An Interlude—The Stance

Before continuing my review of the DVD “Shooting Form” by Dave Cousins and Liam Grimwood, I thought I would take a little time to clarify my thoughts on “the stance,” since I went off on it in Part 1 of that review.

Okay, so we start with a question. If you get this answer right, you will know that you are an expert archery coach. Here it is: what is the purpose of the stance? In other words, what does it provide an archer?

<Jeopardy music here . . . dah, dah, dah, dah . . . >

Got your answer?

Well, the key element the stance provides an archer is stillness at full draw. If you said balance, balance is a cog in the wheel but what is needed at full draw is not balance per se, but stillness. If we are still, the only problem facing us is placing our bows in space correctly and executing a clean release. If we are not still, we not only have to place our bows in space but also in time. Sure Legolas in the Tolkien movies shot while running and whatnot, but his arrows were CGI’d. Being still is crucial to the success of an archer hitting her mark.

Now the stance is not the only source of stillness but it is a major source of problems associated with it.

And, I think stances are personal. They are all similar but no one stance serves all archers. You and your charges must find your stances.

All of the forces at full draw need to be in a single plane, a vertical plane going through the archer’s point of aim (the target center if there are no extenuating factors like wind) because the arrow, when launched, has to be in that plane. This is because as a free projectile, it is only being affected by aerodynamic forces and gravity. Gravity acts only downward and aero forces act along the shaft of the arrow, so if the arrow is launched at an angle to the plane through the target, it will simply get farther and farther off plane the longer it is in the air.

Since this is the case, that all of the forces acting on the arrow need to be in that plane, consequently all of the bracing of the archer’s body needs to be there also. This is why we stand sideways to the shooting line, so that our legs can exert forces on the ground (and the ground can act equally in the opposite direction) to keep all of the forces exerted by the archer in plane.

Now, I showed you Rick McKinney’s “wind stance” in that last post, and that stance was used to create torsion within his body to oppose the forces of wind acting to shove this bow/arrow off plane. But in the absence of wind, that stance has no added value and actually makes shooting harder. You would never use it indoors for example (no wind).

What I recommend regarding stances is to start all archers on some kind of neutral stance to minimize any stance effects upon shooting “in line.” You should now surmise that “being in line” and “shooting in line” has to do with creating the forces propelling the arrow in that vertical target plane.

Once an archer has learned to shoot in line, then other stances can be explored, and I do not rule out open stance or closed stances. If an archer finds a more comfortable stance, being able to shoot the same scores or a stance that allows them to shoot better scores, I am all for it. I just do not want to see them losing their “in line shooting” from that exploration. (That probably should be “in plane shooting” but the phrase “being in line” was invented long before I came around.)

So, how does one adopt a “neutral stance”?

The Natural Stance There is a process to find a neutral stance for any archer. It goes like this:

Address a target at a medium distance. Draw on the target and settle with your arrow point/sight aperture on target center, then close your eyes, count to five and then open them again. (If you can do this counting to a larger number, go for it, but I don’t think over ten seconds is necessary.

When you open your eyes, you are looking for whether or not your aperture/point has drifted left or right (ignore up and down). If your aperture has drifted to the left, move your feet (preserving your normal spacing) so that your aperture is in line with target center.

Let down, rest for 30 seconds and repeat.

What you are looking for is minimum left-right aperture drift upon opening your eyes.

Interpreting This Drill If you drift substantially off line in this drill, you are, in essence, fighting your stance. Your body wants to point your arrow “there” that is you have aligned your body to point it off to the side. This means that with your eyes open some effort needs to applied to oppose this “natural tendency” to point the arrow off line. If you can find the point where your body is not fighting your stance, that stance is “neutral” in my book. Of course, one then needs to memorize the relation between foot positions and shooting line.

I had a thought to create a large “Lazy Susan,” at least three feet wide for archers to do this drill from. Instead of having them move their feed between iterations, I would rotate their whole bodies via the platform. This thingamajig could also be used to explore open or closed stances. I never got around to building one (the metal rolling parts are available in home stores as are three foot and larger plywood rounds, so you could if you wanted to play with such a device with your charges).

Balance is Tricky
Regarding balance I did some preliminary studies using bathroom scales (I think I reported on those studies here). I placed four scales in positions that archers could put their heels on two of the balances and forefeet on two others. I asked them to adopt a balanced stance empty handed and noted the left-right balance and front-rear balance (heel-toe as it were). Then I checked the status of the four scales at full draw.

How bathroom scales are set up for The Great Balance Experiment.

In testing an expert compound-release archer, I noticed something interesting. He was on scales and I handed him his bow (which I had weighed already) then asked him to adopt a “bow raised” position. I checked the scales and, interestingly, the entire weight of the bow showed up on the bowside scales and none of it on the rearward sales. I puzzled over this. Of course, I asked him to go to full draw. At full draw, his weight was distributed exactly as it had been with no bow, all readings being slightly higher accounting for part of the weight of the bow. The state of balance was exactly as it had been sans bow.

But why did all of the archer’s bow weight show up on his lead foot at pre-draw? The best I could figure is that the archer could have rebalanced himself with a tiny shift in the position of his center of gravity, but didn’t bother. Since the state of balance was going to come back to what it was sans bow, why rebalance oneself when raising the bow then rebalance oneself at full draw, when one can leave the state of one’s body in the “balanced configuration” and just accept all of the bow weight on the front foot and then let it come back when the draw is completed without doing anything. Neat.

