| Need to share this...
Nothing remarkable really, but a salutary lesson in the need to do the simple things well.
Up until Christmas I was shooting my best indoor scores ever. However, I did have a tendency to miss the bottom spot on a Fita 18 face to the right. In January, in an attempt to correct this, I added a 4oz. counter-weight to the bow to offset the weight of the sight/sight-window. This certainly reduced the number of right-sided misses, but my scores have been down ever since and on Sunday, at Evesham, I shot my worst score for a year. (In fact all of the 5 Fita 18's I've shot in competition this year have been between 575 and 578, way down on my pre-Christmas scores). I've had the odd good round, but these have been the exception not the rule.
Last night I removed the counter-weight, then started a round with half-dozens that went 60, 59, 58, 56, 56. At this point I stopped scoring and tried to figure out why it was going so badly wrong. All of my misses were low - inside the recurve 10 but not scoring on the inner 10 - some were a bit left, some right, but ALL were low.
It took me just 3 arrows to figure it out. I was dropping my bow arm slightly as the shot went off. As soon as I began to concentrate on keeping it still, my scores leapt back up and the next 6 half-dozens went 60, 59, 60, 58, 59, 59.
I believe that the extra weight initially caused me to drop my arm on release, and that this muscle reaction became a habit so that even with the weight removed I was still doing it.
Conclusions? Well, they go like this:
1. even a small change to the bow set-up can have an effect (adverse or otherwise) on form. Although 4oz. is no big deal, I think young elastic (say, 21 year old) muscles would accept the change in mass weight no problem, but my less efficient (42 year old) muscles didn't react well - this is despite my being in the best physical shape I've seen for many a year.
2. the best equipment in the world won't compensate for poor form. Getting the shot right is worth far more points than anything else.
3. find what works for you, and stick with it until everything about the shot routine becomes ingrained. Then, when something goes wrong (as it inevitably will), you'll be able to recognise what feels wrong and know how to correct it.
Adam  |