One of the most stressful / exciting / challenging moments for any archers is when they are shooting in a competition or when they are recording their score. But, between these two instances, there is still a huge difference. On many occasions, when you are on the shooting line in a competition you end up shooting a lower score than what you normally shoot during practice.
But, an acquaintance of mine, who’s been helping me with the mental preparation any athlete needs before a major competition, told me that you should always shoot during training as if you’re shooting in the Archery World Cup. Basically, every arrow matters and being able to stay focused during training will highly increase your chances of not loosing your concentration during a competition.
Unfortunately, it is easier said than done and, in archery, a small mistake can lead to disaster. I’m not referring here the importance of every point in an individual or team match, when your opponent wins the match at a one-point difference. Yes, the small mistake you made by shooting your arrow in the 8-point ring (rather than 9, which would have been a tie, or a 10, which would have secured victory) lead to a disaster: you lost the match.
What I have found through my personal experience is that, for some archers (myself included), a very bad shot at any time during a match or the ranking round can mess up with your mindset. Thus, your next shots are below your true potential and your score gets lower and lower. By the time you pull yourself together the damage done is irrecoverable or has created such a gap between you and your opponent that you’re sure to lose.
I’ll give just one concrete example that I’ve experienced very recently during a one day session of recording four scores at 70 meters. The morning session was relatively good and I succeeded in shooting what I considered to be a good score for my level, but the afternoon session was a disaster.
Although I had a good start, during the third set, I shot an arrow in the 1-point ring, which is basically the lowest you can shoot. There’s nothing worse than that but a miss. It was not a bad shot as such, but rather a silly mistake. This is what happened: while aiming, the wind started blowing pretty hard and I decided to put my bow down and try shooting my arrow again.
(This is not something unusual, as archers frequently abandon a shot when they think that their set up is not good enough, when they’ve aimed for too long and lost power and momentum, and also when it’s too windy. Of course, the main prerequisite to do this is to still have enough time on the clock!)
But, while I was putting my bow down, my fingers suddenly let go of the string and the arrow flew in the outermost ring. I’d just shot a 1! And it was not because I had a bad shooting form; I could have accepted that more easily. It was because I relaxed my fingers and body too much and too soon, having already made the decision not to take the shot and put down my bow.
What happened is exactly the disaster I was referring to in the title. I still had a few arrows to shoot to complete the 6-arrow set, but during the few seconds that it took me to realize what I’d done, I literally blew away the positive mindset I’d had until that moment. It comes without saying that my next arrows didn’t go in the yellow center.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to recover mentally from my mistake soon enough and, by the time I shot my last arrow, my score had dropped immensely. Even though in the last two sets I tried to motivate myself that I could recuperate the lost points, I was not able to forget the silly mistake I’d made and kept thinking about it.
Although my coach has told me many times that in such cases you have to forget the bad shot and continue shooting as if nothing bad has happened, it was very difficult to do that. With the two good morning scores, I had high hopes for the afternoon session, but that all was blown away by one “minor” mistake.
This has been a great, but frustrating, lesson for me. I’ve realized, once again, the crucial importance that the mind of an archer has in relation to the results s/he can achieve. Training only your shooting form and increasing your body strength and endurance is just not enough. There’s at least one more very important element you have to tune: you mind.
