Q

My scores are way below what I used to shoot, and whatever I try I just can’t seem to get my form back.  Could this be due to target panic

A

Very likely.  ‘Target panic’ describes what happens when an experienced archer can’t control the shot however hard they try.  It can take many different forms and goes by many different names*. Some people can’t hold at full draw and loose as soon as their sight is anywhere on the target.  Some can’t get the sight pin onto the spot no matter how hard they try.  Some freeze completely, and can’t loose at all, even with a release aid, while clicker shooters (yes, they get it too!) may find that they can’t pull through the clicker, no matter how light the bow, or how short the arrow.

*      Including: target shyness; gold shyness; freezing; blocking; choking; sticking; the yips etc etc.  The list is, regrettably, almost endless.

Q

Parts of that sound all too familiar – what causes it?

A

It’s a mixture of unconscious fear of failure, and not concentrating in the right way.  These two feed on each other, and you must tackle both if you are to win out in the end.  This is where a lot of the advice, even the better advice, goes wrong.  It only gives half the story, either focusing entirely on the ‘fear’ aspect or dealing only with concentration.

Q

But I’m not afraid of failing – in fact I’m not all that concerned about my score, I just shoot for fun - so how come I still suffer from target panic?

A

As I said, the fear is unconscious.  If you like, you can think of it as the effects of failing to live up to your own expectations, but it is the same thing in the end.  As for not caring much about your score, be honest with yourself: is that really true?  Perhaps you do only shoot for fun and don’t care about score itself, but can you have fun when you know you are not in control and are shooting way below the level you know you are capable of?  Is it possible that you are just hiding from failure by refusing to compete, even with yourself?  I’m not trying to embarrass or criticise anyone here, but give it some thought.

Q

In your definition you only talked about experienced archers.  What about beginners?

A

Beginners are immune.  They have no expectations, and no-one expects anything of them, so they can’t fail – if they do well they can feel pleased with themselves, and rightly so, while if they do badly, they’re only beginners, aren’t they?  Incidentally, when they do well, we shouldn’t think of this as ‘beginner’s luck’.  It is not luck at all, but a reflection of the flexibility and openness of the beginner’s mind, which is something we could all benefit from.

Q

So, when do we become ‘experienced’?

A

We become ‘experienced’, and at risk, as soon as we have built up a view of how well we ought to shoot and how much we ought to score.  It varies and, of course, some people (those happy few!) never suffer but, in general, the better you perform in your early days the sooner you are likely to hit problems.  Think of the people you know who have done really well for their first season or two.  One day they’re chasing the top archers, the next their scores collapse and rarely recover.  This is nearly always due to target panic, even if the sufferer doesn’t recognise it, and I am sure it is one of the main reasons why so many people leave the sport at around the two to three year mark.

Q

Is it possible to cure target panic or, better still, prevent it from developing?

A

I’m not sure you can cure it, any more than you can cure alcoholism.  But you can definitely learn to control it.  It won’t be easy, particularly if you have had the problem for years, but it is possible. 

As for preventing it, the first thing to understand is that target panic is not black magic and its not a social disease.  You don’t need to put your fingers in your ears and run off shouting “I don’t want to hear this!” whenever the subject is raised, like one top archer of my acquaintance (you know who you are!).  And if you ‘catch’ it, it won’t be because you overheard someone talking about it, nor will it be because you accidentally touched a sufferer.  It will be because you have allowed worry and uncertainty to grow in your mind, and have cultivated an up-tight, sort of concentration that can only cope with one thing at a time. If you put the control mechanisms I am describing here in place before you developed the problem, then that should prevent it, although frankly, I don’t know of anyone who ever has; no-one believes that target panic can happen to them until it is too late.

Q

Okay, but what must I actually do to help me with my target panic?

A

To start to control the problem you need to take four steps.  Take them one at a time, by all means, but to stand any chance of curing the problem permanently, you must take all four.  This is the key to it all.

1.      You must recognize that you have the problem in the first place. I have probably suffered for something like 15 years, but it is only in the last year or so that I have finally accepted this fact, and started to do something useful about it.

2.      You must understand that it is a mental problem and no physical, technical or mechanical fix will solve it.  This is a big step – in fact the main obstacle - and few people ever get past it.

3.      You must learn to set realistic goals for yourself, and to use them effectively.  This is what deals with the fear.

