Competitive Archer E-Book

Simon Needham

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 505

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The Competitive Archer provides practical advice to archers showing them a path to success in their competition performance, taking them from keen weekend competitors to top athletes in the world arena.The book covers: How to set goals and then prioritize those goals; the nature of more serious competition in archery; making decisions about how much time an individual is able or wishes to give to the sport; how far that time will get them, and making the best use of limited time; planning training and competition schedules; more advanced training, shooting practices and techniques to speed up and increase improvement, and to evaluate progress; incorporating mental practices into training; fine-tuning of archery equipment; preparation for individual and team competitions. Although this book deals with success in archery, it shows that the path to success follows the same procedure in any endeavour. Essential reading for archers and coaches of all disciplines looking to take their performance to advanced levels. Includes advice and tips from top international and Olympic archers.Superbly illustrated with 260 colour photographs.Simon Needham has been involved in archery for forty years and has competed at Olympic and World Championship levels.

Leseprobe

The

Competitive

Archer

The

Competitive

Archer

Simon Needham

This e-book first published in 2013

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

© Simon Needham 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 624 6

CONTENTS

Introduction

1Critical Points

2Determining Your Goals

3Making the Best of Your Time

4Training Practices At Home

5Shooting Practices

6Repeating the Shot

7Shooting Log: Dear Diary

8Fine Tuning

9Training Aids

10Archery First: Mental Form

11Individual and Team Round Preparation

12Competitions, Fitness and Top Tips

Epilogue – Afterword

Advice from Archers

Index

INTRODUCTION

Since the publication of Archery – The Art of Repetition, many archers have been complimentary about the book but have then asked a question such as ‘How do you get the best bracing height?’ It then transpires that they have not read it all, but skipped over some vital portions. I would recommend reading the entire book: once you know the available content you will be able to reference it fully as and when required.

The other odd question that seems to crop up is ‘Is there a better way of doing it?’ There may be other ways of achieving comparable results, but the information given is the way I approach the problem and is the best I can give from the experience I have gained over the years.

Archery – The Art of Repetition was written to help non-archers become archers and to help archers become better archers. I believe it was successful in this but still the question keeps arising: ‘How do I get better still? I want to represent my country at the Olympics.’ When The Crowood Press asked if there might be enough material for another book for those wanting more from their archery, I put together a proposal for The Competitive Archer.

This book should be seen as the competition supplement to Archery – The Art of Repetition and should be used as such. It particularly covers how to go about succeeding in archery, but the methods of achieving success are the same for every activity and should be used in everything you do to help achieve your goals.

CHAPTER 1

CRITICAL POINTS

There will be certain points in your life that lead you to where you are today. At the time they may have seemed innocuous but nonetheless they are enough to change the direction of your life. This chapter gives a brief outline of how I arrived at this point in my archery and some of the critical turning points that led me here.

I am now fifty-two years old. I left school at eighteen and joined the Royal Marine Commandos, with whom I served for twenty-two years and rose to the rank of Colour Sergeant. I then became a full-time lottery-funded athlete for four years. From 2004 I was employed as a technician at Montrose Academy, working ten hours a week, and worked full-time from September 2010.

I have been shooting since I was seven or eight as archery was offered as a weekend activity at Mount House School, the boarding school I attended. When I was twelve the 11th Gosport Scout group started doing archery and I had another go as I had shot before. This time I bought my own bow, a 36lb recurve fibreglass bow with victory arrows. With my friend James Downing I made my first archery training presentation with a slide and tape sequence to help new archers in the Scouts. In 1979, during a year-long tour of duty in Northern Ireland with 40 Commando Royal Marines, I bought a Border bow, a Forest Knight, and shot on the airfield in Ballykelly. After the Falklands in 1982, I had saved enough money to buy a Yamaha YTSL II with all the Yamaha accessories. I shot with Alton Archers and then when I moved to Plymouth, shot with ‘Bowmen of the Tors’. For me this was a good social activity and enabled me to meet people that were not military. I think I shot one outdoor competition over this period. I did make the Devon ‘B’ team for the indoor league, which I was very pleased with at the time.

Archery practise at Ballykelly airfield, Northern Ireland, in 1979.

Glamis Castle shoot, 2012.

Critical point 1.Success at the Banchory shoot was really down to the years of shooting I had done prior to it, but it was important in that it convinced me that I was good at this sport. Your first experience with anything you try is important: initial success leads to a perception that you can do it. I have always had a sense that I am ‘lucky’, although I am not certain where this initially came from. By looking for luck I think I have become luckier because of it, and respond to comments such as ‘You’re lucky, you shoot well’ by replying ‘The more I practise the luckier I get’. Starting every new venture with good planning ensures that the initial impression is good and this increases the chances of success. With a new bow, for example, take time to set it up properly, with a good initial arrow position, stabilized and balanced properly prior to shooting. The first arrow shot out of it will then give a lasting impression that the bow is great. When I received my BMG I shot 359 at 30m within two hours of shooting the first arrow out of it, but be aware it takes a lot of practice to be able to set up a bow properly in two hours.

When I was drafted to RM Condor, Arbroath, Scotland in 1982 I joined the Lochside bowmen in Forfar, which was a good club, keen on competitions. At that time, however, I was still looking at archery as a social pastime and stopped shooting for a few years apart from getting the bow out occasionally to shoot on the airfield at the base.