And, I can’t withhold my favorite finding (provisional though it is), when I handed these archers their bows, their front back balance shifted more weight toward their toes than the heels. You have probably heard that archer’s need to have 60% of their weight toward their toes and 40% toward their heels, this being presented as something archers need to do. It is not. It happens automatically. You see, we shoot standing beside our bows. The bow, and its weight, are in front of us. When we draw we move some of our mass rearward (the bow arm) and this balances out the weight of the bow in our other hand (somewhat) and then tiny shifts in our centers of mass make us balanced, left-right, at full draw. But the weight of our bows causes a tiny shift of weight onto our toes which is a slight bias but a desirable one because it feels right, more weight should be on our toes because we are holding a weight in front of us.

The “desired” 60%-40% front-rear weight distribution is not something we do, it is something that happens. This is an important distinction, that if confused will result in wasted time, effort, and energy on the part of both coach and archer. Your archers need do nothing, but feel still at full draw. Stillness is the key. If you desire it, our bodies provide it.

Mindfulness and Archery

I consider the question as to whether mindfulness exercises/practices are helpful to archers to be an “open question,” that is one without a definitive answer as yet. Currently I am in the “it can’t hurt camp.” But studies continue to be done, for example a couple were reported on in an Internet post this morning, including this:

“In a second study, survey data from engineering students and graduates across the U.S. revealed that baseline mindfulness predicted their confidence in being innovative. What’s fascinating is that a particular aspect of mindfulness, known as a “mindful attitude,” emerged as the most significant predictor of innovation self-efficacy.

This attitude involves having an open, curious, and kind approach to paying attention. It’s often referred to as “beginner’s mind,” and it’s essential for exploring new perspectives and generating original ideas.”

That sounds promising . . . for creatives, but in archery we do not want creativity, we want adherence to a process already established. We want immersion in that process so that our minds are “full” of that process with no room for anything else, especially not creativity.

Since this is an open question, pay attention when you come across such studies to see if there is anything there. If it turns out that there is no “there” there, then we need to move off of that topic.

Postscript I grew up on the San Francisco peninsula and often there were jokes about our neighboring city across the bay, Oakland, such as “If it weren’t for the yogurt, there’d be no culture in Oakland at all.” And, “Oakland, there’s no ‘there’ there” as in “there you can do this or there you can have that.”

Even my throwaway lines have depth! :o)

Shooting Form (A Review), Part 1

I deliberately used the photo from the Lancaster Archery Supply catalog to indicate that this is still available there (and other places).

I review books and videos on this site to help you decide whether you want to purchase those for your own coaching library. In this video presentation by Dave Cousins and Liam Grimwood, the dynamic duo are going though compound form from bottom to top, starting with the stance.

They start with DC describing foot positions as feet being parallel (agreed, with the caveat that some people have feet slightly splayed as being normal and I favor normal) and shoulder/hip width apart (agreed) for balance (agreed). DC goes on to state why he prefers an open stance because it places your balance toward the toes of your feet and if you square up your stance, it shifts the center of balance toward your heals and if, god forbid, you use a closed stance it shifts your center of balance behind your heels. DC claims that swaying at full draw can have these stance errors as its source. (Note—The “god forbid” was mine, as a recommender of closed stances galore.)

Brah, Brahn, Brah—Danger Will Robinson, the Bullshit Alert has gone off!

To explain my shock and horror, allow me to explain. While DC was describing all of this LG was demonstrating the stances using a strip of tape on the floor as a stand-in for a shooting line. Allow me to substitute for that strip of tape, a piece of cardstock with the tape running down its length, so I can move it. So, LG takes his slightly open stance, then I take the shooting line and move it so that his stance is now square. Tell me how that action, taken by me, would disturb LG’s balance in any way. Similarly if I keep moving the line so LG is in a closed stance, how does that affect his balance?

Hint: It cannot.

Reality Check If you adopt an extreme stance, it can result in you having to distort your body so much that you could have balance problems. But Rick McKinney (not a compound archer per se) often used what he called his “wind stance” which was 85° open (see photo) and as a World Champion, I doubt that disturbed his balance very much.

McKinney’s “Wind Stance” (Source: The Simple Art of Winning)

Reality Check If your center of balance is shifted outside of your “foundation,” established by your feet, you will fall over, so “a closed stance shifting the center of balance behind your feet” would result in you tipping over backward.

I will come back to this review later. Right now, I have to go lay down.

More on Working Out (aka Part 3 of 2)

You may recall this was about older folks shooting challenging field rounds and being fit enough to do well. But topics do expand and I got a comment from Bob regarding Part 1 which contains a few more topics, namely: workout plans, “FORM difference between shooting on a flat range and shooting uphill (harder) and downhill (easier),” and “plan our yearly events to better fit our capabilities, doing shorter events earlier leading up to the long days.”

I suspect that Bob will also respond to Part 2, but I have some grist for my mill so I will address these topics here . . . and now.

Workout Plans If you work out at a fitness center of some sort, it is best to consult experts regarding fitness plans. They can take into account any weaknesses, frailties, etc. you have and design a plan to provides you with what you need.

Famous traditional archer Howard Hill was known for being incredibly strong. One story I remember is he strung a 100 lb. long bow while sitting down! Mr. Hill worked out daily and one of his go-to exercises is he hung 125 pounds of weight on a cable that was run through a pulley. He would “draw” this weight over and over for many minutes. He also shot 80+ pound bows for his trick shot exhibitions. (I once tried to draw a 100# longbow and to this day I am not sure I even bent the string.)

