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Losing your turns — 11 Comments

  1. I shoot quite a bit of competetive archery, both compound and recurve. Bare with me on this – it will eventually sound familiar.

    No matter if using sights or barebow (no sights) you need to draw the bow to your anchor (a point, usually on your face – corner of your mouth, edge of jaw bone, whatever). You then need to, as relaxed as possible, do a “push/pull” – your bow arm pushes and your string arm pulls. Proper form is such that on your bow arm your fingers/wrist are totally relaxed, your arm structure such that most of the draw weight is held by your bones with the weight held in your back muscles (deltoids, usually around 45lb for a recurve, 20 or so for a compound). In your string arm your fingers must hold the weight, your wrist and forearm totally relaxed, you will have to have *some* tension in your tricepts and msot of the holding weight on your back also. You then block everything out of your mind but aiming – the shot just happens after that.

    The push/pull is very very very slight. Lets say you draw 28″, to get to your shot you need to draw 28.01″ with the relaxed push/pull. It’s really hard to have that much tension alternating back and forth with total relaxation – it normally takes years to do any decent at it, then a few more years to get the surprise release (letting the shot happen).

    That should sound somewhat familiar – a really difficult combination of relaxed/tense that requires focus on a single thing. I don’t know about dance, but something that makes it hard in archery is that to shoot in the higher levels your shot sequence may have 30+ steps that have to be done *exactly* the same every time (for instance, a movement of less than a 1/32″ of where the bow grip hits my hand will drop me points – only perfects have a chance at winning).

    Then, archers get what we call “target panic”. Essentially it is when you can not hold/shoot on target. There are two types of archers, ones with target panic and ones that will get it. It can be such that you can not aim into the center, once in the center you can not shoot, shoot as soon as you look in the center, and a few others strange ones. Very much like “loosing your turns” – it’s mental.

    For us (and I suspect any performance anxiety), it is usually trying to focus on two things at a time – humans can only truly focus on one thing at a time. Archers have to focus on the aim and let all the other stuff just dissapear. If you focus on hitting your anchor, not missing, hitting the center, anything other than aiming it all falls apart. I rather suspect that the part about thinking about loosing your turns causes you to, well, loose your turns. I’m willing to bet it turns into “Did I move here correctly”, “did I push too hard/too light”, and pretty much anything than just forget it and focus on the one thing you have too.

    Target panic can be sudden and extreme – one bad shot and if you can’t get it off your mind it freezes your ability to perform at any level. It’s always amazed me how pretty much every sport on the planet has this thing occur. I’ve played judo, shotgun, rifle, pistol, baseball, golf, and archery – they all have some form of it. Ironically enough the archers seem to have had the best methods of identifying it and curing it that I’ve known of (ironic in that they do everything else horrid). I’ve been able to adapt the drills to almost anything and have it successful – many times WAY better than the standard ways to solve it.

  2. al fin,
    All they can do is pollute the discussion enough to discourage some readers from visiting regularly

    At the end of the day, I think that conversion is not what they have in mind so much as the discouragement you mention. Putting in five comments with five non embedded links in five different comments can’t be anything else. They’re not really interested in discussion or they would embed the links and build a comment around them.

  3. The issue of “changing minds” is an interesting one. While neo and most of neo’s readers understand what it means to change one’s mind, most of the trolls have no concept of what it takes to change a person’s mind. That is precisely why they are so ineffectual in their efforts. All they can do is pollute the discussion enough to discourage some readers from visiting regularly.

    One thing that amuses me is how irate some people get at neo for having abandoned their particular political point of view. How dare she!

  4. Neo, I have to say that I appreciate and value your writing and your voice. Your’s is one of my daily must reads.

    Getting a visual focus point is also an aspect or another activity. Back in the days before helmet restraints in motor racing we were taught to do this in a spin out in order to get out of the way or start racing again.

    One would wonder why someone who could not abide someone else’s politics and who has changed no minds would continue to comment in a clearly hostile environment. Could it be a form of secular evangelical “Witnessing for Christ”? Isn’t it interesting how similar political and religious belief is? Of course, it is so much easier when the stakes, such as the auto de fe and the fire, are low and actual; you know, discomfort; is absent.

    There may be, however, a better explanation and it might be exhibitionism, the ability to wave your particular, anonymous lily in public without people actually seeing just how small it is.

  5. i have to say that, while i cannot abide your politics i am impressed by your range of enthusiasms.

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