In 1988 45 Commando RM was on spearhead duties, which meant that we had to be on four hours’ notice to go anywhere in the world. This in effect meant that we could not go far from the camp. Over the years I had enquired about an archery club in Arbroath, but there did not seem to be one. One of the workshops’ store men, though, was interested in archery and had found Links Archers, a club in Montrose. It seemed a good idea to see what the club was like, so I turned up on a motorbike that promptly broke down when I got there. After joining in for the club session I then had to push the bike twelve miles back to Arbroath, but it seemed like a good friendly club and so I joined.

I was still shooting my YTSL II; it was a 70in bow and I had a 26in draw length (to the button). I had decided back in 1982 that a 70in bow would give me a smoother draw, which I suppose was true enough. Keith, the club coach, showed us how to make strings and this led on to the subject of nocking points. I then thought that if I lowered the nocking point slightly, the arrow would go further.

Up to this time I liked shooting but enjoyed the chat. It seemed that competitions would be good for more chatting and socializing with a picnic at lunch. I wrongly thought you had to pass some sort of shooting test to enter, but all I had to do was say that I wanted to go and pay the entry fee.

My first competition was an American round at Castle Fraser. I was not too surprised when I won as I was shooting reasonably well at the time. The next competition I entered was a FITA Star at Banchory. On the first day I shot around 850, mainly due to my billowing white shirt. It went much better after borrowing a chest guard and I shot 1113 on the Sunday, so claiming my 1100 Star. (I never did get my 1000 Star.)

Critical point 2. Words make a difference. Mental reinforcement only works if the words are sincere and have an element of truth. Words work just as well in the negative as the positive. Words used by associates can make a huge difference to an athlete. An offhand comment by a ‘friend’ can eat negatively into someone’s confidence, while an insincere false positive reinforcement can be just as bad. In thought, word and deed, comments should give strength and belief to the area that is being worked on, the thoughts of the individual (their ‘self talk’). It is working on why you can do something that ‘enables’ you to realize those thoughts.

This was the first pivotal point in my shooting. I had been put on a target with some of the top archers in Scotland and held my own at 30m. I had not previously thought of myself as a sportsman and was surprised by the congratulations of the club archers at my second-day score. Something seemed to ‘click’ and I thought that I might be able to do well at this. Here was a sport that relied on the individual and their equipment. Any variation in score levels was down to the individual. This suited me as my past experience of football and other team games had not been too successful.

In 1989 I was still shooting the YTSL II and decided that I needed better arrows. I was using X7s, which I had bought the year before to upgrade from the XX75’s that I had bought with the bow. I upgraded to Beman (carbon tube) arrows but had a lot of bother tuning them. I was going to quite a few competitions and would camp at the venues to save money. The first competition with my new Bemans was at Greenock, just outside Glasgow. I was on the target with George King and I told him that I was unhappy with the tuning. He suggested I tuned as I shot. I was so engrossed in adjusting the button that I was distracted from the scoring and ended up beating George, much to his chagrin. What I had not realized, being new to the competitive side of the sport, was that it was between the two of us as to who would take third place and represent Scotland later on in the month. On this occasion he ended up as reserve. Even after I shot a personal best at 30m of 330, it felt odd that this competition was the first shoot for a year at which I had not won anything, apart from the place on the team. The other thing I took from this shoot was George’s observation that I always shot the short metric very well, which was mainly because we were somewhat lazy at the club and did not put the bosses up much over 50m most of the time. His comment, though, has come to mind at many a shoot and bolstered my shooting of the short metric, serving as a good example of realistic positive re-enforcement.

Winning shoot in Norway with YTSL II.

Critical point 3. Your approach to any situation that is not under your control defines your future. Control the controllables. As my hopes of promotion were curtailed and outside my control, I determined that I would focus on the sport in which I believed I could succeed. You can only change what is going to happen to you. What’s done is done and there is no point in dwelling on the past. Learn from your experiences so that it can help you shape your future as you desire. You might not get it all, but it will help you get most of it.

Later in the year, at the Scottish championships at Haggs Road, we had to explain to Tiny Reniers, who had come over to shoot a York, the approximate metric equivalent of 100yds, 80yds and 60yds. He asked Alan Cook from our club what colour nocks was he using. We were surprised that he had three sets of arrows with him. In those days I would change nocks on my ten arrows: little did I think that in a few years’ time I would be the one with three or four sets of arrows in my case.

Although shooting was going well, I was in the Marines and looking for promotion. I had completed my senior command course (for Sergeant) and in 1990 went on a six-month VM 1 (Vehicle Mechanic) course at SEME Bordon in Hampshire. After this I was hoping for promotion before moving on to an Artificers course that would lead to becoming a Warrant Officer. This seemed a good plan, but in the military you cannot start a course without an appropriate return of service, which for an Artificers course is six years. I knew that I would need promotion shortly after the course at Bordon if I were to become senior enough to do the Artificers course. Any delay would mean that I would not get the course or promotion to Warrant Officer. As luck would have it (a double-sided coin), the other three on the course were senior to me and there were only three spots for promotion coming up in the near future. Even though we all passed, this meant there would be no immediate promotion for me. Since the next due date for promotion was in two years’ time, I would not be a sergeant long enough to get the course and have return of service for Warrant Officer. It was a big disappointment, so I decided to make the best of my options and put my efforts into archery instead of a career. I requested a draft back to Scotland so I could continue shooting and compete for a place in the Scottish team again. Before then, though, a six-month draft to Plymouth included a three-month deployment to Gul, Norway, for winter training. I had been contemplating buying a Yamaha EX, but instead waited for the Eolla to come out and bought a red and purple one with the ceramic limbs. I figured that if I was going to work at archery I would give myself the best equipment to work with.

