Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

I do believe I am my own worst enemy. The problem: stress & competitiveness getting in the way of my shooting form. My entire life, I have thrived on these two things. When it comes to shooting spots, these things become my biggest problem. I try to control my bow too much, drop my bow arm too soon, blow my mental game completely. Does anyone have any tips, tricks, techniques etc. for holding your mental game in check and letting the bow do all the work? Having the best equipment in the world can't solve this one. How do you relax so you can do your best shooting?

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

TS-

Once you have form and ability down fairly well- the biggest obstacle to competitive archery is mostly the mental game.

A great book for this sort of thing is "With Winning In Mind" by Lanny Bassham. He was an Olympic and World champion shooter (rifle). You can find used copies around (even used ones on Amazon.com) for under $10. It's a short read book, but meant to be that way to get to the main points with no fluff.

I gets you into a mental routine and way of thinking about your game that is consistent and repetitive so that when you get into competition you don't feel so overwhelmed.

Great book- simple in nature but very helpful.



Edited by - Black Frog on 01/18/2002 10:06:44

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Ami, I am no expert as you know, but I think I have stumbled on a routine that works for me... your mileage may vary and I know this isn't a purely "mental" tip, but it puts me in the right mind.

I think PBR. Posture (balanced comfortable stance) Breathing (one when I nock the arrow, one when I focus on my target, one when I draw) and Relax (start relaxed to end relaxed... bow arm is totally relaxed when standing, lifts straight up to position relaxed, and stays relaxed but locked throughout the draw/aim/release)

Then I turn it around RBP. Relax my grip and release hands/arms as I aim/aim/aim, Backtension to hold the draw and steady the sight window and pull through release, and Pause... don't drop the arm for 2 to 4 seconds after the shot.

PBR/RBP is easy for me to remember cause I used to like Pabst Blue Ribbon beer <img src=icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>

The real breakthrough for me (I'm like you, want to control things and am too tense/stiff) was to start out with a relaxed bow arm, it seemed to take the tension out of my whole body.

A couple of other things I do are - never look back at my last shot after I drop my bow - it's out of my mind - and I acquire the target I am shooting at before the draw and never take my eyes off it until after I drop my arm after the shot.

The day I figured this out I shot over 100 arrows at a 5-spot and had 2 zeros out of all those shots - most of the rest were in the 5 ring. That was outstanding shooting for me :)

_________
SuperX

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Shoot with your eyes closed! This should be practiced on a regular basis. Stand about 10 yards from a target, draw your bow, aim, and close your eyes. Pay attention to where your anchors are, how you hold your bow and your release. Go thru a mental check list of what you should do before the shot. Slowly squeeze the trigger until the bow fires. Don't pay any attention to where the arrow hits, that is not the goal. Keep doing this until you are comfortable and completely relaxed. Rember the key to good archery is consistancy. You will notice things you have never noticed before when you shoot this way.

Then when you are done with that, practice for a while shooting with your eyes open, but not aiming at any certian point. Just point the bow at the target, concentrate on your form and let it rip. It sounds goofy, but beleive me it works. It is sort of like meditation with your bow. If you do it enough you can even group arrows within a couple of inches of each other at 20 yards or so, with your eyes closed.

Also, pay attention to your breathing. Most people unconciously stop breathing when they are aiming. If you take to long to aim your pulse speeds up and your body becomes depleated of oxygen and you get the shakes. It does not take very long for that to happen. Especially when exerting the energy it requires to hold a bow up at full draw. I like to breathe thru the shot. I inhale and then shoot while I am exhaling. Some like to hold their breath momentarily while they squeeze the the trigger, but that messes me up. It sounds a lot easier than it really is. It is hard to not hold your breath when you are concentrating.

It sounds like your whole problem is nerves and anticipating the shot. You need to learn a way of remaining relaxed and not worrying about what others will think if you miss or don't succeed. I know people that got so bad they quit competing, and instantaniously became better shots. Sometimes you get so worked up it takes the fun out of it.

Good luck I hope I helped.