This is where the line between amateur and professional is drawn. How much time/effort do you have to support your shooting? If you are not retired, like me, you have work, family, and other concerns that limit the time you have. But there are some simple things you can do. For example, for about the first five years I shot, when the weather turned in the Fall, I packed away my bow until it turned back in Spring. Then it seemed like I was starting anew each spring. When I finally wised up and shot indoors during the late-fall to early-spring months, I started making more progress. (The best exercise for drawing a bow is . . . drawing a bow.)

Shooting Up-, Down-, and Sidehill Shots These were characterized in Bob’s comment as “shooting uphill (harder) and downhill (easier).” And, of course I have a story. My home range had several not-very-steep downhill shots built in, and almost no uphill shots. After traveling to quite a few field ranges in and out of California, this seemed to be a general pattern. I believe, but cannot prove that this is rooted in a safety concern. We do not in general place target butts on the edge of a ravine or an edge of a cliff. If you miss the butt, those arrows may go a long ways and be unrecoverable. Similarly, if you put a butt on the top of a rise and then someone misses the butt, where does that arrow land? Arrows can travel many hundreds of feet launched up into the air that way.

No matter, the point is that I had very little experience shooting uphill shoots and considerably more shooting downhill shots. Then I was in a shoot with an extreme uphill shot and I almost couldn’t release my arrows. Not only was it uphill, but at that time of day, the Sun was behind the target! I felt as if I were to fall over backwards. I had no compensations trained in and, basically, I embarrassed myself (nobody else noted as none of them were expecting much from me at the time).

So, the easier and harder labels may just be due to practice.

I have some friends who have competed around the world and thus encountered extreme field course, with very steep up-and downhill shots. They ended up making some foam targets (before they were readily available), driving up into the Sierra Nevadas and setting up some very steep shots to be able to practice them.

Sidehill shots can be problematic, mostly due to your footing but also particularly due to not having an horizon as a reference for being level and plumb. Again, practice is in order. If you can’t find such shots on your range find a somewhat unlevel shooting stake and place a piece of 4×4 down on the high side and take your stance on your simulated sidehill, then practice and, as always, be aware of what you feel and how you shoot. As always, mix it up, e.g. don’t always have your left foot as the high side, etc.

In all awkward body position shots, the goal is to preserve as much of your upper body geometry as possible. For example, open stances help in down hill shots, closed stances in uphill shots. When shooting downhill, you want to bend at the waist, not higher (to preserve . . .). So, your lower bow limb ends up swinging down, and if your stance is open the gap between your legs provides a space for that lower limb. On uphill shots, which Bob and I find more difficult, probably due to lack of practice and familiarity, there is a tendency to bend above your waist, and that shortens your draw. A closed stance tends to lengthen your draw to compensate. If you shoot compound, the draw length is built in, but if your body position shortens your full draw position, your anchor ends up in a “funny” position, which a closed stance can alleviate somewhat.

A Bonus in the Form of a Question How do you shoot a shot at a target directly below your feet or directly over your head (not that you ever would)? Two categories: no sight involved and sight involved. Put your answer in a comment.

Finally, Planning Your Yearly Events In my book “Winning Archery,” which addresses everything you need to learn besides how to shoot, I devote quite a bit of space on this topic.

If you are what I call a “serious competitive archer” which is someone who is not a professional but a large part of their “fun” is doing well, I strongly urge you to plan the events you compete in carefully. Often there are “important shoots” and “not so important shoots,” important to you, of course. To me the California State Field Championship was important, the Washington State Field Championship not so much, you get the idea.

Leading up to an important shoot you want to schedule similar events. You don’t want an important shoot to be the first of its type that year. So, before a challenging field event at a range requiring overnight travel, it is nice to have a similar event booked beforehand. Just shooting competitions at ranges close to home so that you are sleeping in your own bed and eating home cooked meals, etc. might not be the best preparation. An important outdoor event shouldn’t be your first outdoor event after shooting indoors all winter, especially if you have an “indoor bow” and an “outdoor bow.”

So, another story, I was at an outdoor target event when a fellow competitor pointed out that watching my arrows fly was making him queasy. It was then that I realized that the one bow I owned had been set up for indoors and I didn’t complete the reconfiguration of that bow for outdoor shooting. The setup I was shooting was for a different set of arrows. And I was wondering why my groups were so big! You want at least a couple of shakedown shoots before you attempt an “important shoot,” ones in which your trust in your equipment can be validated.

More? I presume more comments are coming and if there is something in this area you want me to touch, now would be a good time to ask.

The Joys of Old Archery Magazines

I have read a great many old archery magazines but hadn’t read any for quite some time, but one caught my eye recently and I bought it. It is a February 1965 issue of TAM and Archery World, subtitled “Official Publication of the National Archery Association of the United States.” For those of you not so long of tooth, TAM stands for “The Archery Magazine” and the NAA was the former and still name (don’t ask it’s complicated) of USA Archery.

In this issue on page twelve is a column on Power Archery by Dave Keaggy, Sr. who came up with the Power Archery scheme, which to my understanding was the first fully delineated shooting technique published in the U.S. Dave, Sr. along with his son, Dave, Jr., promoted this shooting technique extensively, including through the book Power Archery, which is still worth a read.

The topic of this column is “Your False Release” so you can see that people have struggled with getting a clean release off of the bowstring for a long time.  Here’s a taste “In theory there should be an instantaneous snap back of the arm because you are using thirty pounds of energy in the back and shoulders to hold a thirty pound bow. If there is no snap back from the string upon release you are deenergizing the back and shoulder muscles just prior to the instant of release and letting the arms set in a static position. This is basically the difference between a “dead release” and a “flying release.” Sounds like it could have been written yesterday and not 57 years ago, no?