Alison Rhodius taking a session with the Scottish squad.

Dr Alison Rhodius, 2012.

Critical point 4. The opportunity offered to Alison Pope changed the direction of her life as well as mine. Perhaps a different student accompanying Dr Cripps would not have sparked my interest in psychology at this time. Almost certainly Dr Alison Rhodius would not be the expert she is in the field of archery.

Critical point 5. From my introduction to mental management, I came to realize that significant adjustments to ways of thinking would help me succeed in anything I tried. The key to mental management is the absolute belief and understanding that it works. Finding that belief opens the door to using the tools you have been given. Much of what holds you back lies in your way of thinking and this can be addressed. For me the door was opened by a short talk from Alf Davis and his enthusiasm, combined with Jay Barrs’s video presentation of The Mental Game.

I now knew a bit more about tuning and bow selection and bought a 68in bow, with long riser medium limbs. I also bought my own string jig and changed from making strings from Kevlar string material, which required a new string for every 1,000 arrows shot, to using Fastflight. At this time I had to make a new string every month.

I moved back to Scotland in 1991 to take up duties with 3 Advanced Workshop Detachment Commando Logistic Regiment. I decided that I would give it a year of working hard at the shooting. If I was better, I would give it another year. If not, well, I was sure I would find something else to do.

At the end of the season I had made the top ten in Scotland and won an invitation to the Scottish squad, which was run on a new training format by Peter Willerton. He determined that the top archers in Scotland collectively knew a reasonable amount about the sport and wanted to give us the ‘other’ things that would help us compete: physical fitness, mental tools and nutrition for sport. For the mental side he brought in Dr Barry Cripps, who introduced us to Dr Alison Rhodius (then Alison Pope). Alison was great to work with on the mental game. I found this aspect of the squads especially interesting and realized that this was the key to success.

In front of the Olympic Stadium, Sydney, with Alison and Team.

Despite not being an archer or coach, Alison has become one of the world’s leading experts in the mental side of archery and is a Professor in Sport Psychology at John F. Kennedy University in California:

I started out in archery by chance. I didn’t set out to work in this amazing sport. Dr Barry Cripps made a presentation at the British Psychological Society annual conference in 1992 and then asked if anyone would like to get some experience in an internship with the British archery team. I, of course, jumped at the chance. I worked closely with Barry Cripps for the next few years. I attended all the training events at Lilleshall training centre in Shropshire, sat in on all individual and team sessions and learned a lot from Barry. I also travelled up to Scotland for a few years to work with the Scottish squad in Largs. I had a great time up there and loved the camaraderie that the squad embodied.

After a few years, Barry retired from the sport and I took over as the Sport Psychologist for the GB squads (juniors and seniors). Those years working with the elite archers were fantastic. I learned so much from everyone and I was grateful for the opportunity. It was hard to stop the work with this group, but I took a lot from our interactions and still keep in contact with many of the British archers today (Simon being one of those!).

In 2000 I finished my PhD in Sport Psychology and within days had emigrated to California with my English husband, Virgil. Since then I have become a professor in Sport Psychology at JFK University in the San Francisco Bay Area and am currently the Interim Chair of the department. Despite a busy academic life, my work in archery continued once I got to the US because of good connections I had made. Alison Williamson, my longest-term client, introduced me to Don Rabska who recommended me to the US team. I worked with them for a few years and went with them to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. That same year, I worked with the team from India and travelled out there to work with them twice. One of the most interesting trips was when my services were combined with USA, India and Alison Williamson in a tournament in Italy. During the Games itself, I worked solely with the US teams and Alison, not the team from India.

Since the Games I have continued to do some work in archery, directly with some archers and run workshops for coaches. This past January [2012] I took one of my students, Fernando Lopez, to present with me to archery coaches at the USOC in Colorado Springs. They loved his work and he is now working with members of the US women’s archery squad. I really feel like I have come full circle and am grateful for all the opportunities that came from the sport of archery.

For the 1992 squads Richard Priestman was asked to give advice on performance. He brought in Alf Davis, who had just started a course on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), to give us an introduction to the fascinating subject and demonstrate how the mental tools used for sport could be employed in everyday life, empowering you to succeed. In simple terms, NLP provides a means of examining the very best in a given profession and seeing how these traits can be copied elsewhere.

It was at these squads and summer shoots that I came to know Jim Buchanan, a great mentor in the sport, and John Low, who also took a deep interest in Alf’s talk. John was also keen on competing, so we decided to venture over the border to events in England.

Critical point 6. By the time I made the British squad I felt I had made advances in setting up and tuning my bow. At the squad I accepted the offer of having my bow tuned. After some fiddling I was informed that it was now better, even though my arrow group size was bigger and my bow appeared to be pointing at the next target. On the long drive home I thought over all the aspects of bow tuning and set-up from a mechanical point of view. Halfway I stopped off for a quick coffee with Jim Buchanan and began to regale him with my findings. Three hours later I left to continue my deliberations on the rest of the drive. This greatly improved my understanding of bow set-up and the dynamics of the shot, which led me to revisit bow tuning and enabled me to set up and tune my bow better.

