Bow Practice - Distance
Went back to 40 yards and noticed some interesting things with my focus and body as I held for the shot.
Moving back to 40 yards
I took five shots from 30 yards to warm up and to ensure that my bow was still setup properly from the last time I shot. Wasn’t a great grouping but I knew I had the distance calibrated correctly still.
I then lasered in from 40 yards, made a guess of an adjustment to my sight, and let four arrows fly. I’m still not shooting consistently so they were flying all over the place. I had a sense that they were hitting high and that was confirmed when I saw the target.
I decided to take another five arrows without adjusting the sight but purposefully aim three low to see where they ended up. This confirmed my suspicions that I needed a minor adjustment to nail in the 40 yard pin.
I adjusted the sight, and the final five of the initial session grouped fairly nicely, hovering right around the center. I still need work on my consistency, but that will come with time as I develop muscle and continue training my eyes to focus farther and farther away from the target.
Shot thoughts and focus
I had a weird phenomenon that happened to me during the third and fourth sets. I have so many thoughts going through my head of what I need to work on and what I am trying to do that the muscles in my body stopped working in coordination to execute the shot.
What? What does that even mean?
On the third set, first arrow, I knocked the arrow, looked at the target, and drew the string back. At that moment I had several thoughts going through my mind at the same time:
- Hover the pin directly over the center of the target.
- Keep your elbow straight back from the D-loop.
- Anchor the release just in front of your ear.
- Extend the lead left arm, driving the bow grip forward.
My brain was trying to process all of these thoughts at the same time and I noticed the muscles in my shoulders and arms start to twitch. This immediately was added to my list of shot thoughts and next thing I knew my lead arm’s muscles relaxes and the bow cams turned, bringing the string back to rest. If you’ve shot a compound bow you know how uncomfortable taking the bow string down like this can feel.
FOr the rest of the third and fourth sets, I seemed to be fighting this coordination between my brain and all my mechanics. The first two sets seem to go off with no issues, but then I put too much information into motion and my body couldn’t handle it all.
Simplifying focus
Before each session I need to determine what I am going to work on and then drill on that, over and over again. If I am worried about my trail elbow posture then I will only work on that for the entirety of the session. Once I have committed that to memory, I can move onto the next shot thought.
I had so many issues going on at the same time that my body could not handle it. Taking it back to just one or two thoughts will hopefully get everything working in unison again.
Interesting session! We are supposed to have rain today through the rest of this week so practice will be a little sporadic. I’ll have to keep an eye on the dopplar radar to determine when I can get out again.