To become a
trained archer 

If you really want to be an excellent archers, you have to practise your skills a lot. The practice must be determined and regular. You cannot be a master without a real desire to be a winner in archery! To be able to be a winner, you have to be prepared to work hard and long! I have written the following sections for advanced archers who also go for competitions regularly. If you are a beginner, it surely wouldn't make you harm to read them too.

How to became a winner?

In the very early stage you should pay your attention mainly in executing the Wright shooting technique. By repeating on and on patiently your alignment, anchorages, releases you'll soon learn also to analyse your performance. As your skills are getting better and your arrows begin to pile up you'll get a desire to become a real master. splendid, you are on the Wright track and getting really to know yourself!
      Everybody can learn the basic shooting skills and equipment know how eventually, but you must realise that shooting with a bow requires not only skills, but also a lot of mental skills and that you have to learn to really control your mind as well. 

You have to accept that learning to shoot well with your bow is taking time and nobody can be a winner without practice and training your mental durability. It really takes time! Somebody has said that if you don't learn your archery in ten years, it is time for you to look into other sports too.

Get yourself an experienced coach to help you with your shooting.

Your progress is vastly improved if you have an experienced coach to assist you right from the beginning!
     There is in every archery club an old master hand, who has during his years trained hundreds of incomers to become skilful archers (he is not necessary the same person who was teaching you the firsts steps during your elementary lessons). look around awhile and search then him up and ask if he would become your personal coach.        
      After having found yourself, I would recommend that you make a written mutual coaching contract. Do one really have to be so formal? Yes, because it is utmost important that both the athlete and coach know what to expect from the coaching relationship. What you are going to do with your shooting during the next year or two. How much of your time you are ready to give for your training daily, weekly, yearly? Are you ready to make the necessary equipment purchases? Are you ready to get more durability and strength by running, swimming, weight lifting? Here are only a few ideas to put down on the contract. Your coach has to know your intentions trough and out. Too many coaches have been left day after day waiting on the shooting ground for the trainer to show up in vain! It is frustrating for the coach and you will inevitably end up loosing him! The coaching must be thoroughly prepared as well objective-oriented and not just occasional meetings.

You cannot be a top level archer without a personal coach. A good coach has so much to give you that you cannot even imagine. It is valuable for both of you to exchange views, give feed back both ways and not only negative!

Make notes of everything on your training sessions. You and your coach will learn from them valuable things later.

Get yourself a tiny notebook which you carry with you all the time when shooting. Write down everything on your daily practise. Not only on how many arrows you have shot, but all possible details on your practise session (time, weather conditions, your mood etc.). On that notebook you should also mark down your equipment tuning information and other supplementary sport activities too.
      From your notes you can follow the progress with a longer time perspective, see the exact amount of training per month, and with the help of then, you can always go back to basics in your training or equipment tuning if anything begins to go wrong!
      Your coach will not always be there with you, so the notes help him also to design your future training steps.

Do remember to write down also all your equipment testing results, especially the changes made accordingly.

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I have prepared for my own club - Arcus -  a special archer's notebook, which got several different pre-printed pages for exact notes, but a small cross-ruled paper book will do the same. 
Don't miss to do the notes, they are valuable!

Don't make excuses, fear nothing and be relaxed and sure of yourself. But don't ever get cocky!

All shorts of fears and tensions are very common with the archers. Somebody is afraid of the expensive riser breaking into pieces, the other is afraid missing totally the target, and the third just that the skies will fall on him.  These fears are not real and they exist only in the devious mind of the archer.
      Get rid of all your mental fears just Wright from the beginning. Do not fear anything! Just relax and trust yourself! Even if you have to always stand alone on the shooting line there is no need to panic ever. Just take it easy and shoot good as you always do.
      The archers' book of excuses is thicker than the Bible, but make sure that you don't add any pages in it! 
      If you want to be a winner, don't fall in these ditches, just do the Wright things and concentrate carefully for each shot!

If and when you have set yourself clear goals, acknowledge them boldly! If you practice a lot and take part in competitions regularly, you will achieve them eventually. Don't, however set your goals too high in a too short of a time. To learn archery, it takes really time. Just remember to be honest with yourself, practice enough and love the sport!

Some wise archer sometimes has dared to claim that each pull's eye consists of 70% of mental power, 20% of good shooting technique and only 10% of the equipment. I tend to believe in that deviation. In any case you have to realise that the perfect hit is executed mostly by you and not by your bow or arrows.  You can always buy the best and most expensive equipment, but the scoring is very much dependent on you. Therefore you should also try to train and force your mental ability and capacity and not only do monotonous shooting practise.
     