Critical point 7. No matter how good you are or what your shooting potential may be, everything depends on the support you receive. Are you able to get the equipment you need and still have the funds to get to competitions? This does not have to be the newest equipment, but it does have to be of a sufficient quality to allow you to compete. Especially with youngsters, it is the support of parents and family that determines the level they will achieve in their endeavours. Quicks Archery has supported me for the last twenty years. The Marines allowed me the time to go to events and the money for travel within the UK, which meant I could get to all the competitions I needed to. WO1 Nigel Barrett made sure that for the final run-up to the Olympics I could train full-time and ensured I had a six-month extension so that during the Games I was not concerned about future employment. Lottery funding enabled me to afford extra equipment so that I could trial and test it while identifying what was best for my shooting. It bought my first set of X10s, which allowed me to judge whether they would raise my scores at 70m (and they did).

Critical point 8. Training time is critical for performance. Ray Criche once told me that he could hold his own in the rankings over the year, but he fell behind in shoot-offs. Later he found out that the other archers took time out from work to increase training time prior to selection. For me the run-up to the Olympics was two-and-a-half years of balancing work and training with just the last nine months shooting full-time. This is where planning comes in, enabling you to achieve a good groundwork of shot execution within compressed training times. This helps you peak for your chosen events. Barring injuries, shooting five or six days a week, with one rest day, and an average count of 1,000 arrows, or equivalent, per week is the minimum you need for success.

In Scotland we were both usually towards the top of the leader boards at competitions. Going south of the border had two immediate results: we found ourselves lower down the leader board and wanted to be higher, and because we were shooting with or near more experienced archers we could take advantage of the knowledge that was generally freely given at events. One time, for example, I overheard Jon Shales, a top British archer I then knew only by reputation, talking about why he had put a weight on the bottom of the riser to stop it jumping around. Thanks, it worked for me.

Although I was competing against others, for me it was all about improving my shooting. I had no thoughts of the British team or the Olympics: that seemed to be for others and did not concern me. Over the next few years my average scores went up from 1200 to 1220, and then to 1245. When I was offered promotion to Sergeant in 1993 I asked for it to be delayed as the first two drafts were to the south of England. This was frowned upon, but I knew that a draft was coming up in Scotland and if I could get this it would ensure that I could stay and shoot in Scotland. Not only would this enable me to compete for my adopted country, but the shooting ground for Links Archers was available twenty-four hours a day and this would be a key point in training for competitions.

With Alan Wills, Larry Godfrey and Roy Nash, winning the team silver medal at the 2004 European Championships.

I was picked for the British squad for winter training in 1996. This led to being selected for a European Grand Prix in Turkey, a great introduction to international competition. Even at this point I was still not thinking about the Olympics, but the Marines were now helping with my travel expenses within the UK. I was also selected for Scottish Lottery funding. Early in1998 I had an inkling that, with a concerted training regime, I might have a chance at the Sydney Olympics in just over two years’ time. From then on all my spare time was spent training, which meant that my work in running the workshops of 45 Commando had to be efficient to ensure there was time to train. From November 1999 the Marines allocated me to the ‘Sergeants’ mess’, enabling me to train full-time for nine months up to the Olympics.

Although I was due to leave the Marines in July 2000 after twenty-two years of service, I was kept on for an extra six months, so I was still a serving member during the Olympics in August 2000. For me the Olympics went well: I came ninth in the seeding round, which at the time was during the event, and seventeenth overall. My pass was the third highest on the board for that round and was a personal best, a good place to have one. Although disappointed at being knocked out, I had shot better than I had ever done in competition before. The extra six months in the services would have given me time to go on educational vocational training courses towards another career after the services, but I decided that my world ranking gave me a chance of making the top twenty in the world. Instead of taking time out to do the courses I carried on training.

Second place in an event in Cuba gave me enough points to make a top twenty ranking and led to UK lottery funding that allowed me to train full-time. By the end of 2001 I had secured seventh place at the world championships in China and twelfth in the world rankings. Although I was one of the silver medal-winning team at the 2004 European championships, with Roy Nash, Larry Godfrey and Alan Wills, funding ceased as I did not secure an Olympic place for that year. I chose to work ten hours a week as a technician at Montrose Academy to supplement my forces pension. This provided enough money to get by and still give me plenty of time to train as far as the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Between 1996 and October 2010 I trained at least five days a week. The diary I kept of all my shooting activities for every day in that period, in numerous forms, shows that I shot on average more than 1,000 arrows a week (780,000 arrows). The longest spell without shooting or training was three consecutive weeks after the Olympics. All holidays were taken for shooting events. I have represented Great Britain on fifty-four occasions and Scotland on sixty-two: my mantra for this was ‘Archery First’.

You will find that getting what you want from life sometimes means having to take a calculated risk. Taking delayed promotion could have gone against me, as could turning down the opportunity to retrain for a civilian job. My friends Nick and Isobel Evans are examples of how a risk can pay off. They run a bed and breakfast in the south of France, canoe in the canal outside, are keen cyclists and spend the winters as ski instructors in Andorra. Isobel tells their story:

In the early 1990s we were both working in London. We loved skiing but couldn’t afford enough ski holidays. Nick’s job with the police allowed for an unpaid career break, holding all pension and seniority rights. We decided to take a break of two-and-a-half years to ‘get it out of the system’ rather than wait until we retired, when we had no idea how fit we would be.

