where I’ve started even if I have bad form or traits programmed into my skills.

You can always improve your technique.
And while it is true that every single slinger works best with different techniques, 'just do it' won't necessarily improve, whatever aspect of your slinging you want to improve.

There are ALWAYS things you can do to improve.

And once you've made a change, it's back to  repetition, practice and repetition to see if the changes make any real difference.

There is no magic ' one size fits all' method.
Which seems to be the crux of all these 'how do I hit smaller things more often' type of threads.

There are some basic biomechanical improvements we can all make that will reduce joint strain or incorrect muscle emphasis.
But again, they differ for each slinger and each slinging style.

The only thing that is universal is: 'practice'
Even the worst technique will improve with sufficient usage.

In some ways it was better in the days before YouTube and the internet ( for our younger members, this was less than 30 years ago).
You were on your own, you'd never seen another person using a sling and if you didn't get it right, you'd generally end up hurting yourself

So instead of wondering what technique you should be using, you just used what seemed to work best.

These days it's far too easy to spend so much time thinking about the angle of your elbow, or whether your foot is half an inch too far to the left, or that the chap on the last YouTube video you watched swears a 27 and seven eigths sling is definitely the best, that the sheer joy of just slinging is lost.

Slinging is one of those activities that can be so overcomplicated that you lose the enjoyment and end up getting frustrated.

So as part of any training regime I would recommend making time for a period of 'free slinging'.
Go find some countryside, or a pebble beach, or wherever you have, that you can just amble around for an hour or so, randomly picking up stuff and slinging it.
With no other goal than just watching things fly without the pressure of needing to throw a specific thing in a certain way at a specific target.

It'll help reset both your body and mind.

Slinging should be FUN.
And you will most likely learn more by simply playing around, than by setting unrealistic goals.

Jaegoor Im curious, do you believe that your throwing style has the highest potential for accuracy of any throwing style? Is there anything you can learn from anyone else here? This is a genuine question. Im not being sarcastic in asking this. If your answer is your style is the best and you believe that, that is a perfectly acceptable answer.

And by asking this Im not asking if you can agree with people who already agree with you. Is it possible that you might realize something someone else is doing is better and then change your style to fit with this new evidence? Has that ever happened here?


Jaegoor Ich bin neugierig, glauben Sie, dass Ihr Wurfstil das höchste Genauigkeitspotenzial aller Wurfstile hat? Gibt es etwas, das Sie hier von anderen lernen können? Dies ist eine echte Frage. Ich frage das nicht sarkastisch. Wenn Ihre Antwort ist, dass Ihr Stil der Beste ist und Sie dies glauben, ist dies eine völlig akzeptable Antwort. Und indem ich das frage, frage ich nicht, ob Sie den Leuten zustimmen können, die Ihnen bereits zustimmen. Ist es möglich, dass Sie feststellen, dass etwas anderes besser ist, und dann Ihren Stil ändern, um diesen neuen Beweisen gerecht zu werden? Ist das hier schon mal passiert?