When you have learned the basic skills and have the equipment well tuned, you should then concentrate more on coping with your mental side.   

Your mental capacity is the
biggest percentage in your
scoring.

You can teach your subconscious by thinking positively.

The subconscious mind controls surprisingly many things in your everyday doings. Most of our body movements for example are produced by our subconscious mind.  We don't think about walking, we just lift and move the legs in a nice sequence.  
       We are trying by excessive training to put the whole shooting performance down to our subconscious mind. It takes time but eventually you will get it down there.
      Our subconscious cannot tell a difference between good or bad, it only obeys your conscious mind. So if you are all the time thinking of missing the target, your subconscious will guide your shooting that way too. You'll miss the target because you are telling your subconscious to execute a bad shot. Think only positive things whilst shooting, like I'm holding my bow arm up properly, I'm pulling the string with just right back muscles, I'm cool or I will do next a nice active release. Our subconscious can execute only one thing at a time, so bear that in mind and choose the one most important just now for you! Bull's eye!
      If something went wrong in your shot, don't analyse it for too long, because your  subconscious will think that it is getting new instruction to shoot lousy again! Guide your subconscious with a positive thought, like the next one I will shoot just in the middle! 
     

The mental side of the archery is under ever going discussion, so you must draw your own conclusions on that. Some of us meditate, some of us understate. Archery is so difficult yet just challenging because of all this mentality.
 

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Bull's eye!

 Your conscious and subconscious mind with your self-esteem must be balanced.

When nothing seems to work in your shooting, analyse first your mood. Are you stressed or calm, confident or unsure of yourself. If you feel unbalanced, think how you can retain your mental strength and competence. When you acknowledge fully your shooting, rely on your skills and equipment you are also definitively in mental balance with yourself If you however detect that something is abetting you mentally, try to restore your balance again. Many times it is more easy to say than do, but that always helps.
I would recommend that you stop for a while, take couple of deep breaths and force your self to calm down. Restoring or gaining mental calmness is somewhat personal to each of us. You do it the way you want, the main thing is that you seek for a clear and immediate change in your distracted mood. It is no use of you continuing to do the previous mistakes.


There are only a few good training books for archers. The best for mental training I found so far are: Al Henderson's (former coach for the US Archery team) Understanding Winning Archery (ISBN 0-913305-00-6) and Larry Basham's (Olympic gold medallist in riffle shooting) With Winning in Mind (ISBN 1-885221-47-9). If you loose your trust on your self or especially on your technique, open up Rick McKinney's The Simple Art of Winning. These three books must be found on every archer's hand library. You can order all of them for example via Internet from an English archery equipment shop: www.altservices.co.uk

When your conscious (in Finnish alitajunta=AT) and subconscious (in Finnish tajunta=T) mind with your self-image  (in Finnish minäkuva=MK) are in balance, you are bound to hit the ten.

Concentrate on your shooting, don't let your mind wonder around. Try to get into the flow.

You might have already earlier ran into a term "flow" in your archery studies. To shoot in flow means in practice that you are fully concentrating on your shooting and on nothing else. Your mind is absolutely focused on your performance, not on the day's work, not on the future doings, not even on the possible score for today's competition.
      When shooting in the flow, you are simply mastering your every shot. You are doing only the perfect shots with the best possible execution.  In order to get yourself better into the flow, you should even focus your eyes only on the ten ring and nowhere else. Don't pay any attention on anything else but your target face.       
       This way you build an imaginative and unbreakable tube of flow from you to the ten ring and the same time you get your arrows also fly through that passage just in the middle.
      To get into the flow is very personal, but by concentrating only on the essential and finding yourself a nice smooth  rhythm, also you will get there! I have myself used successfully before each shot a tiny chant, "next one I shoot right in the middle". It helps me to get into the flow and gives my subconscious a clear and simple message to execute a good shot!

In the traditional Japanese Kyudo-archery there is a term called Mu, which means a thoughtless, empty state of mind. If you let yourself to think something else, you are using mainly your conscious mind and your subconscious mind is distracted and puzzled what to do next. You have lost your flow too and you will very likely miss the ten!

Look yourself in the mirror! Are you being honest or just fooling yourself?