Initially we planned to return after three winter seasons of running chalets and looking after campsites in the summer. We decided that we would like to continue with this way of life and considered buying an Alpine property, but very quickly realized we didn’t have enough capital. Spending all our time in France, we looked into buying something to provide a business for the summer season so we could continue skiing in the winter. At no point did we feel we wanted to run away from the UK. We moved away because there was something more exciting we wanted to do – and who knows, we may yet return.

In 2000, after selling our house in Sevenoaks, we purchased Les Volets Bleus in Sallèles d’Aude, near Narbonne, in partnership with Nick’s brother, and set up a successful bed and breakfast business. Nick and I continue to work winter seasons as ski instructors in Andorra.

The plus factor is that you are working for yourself; the minus factor is that you are working for yourself. There is no holiday pay, sick pay or other corporate benefits. But it does mean that, if you are brave enough, you can just say ‘We’re closed today’.

It has been exciting and scary creating a business from scratch. My administrative background in accountancy and office skills has obviously been very useful, as has our mixture of people skills, fluent French, wine knowledge and practical experience. The downside is marketing and publicity, which we find challenging. And the French authorities are every bit as difficult to deal with as everyone says – but then even the French agree.

What does the future hold? A long haul to retirement and bits and pieces of a pension from the UK, France and Andorra, but at the moment we feel we’d rather be poor in the south of France.

Good things: living in the south of France; climate; lovely food (great fruit and veg) and affordable wine. Great cycling. Skiing all winter. Friendly social life in Andorra. Staying fit. Meeting lots of nice people, summer and winter.

Bad things: being too busy to get out and do things; not having much of a social life in France (we work too many evenings), plus everything closes down for the summer, which is when we are here. The worry of being ill or injured and not being able to work. The uncertainty of the tourist trade.

The purpose of this book is to give you as much information as I can to allow you to make the best of your time and help plan the way forward in your archery. I have travelled the world with this sport and made many friends. If just one line here helps towards putting you on the world stage of archery and winning a medal at any event, then I will be pleased that all the time devoted to it has been worthwhile.

CHAPTER 2

DETERMINING YOUR GOALS

The setting of ‘great’ goals is the key to being successful in everything that you undertake:

Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage, but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.

Elbert Hubbard

I find that setting goals, and planning to achieve them, is fairly easy for me. With the right motivation, setting out to do something is easy to plan. I do most of the planning in my head and find that this, for me, requires little or no written lists.

In 1983 I was asked if I wanted to run a marathon. I wasn’t keen. My then boss pointed out that I was reasonably fast on the regular Wednesday afternoon run, but there was a good reason: we started the run at 3pm and when we finished we could go home. The faster you ran, the sooner you were finished for the day. After a few drinks, however, I was eventually persuaded to take part. We had six weeks to train. We ran most afternoons, anything from four to thirteen miles, working up to six-minute miles, finishing for the day when we had completed the running. I ended up completing the marathon in 3 hours 46 minutes, although walking was a bit tricky for a couple of days afterwards.

I thought I would like to maintain that level of fitness and went for a run a few days later. About halfway around the 3-mile course I decided to walk back. I just didn’t have the motivation.

For archery it was easy: I liked shooting and I wanted to shoot better. At Scottish and, later, British squads I pieced together good practice methods for training by talking and listening to both British and foreign athletes, and incorporated them into my training plans. These were recorded in my diaries. When asked by various squads to submit plans for the forthcoming month it was easy as I had already planned everything in my head. I plotted on a year planner the competitions that I wanted to enter, starting with the ones that would lead to qualifying for events. I pencilled in the events that I hoped to be selected for and the shoot-offs to get to those events. These would include major events in the coming years, such as the Olympics, four years ahead, and World and European championships every second year. This was about all I would commit to paper.

Working with people over the years I have found that the amount of paperwork required differs from person to person. Some need a detailed plan for every hour of every day, with alternatives planned to cover changes in the weather and venues. Others require very little written down and the rest can be anywhere in between. How your mind processes information will determine the level of paperwork necessary to achieve your goals and therefore dictate your progress.

To start with it is better to make a detailed plan of your goals and how you are going to achieve them. Once you have established a good training routine you may find that you are able to reduce the amount of written planning and still progress towards your goals. Finding the right balance between time spent planning to ensure you do the training and doing the actual training will take some effort.

Outlined below is a plan for setting your goals and planning how to achieve them, based on the thought processes I use. In this book the goal setting is orientated towards achieving in archery, although it will naturally take in other aspects of your life. The same techniques can be used for achieving anything you set your mind to.

Setting Goals

The three determining factors for the outcome of achieving those goals are:

•Setting an ultimate goal for all your endeavours, providing a path to the very top of all you are trying to achieve.

•Setting the priority now in your life to achieve those goals.

•Time available.

It is the priority you give to each of these that will help determine how far you get. As time passes so will the priority you have given to each. They may well change, as will the list of your goals.

