Finally, if the shot did not go the way you wanted it, you need to accept it and try to do better next time. Once it is shot let it go, because you can’t change it and harping on it only will make you upset. Accepting the mistake is a positive move that allows you to maintain emotional control and the ability to move to the next shot in a confident manner.

When you think about it, you spend hours and hours shooting arrows for practice. Arrows in the bank, under the belt, whatever it is call. All this time is to train your body to do the job. The job is to shoot good arrows and know the feel. Once you have trained the body to feel the shot it becomes subconscious. Then you learn to let the subconscious mind take over and let the body shoot the arrows. How often have you heard a good archer say, “I was thinking to much.” As odd as this sounds it has it’s merits.

We often talk about concentration on the target, not averting you attention, keeping you eye on the target even after releasing the arrow, until you hear the arrow hit the target. So you ask why is this so important? The answer to this may be hard to completely understand or even believe, but here it is. When you aim your attention at the target and work on pulling through the clicker or squeezing the trigger, you are working in a subconscious stream of thought. The instant that you have something else cross your mind, like, you think about the travel in your release, or” I should let down”, or most commonly the command release or “let Go”, that is the instant that you should stop, let down and start again. That split second, although very short, is just enough time for the form to fall apart because you have interfered with the subconscious stream. Now you will tell your coach that you are concentrating, but you may not even realize that you concentration is broken because it occurs during a movement segment of the shot.

So the next time you are at full draw and that tiny little voice in your head can be heard, if it changes direction even for a milliseond, the best thing I can tell you is to let down and start over. Don’t force the shot, you are not doing yourself any favors by continuing on that path because the results will not be your best.

After that moment in class I started to look at the people I was encountering in my work with Archery. Everyday, without fail I hear, I want, I will do, but really when it actually comes down to the brass tacks of doing the job and getting the practice in many of our athletes are seriously lacking. The “If I wish hard enough it will happen”, policy is in effect.

Let us take an example to clarify what I mean: I go to a tournament and see a couple of newer shooters that I may have seen once before at a smaller event. During practice things for one of the shooters, Sam, goes south, hitting wood and missing the butt. This occurs a couple more times and scoring begins. Soon there are frustrated words uttered and an air of "I don't know why I am shooting so bad" comes over Sam. I speak to one of my fellow coaches regarding Sam, my comments are that I felt the shooter has pretty good form considering the length of time they have been shooting. I would like to however suggest a better tab to help with consistency. Now at this point the coach I was talking to said something I really have to admire. He said. "I really don't know, I see Sam shooting and offer suggestions but most time the shooting is not what is really happening. Sam really likes to be the center of attention and the shooting today is only reflecting the lack of practice."

So why does Sam go to practice? To be social, to engage in conversation and mostly because Sam's parents do archery too. These are not bad reasons to participate in Archery, or any other sport for that matter. If this is the case then Sam should not be disappointed about the performance that was produced at that tournament.

What is dedicated practice? Let’s take a look at the meaning of the word Dedicated. “Wholeheartedly devoted or committed to a goal, cause or job.” We all know that Archers are a social creature. They like to visit and lend a helping hand to others, very often we see that they like to coach other shooters as well. Often a good shooter will be practicing and other shooters will ask for advice or support. I am not saying don’t have fun. It is important to keep fun in the activity. What I am saying is the actual time spent concentrating on your own shooting can be detracted from by not staying on task.

About now some of you are saying well shooting is the task, what task is she talking about? Let us take a look at the definition again. “Devoted or committed to a goal,” . Okay, I have spoken about goals before, this is the overall goal that you have stated in writing for yourself. Some single score, placing or ranking that you want to achieve, or the “Big Picture”.

But what about your practice? It would therefore not be to far off the mark to consider that if practice is how you are going to get to the goal, than the practice itself has to have a goal. For instance, the first 2 practices out for the outdoor season your goal is to shoot 30 arrows at close distance. The arrows will be shot in groups of 6 and we will measure the diameter of the closest group of 5 out of 6 arrows. The next practice #3 we will attempt to improve our group by ?. Millimeters, centimeters, depending on the average group size from the first couple of practices.

Whatever goal you choose for your practice write it down before you start, and when you are finished go back to your journal and assess the practice. Did you measure the groups? Did you record the number of arrows shot? What was the result of the practice? I would also recommend writing down any discoveries that you may have come across, like you noticed the rest was out of line or that the string is starting to show serious wear.

All of these things will give you a basis of information for future work.

