Step-by-Step Progressive Trouble Shooting | Archery Training

Let's go through a training scenario which many of us might know all too well. You're doing your usual training routine or you're shooting around and for that one day, today, you seem to have some problem which keeps on recurring. It might be that you are leaning too much, your head is changing position, you've missed your anchor point, your drawing isn't quite right. Whatever it is, you're doing it consistently wrong. So you or your coach go through your footage or what you shoot and they address how to make the change. So you know what to do differently. So you come back, you shoot another end and you do exactly the same thing. You know what you need to do but you don't do it. Not that you can't do it but you don't do it. And the question for you or your coach will be why not? So we know that archery does require a lot of patience but we also know that most archers will tend to be impatient and they want to fix things fast. If you can do it on the line at 70 meters and fix it right away, you'll probably do that. You won't go back down to 10 meters and fix everything from scratch. That said though, most people will need some more structure to their training program to fix problems. Otherwise, they simply don't get fixed. Now this video will go through the step-by-step process, a sequential progressive order which a coach or instructor or even a self-taught learner will need to go through to demonstrate that they can do it before moving on to actual match conditions but they're expected to apply it. Now this video will primarily discuss from a coaching perspective. So if you're a coach or instructor, I'm going to introduce this with coaching language and coaching methodology. If you're self-taught and you're watching this to learn about how you can diagnose your own problems, this works too but it does require more third-person or objective observation. So you may need to observe your results through a recording for example or a mirror. That said, let's go through how we can solve problems and build the confidence that we execute them on demand. So let's begin by role-playing a simple learning scenario. So I'm going to be an archer and I'm going to have a chronic problem and the problem will be my alignment. I'm going to shoot an arrow. I'm going to demonstrate that I've got bad alignment. So let's get the clicker on. I'm going to do something fairly typical and we'll chicken wing, okay? So I've got a chicken wing. I'll shoot, pull it back and okay. That's my shot there. So like I said, I've already called out I've got a chicken wing problem. It may be that your learner is already quite aware, although often they aren't, of what the body is doing or not doing. So chicken wing is quite a big problem. Learners will go through this. It does require the correct knowledge of how to align. And if you're role-playing as the coach or you're doing it as an exercise, you might go through the usual steps. You might explain to the learner that you need to get the elbow behind your head, feel the shoulder blades come together, squeeze them together, expand and so on. That might be what you explain. And to them, they'll go, oh yeah, I get it. I understand what I'm supposed to do. But they'll try it and they can't do it. They know they're supposed to, but they just can't get the arm back. So what exactly is wrong? This is where we need to get down to a step zero to establish what they can do so you know exactly which part of the whole process they are stuck on. The first step or even a step zero is to mimic the action with no bow, no tools. The purpose of this is to establish your physical ability. Do you have the range of motion? Are there any injuries or other limitations which stop you from achieving that alignment? Now, this can be done for any problem, of course, head position, posture, shoulders. Our example here was the chicken wing or the bent crooked arm alignment. So we saw in our demonstration shot that my learner, myself, has a chicken wing. So we don't really have good alignment and we forced the shot to come through and pluck the string. So the question is, am I able to get that alignment with nothing in the way? So I'll ask the learner, just pretend you're holding a bow and just pull it back and draw it in. I can pretend that I'm drawing and anchoring and I can observe the movement of the arm and the elbow. Again, you can go from any angle you want, say or just pretend you're drawing a bow. Just pull the bow back and anchor and see the alignment. And that establishes that in this case, yes, I have the ability to reach full alignment. So that means that there's no physical limitation here. I can move this far. In a different scenario, someone might have a shoulder injury where they can't get much further past here. Okay, that's fine. It's not optimal, but it's functional. In which case, as a coach, you become aware of that. So you know they can't move further than this. You make it work. In this case, I can make it further. That's what I'm aiming for. So if I can do it like this, in theory, I should be able to do it with the bow. But we're not going to skip straight there yet. Let's start diagnosing at what point do the distractions prevent you from achieving that goal. Step two, stretching band. So we're going to go through the same structure and diagnose the same problem using light resistance. So again, I'll tell the archer to pretend they're doing a shot. Line up, pull it back with the elbow in line. And again, we can diagnose the problem. If they're having trouble here, then we can just focus on the motion at this stage and not skip ahead to when they're shooting around. So we'll fix the problem here. We can heal with light resistance and no stakes, no arrow being shot. We can teach them to fix their elbow alignment in whatever method or language you use. The goal here is you have some resistance. Therefore, you feel you're pulling something and then you can reach that alignment. So we have another stepping stone. Those first two steps with no tools and with stretching band are non-negotiable. I have to establish that there's a physical ability to do that action before moving forward. Now let's say we do have that physical ability established. What next kind of depends on what equipment you have available. Ideally, we go to the next progressive step and that's using a light bow. Now again, I'm in a club so I've got plenty of junior bows and club bows which are low draw weight. If you don't have access to a spare bow, you might have to skip the step and go to the next one. But if you have a lighter bow you can use to practice with, this is ideal. With the bow, you now have to align and a lot of problems that come to do with the mental process creep in here. And this is something I've seen with virtually every problem with this side of the shot process. Whether it's a lean backwards or the head's moving or it's in the wrong position or the wrist is bent. There are so many problems here which appear only here and not previously. Why is that so? It's because it's the mental block. So mentally, you are distracted by something else in the process. And in many cases, not every, but in many cases, because