Is this logical?

[geoffretired]

Have been in rehab now for misuse of the release aid. Shots are now surprises rather than the old style anticipated ones. The surprises are less upsetting now that I am used to the way they feel. My thinking goes like this; if I am on aim and the rest of the form is sound, when the release goes off, there is no interference from me,and there is a natural follow through.
Compare that with the trigger activation in use before rehab, the difference must mean there was interference from me at the point of release and probably before as well as after.The interference went unnoticed then, so I felt all was well.
My logic is saying that the anticipation caused me to reduce the sensation of shock,or surprise, by taking avoiding action. I cannot explain or describe what that was but I suspect it moved my sight and/or my alignment in some way. I imagine I had to reduce the pressure I was putting into the bow;a sort of mini and rapid collapse. The result would be a soft and unnatural follow through.
Again, in my logic, I feel the interference-free shooting should be a better way than the style that must have put interference into the shots.
What do the others think?

[LineCutter]

This may be frowned upon in an archery forum, but have you taken a trawl aroud the web looking at pistol/rifle shooting sites? The issues are very much the same there. (I started off shooting rifles & still dabble a little in air pistol).

If you think about it, the distance from brain to trigger finger is the same as brain to bow hand & more than brain to bow arm. Any interference that you program into the shot can be activated before the trigger is jerked... & away goes another dodgy shot. Remove the awareness of the trigger - or iron out the interference & you shoot better. Just be wary of developing new interferences

There's one trick that the pistol/rifle shooters can use that we are denied - dry firing (& for the shooters of live rounds there's always the option of dummy rounds, to see how bad your flinch is). No idea how to extend this to compound though

[geoffretired]

Thanks for that, it does match what I was saying.I think the dry firing could be likened to blind shooting in archery, in a way. We then get the sensation of the shot with no distractions or need to hit something precise.

[LineCutter]

Not exactly... dry firing is akin to blank boss shooting in that you practice your sight picture & hold without a target to annoy you. The purpose I failed to convey is that it allows you to examine the post triggering behaviour of the gun. I suspect you're right, we have no closer analogue than blind shooting available to us - unless we can borrow the high speed video camera.

We shoot with little/no grip of the bow to hold it still for the follow through, which makes ironing out of the twitches difficult as they are hard to see, either from inside or from the coaches POV. YMMV, of course.

I should add a warning here though - shooting with iron sights is about focus on the front sight & not the target. This proves to be poisonous to my shooting (indoors at least) - I'm much more accuarte looking at the target & letting the sight sort itself.

Just had a thought - could somebody inventive come up with a randomiser for a compound D-loop? Something that would either loose the arrow, as normal, or transfer the weight to the wrist/elbow of the shooter when the release aid is triggered? Then we could study the effect of apprehension on the shot.
Needs more refinement, but the principle is viable (I think). Kind of like the practice loose you can get with a Formaster & a recurve.

Hmm, would need to have the tension on the release aid preserved if possible... maybe this would need to be a coaches only tool.

Thoughts Geoff?

[Kellog]

I think you can get something like that in the states that looks and feels like a release aid, but doesn't release the arrow or like a formaster doesn't release it at full force as I remember reading an article that included it in a rehab program for target panic. (Which I suffered thru at the beginning of indoor season)

[geoffretired]

Linecutter, I fixed a laser to the bow to see where it pointed after the release. I hoped then, to be able to work out why the bow moved the way indicated and eventually I hoped to reduce the movement by adjusting weights etc. The movements are rapid but if they are recorded on normal video, the later activity can be seen, and the early stuff can be guessed at by filling in the gaps the camera misses.

[Rik]

Originally Posted by LineCutter

There's one trick that the pistol/rifle shooters can use that we are denied - dry firing (& for the shooters of live rounds there's always the option of dummy rounds, to see how bad your flinch is). No idea how to extend this to compound though

We're not really denied it, it's just a little troublesome to implement. You can arrange something like an elbow cup, or a formaster, to dry fire a compound. You could even do it with just a release aid and some string, but that's a little more problematic (release aid flying out of your hand while still attached to the string kind of problematic!).
The trick, of course, is to set things up so that the bowstring can't move far from the release aid. Anything you can do which enforces that will allow you to dry fire the bow. Note that I don't say "safely" - that's up the operator...