And, you can probably understand why I became an editor. It bothers me still that he referred to “30 pounds” as an energy. It is not, it is a force.

Three pages onward is an article on “X-7 Exotic Metal Easton Arrow Revealed.” Easton had been making aluminum arrows for quite some time but this is the shaft with an “exotic metal” in it! Imagine considered aluminum, one of the most common metals in existence being considered “exotic!” Aluminum arrows were invented by Doug Easton well before this, but this form of aluminum was new to the effort. On the page opposite is an ad for “glass arrows,” not being some sort of award, but actual arrow shafts made from fiberglass. Those had not been relegated to summer camp archery classes at that time and were used for hunting, target shooting.

In the back is an announcement that Howatt Archery Manufacturing had invented the Variable Thrust Compensator, which was a forerunner of the Doinker. (I had one of the Hoyt versions, which they called Torque Flight Compensators.) Again, for those not so long in the tooth, this was a mechanical device, a small cylinder that screwed into your recurve bow as if they were “twin stabilizers” that offset some of the shock of the release and thereby one could tune the feel of their bow to be more or less lively (more or less “hand shock”) upon loosing.

Most of the bows shown in photos and advertisements are one piece recurve bows, as the three piece bows weren’t developed for mass production until the early 1970’s, about the same time compound bows were becoming popular.

There is much more, even a short article on the mental game. I also have found much of interest in the letters to the editor. Often enough these are letters are about other letters! Letters to the editor are from a bygone era as the instantaneous communication via the Internet has made them obsolete. They have been replaced by “comments,” etc.

In any case, if you run across any old archery magazines, don’t assume that all in them is obsolete information and there are always some joys to be plucked from their pages. As another example, in the issue above the Personality of the Month is Earl Hoyt, Jr.

Working Out, Part 2 of 2

Cleaning Up Part 1
I left out part of my answer in Part 1 in that I didn’t address the “geezer factor.” There is an old saying in sports, “Father Time is undefeated.” This acknowledges that we do not just keep getting better as we age. Our archery “careers” follow an arc as they say. We get better, better, better, then worse, worse, worse. This, of course is due to the deteriorations of age. But those do not have to be looked at as limitations, just additional variables instead.

My friend and part-time mentor, Pat Norris, is still winning championships, and even made the USAA World Championship team recently and he is older than I am.

I also saw a Vegas stalwart, who shot Compound Barebow for many years there, who near the end of one day tried to draw his bow and failed, then tried again and failed, and tried a third time and failed. He lost the score on that arrow. I almost turned away so as to not watch, but I wanted to honor his competitive spirit, so I watched.

For us, as I say “geezers,” who have our peak physical performances in our rear view mirrors, the game is now to match the challenges of competitions to our abilities. Bob and his crew sound like they are in quite good physical shape and therefore might want to tackle more challenging events. If you are not so committed to keeping in good physical shape, you might want to limit yourself to less physically challenging events.

Now, Part 2
But not something completely different as the Monty Python crew used to say.

Planning which events to attend is a mental skill. Learning about the terrain, weather, etc. of an event ahead of time is as important as determining whether there is a dress code (e.g. you still cannot wear camo to an USAA event). Our course, if there is an event you really, really want to attend and it is quite a challenge, you may just set some fitness goals to up your abilities to handle those challenges, so, of course, you need to know about those challenges ahead of time. As I said, planning!

The Internet is a great deal of help as are friends you can ask who have shot the event before. If your goal is winning your competitive category, you also need to know what the winning scores have been for the last three years, at least.

A Note About Cardio—Cardio fitness is not all that important in archery, although it plays a role. Archery is an anaerobic sport, which means you can perform it while holding your breath (this is not the technical definition :o), so cardiovascular fitness is not a major factor. It is, however, valuable in creating stillness under stress (important at full draw) and maintaining a slower heart rate and so good for high stress situations (shoot-offs, etc.). If you are designing a fitness program, you need to focus on strength, not power, and not speed. Cardio fitness can help in all kinds of ways just in your everyday life, but it is not crucial in archery (unless you are an elite archer, looking to close a gap of just a few points with your competitors).

Clothing, Et.Al. For field archery, there are any number of conditions that affect what you wear, especially upon your feet. In target archery, you can sit in a chair, in the shade (natural or artificial), and slather sun block on your exposed skin. This is much harder to do in the field, so many people just cover up (although I have seen a number of archers, apparently from Mediterranean extraction, wear shorts on field courses. Insects find me way too tasty for me to do that and I sunburn easily, so I cover up.

Because the shooting stakes on field courses are rarely flat, you need ankle support, so boots are recommended. My last club in California was in a forest, logging country, and a number of serious archers wore logging boots, which have massive lug soles, They used these to dig out a flat spot to stand in and often as not, from the perspective of someone spending time in range maintenance, seem to be the equivalent of a backhoe for moving dirt. (We considered banning the boots as they were so destructive. We wanted uneven ground to be shot from, not flat and paved.)

So, sturdy boots with fairly rigid soles are typical. Even target competitions require somewhat rigid soles. I was always amazed when I saw people shooting in “trainers/cross trainers,” which have curved soles, to facilitate getting from heel to toe while running. This makes it hard to have a stable foot position (shoes with exaggerated curves in them are sold as a training device for basketball because they force you onto your toes . . . and yes, I have a pair . . . just for walking exercise!). You want flattish soles, with sturdy uppers that are comfortable to walk in. (And I would carry a pair of dry socks in a baggie in my fanny pack to change into if my feet got clammy from sweat or rain as wet socks are part of the recipe for forming blisters.

