Hi All,
Welcome to this week’s quick tips email. Today I did an Ask Me Anything Q&A video for my OAA Members Group. But I got so many great questions that I wanted to answer a few in this email as well.
So today’s tips below are answers to just a few of these questions. You can access the full video & send questions for future Q&A’s by becoming an OAA member.
As always, please forward this message to any of your archery friends who might find it helpful.
“In some archers, we sometimes see their arms vibrating or them shaking during the shot, as if they’re struggling to maintain stability. But we rarely see Korean archers having this issue. They have the most stable and effortless technique despite high poundage. Why is this?”
This is a great question, and there are 4 main reasons for this:
The first point is fairly straightforward. In general, Korean archers have a more solid technical foundation than a lot of other archers which makes their technique more efficient. This means they often have better posture, alignment, and draw elbow line relative to the arrow. These factors are crucial in minimising the amount of effort that’s required.
If it takes a lot of effort to shoot your shot, you might be solid during training, but it’s very likely you’ll start seeing weaknesses during competition.
When it comes to conditioning, Korean archers generally shoot MANY more arrows than archers from other countries. So they simply have smoother muscle memory and fine motor control as a result of this.
To put it into perspective, I shot over 1 million arrows during my time on the British Team. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Kim Woo Jin has already shot 5 million arrows in his career.
Thirdly, Korean archers are often more experienced at competing in high pressure situations, so they can manage their excitement and nerves better than many archers. You’ll often see the Korean team practicing with loud crowds and big audiences in baseball stadiums, and famously doing other activities like bungee jumping to push themselves mentally.
Lastly, any Korean archer you see competing internationally, and particularly at an Olympic Games, has been selected through the most rigorous, demanding and high pressure selection process you can imagine.
So there’s a selection bias here.
There probably are Korean archers who shake at full draw, but it’s unlikely you’ll see them competing because they’re less likely to make the team.
“What archery equipment is used by the top male and recurve archers of the recent Olympics? Nocks? Pins? Vanes? I’m curious if anything other than X10 arrows is commonly used by all the top level archers?”
Firstly, the X10 arrow is the obvious one here, and was indeed used by all 6 of the individual medalists in Paris 2024. But everyone knows X10’s are the best arrow.
The two things I want to highlight here are Spin Wings and Beiter Over Nocks.
Every single individual medallist shot Beiter Over Nocks. Yes, 100%. And 5/6 individual medallists shot Spin Wings (only Brady didn’t).
I’m going to make a video on YouTube on this in the future, but do you really think the Korean team haven’t thoroughly tested which vanes are the best and which nocks are the best?
I always go on about how Beiter Over Nocks are the best nock to shoot, and I know they don’t protect your arrow as well as pin nocks.
But the removal of the pin is one of the very reasons they are more forgiving, and the extra plastic adds more flexibility to the back of your arrow.
I’ve said this for years and I’ll keep saying it, if you want the best nocks and fletches you should shoot the Beiter Over Nock and Spin Wings.
I recommended them already in previous ‘3 tips’ emails, and nothing has changed yet!
Another question I got this week was about training and recovery. Someone asked:
“How would you plan recovery time without shooting? I try to have 1 rest day after 3 days of shooting so my body and mind can recover. What would you recommend?”
This is a really important point, and it does depend on your individual training. However, I would say that most archers I see train too little, and overtraining is more rare.
Obviously you have to listen to your body, and it depends on how many arrows you’re shooting, how long you’ve been shooting, and what other exercise you do.
But in general, I recommend having 1 rest day per week.
For most of the archers I coach, having Monday as a rest day can work the best. Competitions are normally on the weekend, or on Sunday. And many archers have work commitments on the Monday as well.
So you can train Tuesday-Friday, compete on the weekend if you have a tournament, and then having Monday off gives you time to recover and catch up on any other commitments you might have.
Thanks for the great questions, and if you want to access the full Q&A and submit future questions you can do so here.
That’s it for today, have a great weekend!
Happy shooting,
Ashe
