22 May 2013

Archery

I've been down to the range twice since my bow arrived. Yesterday I was just remembering how things work, and shot well enough, but was wrecked after 3 ends (15 shots). Today I loosened the tension on the bow and only brought one arrow with me, forcing myself to take it easy.

I was trying new things - stance, follow-through, focusing on my target instead of sighting down the arrow. It was kind of cool, actually. Over the 40 minutes I was out I could see myself improving. The times when I remembered my steps of shooting (anchor, relax, focus, follow-through) I was only about a foot from where I wanted the arrow to go.

Now, I consider this excellent for someone who wasn't using any reference point on the bow for aim. All I did was stare at where I wanted the arrow to go and relax my body so it moved where it wanted to. My arrow landed exactly where I was looking on the x axis, but up between 1 and 2 feet on the y axis. At one stage it went clear over the whole target and had a slight run in with a rock. It got a bit scraped up, but the vanes are fine so it's all good.

I think the people shooting on the target next to me thought I was a bit crazy. They offered me extra arrows and everything. But they were friendly.

I can't wait to go again. I'm so obsessed. I'm going to have mad callouses on my fingers from pulling the string.

3 comments:

  1. Sorry Ria about that. I haven't you set up for Google Reader and this did not appear in my Google+ stream. So I took the lazy way out and commented in LJ

    My previous comment was:

    Focus on the target.

    When I was learning to windsurf I kept falling in while I was focusing on the board and the sail and my relation with them. Then I remembered that when I was sailing the mirror dinghy I just looked where I wanted to go. Once I focused on the target I started sailing in the right direction. Anytime I looked down to see what I was going right I fell in.

    "Brilliant" was Mary's comment. Well done!

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  2. I've now subscribed to your blog on Google Reader.

    Love Brian

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    Replies
    1. :) Thanks.
      You know Reader is shutting down in July? I moved to Feedly; it can import all your Reader feeds, and it's pretty similar to Reader.

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