Tournaments: Managing expectations
By Roy Rose
Your initial tournament experiences are always packed with mixed emotions. There’s anticipation, there’s natural excitement, there’s logical trepidation and finally of course the actuality of it all. If your earliest venture to the competitive line occurs when you’re a mere youngster, then emotions of a negative nature tend to be swallowed up in the excitement of the occasion, but for the adult novice it will be a uniquely interesting experience which will play on your mental composure. The truth is, and this is not meant to discourage, that no matter how well you prepare, you’re never as ready as you think you are. So how does one sway the balance of readiness to a positive reading?
The very first hurdle, quite obviously, is making the positive decision to take the plunge. I am constantly surprised at the huge percentage of club shooters who confine themselves to close range shooting, and who are reluctant to participate in the active competitive arena. In my own club only half a dozen out of a hundred plus members regularly line up for competition events, even at a local level. Some clearly have legitimate reasons for not participating; not every one of us is inherently competitive, but the majority, although tempted, back away for a wide cross-section of reasons. So accepting the challenge is the first assertive decision. Having done so, the prospective competitor needs to set realistic goals in harmony with their personal standard of accuracy, and set in place steps to make their initial undertaking an enjoyable and rewarding one.
There are positives about the way our sport works, which are extremely helpful if you’re a debutant, and even now after five decades of experience they remain part of my mental approach. Firstly, no one has any concern about your scoring except you. This is sometimes difficult to accept for all kinds of reasons. Ours is an endeavour where archers of any age or discipline, can be grouped harmoniously, and enjoy and encourage each other.
Secondly, it can be a real opportunity to learn procedures. There is never a need to feel out of your depth, or out of place. Regardless of these pluses, understandably, there will be mental pressure, and the fluency we exhibit at practice will tend to desert us in this new environment. Preparation, which keeps that mental composure under significant control, is essential, and there are steps the newcomer should have in place, in order to make the final wash-up a positive outing.
Whether your event is at home or away, be sure to give yourself more than ample time to arrive and settle, especially as the procedures prior to the tournament, will be new to you. Find the courage to ask about any concern you may have, as fellow archers invariably will be happy to assist. The last thing you need is to be a late arriver, unfamiliar with procedures, and experience pre-tournament stress which is completely unnecessary. You have enough to cope with mentally as the first practice arrow end becomes reality, to be already under stress because of poor equipment preparation and negligent time management.
Your practice sessions leading to the tournament are extremely important in
enhancing your trust and composure levels. Pay particular attention to your shot execution time frame, because not only is it the critical component in accuracy attainment, but it is the critical component which can easily lose its fluency under pressure. I always utilise blank bale and eyes shut practice drills, prior to every session. Logically, practising at the specific distances of the round to be contested will give you a quality sight mark and also a sensible average score potential. If you are able to shoot your average first us, then this will be a most satisfying result. Why? Because as I suggested at the outset, we just never seem to be as ready as we think we are. No matter how much attention we pay to preparation, there will be never previously experienced stresses on our composure. The environment will be foreign, the clock becomes a contingency, and our form fluency will be tested, and attaining duplicative processing will make major demands.
Conquering these inevitable concerns will teach you plenty about yourself. It can be taxing, but it can also be exciting when supreme focus and determination yields a quality end. Although you may approach this experience determined to remain calm and composed and without a score focus, the reality is we all have aspirations, and reaching your practice average is what we all hope will be the outcome.
Always work on the premise that in order to succeed we need to double our failure rate. Delight in every quality arrow shot, don’t beat yourself up over a less than satisfying end, and revel in the knowledge that next time the first occasion uncertainties will be considerably less demanding and your comfort level enhanced. Familiarity breeds confidence and every time you participate you advance the curve of your tournament understanding. It’s a simple mandate that we all have a desire to improve, so we need to be fully invested, and learn to shoot with conviction.
It is pivotal to your archery satisfaction to embrace the challenge of competition. It will test you early on, but the rewards of becoming the best you can be, can give you a sporting reward than can last a lifetime.
Overcoming nerves
We’re shooting competitive scores on our practice best, the bow feel great, the arrows
are flying nicely, and grouping well, our sight marks are spot on, we’re aiming steady, so what can go wrong? The tournament experience, particularly the early ones, can be quite harrowing, and the first premise we must absorb is that there is nothing abnormal about being nervous, it’s a human reality. So what causes this situation, and equally important, how can we overcome it?
