More entirely predictable obsessing over archery
December 14th 2005 -
Scored 262 and 275 this morning (at 30m). Best round: 10 10 9 9 8 6 (52).
Over the last two sessions of archery, I’ve plateaued somewhat, due to a couple of factors – mostly, it’s me gradually getting used to the stronger bow. But there was also the discovery on Saturday morning that you’re not supposed to have your mouth open when you shoot. At all. A lot of the technique of archery is being able to repeatedly do the same things, and an important part of that is the “Anchor point”, where you touch your hand to your face as you pull the string back. It should always be in the same place. If you have your mouth open, this point varies slightly, enough to notice a variation in height of the shots. So now I’m getting used to the new anchor point. I had to do a lot of adjusting of the sight over the last two sessions, but I think I’ve got it right about now.
My current bugbear is the Release: sometimes I jerk the string back slightly before shooting, and the shot goes high. The target usually has two clusters: one near the bullseye where I am shooting properly, and another high and slightly to the right where I screwed up. But both of the clusters are quite tightly grouped, which is nice.
As for the learning procedure – it still feels good, but I’m no longer on the crest of the wave. At the moment, sometimes the shot will go bad and I won’t know why. It may be that I’m shooting suboptimally, correcting with the sight some bad technique stuff. I’ll see if I can get some more explicit tutoring on Saturday.