GETTING BACK UP AGAIN

Beware the conscious mind

We have all been there at the start of a shoot, feeling confident, the week’s training has gone well and even the weather is playing ball. We step up on the line and practice ends confirm that we are in for a good day. Practice over… and it all starts to go downhill.

Or perhaps we are on for a personal best, a top three placing and/or a new shiny badge, so all we have to do is shoot the last few arrows in the same way as the previous shots. But then it becomes hard to execute the shot and we find ourselves anxiously looking through our scope in the hope the arrow has landed in the right scoring zone.

Finally, by far the most common comment I hear is that practice scores are always higher than those achieved in competition. This is