The shooting process, whether recurve or compound or anything else, as we all are aware, involves the conscious and the subconscious mind. We have to allow the conscious mind to focus on either the aim, or the process at the back end, and the subconscious to deal solely with the other. Let’s assume we are placing our conscious attention on the aim, then in practice we simply aim, aim, aim, and the subconscious completes our shot process. Our actual release system operates on a trust developed with serious practice.
Tournament pressure however, especially in our early events, tends to cause this trust to dissipate, a virtual fear factor creeps in, our conscious is not immersed in just aim, aim, aim, and somehow, with our trust gone, we think we can shoot better if we summon all our senses to the process. What we learnt, and
THE KEY TO EXCELLENCE IS TO ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU’RE MOST AFRAID TO DO
what we know, that is, keeping our conscious thought solely on the aim, the key to our success in practice, has gone out of the window. We cannot shoot a surprise, unanticipated, subconscious shot, as we know full well we should (and can, in practice) when fear and mistrust have us jumping from the front half to the back half and back again. One of the great archery truths states that, “It is fine to be nervous, but it’s not okay to be fearful”. All elite shooters experience varying degrees of nerves. It’s natural. Yes, some have developed superlative trust levels for their form and execution, by years of tournament exposure, and reproduce near perfect scores as a result.
Normality?
So having established the normality of nerves, and the loss of trust which nerves and adrenalin can do to you, the crucial question is how can we correct the problem? Clearly we need to regain the trust which allows us to shoot correctly in practice, and transfer it to our tournament ambitions. So first we must accept that the loss of trust is not a disaster, merely a natural occurrence; your nerves and your sighting agitation levels have been heightened, causing your shot process and execution to lose their way.
Very obviously, exposure to the tournament situation on repeated occasions, must produce a major lowering of those anxieties, and allow you to get back to holding the conscious aim, uninterrupted, until the shot breaks. Equally evident, is that fact that general unpressured practice is not going to get you there, otherwise this problem would not have arisen in the first place. We must create whatever we can in the way of pressure in our practice experiences, in order to accustom ourselves to the type of atmosphere the tournament day will present.
I have found that challenging myself to shoot for perfect scores in close range practice, by adjusting target size to my level of accuracy whereby a perfect round is possible, adds pressure to every shot from the first to the last. It’s artificial, yes, but by committing to the aim and learning to never let the aim be interrupted until that shot breaks is a great starting point.
Top archers also use noise distractions to heighten their practice focus. Anything you can manufacture that can add pressure to your thought processes will elevate your trust level. You know you can only think of one thing at once, and if you can trust your thinking to be only on aiming until that shot breaks, each and every time, you have the mission accomplished. Tournaments, until you become an experienced participant will remain pressure situation, and only practice under pressure, can give you the final composure to be the best you can be.
So remember the key to excellence is to always do what you’re most afraid to do. If you have the desire you have the power, and success is the result when fear meets faith. So enhance your each and every practice experience with some type of pressure or stress, and launch into the tournament scene, because familiarity breeds confidence, and confidence exhibits itself in the knowledge that you possess all you need to be successful.
Vanessa Lee is a former Canadian national team member for recurve, and also works as a commentator for World Archery. When Bow found out she had decided to turn to 'the dark side', we decided to ask her - how, and why?
It wasn’t easy when I had to come clean. I couldn’t deny my honest feelings. I spent my mornings thinking about them, my afternoons wondering what they would feel like, and my evenings trying to learn everything about them. I had been faithful for so many years but when I looked at my computer search history, I knew it was time to admit my true feelings. I was truly, madly, deeply in love with compound. I ended up having the difficult conversation with my recurve bow, I even
PICKING UP A COMPOUND BOW ALLOWED ME TO RECONCILE THE DISSATISFACTION WITH MY RECURVE CAREER AND FALL IN LOVE WITH THE SPORT AGAIN
took back some of the accessories I had given it and decided they could be put to use with my future compound bow.
For years, I had been contemplating picking up a compound. I had competed with a recurve for over a decade and enjoyed the majority of my time with it. I initially started archery after watching Park Sung Hyun win two gold medals at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. From that moment onwards, I was hooked and vowed that I would one day compete at the Olympics too. I eventually made the Canadian national team and was able to shoot at international competitions over several years but I never did make an Olympic team. Perhaps it was my fixation on achieving my goals rather than the journey, but I was never satisfied with my time behind a recurve bow. I really enjoyed shooting but I had fallen out of love with archery over the years. Picking up a compound bow allowed me to reconcile the dissatisfaction with my recurve career, fall in love with the sport again, and feed my innate desire to shoot sharp objects at targets.