Having clothes appropriate for the weather is important, too. If it starts to rain and you have no rain gear, you may be in trouble or at least your score might be. I tended to avoid shooting in baseball-style caps because if it started to rain, I would pull the bill down to cover my glasses and then the bill would interfere with my bowstring, which was at best a distraction. (I wore Tilley hats after I became rich and famous . . . actually i never got to either of those, I just had a steady job. The brims were soft enough to not interfere and stiff enough to keep rain and sun off of my glasses.)

Rain gear needs to be tried out before it is needed. Does the rain jacket catch your bowstring? Do you have rubber bands or an armguard to hold the fabric on your bow arm down? Does the jacket restrict your draw? Lots to consider there.

Your Equipment The above topic borders on having the right equipment to shoot. Presumably you have set up and tuned your bows and arrows so that they suit your game. Older people can be deluded into being overbowed. Your draw weight does not stay the same forever. Like the arc of your “archery career” they typically go up, up, up and then down, down, down. I remember after I moved to the Chicago area and my draw weight was being adjusted down, down, down, I had gotten to about 48 points of draw and there was a guy just kicking my butt, so I asked him how much he was pulling, thinking I may have to really work out to attain a higher draw weight and he looked me straight in the eye and said “38 pounds.” Many people don’t realize how beneficial light weight, stiff carbon arrows have been. (My friend was shooting Easton ACEs.) Because those shafts are light and stiff, our arrows are much lighter than in the past, which means lower draw weights can produce more than adequate arrow speeds. When I was young (40-ish) and first learning archery (compound) I thought “real men shoot 60 pounds or more,” so that was my initial recipe. I was overbowed from the start. I started to shoot well at 56 pounds of draw and even better at 52.

If you get tired from shooting longer stints, older folks need to consider lower draw weights, and also lower “mass weights.” (I hate that term.) Physically heavier bows are easier to hold still (they have more inertia). So, you will see compound champions with backweights on their bows, heavier stabilizers, etc., ending up with bows in the 8-10 pound weight range. While such weights make bows easier to keep still, they also are harder to lug around a field course (which often as not do not have bow racks at each target), lift into place, etc. and if you get tired, you are going to give back more points than you were saving earlier in the shoot due to fatigue. So, older folks should consider lower bow weights, lower draw weight, etc. Younger folks should avoid being overbowed, too, of course.

Your Equipment in Competition We all hope that our equipment, which we have so carefully set up and tuned, stays the same during a competition, but “equipment failures happen.” Are you prepared? Especially in a field shoot, you maybe miles away from a back-up bow in your car. (Target archers have their backup bow, ready to go next to their lawn chair.) In the field you may have to make field repairs.

When working with newly competitive archers, we recommend they start by having two finger tabs (if they are “fingers shooters) and that they shoot both tabs in. It is harder with release shooters as a back-up release ain’t cheap, but one is necessary, eventually. And both tabs and release aids are easy to drop. We suggest that our young recurve archers carry a back-up (and shot in) bowstring. Servings fail, bowstrings are subject to broken strands causing the string to “stretch.” All of this is a ramp up to having a complete back up rig. This usual starts at the point of upgrading their bow, leaving them with their old bow as a back-up. But a complete back-up bow has everything: bow, stabs, sight, arrows, everything.

In field archery, however, you may not have access to your back-up bow, so are you prepared to repair your bow? I always carried tools (Allen wrenches, a small crescent wrench, a small screw driver, etc.) but I have seen people carry serving tools (less now that we all seem to shoot with two nocking point locators on our bowstrings), Teflon tape (you would be surprised at how useful it can be), and all sorts of other tools. Obviously you don’t need tools you do not know how to use, but I remember shooting one day in practice and my arrows were going all over the place. I finally found out that my arrow rest’s retaining nuts had gotten lose and the arrow rest’s position had become “variable.” I had the right tool, fixed the problem, and enjoyed the rest of my day.

In target archery, I remember shooting when the rope on my release aid rope broke. (Remember when we attached ropes to our release aids, before D-loops?) I looked at the clock, walked over to my tool box, dug out my spare release, went back to the shooting line and shot my last arrow. My shooting partner said to me “You know you could have declared an equipment failure” (as my final arrow was launched with three seconds left on the clock) and my response was, “Too much of a hassle.” One of the joys of target archery, you don’t have to carry everything with you.

Oh, and field archers need be careful you don’t turn yourself into a pack mule, carrying way too much weight around with you.

Diet I am a diet heretic, so you may want to take what I say with a grain of salt. My professional training was in chemistry. What I have read about dietary “research” I found appallingly bad . . . really, really bad. Researchers with foregone conclusions found data to support their “beliefs” over and over and by doing so, obscured valid information. From these efforts we got shoved into “low fat diets are good for you.” Our diets should be closer to vegetarian or vegan, etc. Of course when we Americans took this advice it set off an epidemic of obesity and metabolic diseases.

For my part, a pre-shoot breakfast of bacon and eggs worked well. For lunch I usually packed my own (as range fair can be iffy) and it consisted of ham, beef, or turkey, cheese, and some sliced vegetables (I like sweet peppers), all of which were cut into strips to make “finger food.” To drink I had diluted sugar-free sports drinks; watering them down made them more easily absorbed (according to studies). I avoid sugary anything: sodas, candy bars.