Many of you may have come across the acronym SMART in goal setting. Various words have been applied to the concept, such as:

Sspecific, significant, stretching

Mmeasurable, meaningful, motivational

Aagreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-orientated

Rrealistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-orientated

Ttime-based, timely, tangible, trackable

The acronym can be used well as part of your goals-setting programme, but if you are not careful it can negate your dream. Are the Olympics, for example, a realistic goal to an archer who is now trying out for an area team?

Goal setting must include the dream for all your desires. The priority you give to all your different desires will determine which you will follow towards the top. The limiting factors will then only be your own potential in each chosen area of endeavour and the amount of time you can, or want, to allocate to it.

This chapter will supply a template to work from to help you get to the top of your game in your shooting, increasing the number of arrows you shoot into the middle. For this we will describe the ‘Sport goal’ of Olympic archery as the subject for the setting of this goal. Once you understand a method for setting a goal and prioritizing it, it becomes quicker and easier to work out steps to your dreams and aspirations in every aspect of your life.

Olympic Goal

Most of you will have started archery as a hobby or a pastime. You may well have had a go at a ‘come and try’ or participated at a holiday venue. However you started archery, it is unlikely you did so with the idea that the outcome would be to represent your country.

It tends to be on the lines of: start shooting; enjoy shooting; and then being persuaded to go to competitions or go to them because you want something to do at the weekends.

There will come a point when you feel you want more from shooting. It might be that you want to make your club or county team, or you find you are getting close to selection for your country and need more than your club can offer.

The issue will be that until this point you will have been participating in archery as a hobby. Some will never make the transition from hobby archer to athlete on their own. This is not because they don’t want to, but because they do not have a method of determining a path to success.

In considering what you want to achieve from your shooting, you should lay out the steps to be used to help with the transition to sportsman or woman. Success in anything is determined by goal setting: with a good structure of goal setting in place all the other requirements necessary for success will fall into place. Goal setting is not enough on its own, though, as it requires two other main ingredients: priority of desire for your goals and time allocation.

Goals – What Do You Want from Life?

‘Goal’ seems to be a widely used word that some people use consciously without fully thinking about what it means to them, while using it exclusively in the context of their sport or a single activity. Others want good things in life and will strive towards them but do not think of them as goals. My interpretation of goals is that they determine what you really want. These pertain to all aspects of my life, not only to sport.

[Archers] need to have clear goals set and ask themselves what is their reason for wanting to be a top competitive archer. Some archers are doing it for the wrong reason. They can’t realistically achieve the goals, either with the amount of time to train or their ability to travel.

Matthew Gray

When managing multiple desires, I need to rationalize them and ensure that I allocate a priority and time to the separate areas: work, money, holidays, friends, activities, sports, house, clothes, happiness, possessions and so on. Analysing the priority allocated to the different desires ensures that what I most want to happen is given the highest priority. This gives it a better chance of occurring. It goes hand in hand with how much time I have and am willing to put into it. When my funding finished as soon as I did not make the 2004 Olympics at the European qualifying shoot-off, I decided that I wanted to keep archery as my highest priority. I knew that to have a chance at the 2008 Olympics I would need most of my time for training. To that end I took a part-time job in a local school for ten hours a week to supplement my pension from the Royal Marines. That still left me with sufficient time for the training necessary if I were to have a chance of rejoining the Olympic team in four years’ time.

As I have suggested, goal setting can be used in all aspects of your life. As a means of understanding this method of setting goals, the construction of a goal-setting pyramid will help you to realize the priorities in your life and allow you to make the most of it with fewer regrets.

Put your goals in order, adding other scores and goals to give attainable steps. KAREN HENDERSON

The goal setting for this book, of course, relates to archery. It is a model that can be used for anything you wish to achieve.

The best way to start requires a friend, a pen and a pad of Post-its. As you think of goals and the steps towards them, you can put each on an individual Post-it, making it easier to arrange your thoughts and the order of your goals. If possible you should sit down with someone who knows you well, someone you trust and can chat with comfortably about your goals. The person need not be from your sport. Talking to someone from outside the sport ensures that they are not biased by what they have seen within it and can view your aspirations more clearly. Discussing your dreams and hopes with them can help as a check and balance on what you think you want to achieve. Verbalizing a hope to someone else opens up the opportunity of it coming true because it changes from a thought to a deed. Once it is written down it enters into the reality of it possibly happening. This is partly due to the fact that hearing, writing and seeing what you have written uses more areas of your brain, providing a better insight of what you are trying to achieve.

Making a Goal Pyramid

An ideal model for determining what you want is a Goal Pyramid. The boxes on the left of the pyramid show the steps to your ultimate goal, the blocks across the bottom indicate the amount of time you are willing to spend on trying to achieve those goals.

The first step is to determine what will be your ultimate goal. If this is to be world champion, an Olympic gold medallist or the best in the world, it may seem so far from your present ability as to be just a fantasy or it may indeed be close to your current hopes and aspirations. It is very important at this point to come up with an ultimate goal that will be the pinnacle of what you are trying to achieve. In my opinion, you should choose aspiring to be the ‘best in the world’. If your ambition is simply to win an Olympic gold medal you will not necessarily be the best in the world and there will be other competitions that you may not win.

The goal pyramid represents the steps and effort required to reach your goals.

The ultimate goal you choose will be placed on top of your pyramid. Discussing this helps to ensure that you have found the right goal at the top.