I was once given as a present by a business trainer a small double sided pocket mirror, on the one side with a print "problem" and on the reversed side "solution".  I still use the mirror occasionally, not for combing my hair, but remaining me of the fact that only I can effect on my shooting and scoring. "After a quick look in my mirror I recognise easier the faults in my performance and with the ready looked up solutions I go back to the archery field and try to do everything right this time.
      Major part of the problems are due to yourself and not caused by your equipment. I wonder why so many of the archers like to cheat themselves by barking at the equipment rather than giving oneself an honest self-criticism on the poor performance? I you want to be a top level archer, stop fooling yourself!

Each of us fears failing sometimes but some of us are afraid of winning too! To fear winning is unbelievable, but it does exist. Tell yourself that you are a winner and you'll be one. Each of us has own comfort zone. A mental space which we have set and accepted for ourselves subconsciously. This effects unknowingly on your scoring. If you are scoring better than ever before, your subconscious will take you down to your normal level. If you are scoring less than you normally would do, your subconscious will take you up to get you the suitable (comfortable) result. What actually happens? You are living undisturbently in your comfort zone and immediately when you are exceeding the boundaries your subconscious comes to an alert and tries to move back to the more convinient and normal level.

You should also alter your comfort zone as your advancing in your shooting. Set it wisely not too high. For example if your average score lately been on a Fita-round round about 1100 points, don't dream to shoot next time 1200! You should set your mental comfort zone next perhaps not more than to 1140 points and the next time to 1160 and so on. And when you are about to reach the 1200 line, set your goal a bit higher like 1204. Why? Because if you aim for 1200 your subconscious mind will most probable settle for less and you'll end up with a score 1198!

Recognize your present comfort zone and make your self actually on paper an ascending training scheme. But remember to do it so realistic that you can carry it out. too much practise will cause you only uncomfortable stress. Whilst you are executing your sensible training program, your comfort zone will widen up also. 
      

To clime too high a mountain is always a hazard! I have seen archers setting their desires too high in a too short of time and getting only frustrated.

One more piece of an advice for exceeding your comfort zone: don't ever begin to count how much you would score if you shot now this and that. I know from my own experience that the dream score wouldn't happen!

The best sailors are seldom born on the calm sea. During you competition day there will be windy and rainy moments. That is more like a fact than just a coincidence! Therefore you should also train in these severe conditions.

Training in the windy weather

The wind is an ever changing factor in your shooting. In order to be a winner you have to learn to read the wind on the field! To be a good shooter you have to practice under windy conditions too. From which direction it is blowing, how hard and is it blowing steadily or is it gusty. 

The wind coming from your behind will normally take your arrows up, the wind against you will take them down. The horizontal wind of course will change your sight to either to the Wright or left accordingly of the wind direction. Monitor the wind all of the time and do the change in your sight pin accordingly if the wind is blowing evenly. If it isn't use rather an advance in your sighting which is sufficient to each moment. Do notice that if the wind suddenly weakens or stops totally, you should go back to your normal sight pin settings.

View the wind indicator flags above the target buttresses, the flags and trees around the field, the grass on the field and do remember that the wind isn't blowing the same way everywhere on the field of shooting. Notice that if there is no wind on the shooting line and the wind indicator flags are in a stand still, there still might be wind in the middle of these two places. 
      Learn to read the wind by practising also in variable wind condition and remember to make notes also on that in your shooting diary in order to be able to refer to them on the following competition or practice session.

If the wind direction and force is vary variable I recommend that you leave your sight pin untouched and rather use a appropriate advance in your aiming. It is easier to execute more rapidly and you don't need to all the time make the sight adjustments.

If you have however made a wind adjustment in your sight pin, do notice that you should remember to change it again accordingly when starting on a shorter distance.

Training in the rain

You have to practice under rain too. Rain effects on your scoring, since it usually takes your arrows down as the air is filled with water drops which crash with your arrow and as braking factor for the flight power of your arrows. Rain water sticks also on your arrow shafts thus making them heavier. The extra weight of the rain water on your limbs makes your bow also act (hit) slower.

It is wise to have a towel or even a real chamois available for drying both the bow and the arrows. 

Practising on in special and especially in the noisy circumstances.

Each archery field is different, so you shouldn't let anything effect there on your shooting. I Was shooting a couple of years ago on a competition field situated just in the neighbourhood of a fire station. I was just starting the aiming when the sirens suddenly went on! I was taken totally by surprise, made a absurd release and almost totally lost the arrow scoring only a two with it. Very human, but I still should have been taken the possibility of the siren launch into account, which I obviously didn't. 
     On an other occasion I was having a competition on a field where they had on the neighbouring field a football match going on. The audience was load all the time and bursted into furious cheers whenever the home team made a goal.
     On an indoor world championship gold medal match play situation each supporter of the other finalist had a special banging balloons in their hands always banging them together furiously whilst the opponent was shooting. Impolite or even illegal, may be, but the other poor chap had to live with that and yet score fine.

