Its coming together bit by bit

Shot yet another Portsmouth tonight, and I followed on from Sunday, ensuring that I got the alignment correct and maintained the back tension, and put in a 580.

Still some sloppy shots, but these are easily avoidable and just need to find the consistency again, but its coming together slowly.

SCAS Indoor Champs 2011

After several weeks of struggling I came out of this quite pleased. I ended up with 579, and 6th place out of 38 compounds, in a very strong field. It was also a competition PB as well.

It was not a perfect round and finished weakly, shooting only 115 for the last dozen, but the middle section was very strong, really hammering home those 10's with some very strong shots. My form was excellent, pulling through the shot.

Considering this was competition conditions, under time control, with the pressures that come with that, I feel it was in the right direction.

I shot in the team event, but by this time I was dead on my feet, having out so much into the first session, and shot a rather poor 560 for a FITA 18, but that is just a stamina issue that I know will be sorted in the peak of the season.

Not so good...

Last Wednesday evening I shot a Stafford round indoors. I didn't shoot well, struggling with the distance under indoor light. My form was wrong and spent too long trying to wrestle the bow into the middle.

I finished on 678 (a county record - although I am not going to claim it). If it were two back to back FITA 30m distances, it would have been 355 and 356.

New practice regime and York practice PB

I have now made up my mind that my whole practice regime is going to be focused around shooting timed FITA's and Yorks. Out goes changing to indoor competition mode or shooting other rounds (unless they can be done alongside). Before I would immerse myself in indoor competitions without really enjoying them and then it takes a lot of effort to get back into outdoor mode just before the season start.

Up until now I have had too many other distractions that have hampered progress in shooting/practising FITA's and Yorks. Whilst it will be nice to do something different occasionally, I am now fully focused on these. Its these rounds that will give me GMB scores which is what I want. I want to now make shooting a 12 doz round per week normal, and shooting them to a high standard normal as well.

My plan is to shoot a FITA or York per week. I will shoot the round that is appropriate to any competitions coming up, and over the Winter I will alternate between the two.

For the indoor season, I will shoot indoors on club night simply for practise, but this will be done with my outdoor set-up and on 40cm target faces to replicate outdoor rounds as much as possible. I might even print off some scale targets to replicate the different distances over 20 yards.

So, last Saturday, I was up at 6:30am and down the range by 8am, and shot a York practise PB of 1268.

The 100 yards started slowly with a 100 dozen, but I steadily built up and finished on 622. This distance included four 6 gold ends.

Apart from one red on the first dozen @ 80 yards, I maxed out the rest of the last 6 dozen. Not all the shots were pretty, but each was strong and positive. It seems that I can stop the bad shots being so bad by being positive.

This was probably the first round for a while that I had aligned everything during each shot, pulling hard on the wall and bring the draw elbow round. This resulted in a rock steady aim, and with good timing the shot executed with guaranteed golds.