Duncan Busby Bored? Demotivated? Aimless after a big win? Read on.
Have you ever felt like you’re stuck in a rut, just treading water without any direction or motivation? Whether its work, sport, or life in general, we’ve all had times where things just feel difficult – and archery is no exception. It’s easy to get bogged down with the same old rounds and practice routines, when even the thought of picking up your bow feels more like a chore to be endured rather than something to look forward to – and I know this from bitter experience.
Many years ago in the months leading up to The Commonwealth Games I was singularly focused on what I wanted to achieve in both the run up to the event and at the games themselves; my drive to train harder and longer was stronger than it ever had been, but once I got myself onto the podium and the hype and excitement of winning had died down, I lost all direction. The following indoor season was incredibly frustrating. Though I had achieved a career high in a sport I love, I couldn’t focus or motivate myself to perform or to train, as suddenly I had no new goals to attain. Then the failures of that season hindered my desire to shoot even further. I needed to reassess the direction I wanted my shooting to go in and recover my love for archery.
So what can you do to keep things fresh and to ensure that you look forward to the next shooting session?
Challenge yourself
It’s easy to lose motivation when you have nothing to work towards. Remember when you first picked up a bow? Everything was new and exciting, and you were constantly learning. Then you settled into a comfortable routine, setting targets at your usual familiar distance and shooting a set number of arrows. It’s easy to fall into the trap of routine – familiarity is comforting, and so is feeling in control; but when you stick to a routine for too long you can start to feel uninspired and frustrated, especially when things aren’t going your way.
Setting yourself some new challenges outside your comfort zone may seem daunting at first but it will reignite that fire you felt when you first started shooting. Try practising at different distances or with different-sized target faces; mixing up the rounds you shoot is a great boredom buster and can help you to break through any issues you’re experiencing. It’s easy to feel that you should only be practising at the distance you compete at, but you’ll be amazed what you can learn about your set-up or shooting form by mixing things up a bit. Shooting longer distances or at a smaller face can highlight tuning issues and elements of your technique that need work, and if nothing else the challenge of a new round can help you to find your focus again, giving you fresh motivation.
Set some goals
Most of us have life goals whether in our careers, personal lives or hobbies. These dreams keep us moving forward and push us to succeed. Archery is no exception; we need constantly to aspire to new heights, to drive our practice plans and thus our form improvement. This is the only way to become a better archer, and to maintain the passion for the sport. So if on the other hand you’re tending towards feeling uninspired or aimless, perhaps it’s time to reassess what you’d like to achieve, and to set yourself some new goals. But when goal-setting, remember there are several types of goal.
- Outcome Goals
These goals are based purely on the outcome of a particular event or a particular result – such as winning a tournament or qualifying for a team. They can be based around your current season or be more long term.
Outcome goals are the most common type of goal people aim at because they offer an immediate or concrete result. However, success or failure depends not merely on your own abilities or improvement but also on the quality of the opposition. In other words it can set you up for failure, even if you shoot the best you ever have, because the result is not solely in your own control.
Therefore you should only use outcome goals for motivation. They’re useful for maintaining drive and focus during training, as long as you are realistic about the final outcome. Allow yourself to dream but don’t base your future happiness and affection for the sport on success. Your dreams may inspire you to achieve, but should not discourage you if they are not realised.
- Process Goals
These goals are based on improving your own skill sets, whether mental or physical. They encourage you to identify the areas of your shooting that you feel are holding you back and then make the necessary improvements. So if, for example, you want to develop your release execution, or learn to better control your nerves during a tournament, a process goal will allow you to focus on that specific area; and as you have ultimate control over its outcome it’s an empowering and positive type of goal to aim at.
For most of us it’s fairly easy to come up with a long list of things we’d like to improve, but it’s best to focus on only one thing at a time to avoid becoming overwhelmed and losing motivation. Moreover you should push yourself to work through your process goals in a set, realistic period of time. Don’t set long-term and open-ended timeframes. Once you have made one improvement move on to the next. That way you’ll always feel like you are making progress, you will maintain impetus, and your drive to succeed will remain high. Remember also, when choosing a process goal, to have a clear plan of how you are going to achieve it; before you start research and find the technical or psychological information you need. There’s nothing worse than feeling powerless or unsure how to make improvements you know you’re entirely capable of making.