Paul

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Ami, there is a great thread on the mental game on another board. The author is George Ryals a noted shooter. Email me and I will send it to you. (don't want to violate TOS here by posting the URL)

_________
SuperX

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Oh, Ami, don't shoot with your eyes closed when you compete! It is just an excercise to become more fimiliar with your bow and state of mind during the shot. Practice every few days or so and it should work. Also when you practice, pay more attention to your form than where the arrow hits. Once you get a handle on your form the arrows will go where they are supposed to. Your bow should also be set up so when you draw it with your eyes closed and then open them everything should be right there. You shouldn't have to move around to get things lined up. It should be a very instinctual and natrual thing.

Paul

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Thanks for the tips and info. I am going to start shooting more at home by myself. I had planned on shooting a round of 300 before work in the morning, but I think I will practice the techniques you both spoke about for awhile instead. Last year league for me was all about form. This year it's time for the mental game to take shape. First week of league score: 525/600. My all time best: 547/600. My goal: 570/600.

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Funny story on me about shooting with your eyes closed. I was doing this a couple weeks ago trying to learn backtension release. I was really feeling it and was banging them into the blank backstop. I shot one arrow and heard a terrible clatter - everyone was looking at me when I opened my eyes. I asked around to where my arrow went and no one knew. I found that it had slipped between the wall and the backstop and was stuck - I couldn't reach it. A couple days later, the shop owner came up to me and handed me my arrow without feathers and with a lot of white paint on it. Where was it??? Sticking 8&quot; out the back of his shop right where he parks his new pickup. <img src=icon_smile_blush.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=icon_smile_blush.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=icon_smile_blush.gif border=0 align=middle>

It seems I now have a &quot;reputation&quot; <img src=icon_smile_clown.gif border=0 align=middle>

_________
SuperX

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

There is a great Jay Barrs video via the good people at Robin Hood. I forget what it is called, but it should be obvious since it is all the mental game. One of the things I learned from that is that there are multiple mental games. There is gaining control of your emotions in the present, deep breathing, staying in the shot, etc... There is visualisation, Barrs went in incredible detail through every facet of shooting a gold medal round at the Olympics. There is happy talk, he used cue cards to repeat afirmations over and over, and possible other stuff. Its facinationg, useful, and can be put into use in the rest of your life, but on the other hand, it is also a litle obsessive. Makes you wonder whether time spent doing this stuff is well spent compared to raising children or something. Of all the archers I have seen on tape etc... Barrs is the best. I think he has taken form the furthest, and Psyc also. He is still competitive. There are doubtless others who are as good, but Barrs got known as a result of being in the right place at the right time. I shoot 3D when I shoot at all, but I still feel the olympic guys are more evolved, for now.

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

When I shoot competitively...I try to not even think about anything to do with archery untill I draw. Then I concentrate very hard on what I'm doing. Once the arrow is gone. Done. Don't think about it anymore. Can't change it! I try to think I'm shooting 60 rounds of 1 arrow. Instead of 1 round with 60 arrows.

POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE! You know your good.
In the words of a traditinal archer:
Don't think. Just shoot.

Good luck!
John

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Before I shoot I pay attention to every part of my body. I start at my feet. Some people dont realize that standing in the same stance every shot will make a difference. Like I sad I start at my feet, get the stance that feels familiar, back straight, draw back(slow and easy)and then make sure your grip feels natural, elbow not completly straight, but not very noticably bent,shoulder relaxed,back relaxed as much as possible. only you and the target. seeing only the target and nothing else. dont look at the sight, look through it. squeze the trigger without thinking about it, keep your focus on the target. The arrow released,your focus still on the taget. You hear the arrow hit and lower your bow.