4.      Most important of all, you must learn how to concentrate while keeping your mind relaxed.  This is what allows you to put your technique into practice.  If your mind is anxious and up-tight, however well you know what to do, you won’t be able to do it.

Q

That gives me an interesting  set of guidelines, but it still doesn’t tell me what to do.

A

A very good point. When I first suspected that I suffered from target panic and asked for advice, I got utterly fed up with being told that all I needed to do was relax and stop worrying.  This is about as useful as telling a person with a cold that all they need to do is unblock their nose and stop sneezing.  I already knew pretty well what needed to be done, it was how to do it that was the problem!  Don’t worry, I will explain what to do, in detail, but before I do, are you happy with the four steps?

Q

Sort of, but It all sounds pretty horrendous.  Can’t I just use a clicker, or a back-tension release, or whatever?

A

No!  The problem is in your mind and that’s where you have to deal with it.  Ironically, one of the main problems when learning how to deal with target panic is that almost any change – style, equipment, anything – will help for a short while.  I sometimes think that changing the colour of your riser would do the trick for a bit.  This means it is all too easy to fool yourself that a quick fix has worked, when all that has happened is that the change has made you a beginner again, just for a while.  Now you can miss without feeling that you have failed – you are simply getting used to your new gizmo.  Your anxieties go and, hey presto, no target panic – the fix has worked!  Then, after a time – it could be a few weeks, or just a few arrows -  the novelty wears off and back comes the problem.  It may come in a different form, but I guarantee that, if you have not tackled it where it lives, in your mind, it will come back.

Q

Is there nothing in the equipment technique line that will help?

A

I will say again, no equipment and no simple change to your physical technique will cure the problem – absolutely none.  Although, of course some things do seem to help, while others just make things worse.

Q

What helps then?

A

In the equipment line, clickers do help – and don’t forget, you can use them just as effectively on compounds as on recurves.  But they are not an answer in themselves.  On a bad day I can’t get my arrow through a clicker on my compound, and I’m only holding 20lb at full draw! 

Sights seem to be important and a lot of people find that an open ring sight, rather than a pin or dot helps, although this is very personal – I find no benefit, for instance. 

For release shooters, having the right trigger pressure and movement can be important.  Most commonly, if the trigger is too light, there is a tendency to freeze (‘Help! I daren’t touch this thing in case it goes off!’).  On the other hand, too heavy, or too long a movement is equally unhelpful (‘Is this thing ever going to go?’).  You must adjust the trigger until you are confident that the release will go off when you want it to (whether consciously, or unconsciously, depending on your style), but not before.

On the style side, any technique that leads to a comparatively relaxed stance helps.  Watch out for little things like not screwing up your non-aiming eye (use an eye-patch if necessary), not clenching your teeth (or any other part of your anatomy!), not gripping the bow tightly, and not trying to grip the ground with your toes, which may sound daft, but a lot of people do it unconsciously.

Q

What about things to avoid?

A

Of the equipment related things, over-heavy draw weight is, perhaps, the worst single culprit for bringing on target panic, for obvious reasons.  Over-long sight extensions and very high power scopes come a close second.  They exaggerate every tiny movement and breed doubt and panic in your mind. Some movement is inevitable at full draw and absolute steadiness is neither necessary nor possible: trying to achieve it is dooming you to failure right from the start.

In fact, one of the worst killers is trying to hold your sight absolutely rigid and still on the spot – it is simply not possible, and a sure-fire recipe for disaster.  Your sight must be steady and under control, but it cannot be completely still.  A bit of a paradox, I know, but archery is like that.

At the other extreme, anything that could lead to snap-shooting should be avoided.  In particular, so-called ‘instinctive’ shooting should be treated with great caution. I have done quite a lot of bowhunter and longbow shooting myself and I have no doubt that a tiny handful of archers really can shoot instinctively (just watch the Howard Hill videos!).  But in most cases what I see when archers claim to be shooting instinctively is an unsteady stance, a shaky draw and a wild, uncontrolled loose, taken on the move.  True, it occasionally puts the arrow perfectly in the middle, but far more by luck and random distribution than judgment, and it is just as likely to put it in the next county.  This type of shooting breeds the worst possible set of habits and attitudes for anyone who is even slightly inclined to target panic.