- Performance Goals
Finally, these goals focus on improving your own performance and are based on your past results. Whether you want to improve your PB or shoot a six-gold end at a longer distance, a performance goal tracks your progress and motivates you to improve. It’s good to have both short- and long-term performance goals so that you always have something to aim for. The goals you set must be a challenge, but ultimately attainable. It would be highly de-motivating if you set yourself an immediate target of scoring 700 on a WA720 round when your current PB is 650, but achieving a score of 680 is not out of the question. That is to say your shorter-term goals should be steps up to your longer-term aspirations.
However as with outcome goals performance goals are not purely dependent on your own shooting, other factors play a part and can have a huge impact on your results. Focusing on performance goals too much particularly during practice can distract you from training with the correct form and mental game, so pay attention to how helpful it is to your shooting and adapt your goal until it positively motivates you to improve.
Your goals should all work together to both inspire you to train and ensure you are always working towards something, so you can set yourself several goals from each category as long as they form a clear and cohesive plan for the direction you’d like your shooting to go. At the same time you mustn’t use them as a reason to beat yourself up. Oftentimes life doesn’t go to plan so if you’re thrown a curveball be flexible and allow yourself to reassess things. I don’t mean lower your expectations – that may feel like a cop-out and will lead you back to feeling uninspired – but if circumstances change and you need to change direction slightly that’s fine. Just try to make sure you always have something just out of reach to work towards.
Try something new
Try something new, whether that’s a different style of bow or a new discipline you’ve never tried before. You don’t need to make a permanent change, sometimes simply allowing yourself to do something different will rekindle the passion you had when you first started shooting. Have you ever switched between recurve and compound or picked up a longbow? Different styles of bow can give you new perspectives on the sport. If you’ve never tried field or 3D archery why not give them a go? Aiming at unfamiliar faces or even foam animals can be exciting, and if you really fancy a change from aiming at targets then there’s always clout archery. Anything that helps you to find the love for the sport again is time well spent; it may be the first step in a new direction, or it may simply remind you why you started shooting in the first place.
Have some competitive fun
Archery is a social sport and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition amongst friends. See if your local club is running any competitions you can attend, or why not check out the tournament calendar and find some larger national events to go to? Having an event to look forward to can give you the inspiration you need to make your practice sessions worthwhile, whether it’s an official tournament or the informality of a challenge amongst some club mates. Turn a practice session into a fun challenge; it doesn’t need to be a proper round – it could be a closest arrow to the middle or highest number of X’s in an end, – anything to make the day more exciting and break up the monotony of simply shooting arrows.
Take a break
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so they say, and sometimes it’s important to allow yourself some time off from what you love doing. Even a passion like archery can feel like a drag when it becomes an automatic action. It’s Sunday afternoon so you go down to the archery club and shoot, for no better reason than that’s just what you do – it’s as regular as getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth. But when things become too much a part of your routine you can stop being excited by them – when was the last time you looked forward to brushing your teeth? Taking a short break can give you time to reassess what you enjoy about the sport. Just a week or two off will be enough to have you yearning to pick up your bow again with new-found enthusiasm. Use your time away wisely, think back to all the good times you’ve had shooting and about all the things you’d still like to achieve, set yourself some motivational goals and before long you’ll be itching to get back out on the range.
Final reflections
In my case, ultimately, I found my love for archery again. I took a short break which rekindled the fire in me to pick my bow back up. When I came back, I set myself some new goals to work towards, including trying field archery for the first time. This new focus gave me the drive to keep learning and I started to enjoy shooting again. Having something to focus on each training session gave me direction again, I was excited to get down to the club each day and I started looking forward to my time behind the bow – the rest is history. So if you’re feeling down and uninspired about your archery shake it up; set a new goal, learn a new skill or simply put yourself out of your comfort zone and find that spark again.