It is too often that the archers practise only on ideal circumstances packing their equipment up   immediately when the rain or wind starts or anything extraordinary happens. Be wiser and don't let these things like above to bother your practising or competition.

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On the competition field one often listens somebody asking the fellow competitor how many points he has got so far. What you actually gain by knowing his score? Nothing since If you have more than him, you will most probably begin to fear that he take you over and you begin to shoot nervously. If you happened to have less than him you would in any case fear loosing the competition for him. Be the gentleman of the field and let the others shoot in piece and only do the best you can! Shoot for yourself and be happy with yourself and with your shooting. If somebody ask you something just be friendly with them and keep smiling.

I have had a long time ago the pleasure of listening to a fantastic presentation by the experienced American archer called Ed Eliason on the mental aspects of the archery.  He told for example to the audience that he always walks before the shooting starts around the competition field corner by corner taking it thus under his mental control. According to Mr Eliason this way the archery field has no "black spots" to distract you mentally. According to Mr. Eliason you should always feel that the archery field is the happy place where the life is nice and easy.

We expect the archery competition only to be happy and successful. If you are ill-tempered it will reflect on your subconscious mind and you will shoot lousy and loose the happiness of being successful.

Practise a lot, but don't do it without clear thinking and a set goal! You should except also the fact that somebody learns faster than the other.  Remember that you don't need to be a champion just today. Give your self the time you need for the practising. If you are in a hurry, it is no point of rushing down to the field for a too short period of time. Archery is a tranquil sport, which gives you more if you don't hurry or worry. Enjoy unstressed you life as an archer!

One of the young male archers in Al Hendersson (the former coach for the US team) training team once asked Al whether there would be a way to get good in a lesser time. Normally a question like that would turn the world up side down and get the your coach furious but Al only thought a while and answered surprisingly: "Yes there is! Trust yourself!" There is also the old saying that practice makes the master. That is partly true in archery, but you have to realize that to be a top level archer, you should not only practice a lot, but have the burning desire and high motivation for the sport too. If you trust in yourself you obviously would need less training. This however don't mean that if you are mentally made of steel, you wouldn't need any practice!

Every change or tiny adjustment effects on everything. If you need to change something, do it only well-thought-out.

Remember that in archery everything is effecting on everything! If you make an adjustment on your bow, it will effect on the arrows and on your scoring immediately. If you alter something in your shooting, like in your positioning on the line, it will naturally effect also on your bow and arrows. Let me give a couple examples to lighten my point up a bit. If you turn your feet and upper body clockwice on the line, your hitting point will move to the Wright or if you suddenly increase the weight on your stabilizers it will effect on your arrow's flight also (they will be act like weaker arrows for you and to balance this up you needed to increase the plunger weight also).
      To change nothing in your performance or equipment tuning during the competition is the safest thing to do. Especially if you don't know exactly how the change you are about to will effect on your scoring, don't to it. If you are not scoring normally, rather stop for a while and think where you have gone wrong and try to return to the starting grid again rather than to make hastic and drastic changes! 
      There are however a couple of changes which I recommend you to do even during the tournament. First one is to make a change in your negative attitude towards your bad shooting. The other is to adjust the sight pin  if you are definitely all the time hitting somewhere else than you would do in normal practice session.  Changing the negative attitude helps you to get back on the right track again and changing the sight pin position helps you to score more.
     


Whenever you do well-thought-out changes, write down carefully each changes in your shooting diary so that you can later analyse the effects.

You simply cannot be a master without taking part in the competitions.

Too many archers practise day after day to one day become so skilful that is able to win a major archery competition. That is totally wrong idea to practise and it is simply impossible for you to win the first competition! Why? Because the competition is always different and unpredictable situation from the daily practise routine.
     So if you really have decided to become a recognised (the best archers are known according their best scores in tournaments) archer some day, you should attempt the competitions as early as possible. It is the only way to measure not only your technical skills but the strength of your mind. It takes nerves to shoot well in a competition!

You have to take your first competition as just getting the experience, you shouldn't think that you'll immediately could be a first time winner!


go next to about competitions -link.