Stickbow Target Archery Forums

It seems that lately most have come to accept target panic as a conditioned response. This is mostly in part due to the knowledge and teachings of Sports Psychologist and fellow archer, Jay Kidwell.

To some extent I would agree, but I believe that there is more to the mystery. After a few years of retraining my shot, I can now hold on target without being triggered to release. Thanks to Jay, this part of Target Panic is no longer an issue for me.

However, there is another element that cannot readily be explained away as a conditioned response. This element is evidenced by such things as freezing off target, inability to reach full draw, and inability to pull through [the clicker if you have one].

What is going on in each of these circumstances?

1) Your muscles have switched from "active" mode to passive mode because passive is more stable than active; it is easier to hold a heavy weight in place than it is to move it.

And/Or

2)Other "support" muscles have become active in order to stabilize the shot, and are fighting the muscles that the archer wants to be using.

These situations will occur when the archer really WANTS to make the shot, as in a competition, and will not usually affect the archer in practice.

It is when the archer is being extra careful that these physical manifestations of TP come in to play.

To illustrate, imagine that you can draw perfect circles all day long without thinking about it. Always smooth, symmetrical, and always the same size. Now imagine that someone draws boundaries on a paper that your perfect circles will just fit in, and they tell you to make your circle without touching the lines or you will have to pay them 100 dollars.

Now the pressure is on, and you switch to "careful" mode which activates stabilizing muscles. Your circle will no longer be smooth and symmetrical.

In order to make the same smooth, perfect circles, you must eventually learn to trust your normal circle drawing process while the pressure is on....but doing so may cost you hundreds of dollars in initial failures.

That is the problem with this muscle control in pressure archery situations. One needs to be able to practice mentally "letting go" and trusting the shot. If you give up to the shot, and commit to it completely, you won't try to activate the careful, controlling muscles. But getting that crucial practice seems impossible without "throwing" numerous meaningful competitions just to get the practice.

Here are the solutions I've come up with.

1) Mentally divide the shot into 2 major parts, the "get on target part", and the expansion part. Since the parts are separate, there should be no need to use your "careful" muscles to get on target....there is no need to be careful until the expansion part.

2)Don't ever "settle in" throughout the draw or aim, because it is SO hard to reactivate settled muscles. So you have to continually believe you are expanding ever so slowly even as you try to get on target, and then even more so when you are finally happy with your aim.

Subject to further testing and assessment, but I feel like I'm on the right track....or at least a better track.

I've decided I don't like the "continual motion" theory. It takes too much energy, and it serves to mentally blend the two aspects of the shot that I want to be separate and distinct. I think instead, I will make a concerted effort to train myself to re-activate the expansion muscles after I am happy with the sight picture.

a possibility: if you KNOW that the shot will go off when the sight picture looks a certain way, and if you want to be more careful (that is, hold that perfect sight picture, maybe even refine it, before letting go), then you had better not get on target or you will not be able to be more careful (that is, once you get on the target the shot will go off). so you freeze off target.

your suggestion to separate the getting on target from the expanding should solve it.

Well, there is a lot of food for thought in what you have said. I haven't made my mind up about all of it but thinking lately has been along somewhat similar lines. For now I will just say that I do make a mental separation from the more muscular and physical part of drawing and settling into the approximate position from which to complete the shot, and more mental part of refining the aim and completing the shot. For rrandall I will add that I favor the notion of getting a good, not perfect, sight picture BEFORE commencing the expansion phase or whatever you call it. Actually, my mental image isn't exactly expansion, at least it is not this week- next week may be different, it is more a matter or making a strong rotational pull through to a vigorous follow-through.

Mainly I sense a two step process, vigorously getting into position to make the shot, and more carefully completing it. - lbg

I guess one of my main issues isn't so much getting on target, as it is expanding once I'm on. Once I'm on, my muscles want to go into lockdown mode to stay on target, and expanding from that position activates muscles that were previously stabilized or stabilizing, so my brain does not want the sight picture to change by doing anything "extra".

It MAY be something that is more coordination than mental. I think I will train on a coordinated expansion that does NOT affect the sight picture. If I can physically expand while mentally believing that the expansion is enhancing the aim, I may be able to trust that portion of the shot more.

I think most importantly at this point, for practice, I should come to full draw, aim, then expand, relax, expand, relax, over and over again at full draw just to ingrain the feeling of that tiny movement a little better. Right now it's a bit like trying to write my name in the sand with my big toe.

a coordinated expansion that does NOT affect the sight picture.
Sounds like the right plan to me.I've made improvement using what you've described.If I try to seperate anchoring and aiming my shots are always high or low.

In the interests of hoping to help those afflicted with TP ...

Jim Ploen (champion target archer back in the 60's, one of the first to shoot perfect indoor scores) published a TP article in Instinctive Archer Magazine, Fall 2000 issue. Red Chavez also authored a two part TP article in the Summer & Fall 1999 issues. Jim's excellent articles on aiming the arrow ran Spring & Summer 2000. IAM is just chock fulla really great stuff about trad archery (not to mention trad bowhunting). Y'all really need to get a copy of the IAM CD.

In interest of helping those in need right quick and right now, here are the images of Jim's TP article that's on the IAM CD. I normally won't post such large images, but I think this is a valid exception.

Rob,
Thanks for posting that.
I do have your CD, and I read that article a few times a number of years ago when I was first starting to overcome TP.

It's funny, reading it again now, how much clearer the information is. I don't remember being able to so closely relate to everything he said before. I probably just didn't understand it yet.

It is definitely a great article....probably one of the best. Some of the jewels of wisdom are but quick sentences that can easily be overlooked. The one that most applies to my situation now is: "...that stimulus will be the feeling of restarting of the draw after aiming by firming the shoulder blades." For me that feeling has been so subtle, that I often believe I just imagined it. I need to make it more real by practicing that part alone for a while.

While many thought Jay Kidwell came up with the solution, he in fact just re-stated what Ploen already knew and wrote about.

What is never mentioned by anyone who writes about TP, however, is why it gets proportionally worse as pressure to make the shot increases. For me, I think the answer is: too much tension in the stabilizing muscles. Being too careful means resisting change; change in sight picture, change in muscle exertion, etc. Good archery form is all about changing position from the start of the draw to the end. So I have to learn to not be too careful, or I have to learn to work through the muscular problems associated with being too careful.