Out in the field I mostly drank water, because that was available, and I would carry granola bars, those having lower sugar contents). Sugary drinks and foods promote what is called “sugar highs,” which are followed shortly by “sugar crashes,” neither of which promote good shooting.

And don’t get me started on “hydration;” there is more nonsense on this topic than you can shake a stick at, starting with “you need to drink eight glasses of water per day” and coffee and beer don’t count (they do). Basically, athletes who were competing in aerobic events cannot afford to get dehydrated, so they practiced preventative drinking (drinking fluids before being thirsty). I would follow this advice if it were a really hot day and I was out in the sun (like in Sacramento, CA in summer!). Otherwise, you have this thing called thirst which prompts you when to drink. It has been time tested and works really well.

If you are personally interested in the history of diet “research,” if I can call it that, I can recommend the book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes.

Awareness, Awareness, Awareness This is a topic I am thinking about now so that probably explains why I am including this now. If your goal for success in field archery is wins or just fun, I suggest you need to hone your awareness, both external and internal, that is becoming aware of what is happening and when.

When you are shooting really well, are you aware of what you are doing (external) and feeling (internally) when that happens? Similarly when your score suffers, are you aware from what? Was it fatigue? (My big “problem” was distraction, my mind would flit around like a butterfly. It took me a long time to learn how to focus upon my process.) Were your socks or underwear bunched up? Were you worried about going to work on Monday?

The more you can identify blockages to success and the conditions that lead to good shooting, the more you can avoid the former and encourage the latter. Bob showed this in recognizing the need for boots to shoot in (external awareness and internal awareness (tired feet)).

Conclusion Do let me know if I left anything out you want to know and I will plug the gap, so to speak.

Good shooting . . . at whatever your age!

Note—I am not using the term “geezer” in a derogatory fashion. Apparently the word geezer originates from the word ‘guiser,’ (Dutch?) meaning a person who performs in a guise or costume, as in a carnival or street parade. General online research suggests it first was recorded in the mid-1880s in its derisive meaning for an old man.

I am someone who values words and I didn’t want to be mistaken, so I do apologize for my justifications from time to time to those of you who are not interested in them. S

Working Out?

I love getting requests for post topics as just coming up with things to write upon I hope you are interested in is the hard part for me. And in a comment to “You Win or You Learn,” blog follower Robert Shelfer gave me a bunch of topics. Here is his comment:

“Hello Steve, This past weekend my wife, two friends and I did the Washington State Archery Association Safari Championship. My wife is the youngest at 75 years. Bill, Fred and I are 78 each. This is the second safari that we’ve done this year and there are several more field shoots coming up. This is our second year shooting the field games. We’ve all been active target archers for well over a decade. I remember you said that you are a field archer and 77. Prior to starting target archery in 2010, my wife and I were canoe racers where we had a planned cardio/strength and diet plan. While we’ve continued a twice a week gym routine we haven’t done the hiking that is necessary for the field events as I found out this past weekend. The first day started at 09:00 with a shotgun start and finished 6 1/2 hours later for our group. We shot 42 targets on day #1. I sure slept well. Day #2 was 28 targets which was doable. At the end of day #2 I started thinking that I needed to do a lot more hiking up and down some hills, buy myself some good hiking socks and buy my wife some good hiking boots and socks. I remembered our canoe racing diet. I looked at the podcast index under archery fitness and found a multitude of podcast for hunters. Do you have any training advice for us geezers who just can’t quit?”

There is more than one topic I see here, and there will probably be more as I respond, so this may take a couple of posts to cover.

Some Background
Whenever we attempt a competition I suggest there are four walls to the foundation of that effort:
1. physical fitness (specifically archery fitness)
2. our equipment
3. our form and execution, and
4. the mental game.

These are not independent things in that they all intermix. The first three are largely established before you show up at the competition, the fourth one may and will vary (it’s complicated).

The big request is to address #1 so that is where I will start. And I will address all ages, because the criteria are the same, but there are special considerations for old folks like Bob and me.

Just What Is Archery Fitness?
Our goal as competitive archers is to be able to shoot our last arrow with the same skill and attention as our first. This seems obvious. So, fatigue, either physical or mental, prevents this and leads to disappointments.

There are several aspects to being “fit” for a competition. Not surprisingly, it does depend upon the type of competition. Before I got involved in target archery of the non-field variety it seemed to me that standing in the same spot and shooting arrows all day long would be boring. Then I experienced the challenge and changed my mind. In the FITA 144 Round (the old FITA Executive Round), there is four miles of walking back and forth between the shooting line and the targets. But you can set up a lawn chair and sit while the other line shoots. If there is only one shooting line, then it is a task. Shoot six arrows, walk 90 meters, score and fetch your arrows, then walk 90 meters back and immediately shoot six more arrows. The challenge here definitely targets stamina.

The exercise for being able to draw your bow and execute a good shot calmly is, not surprisingly, shooting itself. In fact, studies show that the best exercise for any sport is the sport itself. So, if you are going to take on a 144 Round, you will be shooting 144 arrows in competition, and maybe 12-20-ish warm up arrows. If this is a one day shoot, have you shot that many arrows in a practice day? (When I shot my first such round, I had not.) It is a good idea that you shoot more than that total in a day of practice more than once to see how you respond. Do you get tired? Do you lose focus? Do you get bored? You can’t assess yourself without putting yourself in that position.

