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Read time: 3 minutes Hi All, Welcome to this week’s ‘5 quick tips’ email. As always, feel free to forward this message to your archery friends.

🛠️ Equipment recommendation

The clicker is a key piece of equipment to get right and there’s a clear winner here. Go for the 0.25 Strength Beiter Clicker in Silver. The black one is too easy to snap if you need to bend it. Why do I recommend this?
  1. A stiffer clicker (like the carbon ones) can push too hard on the arrow and cause it to jump when you pull through, so medium stiffness is best. You can check this by pulling through the clicker while looking at your arrow tip. You shouldn’t see any twitch or ‘jump’ when it clicks.
  2. Stiffer clickers almost guarantee a miss if you accidentally shoot without pulling through. On more than one occasion I’ve shot through a Beiter clicker (it happens to everyone) and salvaged an 8 at 70m.
  3. Most importantly, a loud clicker makes you rely more on the sound of the click as your cue to shoot, whereas a softer clicker will allow your brain to use the feel of the vibration more.

🏹 Technique tip

Let’s follow on from the clicker theme above. Have you ever flinched during expansion or almost shot at the sound of someone else’s clicker next to you? Or maybe you heard a compound release aid go off and thought it was your clicker. You need to teach your brain to respond more to the feeling of the clicker rather than just the sound. Otherwise, it’s more likely you’ll respond to other ‘clicking’ sounds, especially in competition. To learn this, try shooting with music playing in headphones so you can’t hear your clicker. You’ll be surprised how much you can feel the click, and this will also improve your release and follow-through massively.

🧠 Mindset

Visualisation sounds fancy and daunting, but it’s so effective and can be easy to use. After you’ve nocked your arrow, just spend 3-4 seconds imagining the feeling of the shot you want to create, before you raise your bow. If you’re working on a specific technique area you can imagine the feeling you want to create here. This is a great way to get more out of your training by increasing your focus.

💪 Try this in training

You’ve probably found it easy to expand at close-range blank bale before, but then might’ve struggled to get through at longer distances. Pretty much every archer has experienced this. Set your clicker length at close range, with a horizontal aiming angle, but then move your clicker out by 2-6mm for longer distances. This is actually a great tip Steve Wijler recently shared in my OAA Telegram community. He mentioned that he hasn’t moved his clicker between indoors and outdoors previously, but this year moved his clicker out by 6mm for 70m shooting and is feeling a benefit. The amount you need to move your clicker is personal, I normally went for 3-4mm, so give it a try and find out what works for you.

🎬 Cool video or podcast I’d recommend

Although the video quality makes it look a bit dated now, this clip of Park Sung Hyun shooting on the Athens 2004 Olympic Games practice field is still an absolute gem. There are so many things you can learn from this video, and I always end up sending it to the archers that I coach because of this. Considering what I mentioned above, one of the key things to highlight is how still her body is through the entire shot, as well as her clear intention before raising the bow. She also has great taste in selecting the best clicker to use 😉 That’s it for today, have a wonderful weekend! Happy shooting, Ashe
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