I had been to the talks, read the books, watched the movie and worked out by myself that my goal was to be a ‘world-class athlete’, which I then became. The error with my goal was that I had become a world-class athlete, but not really winning anything! I had not chosen the correct ultimate goal, so I changed it to a goal of ‘Being the best archer in the world.’

Simon Needham, 1999

It is true I did not achieve this, but it did not hamper me from being the best I could be, achieving 7th at the 2001 world championships and 12th in the world rankings. It also allowed me to attain results above those of a world-class athlete. At this point in life your ultimate goal may seem to be an out and out dream. You might only want to make the area team, a valid aspiration, but this is your opportunity to fantasize about what could be.

Next is to determine the steps (short- and medium-term goals) leading from your present status to your ultimate goal. These Post-its should be placed under the ultimate goal on the left side of the pyramid. With your ultimate goal in place, this becomes easier to work out. The Post-it at the bottom left of the pyramid stands for where you are now in the sport. Above this place others indicating reasonable steps of attainment. It is entirely up to you how many steps you include, but the transition between goals needs to be realistic.

One suggestion is to construct an initial pyramid with just scores down the left-hand side. If you are scoring 1224 for a FITA, for example, it would be unrealistic to put 1300 as your next step. Moving up to 1250 points, an increment of just 26 points, on the other hand, is a realistic challenge as when you break it down it is only an increase of 6 or 7 points per distance, or an extra point per end.

The pyramid can easily be started by using scores to give you the steps to success. You will notice that as the scores get higher the score increments in the pyramid will get less. A 1200 shooter may well put 30 points on their average score, but a 1320 shooter is less likely to improve with a step of 30 points. Although using scores will provide a fairly good structure to your pyramid, leaving them in the primary position on the left side of the pyramid will tend to channel you into concentrating just on scores, which can be detrimental to your progress.

One suggestion is to work the FITA Star awards system into your steps. On its own, however, this is not really enough because it would give you steps of 100 points and you will need to add achievements inbetween. Many countries have achievement levels. In the UK we have Bowman, Master Bowman and Grand Master Bowman. These can also be included in the construction of your pyramid and it is sometimes better to work on achievement rather than a score, for example making your club, county, area or country team.

This will be an organic pyramid to which layers can be added as you get used to working with it. You will also find that when using a combination of goal varieties some of them will coincide. If placed on the same level, these can be used as markers that can be ticked off as you achieve them. This will fill the levels of the pyramid, giving more depth and purpose to your goals.

The realization of these goals will, to a greater extent, be determined by the amount of time you are willing or able to dedicate to your goals and desires. The base of the pyramid contains a scale of the time and effort you are willing to commit, starting at the left and increasing to a level determined by the base of your pyramid. The highest number indicates that 100 per cent of your time is to be available to spend on archery; it does not mean you spend twenty-four hours a day on archery.

With this example you can see the steps that are required to get to your ultimate goal. How far you climb the steps to success will depend on how much time you are willing or able to commit.

Use the Post-its to lay out the basis of your pyramid. If you are a club archer wanting to make the area team, you only need to construct the pyramid from where you are now to your immediate goal, and perhaps allow the next couple of steps above that. You do not have to construct all the levels leading up to the top. You still put your dream/ultimate goal in place and then add to your pyramid as you approach the immediate goal of area team. This means you can keep adding to the levels as you go along.

Initially scores can be added to the pyramid to give a basis to the steps.

Transferring Post-it goals to the pyramid. A higher percentage of effort and time put towards your goal will determine how far you get towards your goals. Be aware that 100 per cent effort does not always lead to you achieving 100 per cent of your goals.

With your ultimate goal in place, initially you only need to fill a couple of layers above where you are now. The levels above become more apparent as you work up the pyramid.

In reality the pyramid is a list of levels on a spreadsheet, although I still perceive it as an actual pyramid.

Once you have your basic pyramid plan laid out, you can either turn it into a poster to put on the wall or transfer the information to a spreadsheet and print it out. Putting your goal pyramid on a wall where you can easily see it helps to remind you what you are trying to achieve. Tick off your achievements as you start to climb the steps, keeping track of all your goals from when you start. This ensures that you have a visible account of your successes. The act of ticking off your achievements is a tangible positive reinforcement and gives you the satisfaction of recounting how you are progressing.

Life Goals

Setting sport goals does not take into account the other aspects of your life, such as work, housing, food, family, holidays and transport. Goals should be set in the same way for every aspect of your life. This will enable you to apportion time in such a way that you can achieve a level sufficient to support you in your shooting. To achieve the goal of archery you will need money, transport and somewhere to live.

Deciding Your Priorities

No matter how much you plan for your goal, it is the significance that you place on it that will help determine your willingness to work towards it.

Many archers have said, ‘You are so lucky to have gone to the Olympics. I would love to do that.’ They genuinely seem to think that luck has a lot to do with it. It appears, however, that they do not want to put more time towards their shooting. So many other things are stopping them from doing any more than possibly two sessions a week at the club: resting after work, going to the pub, playing with the kids, lunch with the in-laws – the list is endless.

If you wish to achieve more from your shooting you need to strengthen your determination to succeed by determining which of all your goals in life and sport have the highest priority.