When I first attended the NFAA Outdoor Nationals, it was a five day tournament. on the first four days we shot 112 arrow field/hunter rounds, and on the last day we shot 28 animal targets which meant at least 28 more arrows. I had never shot a tournament longer than two days, so this was going to be a test. (Realize that, as a school teacher, I had many days available for practice over summers, but it never occurred to me to shoot NFAA field rounds four days in a row as practice/a stamina test.) What happened was I got stronger each day, which surprised me. I even set a personal best score for the animal round at that competition.

So, to summarize, the best exercise for achieving archery fitness is shooting. If you are trying to move up in draw weight there are other complications. You may want a copy of the book “The Archery Drill Book” that Mike Gerard and I wrote; it has drills/exercises to do just that.

But wait, there’s more!

There’s More to Archery Fitness Than Being able to Shoot the Required Number of Shots
I probably shouldn’t start with another story but then we are primed via evolution to learn from stories better than almost anything else.

Bob’s Washington State Archery Association Safari Championship reminds me of the worse shoot I ever attended. It was the NFAA Marked Yardage 3-D shoot in Redding, CA. (I don’t remember the year.) It had similar numbers of targets (now it is 25, 25, and 20 on a three-day weekend, back when I shot it was a two day event, and you shot 50 and 20 shots) and being a two arrow shoot and that meant 100 or fewer shots per day, but that wasn’t the challenge. The challenge was they accepted 1500+ archers to compete! If you spread out 1500+ archers over 70 targets, that’s over 21 archers per target. In groups of 4-6, that means that the vast majority of time spent on the range was spent waiting. In the few targets that had longer wait times, they had benches set up to sit on but most of the targets had maybe one bench with 20-30 archers standing around waiting . . . to shoot two arrows. We got to our first target at 8 AM and back to our vehicle at 8:30 PM having spent a tiny fraction of that time actually shooting. (I got what we called sun poisoning and we called it quits after day one, and never went back.) This is a hobby and it is supposed to be fun. (Any number of participants were having fun in the form of excessive intakes of hard liquor, but that’s another thing.)

So, regular fans of this shoot, say it is “fun” and a “great experience” but I didn’t think so. How does one prepare for standing up all day long, out in the hot sun? I got into the habit of carrying a folding stool but often as not, there wasn’t level ground to set it on, or the legs sank into soft soil making the stool unusable.

So, the type of competition and the field it is on presents fitness challenges. I have shot field shoots out in the desert (no shade), shoots with no seating (including the above example), shoots that had lots of hills to climb (the European field shoots are notorious for this), and then there are the targets themselves.

In a shoot in the Pacific Northwest, the target butts were made of compressed cedar excelsior (called wood wool by the Brits) which were damp under the trees of that forest. No matter how much arrow lube you used, those arrows were bloody difficult to pull. Often we had to take the bale down, with the arrows pointing upward, stand on the bale and pull each arrow with two hands and a strong back. Since a number of people in our group didn’t possess the strength to do that, I ended up pulling arrows for much of the group on many of the targets. I was shooting well but on the last three targets I dropped enough points to lose out on a personal best score that I was on track to achieve. Basically I was exhausted from pulling arrows all day long.

So, when considering your fitness for an event, you need to know the terrain in question. If it involves a lot of up- and downhill trekking, then maybe you might want to do a lot of stepper/stair climber work in the gym leading up to the competition. Or, if you are cheap like me, walking up and down stairs is great exercise for dealing with having to climb up and down hills.

If you are attending a flat field target event, having a chair to rest on during breaks and between ends is a must. Assuming chairs will be provided is iffy at best.

Note that I consider these kinds of preparations to be part of the mental game of archery: preparation, physical training, etc. all need to be planned.

Coming Next
Next I will address footwear (yes, boots are good for field archers as are spare socks to change into if your feet get sweaty to avoid blisters), diet, weather, dealing with equipment failures, how to research a shoot to see if you want to attend, and possibly more.

Ancient Wisdom

“Amass possessions,
establish positions,
display your pride:
Soon enough disaster drives you to your knees.
This is the way of heaven:
do your work, then quietly step back.” —The Tao Te Ching

Archers can fall into this trap by “amassing possessions” in the form of acquiring championship medals, establishing their positions in rankings, and then displaying their pride. The admonition above is “to do your work then quietly step back,” that is to be humble. Let others sing your praises.

Athletes can be brash, in fact I appreciate braggadocio, but only if it is backed up. I was a big fan of Muhammad Ali in his heyday. He would say “I am the greatest!” but while he was saying that there was a glint of humor in his eyes. Darrell Pace, as an example from archery, was quite brash as a youth. But is there an upside to such brashness for your coaching charges? I would say that it is rare. What it more likely gets they get fewer friends, fewer supporters, etc.

Internally, focusing on external rewards is antithetical to being a good archer, one who needs to focus on their process, not their outcomes. It is better to show up every day, focus on getting a little bit better in each of those days, and learn to love the process.

Professional basketballer Allen Iverson is famous for a comment “We talking about practice?” in response to a journalist asking about how indifferent Iverson was to team practices. Iverson was known as a “gamer.” Irrespective of the effort he put out in practice he exerted huge efforts in games, throwing his smallish body around with abandon, which got him into the Hall of Fame.

But archery is a low arousal sport, a quiet sport, that requires concentration and repetition and skipping practice or nor taking practice seriously is a bad idea.

I am someone who argues that archers should compare their practice scores to their competitive scores to see their relationships. Those whose competition scores are higher than their practice scores are “gamers,” archers who are stimulated to higher performance levels by competition pressure. Archers who are the reverse are probably more common (practice scores higher than competitive scores). These folks tend to make more mistakes when under pressure. But the goals for those practice scores is always to raise them, to get “better.” For the gamers, they also raise the competitive scores because those tend to be higher than their practice scores. For the non-gamers, those higher practice scores can drag up their competitive scores, and often show them what they are capable of, were they to reduce the gap between their averages.

