The Power of Stillness
Category : FC Archery News
Hey FC Parents and Archers,
The ability to stay still – what a rare skill these days. The world at our fingertips, anytime and anywhere but without stillness how do we reflect on what it all means? Time slows, understandings grow, and knowledge builds when I shoot my bow. I hope and wish that all students learning archery at FightClub find these things too.
Olympic Gold Medalist in Shooting Peter Wilson wrote about this very subject not to long ago …
The Power of Stillness
by Olympic Gold Medalist in Shooting Peter Wilson
The word ‘sport’ conjures up images of athletes pushing, grunting sweating or panting in a bid to get faster, higher or stronger. But some prize stillness – both in mind and body. I’m talking about mental sports like archery.
The arm pumping or leg lunging movements of sprinters or footballers are distilled into a slow, almost imperceptible squeeze of a trigger. It’s not about kilometers or even meters of movement but millimeters. Maintaining this kind of physical stillness in the heat of competition requires serious mind control. The heart is pumping but adrenaline is the enemy.
A raised heart rate may cause a slight shift in arm position but also a momentary mental drift and the focus is lost. I’ve worked with a few archers shooters and the zen-like state they aim to reach is remarkably similar to that of meditation. A shooter may take 40 shots in a match but the shot being taken is the only one that matters – it’s the very essence of here and now.
If the shot before was bad the mind frets about the future score. If the shot was good the mind anticipates success: both are bad.
The yogic sage Patanjali wrote ‘yoga is the stilling of the thought waves of the mind’ in his Yoga Sutras. Yoga has a vast range of techniques to reel in a jittery mind easily adapted to mental sports. Breathing exercises used both pre-match and in between shot cycles, to pre-shot visualization and meditation. Mindfulness is also useful as it teaches us to stay both alerts but anchored to the present moment.
you anchor after draw your bow back, you must transfer the held weight from your arms into your back muscles. This makes it much easier to hold the bow steady. You transfer this weight into your back by moving your draw arm away from you, and your scapula (or shoulder blade) toward your spine. Think of it like drawing a circle with your shoulder blade. Once the bow weight is in your back muscles your arms can relax a little to ‘release’ the arrow. If your moving before the shoot your accuracy will be compromised. Holding steady is a tricky thing to explain but very important to overall success in archery.
You simply release the tension in your bow string fingers and let the arrow fly. That’s it! Relax all three fingers at once and let the string jump forward by itself. You don’t need to do anything but let go—the energy stored in the limbs at full draw will pull the string forward with great force, so there’s nothing you need to do. Letting your hand brush past your face is called a “dynamic release.” 
bow ever-so-slightly after the arrow has been released, and that—like absolutely everything else!—can mess up your shot. You want to keep your bow arm as still as possible as the arrow clears the shelf and moves toward your target. The bow will likely dip forward a little, especially if you’ve got a very relaxed grip, and that’s totally OK.
