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Hi All,
Welcome to this weeks quick tips email, as always, please do forward this message to any of your archery friends who might find it helpful.
I mentioned previously in one of my emails that it’s really important to make sure you increase the string pressure on your face when you come into anchor and start your expansion.
However, just knowing this and doing it are two different things.
There’s an incredibly important moment of your shot which most archers get wrong, and that’s this exact moment when the string starts touching your face.
You see, most archers know that movement is important and they need to keep moving, but they fail to do so because they become distracted by aiming.
I can’t overstate how common this is and how important it is to get this stage of the shot right.
So what do I suggest? You must have a repeatable process that you can do every single shot at this moment. Specifically, as soon as you feel the string touching your face, you need to have a habit that will make sure you continue moving.
One example could be as soon as you feel the string touching your face you think ‘pull, pull, pull’ and focus on the string pressure instantly increasing on your nose like I’ve mentioned before.
Or instead of focussing on the string pressure you could focus on your draw elbow moving away from the target. The exact cue is personal to you, but the important thing is you do this on every single shot.
The reason this is so useful is it will help prevent over-aiming because you’ll have a habit which replaces it.
🧠 Mindset
Today I’ve got a training drill you can try which will definitely test you mentally!
At the end of your next training session, wait until you’re almost ready to finish and then give yourself a challenge which is difficult but you could achieve if you performed well.
For example, if you normally shoot around a 590 on a Fita 70m, a good challenge would be to shoot an end of 51 or 52 points.
Now here’s the difficult bit, you’re not allowed to finish and leave until you’ve achieved the challenge.
Your brain will try every trick in the book to tell you this challenge isn’t achievable, isn’t fair, you need to go home, it’s a silly challenge…etc.
But this is one of the best ways you can test your mental focus in practice because these thoughts come from the same area of your brain that creates doubts and worries in competitions. And you need to learn to manage it and focus on the process regardless.
And if you want to increase the difficulty do it before a mealtime when you’re hungry 😜
When you’re next working on a specific technique area, you can find a video of a top archer who does it extremely well and use this to train with.
Simply put this video on loop on your phone, iPad, laptop…etc and place this in front of you while you shoot.
Ideally you would also have another device showing a delayed video of your previous shot.
Before each shot you can watch the ‘reference example’ of the top archer, then shoot your shot and watch the delayed replay of your shot. Through your training you’ll start moving closer to the ideal way of executing this part of your shot and be able to use this comparison to improve quickly!
A word of warning though; don’t try and copy someone else’s technique. You want to use this exercise to see how they execute that part of the shot well and how you can do this in your own way.
That’s it for today, have a wonderful weekend!
Happy shooting,
Ashe