For some the order will be family first, job second and archery third. By deciding what you want from life you will be better placed to apportion your time and effort. If you want to make the Olympics, your family will need to be kept informed of your intentions, as will your work, which pays the bills to allow you to compete. This is where time becomes a factor. To reach the top you will need to apportion most of your time to shooting. As a rule of thumb, to be the best in the world the minimum you will need to shoot is one thousand arrows a week. It takes approximately one hour to shoot fifty arrows, so that means twenty hours a week. Do not get too caught up in the number of hours required, however, as Chapter 3 is all about making the best of your time.

Stick your goal pyramid on the wall or a pin board so that you can see where you are, ticking off the achievements as you reach them.

If family and work do not allow sufficient time at the moment, you can still strive towards your potential with the time you currently have available. As time passes you may well be able to apportion more time towards you goals.

Having decided that sport is to take priority, you may need to increase your desire to work towards that goal above all else. In the days when I was improving from 110th in the UK rankings to 15th, I enjoyed competing and wanted to see how far I could go with it. When I realized that I was close to making the British team I started to change the way I thought. ‘Archery First’ became the first consideration in all that I did. If there were a choice between shooting or going to the pub, going to a party, going on holiday or watching television, shooting won every time.

To help give emotional weight to your desires, you need to put together a list of what attracts you to your ultimate goal. This will enable you to put into perspective how much you want this and the weight of desire needed to reach your goal.

I would suggest that winning the gold medal is not enough on its own. International athletes have suggested many attractions that go with the commitment to shooting better:

•Shopping around the world

•Appearing on television

•Travelling the world

•Free clothing from the Olympics

•Wanting to be the best

•Having a good party after the events

•The kudos it brings

•Flying on different airlines

•Meeting friends at events

•Beating other archers

•Enjoying shooting arrows

•Perfecting the shot

•Competing on the world stage at major events

•Breaking records

Making a list of what attracts you will help highlight why you practise every day, driving you to do better. Lanny Bassham, author of With Winning in Mind: The Mental Management System (3rd edition, 2011), labels this ‘Pay Value’. The more it means to you personally, the more likely you are to do something about it.

Allocating Time

As you work through setting goals and deciding their individual priorities within the time you have available, it will be much easier for you to decide how much time you have for working towards your goals. This will give you a good idea of how far you will get towards them.

Putting together a chart that enables you to plot all the hours of the day gives you something to work from.

By blocking in the time that you have to allocate for work and sleep, you can then fit a training schedule into what remains.

Once you have considered all your goals in life and decided their relative importance, you can now apportion time to them. The easiest way is to make a weekly chart on a spreadsheet, dividing each day into forty-eight segments of half an hour.

First block in what you have to do on each of the days. If you have to go to work, you should allow for travel there and back. Most people will count their hours from the start to the finish of the working day. Lunch and breaks, though, can be your time and are free for you to use.

When looked at this way it can be surprising how much time you have available. It is up to you to decide the proportion of this you want to allocate towards your shooting. The next step is to block in the time you currently spend shooting, then see where you can fit in further training.

When I was in the Royal Marines, I usually worked my lunch hours to make sure I was on top of my work and did not have to stay late. I also kept a bow at work that I could use to do reversals or, if I had made time, I might go for a run in my lunch hour. I would get home from work, make a sandwich, go to the field and shoot until it grew dark, go home, cook something to eat, then go to bed.

Chapter 3 details ways of making the best of the free time you have available. It is for you to decide how much of your spare time you wish to apportion to your sport.

The three-week training plot is a rolling outline of training to cover the next three weeks. During week 1 you will be projecting what you will be doing in week 4, three weeks away.

Achieving Your Goals

It does not matter what goals you put in place, achieving them requires detailed planning and a system to do so. Be like Baldrick from ‘Blackadder’. Always have a cunning plan. This should cover not only how you are going to achieve your goals, but how to tackle situations that may distract you from reaching them.

With the steps of your goals laid out and a fair idea of what time you have available, it is easier to make plans as a logical sequence of achievable steps becomes apparent. Breaking the steps down into single plans is too simple a way of looking at it. The plans you put in place will overlap both in their depth and their reach. The depth is the variation of tasks you undertake in your planning. The reach of the various tasks you plan to carry out will also vary. Both will be dependent on how much time you have available. More time will allow you to carry out more tasks on a daily basis and for longer. Picking the right tasks and allotting them the right amount of time is the key to successful results.

Selecting an ‘Aim’

To start with you need to come up with an ‘Aim’ for what you are trying to achieve. This will serve as an underlying theme that you can remember and use to reinforce your endeavours throughout all your future training, no matter what level you reach. This needs to be a short phrase that reminds you of what your planning is trying to achieve through the steps or goals laid out on your pyramid. ‘My aim is to improve the consistency of my shooting, both physically and mentally’ is a bit of a mouthful, but the idea is on the right lines. I settled for ‘Improve the percentage of good shots executed during all my shooting’.

Having a good aim gives purpose and direction to your training. You should ensure that the tasks you choose to carry out are consistent with your aim and that their performance ensures focus on that session.

Keeping a good aim in mind while working on all areas of your archery will help you to improve without limiting you. As you carry out your planning, thinking about your aim helps clarify the direction and value of the plan.

Planning

Planning involves considering all aspects of your life and adjusting them for the better. Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) indicates three steps to successful planning:

1.Come up with a plan

2.Carry out your plan

3.