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

For focus, imagine yourself in a feild of grass, lots and lot's of grass, now focus it down to one blade of grass, yellow grass if it's more like a target, then on that one peace of grass focus even further until you see a small microscopic afid crawling around on that peice of grass, that afid is your target. If you need something else to focus on then choose something else, but for focusing down on one small peice of a big picture, it help's you focus on a small spot on the target. For holding the mental game, you must simply not think of anything, don't pay attention to anyone, not even yourself, talk to people but don't pay attention to what they are saying, shoot with in yourself, if you shoot with in yourself your body will do what your subconcious is telling it to do, if you get in a zone you can feel it, it's almost like you have tunnel vision, your muscles won't get tired, your eyesite becomes very sharp and focused, and you smack the heck out of the ten. All you have to learn, is to shoot with in yourself, if you ever watch koreans, or any other solid shooter, they don't shake, the don't look like they are thinking of anything but what there eye's are looking at and that is the ten, ten, ten, ten, ten. Through the hole shooting sequence you must only focus on the ten, noting else, not your shooting form, release, nothing but a microscopic spot in the ten. That's enough rambling.
Good luck.
Dylan

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Edited by - 55#recurve on 01/18/2002 21:11:26

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

<font color=green>SHOOT WITH IN YOURSELF!!!!!</font id=green>practice is the time to work on form only during practice, it must be natural and unthought of when competing.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;--------o--&gt;

Edited by - 55#recurve on 01/18/2002 21:14:55

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Well said 55!!!! :) I find that in practice that the smaller the target the more heighten my concentration. I will often shoot for dime sized stick-on dots posted at random around the target to see how many I can hit out of 10 arrows in an inning. It works!

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Though to go more to the point of the original question: stress and competitiveness. The problem is that to be extremely effective you have to execute. At some level, really caring about what you do is a negative. It depends on all sorts of things, how easy is the execution etc... Jeff Cooper the Gunsite guru has made the point that to overcome fear one has to become angry. At a certain level that kind of thing works. But much of what he is involved with is training, which is to say giving people the basic set of skills which are essential to competence. Mastery is the other end of the spectrum. The appeal of Zen to the Samurai was that they felt to overcome fear they had to let go. A fascinating book along that path is &quot;The Sword of No-Sword&quot; about a warrior Tesshu. Tesshu is aparently a real person who lived in the generation imediately following the baning of swords, so he carried on in great mastery, though unsatisfyingly to an extent, at a time when the fighting was over. None the less he is a great connection to the warrior time. What they went through to become at one with their goal is amazing. Much of what is expected of us in the normal world is exertion. People want us incredibly atuned to a role: &quot;will you have fries with that&quot;. We are all constantly after something. A lot of passionate caring will only make it impossible for you to be in the moment when the time comes. Wanting to win really badly won't help you shoot the shot.

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

tribal, im not any where near a competitive shooter { did one 3d shoot in my life} but my hunting partner that got me into archery told me once. &quot;practice does not make perfect only perfect practice does&quot; ive lived by that ever since. every shot i take is ONE shot. nothing more nothing less. if you get tired its time to stop. contunuine to shoot will make for bad habits.
Ron

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

There's a good article on this topic in this months Petersons Bowhunting Magazine.

RE: Relaxation and shooting form advice needed
 

Howdy again (this is my whopping 3rd post!)
I'm no expert bowhunter (haven't killed one yet with a bow) but I think I have a pretty good idea about what to think about.

Several of the guys mentioned shooting with their eyes closed. I never did that, though for about 20 rounds or so, I concentrated on my form more than where I aimed/hit. For a finger/barebow shooter, I tried thinking &quot;Ok, body in the right position, eye on the left of the string, get rid of that third finger, aim...concentrate on that target...concentrate, concentrate, concentrate (that's the key, concentrate on where you're trying to hit...no, where you are going to hit so hard that it hurts. Then I just let those fingers go QUICKLY. When I flinch, I usually do it before I let go...if you do that, just take a break (5 seconds max) and then do it again.

Now when I shoot, Everything is just natural. I'm pretty stable (tip of the arrow doesn't move around allot) and I can group within around 3-5 inches at 20 yards. I haven't yet practiced seriously at thirty, though that is up for tomorrow :)

Anyway, that's it from an amature bowhunter :) I would strongly recomend shooting fingers...you think about the yardage before you even draw, so once you draw, all you HAVE to think about is that point...nothing but that point :)

-Nate

Finger shoot it man, just use your fingers.