Q

Can exercises like shooting at a blank butt or holding on aim without shooting help? 

A

This type of exercise will certainly do no harm, and it has its uses, particularly in allowing you to really feel what is going on with your shot and giving your brain a chance to uncouple the activities of aiming and loosing.  I am quite keen on shooting with my eyes closed, which I do quite frequently (on a very big, close butt!). But none of these exercises is the answer in the longer term.  The trouble with all of them is that they are unrealistic, and they only appear to work precisely because they are unrealistic.  Shooting blank butts is easy – I can shoot superb, shaft-rattling groups all day without much difficulty, at any distance you like - my problems start when I put up a target face!  The same with holding on aim. I can aim beautifully if I know I’m not going to shoot.  All I have to do is take my thumb off the release trigger and the sight sticks to the spot like glue.  Its when I know that I am going to shoot that the difficulties start.  So, you can use these exercises to chill out and remind yourself that you really can control yourself at full draw, but don’t expect them to help much in the long term.

Q

Going back to your ‘Four Steps’.  You said that accepting that you have the problem is the first step to dealing with it.  Surely, that’s easy enough?

A

Not really.  It is much easier to convince yourself that your problems lie elsewhere, particularly in your equipment or your tuning. I am certainly not saying that equipment problems don’t exist, but be honest with yourself and be logical. If you can’t hold a steady aim, is it really because your tiller or cam timing are wrong, or are you steady as a rock when you are doing the ‘no-loose’ exercise? Similarly with problems of style and stance: if you are a clicker shooter and your draw length seems to be shortening try a blank butt, or drawing with your eyes shut (careful!).  Is it still short?  Anyway, how can your draw length shorten, unless you’ve changed something or injured yourself in some way? Recognising your problem, and giving it its proper name is a big step forward, but not always and easy one.

Q

What about your second step? I know what you mean when you say the problem is 100% mental but, to be honest, I’m still not totally convinced.  Does that mean your ‘cure’ won’t work?

A

Don’t worry, it isn’t faith healing.  Of course, the next two steps will be easier if you are already convinced by my arguments, but so long as you are prepared to give them a fair try you should still notice significant improvements in a week or two, often sooner.  That will convince you!  In fact, if you don’t notice substantial improvement in about a month, then perhaps this method is not right for you.  And this is another important point: we are all different and should be suspicious of anything which claims to be a ‘universal cure’.  I know from experience that what I am describing here will work effectively for a wide range of archers, but I doubt that any single method can work for everybody.

Q

You said that the third step is about setting goals.  What has that got to do with target panic?

A

A great deal.  Fear of failure is one of the twin roots of the problem and what is failure other than not meeting our goals?  So, if we set ourselves unrealistic goals, or allow others to set them for us, we must fail.  As adults, we will all experience failure at some time, and must learn to deal with it.  But, however resilient we are, constant failure takes its toll.  It destroys our self esteem and that is when we develop the fear. Even more worrying, eventually we can learn to accept failure, to expect it, and stop trying to reach our goals – in fact we cease to have any worthwhile goals at all.  This might be a highly effective defence against the fear of failure, but it won’t help your archery.

Q

So, how do I set good goals?

A

First, think hard about what you want to achieve: it may seem obvious, but it isn’t.  You can think in general terms at first, in fact it is probably better to do so. Do you just want a higher score?  Are you more concerned with getting more enjoyment from your shooting? Is it the idea of being in control that attracts you, of feeling more comfortable, less frustrated?  Is it recognition by other archers that drives you?  Is it winning medals?  Or is it just beating the hell out of Joe Bloggs (go on admit it – ‘competition’ isn’t a rude word!)? 

Now become more specific.  If you want a higher score, how high (and don’t just say 560 or 1440 – give it some thought)?  If you want enjoyment, what is it you enjoy?  If control is your driver, what exactly do you mean by ‘control’.  Just how many points do you want to beat Joe by? 

The more specific you can be the better, because the next stage is to work out how you will know you have achieved your goal.  This will be easy where you are dealing with a score or a particular event, but sometimes it will be more difficult.  In the end, if you can’t give a clear answer to this type of question, look for another goal, one that you can define clearly, that will give the same underlying result.  The results don’t have to be numbers, so long as they are clear.  But fuzzy, intangible goals can be worse than no goals at all, as they only serve to increase your confusion and doubt.  Also, you must have short term, as well as long term goals.  It is good to have long term goals, as they are your signposts and guides.  But you must also have something you can realistically achieve today, or this week, or at most, this month.  These are the goals you will be actively working on at any one time.