Things got real, fast, when my friend, Lauren, asked if I wanted to try her compound bow. I jumped on the occasion and met her at the archery range with mixed emotions. I was excited to finally shoot “a bow with training wheels”, as many recurvers lovingly refer to compound bows. I was also scared out of my mind because I had heard horror stories of people punching themselves in the face or feeling like their shoulders were going to rip out of their sockets. So, I packed a spare pair of underwear because I thought that might be necessary. Lauren gave me a quick but thorough explanation to prepare me for my first shot and the parts of the draw cycle and how it feels different from a recurve.
You start off at brace height and immediately have to overcome the peak draw weight, completely opposite from a recurve, which gradually builds the last moments in our draw cycles. At the end of the peak draw weight, the geometry of the cams allows for a “let off ”, where it becomes significantly easier to pull the bow back. You then enter “the valley”, which I prefer to call “the valley of doom” – either you promise yourself to keep pulling and hit the wall, or you soften up a bit and get your shoulder ripped out… lovely. At the end of the draw cycle is the wall, your best friend. It’s when your cams come to a mechanical stop and allow you to pull against while executing your shot. Draw-force curves profiles differ among bows, some aggressive draw cycles optimise energy and others prioritise comfort.
Lauren had brought her Mathews Apex 7, which I believe, has a draw cycle with good balance between comfort and power. We started off with a thumb trigger release so that I could have a bit more “control” over when the shot would go off.
My first shot
Just holding the bow was a different feeling – it’s obviously much shorter than a recurve but every inch of it felt heftier. The grip was something that caught me off-guard. It was much thinner and flatter than a palm-shaped grip you’d find on a recurve riser. Instead, this grip looked and felt as if someone had taken the plastic recurve grip off. It was surprisingly comfortable, though, and its geometry was something that I’d inevitably come to appreciate.
The arrow nocked on like it would on any other bow but what came next was another part of the compound bow that will likely always scare me, just a little – the d-loop. This little rope is tied on with melted ends that form little blobs to prevent itself from unraveling around the string. All compounders will reassure you that pulling the bow will only tighten the d-loop on the string but I found it hard to trust the little guy. Nevertheless, I attached the release to the loop and got on my way. The most important safety point that Lauren reinforced was what to do with my thumb when drawing. Since I was using a thumb trigger, I needed to keep my thumb in front of the trigger until coming to full draw.
Lauren’s bow had a peak draw weight of
about 48lbs and I found it extremely difficult to get over the hump. In retrospect, I should have started at a lighter draw weight or I should have gone to the gym at least once in the last year. I don’t understand the physiology or biomechanical advantage behind audible grunts, but grunting somehow allowed me to pull over the hump. Suddenly, I found myself in the valley and it felt like I was holding next to nothing in draw weight but everything in bow mass weight. Without something to pull against, the bow, itself, felt ten times heavier. It was this moment I realised how strong compound archers really need to be in order to hold their bows steadily.
With a little more pulling, I reached the wall, which to me, felt like safe place to be. It was comforting to know that I couldn’t pull any further and all I had to do was come to anchor, aim, and let the release go off. I tried my best to imitate the compounders I’ve observed over the years by bringing the back side of my knuckles under my jaw, and then looked through the peep. Luckily, the peep sight was perfectly in line with the scope and I was able to aim.
I was starting to feel like a badass compound archer at full draw. I had moved my thumb onto the knob of the release and tried to slowly add pressure. And that’s the moment I got stuck. I couldn’t get the release to go off. I felt a wave of tension take over my whole body as I tried to squeeze the trigger. I was shaking, my bow shoulder shrugged to the level of my ear as my sight kept dropping below the target, and my right hand felt like I was trying to squeeze the last bits of juice from a lemon. Then, BAM! It finally went off, I screamed for help and the arrow landed in the bale faster than lightning.
I spent the rest of the afternoon grunting as I pulled back the bow and letting out an involuntary yelp every time the release went off. Despite sounding like a dog’s chew toy while shooting, I could feel myself gradually becoming more and more comfortable with the bow. I started to feel my bow shoulder and how much strength it lacked, I got a feel for pulling into the wall, and started relaxing my release hand a bit. I managed to only shoot about 30 arrows that day and I was exhausted. Of course, my technique was far from “Sara Lopez” but I had never enjoyed shooting as much as I did that day. If I could summarise my first day of shooting a compound, I’d break it down into five main lessons:
• Shooting compound is hard. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
• It takes a lot of physical strength.
The fundamentals of archery technique are still the same.
• Consistency is key.
• You’ll eventually stop screaming, don’t worry.
That day, I decided two things: I needed to get myself a bow and I need to figure out how to shoot properly. This was when my journey of hacking the darkside really took off.