IN CONCLUSION

Fear of failure is a big influence on your performance, so you need to put your archery into perspective. Yes, we care and get satisfaction in doing well and achieving our goals, but the consequences of failure are quite minor – you will not go hungry, become homeless or lose your job, so don’t act as if it is the end of the world, it will affect your performance, give encouragement to your competitors and finally, nobody is interested in your excuses – they are far too busy making up their own.

Control your conscious mind, it is rubbish at shooting good shots, so don’t let it, by giving it something else to do. Reduce the opportunity for your conscious mind to interfere by preparing for each shoot correctly.

Pre-tournament preparation is important and helps you anticipate issues that may cause a kind of panic at an inappropriate moment.

Your performance in competitions is the result of your training, a reality check on how well you are doing and it is not the time to change things. Training to shoot good arrows teaches your subconscious what to do, as you get better so does your archery in your subconscious mind and your scores improve, but it takes time for your subconscious to mind be programmed, things do not happen overnight. At the same time you need to train your conscious mind, so during practice remember to give your conscious mind its task to do. Then in competition everything will feel normal. The more normal everything feels the better you will perform.