Next, apply a big helping of realism.  Only you can do this, but you are an experienced archer and a bit of thought should be all that is needed.  Your goals can, and should be challenging, but they must be achievable.  Nothing is worse than constantly missing goals you have set for yourself.  Be ambitious, but be realistic. If you shoot a recurve and have never scored above say 420 in a Field Round or 900 in a FITA, it would be nonsense to make your goal 500 or 1300 next time out (although it may be fine in the long term).  In the examples given, pushing the score up to 435 or 930* would probably be realistic in the short term.

 Good goal setting itself isn’t easy, but, like everything else, you will improve with practice.

*      Approximately 5% of the difference between the score and the maximum for the round is quite a good rule of thumb for a short term improvement goal.  10% would be very ambitious.

Q

Isn’t this a bit like the ‘stop sneezing’ advice we discussed earlier?  Surely just saying my goal is to score 530 instead of my normal 520 isn’t going to make it happen, or we’d all be shooting maximums.

A

Absolutely right! To make goal setting work, you must have an action plan.  Goals are an excellent – I would almost say essential - way of giving you confidence and measuring progress but they are not a set of instructions you can follow.  To quote top American professional coach and shooter, Frank Pearson “if you ain’t changing the way you shoot, why do you expect to change the way you score?”.  So, are you going to practice more?  If so, when? Practice better? If so how? Are you going to try the concentration programme outlined below?  And so on.   I won’t go on any more about this any more; I  don’t want to turn a sport into a business planning activity, but I think you’ll get the point – goals without action plans aren’t worth having!

Q

Okay, I quite like the idea of goals and action plans, and I understand that they must be realistic.  But it sounds as if you are saying that I must never put myself in a position where I can lose.  Surely, losing is inevitable sometimes.

A

It depends what you mean by ‘losing’.  If you mean that you will sometimes not come first in a competition, yes, that is pretty well inevitable. But unless winning the competition was realistic in the first place, it should not have been one of your personal goals, and if it was not one of your goals, then you may have lost in one sense, but you have not failed.

Q

But what if it was a personal goal, or if I had another goal, but didn’t meet that one either?

A

First, look at the goal honestly.  Was it truly realistic, and was it backed by a practical action plan?  If it wasn’t, you have learned something useful about goal setting for next time.  If you come to the conclusion that it was realistic, try to work out what else it is you must do better next time.  So long as you draw a positive lesson, nothing you have done can be seen as a failure, simply as a step on a difficult path.

Q

Speaking of steps, what about your Step Four – what is this ‘relaxed concentration’ thing?

A

The last, and the most important step of all.  But first let us go back to near the beginning of our conversation.  I said that the two root causes of target panic were fear of failure and not concentrating in the right way.  You will notice that I didn’t say ‘not concentrating enough’, or ‘not concentrating on the right things’ or ‘… at the right time’, but not concentrating in the right way.  

When we think of concentration, we generally mean forcing our mind to think of one thing to the exclusion of all else: we can call this ‘focused concentration’.  It is a forceful, adrenaline-filled activity.  It is psyching yourself up to ‘go for it’: it is Lindford Christie on the starting blocks.  It is also the Aim! Aim! Aim! strategy advocated by some of our coaches.  I’m not knocking it - it clearly works for some people.  But for many of us, as archers, it presents problems.  To start with, shooting a bow is a complex activity, at the heart of which is the ability to balance countless subtle forces in order to consistently achieve a degree of precision which is, in theory, ‘impossible’ in the same way it is ‘impossible’ for a bee to fly.  If we focus too hard on any one thing, we are asking for trouble.  If we concentrate too hard on our aim, our loose goes haywire, if on our loose, our stance collapses and so on - we've all been there.  We can try to trust our sub-conscious mind (whatever that is) and we can visualise and rehearse each shot, trying to burn pathways in our nervous system that will allow us to run on autopilot.  But despite the enthusiasm of 1970's sports psychologists for visualisation as a cure-all, it has its limitations and for many people is just not relevant.  The evidence is clear: the conventional, focused approach may be fine for some, but there are an awful lot of people for whom it simply doesn't work.  In fact, if you have read this far, the chances are it didn’t work for you.

