Relax

Although the outdoor season has officially begun, the club officers made the very sensible decision to move the two weekday evening sessions indoors for reasons of temperature and available daylight.  The third Portsmouth round of my short career awaited.

This was to be the first proper indoor round with the new, heavier limbs on my bow and I was back to using the borrowed arrows as we were away from the clubhouse.  The first hurdle I had to cross was the lack of any sight marks at this distance because of the new limbs, so the six sighters were used to best effect.  I was determined to put into practice the advice I had been given the previous weekend, and to concentrate on stance and correct draw, keeping everything in line and using my back correctly.  Unfortunately, this had a horrendously negative effect on my score, with arrows pinging all over the face or, a couple of times, missing the boss altogether.  There were a few reasonable shots which felt right, and I did manage three tens, but my final score was 50 points below my best in that round, and the first time I had actually made negative progress.

Of course, this all felt truly awful at the time, and there was the inevitable feedback loop of worrying over what had gone wrong rather than forgetting it and trying to do it right next time.  If I was to describe the round, I would say it was 'unsettled'.  I am still trying to analyse what made a shot bad, whilst still trying to concentrate on the 'right' technique.  It is quite telling that one of my better scores was achieved when I was not really thinking, but one of the coaches spotted that my draw arm had not come back far enough.  If concentrating on technique is making my score worse, then where is the incentive to do it right?

The answer, of course, is that you will eventually reach a point where your 'bad' technique starts to have a more negative influence and will eventually limit your possibilities unless it is corrected.  This is true for most things in life - you need firm foundations to build something that will last.  I have the same approach when I am teaching people to ring church bells for the first time; if you don't sort out your technique early on, it will limit you in the future.  I was lucky to have had some excellent advice in my early ringing career, and I try to pass it on to my learners thirty years on (including EA jnr).

Over the last few weeks my equipment has changed almost every session as I build up my own kit (new sight this weekend - no sight marks again!), but I will shortly be at the point where these variables can be forgotten.  Then I probably need to chill out a little and just work on getting the basics right for a while, regardless of what the scoresheet says.