Feed your head . . . feed it!

Markus Strikes Again!

My colleague and friend, Markus Wagner, a certified mental coach in Germany mind you, commented upon my last post, including this tidbit:

“What I want to say is just: We tend to remember more easy those things which went wrong. Our bad habits, our errors and mistakes. Well, it is good to look at them. BUT more important is to remember our good things.”

This is oh-so-true. And there is a good reason for it. Evolution has created in us a superior memory for the dangers in life. If a rattlesnake almost kills us, it could be disastrous to forget the danger of rattlesnakes, so we have a better memory for the painful aspects of our lives so we can avoid them in the future.

This jibes with professional golfers envying young golfers because they don’t have a vast wealth of screw-ups in their memories . . . yet. Every time there is a pressure-packed moment many of those memories come flooding back because the pressure creates anticipation and we are primed to anticipate danger/negative happenings.

Markus’s “fix” for a young student (do go back to my previous post and read his full comment) was to encourage him to remember his strengths. Now, I don’t suggest that you sing “A Few of My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, but remembering your strengths can counter remembering your weaknesses.

And you can’t remember your strengths unless you list them, which is part of my thinking behind the post-competition list “Things I Did Well.” Coaches can be a big help here by pointing out such things like Markus did for his student.

You Win or You Learn

You have heard this cliché before, I suppose. It conflicts with reality a bit but the message is valid. It is designed to take the sting out of losing. When you lose, realizing that there is learning involved, learning that will make you better and possible end in winning!

But, is that really the case?

I will argue that for most archers it is not.

First, I argue that you can learn from winning, not just losing. In fact, you need to learn how to win and then having won, you need to learn how to do it again. Learning to win, in fact, requires you to win, so you know the experience, what it feels like, the pitfalls, the quirks, etc. This is why I recommend that relatively new competitive students start at the bottom and work up. Shoot in small, local tournaments first, as they are the easiest to win and then work your way up the “winning difficulty” ladder. (I once shot next to an archer whose first archery tournament was the USAA California State Championship!)

That aside, how does “learning” get linked to wining/losing/experience? This is not at all obvious and is a place in which a coach can show the merits of being coached. Figuring out what the lesson to be learned is not at all obvious and is, in some cases, totally obscured.

To address this I asked all of my students to do something right after each and every competition. I asked them to make two lists. One under the heading “Things I Did Well” and other under the heading “Things I Will Do Differently Next Time.” These are best done when the competition is fresh in their minds, but I ask that they be done within at most 24 hours after the competition.

Note, this is not lists of What I Did Right and What I Did Wrong. The “Things I Did Well” list is to encourage a growth mindset. Typically these are focused on the things we want to do well at the shoot in question, so focused on our process goals. But, we are all inclined to “awfulize” and declare everything that happened at a shoot to have been an unmitigated disaster. This is never the case. We all do something well. Note—to discourage shallow thinking, I insist that each list must have a minimum of three items. I also comment that my top performers lists are substantially longer.

The Things I Will Do Differently Next Time list is to address the things that you did wrong and want not to do again, and to direct ourselves to think ahead to see how things might be done differently. The key word is “how.”

Both of these lists inform upcoming practices and goals. If, for example, the same thing shows up on the Things I Will Do Differently list three shoots in a row maybe, just maybe, a bit more attention needs to be applied to the fix for that. Part of preparation for any tournament is reviewing previous lists to see any recurring patterns. I want to see items on the Things I Will Do Differently show up on the Things I Did Well list after some time, for example.

Too often we treat archery like high jumping. We take a run at a medal and fail and vow to come back the next year/month/Olympiad/whatever and take another run at it, typically getting much the same result. We need to look at why we failed to get over the bar and change our evil ways, hoping to get a better result. (Better than hoping, is planning!)

If you really, really want to win a particular tournament, look up the winning scores to see what you needed to shoot to beat your competitors. Can you shoot such a score in practice? Can you shoot such a score in competitions? Can you be trusted to shoot such scores? What do you need to do to improve those scores if they are not high enough? And you can tell if what you are doing differently is working because your scores will go up.

Let me tell you a story of how I managed to not do this. I “worked” for years and years (without coaching, without planning, etc.) to make it into Class A in compound field archery in California. Then it happened (Thanks, Lanny Bassham!). I made it into Class A in Male Compound Freestyle! So, of course, I immediately signed up to shoot in the NFAA Outdoor Nationals and registered into Class A. This competition was in a different state, with different weather, different bugs, a motel bed that was lumpy, and difficult field courses, many of them. Back then it was a five day shoot (field, hunter, field, hunter, and then animal targets). On day one I shot a solid score . . . for Class B. On day two I shot better, but still a Class B score. On day three, the same, even though my score was better. On day four, I finally shot a Class A score! And on day five, I shot a personal best score in the animal round. (When people asked, I told them I came in eighth. What I didn’t tell them was my goal was to not come in last, and . . . you guessed it, right? . . . I came in eighth from the bottom (out of 56 or so entered in my class.)

Our inclination is to take a shot and, if we are lucky, we might win. If we don’t, then it is “better luck next time.” If you are a serious competitive archer or are coaching one, that is just not good enough. You need to identify the lessons needing to be learned, learn them, and see that learning translated into better scores, more consistent scores, etc.