they're taught to anchor in a very specific way, their mental focus, their conscious thought is only on reaching anchor point. So you're thinking right away, I've got to touch with the Olympic style recurve, nose and lips here. So people think, all right, look at target, all right, and touch this. But they're not thinking about how to get the full draw, they're taught to touch anchor. So the remedy for this is to reprogram the process. This is where we see that focus being broken. It is the mental barrier that has to be overcome. You take it away, bring back the stretching band, they do it fine, great. No head movement, fine. No chicken wing, fine. These are good checkpoints. You bring the bow back and they're struggling with that alignment or head position. We know that's where we have to fix the problem. There's almost no point in fixing it beyond this point because they're going to make the same mistakes with more distractions. So consolidate with this stage before progressing. So let's say the learner has met the milestone. They have demonstrated with a regular light youth bow that they can complete the correct technique. In my case, as the learner, I can reach the proper angle or alignment. So I can do that. I look good. Okay, thumbs up. What next? We start using their own bow, all right. So we have the higher draw weight, which they're probably using competitively. And ideally, if you're going to go really patient with step-by-step, take the accessories off. So let's remove at least one stabiliser rod. That's usually the one which causes the biggest problems. And ideally, I take the scythe off as well. No distractions. All I want is for them to feel the weight of the bow and their draw weight. So we'll draw. I'll get my actual finger tab here. We'll do the same thing. So ideally, they should have that motion correct and angle. So it already feels different, okay. So trying to diagnose where people go wrong. We know mentally that having extra things acts as distractions. But now we have extra physical distractions. The mass of the entire bow plus the draw weight might cause people to start resorting to old habits. So again, if you recognise this is where the problem is, that may be a thing you can do with conditioning to move forward, rather than just purely mental training, okay. So let me remove these things here. No arrow. Do practice draws and see if they can get it right there. And if they can do that without the attachments, then put the attachments back on. The scythe and the stabiliser. Now you have the full weight of your actual bow. So again, you ask them to do the same technique, the same success criteria. They can do it. Great. If they can't, we need to work on that. And again, each of these stepping stones will identify a different cause of problems. Again, going back to the previous points with the stretching band, it's mostly a physical limitation. Can you do it? With the light youth bow, it establishes a mental barrier. Can you complete the correct technique with the correct alignment, anchor point structure and so on? That's usually a mental technique area. Then we have the mass of the riser and the string. Then we have the stabilisers. And by adding more mass, we start reintroducing physical distractions. Again, for many of us who shoot just simple barebow recurve or trad recurve and go to Olympic recurve, this is a heavy bow. People start doing things which are suboptimal and offline because it feels easier. That's why you start seeing people start leaning backwards because the bow is heavy. You lift it up and you start going back like that. You start seeing those cramped brawls because you're trying really hard not only to align this but to keep the front arm balanced while you're pulling back as well. So adding all these attachments will create another major distraction which forms another challenge in diagnosing problems. And again, many of the problems of alignment, anchor, head position, shoulders, posture come from simply using a heavier bow. If that's where the learner's stuck, then the pathway is probably going to be conditioning. Use the whole bow with full stabilisers, do SPTs, holding exercises, drawing exercises to get used to the structure, build strength. It might require additional weight training to build that muscle mass to hold the mass of the bow in a more stable way. So that's where you start seeing that distraction. If that's cleared, what next? The next step is to shoot. Put the arrow on, shoot the bow, and ideally do this at close distance, blank bow. That means no target face. This is crucial because target faces are distractions. You start to break down your mental process because you're fixated on trying to hit a very specific precision target. So by removing the target and shooting blank or shooting close distance, there's zero distraction, there's no fear of missing, which means you can mentally focus on the correct shot structure, process, and execution. If you are okay with shooting blank, then the next thing of course is to shoot a target face at the proper distance and scoring conditions. And that's the step-by-step process. We've gone from the stage one, which is the shooting with no assistance, pretending you are shooting a bow to prove that you can emulate the structure or motion or whatever thing you're trying to address. You slowly introduce distractions. You go to the stretching band, that's light resistance to show that you can actually do it while holding something in your hands. You go to a light bow where you're trying to hold the right anchor point and structure, then your own bow, then with attachments, then blank butt, then with the full target face, then shooting proper match conditions. That's step-by-step progression. Like I said earlier, there isn't much point in skipping to the very last step to troubleshoot a problem. If they can't fix the problem in that situation under those distractions, start removing distractions and diagnose them backwards. I'd say work the ground up more than working the top down because you want to establish a mission for learners and beginners. They need to know what it looks and feels like so when they advance to their own bow and shoot a long distance, they can emulate their programmed training with that same structure with their real bow in real conditions. My advice here, both as a coach and as a learner, don't take shortcuts. Archery isn't a sprint. It isn't a race so you can learn fastest. People will learn differently at different speeds and different ways. Some people do need to be brought back down to learn foundations and fundamentals again to progress them back to where they should be. If you don't have that patience and you just want to keep on shooting, you may end up developing more bad habits to make up for the things you should have learned at a foundation level. So that's my advice for you. Go step-by-step. Make use of these different levels and tools, stretching bands, bare hands, mirrors, cameras. Observe that you are doing it correctly and observe at which point you become too distracted to correctly execute the technique. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. Thank you all for watching and hopefully we'll see you next time.