You can practice using a release aid without a bow at all. All you need is a loop of cord, about as long as the distance from your grip, to where your release attaches at full draw. I guess this would fit roughly under the heading of "dry fire".

[geoffretired]

Hi Rik,
Have you been away?
I've been round and round this in circles and started to get clearer ideas of what I think is needed.
Shoot a pistol with live and blank ammo and if you flinch when it's a blank round, you flinch for no reason. That indicates that you were probably flinching on live rounds too. The blank round should allow the shooter to squeeze the trigger and not move when the gun simply clicks. If you didn't flinch for the blank, you probably don't flinch on live rounds. That's the theory as I see it.
When we move to shooting bows, I can think of no real equivalent. I can imagine a situation where the bow can feel "live" all the way to full draw and sometimes shoots and sometimes doesn't. What I can't imagine is the situation where the bow doesn't produce a follow through from the archer.
It is the follow through that masks the anticipation, if there was any.
My feelings on this are coming round to using dual control release aid but this will be no help to recurve archers.
With dual control, one for the archer one for the coach, the archer will not know who is going to release the arrow. If the archer releases the arrow, there may be anticipation built in. When the coach releases the arrow there will be no anticipation(some times anyway) The difference in the two will indicate whether or not there had been anticipation in the archer's shots.

[Rik]

Yes, I've been away for a few days, and Easter trip to visit my wife's mother in Armagh...

Thinking about surprising events; one of my maths lecturers used to be careful to make a distinction between improbable and surprising events. For example: having the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 come up on the lottery, would be surprising, but not unlikely (in the sense that they are as likely to come up as any other set of numbers you can write down!). Likewise, you know that the release aid will be set off, it's the circumstances which make it a surprise. It's "in your head".

Which brings me to the question: is surprise good? Is anticipation bad? I guess it depends on how you react to the situation. Anticipation is bad if it causes you to take some action which will affect the shot. If you can anticipate the release and not act on that anticipation then a good shot should still result. That's about control. I would guess that a bad reaction to surprise is less likely to mess up a shot than a bad reaction to anticipation. But I can't help the feeling that to be surprised by the shot is a bad thing, because it implies a lack of control. Ideally, the shot should go exactly when you want it to, I think that's true whatever shooting discipline you're talking about. But that might be what you're working towards; a more zen-like acceptance and non-interference in the shot. No surprise as such, but not forcing things to happen either. Good shots happen now, you don't drag them out of the past, or pull them out of the future.

Sometimes, I know I think too much. Sometimes, I think I know too much...

[geoffretired]

Quote ;Which brings me to the question: is surprise good? Is anticipation bad? I guess it depends on how you react to the situation. Anticipation is bad if it causes you to take some action which will affect the shot. If you can anticipate the release and not act on that anticipation then a good shot should still result. That's about control. I would guess that a bad reaction to surprise is less likely to mess up a shot than a bad reaction to anticipation. But I can't help the feeling that to be surprised by the shot is a bad thing, because it implies a lack of control.End Quote
You have got me thinking Rik,Mmmmmm.
I agree with all you said until the last sentence, then I'm not too sure.
I'm wondering if surprise is the wrong word. Or perhaps it conveys the wrong meaning. Surprise, in the way I'm thinking means "too quick for me to get in its way" in other words natural reactions take over. Blow in my eyes and I blink so to speak. I don't think that's quite the same as "lack of control" more under the control of the subconscious, perhaps.
IF the forces at work just before release, are the correct ones, Then I have no time to disturb the form by reacting naturally to the trigger suddenly going slack. IF the forces were wrong, then a bad shot would result which ever way it was released.
I know for myself, that the surprise was quite disturbing when I first started shooting that way. Three weeks down the line and there are still surprises but they no longer seem so unpleasant.