Fortunately, there is an alternative, which is ‘relaxed concentration’ or ‘mindfulness’.  I have seen quite a few explanations of how it works, and a lot of them are based on some pretty dodgy psychology.  However, it does work and all the authorities seem to agree that the idea is to get yourself into a frame of mind where you are aware of everything that is going on, both inside and outside yourself, without paying too much attention to any one thing. Also – and this will be a fairly revolutionary thought for many people – relaxed concentration does not involve shutting out distractions.  Potential distractions will always be there, but you learn not to pay them any more attention than anything else – simply acknowledging that they are there, and then mentally letting go of them.

To summaries, keeping a broad awareness is the key to the whole exercise.  If you try to shut things out, then they can suddenly break through into your consciousness and ruin your concentration, while if you concentrate on any one part of your style too much, you will inevitably ‘forget’ to do the hundred and one other things you need to do to shoot well.  What is more, you will probably even mess up the one thing you are concentrating on because you will give too much weight to every little imperfection and - yes, you’ve guessed it - start to panic.  You are, by definition, an experienced archer: you know how to shoot, you just need to let your body get on with it, without interference.

Q

So – I think you know what my next question is going to be – how do I actually do it?  How do I achieve this state of relaxed concentration?

A

There are many ways - and I have listed some books that will help, if you are interested in getting more detail – but here is the way that works best for me.  You might like to know that I didn’t just make this routine up.  It comes from Zen Buddhism and has been helping people with their mental control for hundreds of years:

·        Find somewhere quiet and make yourself comfortable.  You are going to be still for anything from 10 to 30 minutes, so choose a comfortable chair, or cushion on the floor, or whatever suits you best.  The idea is to find a position that is comfortable enough for the duration, but not so comfortable that you go to sleep – so don’t lie on your bed!

·        The first stage is systematically to relax your body.  Close your eyes lightly and think about your toes.  Are they relaxed?  Tense them very slightly, then relax them.  Do the same with your feet.  Move your attention up to your ankles and do the same.  Keep moving up to your legs, your pelvis and so on until your whole body is relaxed.  Pay special attention to your buttocks, neck, scalp and face, as they are usually the most tense parts.

·        Now gently shift your attention to your breathing.  Don’t force it, or try to speed it up or slow it down.  Don’t hold it.  This isn’t about controlling your breath in any way: for those who have some experience of this type of thing, it is not pranayama.   Just notice your breath and be aware of it.  Notice how your chest expands, how your shoulders move.  Feel the air moving in your nostrils.  Notice how no two breaths are identical, how some are smooth, some ragged, some deep and some shallow.  Notice everything about your breathing, and just observe it for about twenty breaths – count them if you like.  When you lose concentration (when, not if), don’t worry and don’t give yourself a hard time, just bring your mind back to the breathing.

·        By now you should be feeling very relaxed, but perfectly aware of everything going on around you, and aware of your own body, just sitting comfortably.  Now it is time to use your breathing to bring your mind gently into the state we want.

1.      As you breath in, think: “I calm my mind”.  Try to see your mind as a clear, blue sky, a steady candle flame, a deep, still lake, or whatever image you personally associate with calmness and relaxation.  For the first few breaths you might be amazed at how chaotic and frantic your mind is, but as you continue the exercise you will feel your mind being relaxed and refreshed like a tense muscle being massaged.

2.      As you breath out, smile.  Just that. Smile gently and naturally.  Smiling, even as part of an exercise, like this, has countless effects on both the body and the mind, all of them positive.

3.      As you breath in a second time think: “I am living in this moment”.  Every experienced archer knows to concentrate only on the current shot and this part of the exercise underlines that idea and takes it further.  The present moment is the only one that matters, as all actions are in the present, even if they are planning the future or remembering the past.  Hear the sounds around you, feel your body, sense the smells and the subtle air movements – they are all now.  When I do this properly, I get an almost physical sense of returning or anchoring to the present, and it gives me a great sense of well-being.

