When I first got my garden boss I was just firing arrows down and onto it to try and build a repetative muscle memory no real attempt to hit the gold but it soon came! I thought this was important as I was still quite new to Archery! It was a trick taught to me when I first got into hurdling as a young lad. A very clever england coach who had retired lived quite close by my track. And his first words to me were "Im going to teach you to know what your feet hands eyes and breathing are doing all at the same time" And Frank went systimatically about identifying to me what each bit of the body did. How my feet should land on the track where hands and eyes should be when approaching and when departing a hurdle. Over two years he reinforced this at every session asking me where I was looking what I was thinking about and how many hurdles were left. My progression from that point including lowering of my PB at 400mH was dramatic. We even went about repetative performances when I was nearly out on my feet to try and sharpen my perception and awareness when tired. Archery has a lot of the same features and in the few competitions Ive entered Ive soon come to realise there are a lot of things to improve on! These things will improve my PB because I wouldn't be thinking of the score and Ive only got x amount left to get to beat it.
I do keep an excell spread sheet of my garden performances over 20yds. Shooting six arrows five doz at a time on a 60 cm face and strictly in 1 to 6 order. This has allowed me to record what each arrow does! If Im not scoring so well at any particular time in the shoots and if one particular arrow is not so consistant or as good as the others! Lastly I keep golds and hits below 9 in each dozen as a seperate score all highlighted in seperate colours as this is my target not to go below with each arrow.
Presently I have shot.
23 rounds Scoring 11706 points Lowest score being 480 highest being 551 Averaging out at 508.6 for each round and the highest arrow average for a round was 9.18 lowest being 8.00
I have started highlighting on the scorecard before I shoot when I should think about my scores and concentrating a bit harder.
Not sure if its helping a whole lot yet especially as limbs and string have been changed this week but it gives a good reference point.
Also Ive found shooting in very low light allows you to concentrate on technique and not the end result at the target.
Blimey sorry its so long but its a "my own way" of improving technique.
Jock