One step at a time, one problem at a time. It may seem obvious, but many of us do not proceed in this way. Conscious change often requires two essential components - removing unhealthy things and adding things that are healthy. We also need to strengthen ourselves with positive, life-supporting activities and friends in order to make changes stick. Notice that I did not use the word bad, or wrong. It is important to remember when working with athletes that we must re-enforce the positive. There are times when this is not always easy, for the coach, for the parent, for the athlete themselves. Previously I have talked about how long it takes to teach the body a change in a routine or move leading up to a shot. I spoke about it taking weeks and hours of training to ensure that the muscle memory maintains the new or corrected form. There is another component that needs to be mentioned in order to totally understand the process that a person goes through in order to institute a change. The one other thing is self realization.

Okay, now what does she mean? I can hear the wheels turning out there.

I remember my first realization shock with my shooting. I was about 15 years old, had been shooting for a couple of years already. I was having a bad day score wise, but in general I was dump and happy about my shooting and really did not pay to much attention to my score. I was shooting with a couple of adults and we were joking around when one of them casually asked me “What side of the string do you look down when you are aiming?” Before I even really thought about my answer I replied, “What string?”

You laugh now, but it was not funny at the time. This embarrassing moment in my shooting career did however make me think about what I was doing when I was aiming. Quite obviously the answer should have been, “I look down the inside of the string.” But at the time I wasn’t thinking about the string, or come to think of it about, my aiming either.

This one harmless question opened my mind for me to self realization, it offered me the opportunity to ask myself the hard question about what I was doing. I could have been told what I was doing, but it is quite likely I would have offered some reason why I do it this way and not the other. Or worse yet, I might have even said something like “ I’m not doing that.” Or “No, I don’t do that.” When an athlete comes back at you with one of these kinds of replies you as a coach need to back up and find another route. This means that the personality that you are working with is strong and independent. This is a good thing for the athlete, for the coach this means you need to be ever watchful for the “Golden moments of learning.” A moment of when you are ready the teacher will come, or You can lead a horse to water. By being positive and life supporting you are more likely to be the teacher when they are ready. You will also need to be ready, get a big mirror, use a video camera, still photos, whatever, so that you can allow them to see what you see. You journey will be more pleasant and positive when you are both working on the same problems. Be a positive life-supporting influence in your athlete’s life, and you athletes need to be positive life supporting influences in the lives of the people around you, it just makes the whole process more rewarding.

In general, the discussion is that if the product is Canadian and SOME European, and is produced by a well known manufacturer, the quality control and labeling is probably adequate to ensure no accidental tripping of a doping test will occur. That would be worse than taking a cold medication and managing to be given the wrong type. This would be because of misleading labeling and business ethics that lean to the almighty dollar and not the end user.

I was recently reading the newsletter Coaches Perspective and came across an article that re-enforced some of the thoughts that I have had for some time regarding energy bars. The article in the Spring 2004 issue commented on how common these bars have become and are they actually healthy or even a good meal replacement? Some interesting questions asked by more than just me, and I would recommend reading the article. I have summarized pieces of it for reference.

They recommended that you decide why you are eating the bar?

They discussed the fact that the energy bar is really just calories and that if you are eating an energy bar during a work out you are probably eating more calories than you are burning off...interesting point.

If you are eating energy bars as a meal replacement, you might be missing out here too, as these bars do not contain many important ingredients that you would get in whole foods. They also, in general, are low in fibre and contain hydrogenated fats...definitely a better choice than a candy bar or chips, but not great..

Further, High Protein bars tend to be higher in saturated fat and calories, and lower in fibre. When looking at bars you want to see ingredients like hydrogenated oils, cocoa butter and palm kernel oils near the end of the list of ingredients, not in the top three or four spot.

Warm up first. Warm muscles and connective tissue respond to stretching better and are expected to be less prone to injury.

Stretch progressively and hold the stretch. Stretch smoothly and progressively, holding at the extreme limit for 10-20 seconds. This is 'static' stretching.

Don't 'bounce'. Stretching, like weight or resistance training, should be steady. NEVER stretch fast and NEVER 'bounce' to extend the movement (this is sometimes called 'dynamic stretching'). Both cause the stretched muscle to contract in what's called a 'stretch reflex', and that in turn can cause torn or muscle or damaged joints.

Stretch muscles, not joints. In general, stretching should be felt in the muscles, not within the joints. Overextending joints can damage ligaments that hold the joint together and weaken the joint.