4.      As you breathe out a second time, think: “It is a wonderful moment!”.  It is.  You are safe, warm and comfortable, doing something positive to help you in your chosen sport.  You could be at work, in a traffic jam, or in countless situations that you don’t even want to think about.  This is the thought that will help you when, despite your best efforts, you just can’t seem to get it all together and a really poor score looks inevitable.  Look around you – you are where you want to be, doing what you want to do.  It may not be perfect, but its pretty damned good!

·        Keep up the 2-breath cycle, running the key words through your mind, something like this: In - Calm; Out - Smile; In –This moment; Out - Wonderful.  Do this until you feel it is time to stop.  Set an alarm if you want, but the exercise will draw itself to a close quite naturally, usually after about 10 to 20 minutes for beginners.

·        Make a real effort to do this exercise every day, although it will help however often you manage it, the more often, the better.

Q

Er… yes… well, I think I see what you are getting at…

A

But it all sounds a bit weird?  That’s okay.  It sounded weird to me when I first came across the idea.  But just try it for a couple of weeks – it doesn’t cost anything, you do it behind closed doors and, unlike some of the breath control exercises I have seen recommended, it can’t possibly do any harm.  I can tell you from experience that it works for a lot of people – so it may well work for you.

Q

If I do try it, what happens when I actually want to shoot?  How do I use all this calmness and stuff I’ve learned?

A

The idea is to recreate the feeling you had when you did the exercise every time you want to shoot.  This is where the key words come in.  Run your ‘mind scan’ over your body, relaxing it as much as you can, concentrate particularly on the shoulders, face and neck – many of us have a bad habit of not relaxing these muscles from one shot to the next.  Start noticing your breath and run the key words through your mind in time with your breathing (don’t forget to smile!).  Within a couple of repetitions you will find your mind relaxing and settling into the present moment – the more you practiced at home, the easier it will be. 

I run through the exercise at least once before every end.  If I’m ‘in the groove’ (you know what I mean) that’s enough and I just let my natural rhythm carry me from one shot to the next.  If I feel I need it I do it once or twice before each shot – there’s plenty of time even if you’re shooting against the traffic lights.  However many times I do it, I am constantly surprised by its power, particularly the ‘this moment’ and ‘wonderful’ parts. 

Keep hold of that ‘centred’ feeling as you shoot and, being aware of everything that is going on, you will simply notice that you are shooting at the same time and in the same way as you notice everything else, and give it the same importance, no more and no less.  Let go of the idea that the conscious mind can only do one thing at a time, in fact let go of the idea of a ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’ mind entirely – there is just ‘mind’, and it can do far more than it is credited with, if you let it.

You will be fully concentrated, but completely mentally relaxed.  You will find that you do know how to shoot, that you don’t have to hang on to every action like grim death, that the odd bad shot (and there will still be some of those) doesn’t upset you, or affect any later shots.  And, because you are, on the one hand, calm and logical, and on the other deeply involved with your shooting, both in body and mind, you will also soon find out if there are real problems with your set-up or technique and be able to deal with them without losing confidence. 

Obviously, because this is Planet Earth and we are only human, you won’t reach this ideal state of affairs immediately, or every time.  But I say, yet again, give it a try.  You might be pleasantly surprised at how quickly the benefits start.  From then on, like everything else in archery, it is down to practice and effort. But at least you know that this is an effort worth making – the effects of this treatment for target panic can be permanent, if you work at it.

Good shooting!

 _______________________________________

 I gratefully acknowledge my debt to a number of publications, including Roy Matthews’ ‘Archery in Earnest’, Rick McKinney’s ‘Simple Art of Winning’, Al Henderson’s ‘Understanding Winning Archery’ and especially to ‘The Advanced Archer’, by Thomas Whitney and Krishna Karmakar, which I consider to be the best book on the subject by far (even though I don’t share their faith in visualization): this was the book which gave me my first clues as to where salvation lay.  I would also mention personal discussions, at various times, with Frank Pearson, Larry Wise, Jay Barrs, Terry and Michelle Ragsdale: I doubt if they will remember me, but I remember them and have thought long and hard about what they had to say.

On the mental control side I would highlight ‘Change Your Mind’ by Paramanada, ‘Peace Is Every Step’ by Thich Nhat Hanh and, of course, the much quoted, but little read ‘Zen in the Art of Archery’ by Eugen Herrigel.

Namo tassa, bhagavato, arahato, samma-sambudhassa.