9 Archery Drills To Hack The Mind

When shooting a bow, your body defaults to what's most familiar. If what's familiar is bad form or lousy shooting, then the goal would be to make what's unfamiliar familiar. This does not happen accidentally. It takes willpower, practice, intentionality, and focus. Today I'm pleased to share with you my favorite drills that have helped me go from really bad at archery to a little bit better. My name is Kramer Ammons, and it's really nice to meet you. We just surpassed a quarter million subscribers. I am very grateful, and I'll do my best to produce soulful content that inspires. In other words, I'm going to do my best to make good vids. Thank you for watching. The ninth drill I'm going to share today is just as boring as the first couple. So if you don't like the first couple ones, you probably won't like the ninth. The first drill is really simple, and it helps you define what a hit is and what a miss is. You see the term sin comes from archery. It means missing the mark. But for most of us, we're looking at a range, maybe a three-inch group, a five-inch group. We want to define that, and that'll help us know if we're improving or not. So here's the drill. I like to pin a paper plate or a cup or something like that to the target. Next I do this drill two different ways, depending on if I'm shooting instinctively or gap. If I'm shooting instinctively, I'm going to start at five yards, and I'm going to get three shots inside my target area. It could be a two-inch area, or it could be a nine-inch area. It doesn't matter. But once I get those three shots in a row in that area, I'll take a step back literally one yard and just do it again. And every time I get in that area, I'll scoot back one more yard. Now, you can either not advance until you get three in a row, or if you want to be really particular, which I like to do, once I miss, I have to go to the very beginning and start over. This is a great way to instinctively start learning your distances. But for gap, I don't move per yard. But I generally like to expand it a little bit, and I'll maybe do every three yards. So for example, I may start at 10 yards, and once I get three in the plate in a row, I'll scoot back to 13, 16, and so on. The other thing you can do is match up the yardages to the gap or the distance of your tournaments or to your hunting distances, whatever it is. But this helps you define a hit or a miss. And it also shows you how consistent you are. I find this practice method being great to measure my improvement over a period of time. You can do this drill today, and then practice for a month, and do it again at the end of the month, and see how you improve. The next drill is spot shooting. This is a great one because you can do it with your target at home. The idea of this drill is to increase your focus. How are you going to do this? Well, you're never going to aim at the same spot twice. It gets real easy and repetitive to just hit the middle of the target every single time. But if I'm shooting four arrows, let's hit each dot once. It's harder for me mentally to hit each dot once than it is to hit the middle four times in a row. Why? Well, your sight picture is changing slightly. If you're shooting gap, then you go from moving to aiming like here, to here, to here, to down here. Or if you're shooting instinctively, your sight picture still changes. It doesn't matter what target you use, you can do this method of spot shooting. This next one I came up with, I call it the rule of doubles. This one expands your capacity so that when you come back down to where you want to be good, it almost seems easy. Rule of doubles. Be able to draw twice the draw weight that you want to shoot with. Now I'm not promoting injury and I'm not saying throw your shoulder out every time I say anything about heavy draw. Someone tells me I'm going to throw my shoulder out. I'm not saying to do that. I'm saying if you can comfortably pull back a 60 pound traditional bow, maybe you should be shooting a 30 pound bow. It's more an idea than a hard rule. Just think of it this way. Would you be better off shooting a 50 pound bow if you could pull a 100 pound bow or if your max pull was a 60 pound bow? You'll be better off with the strength to pull a 100 and then shooting a 50. The reason is, if this is your max strength, the closer you get to your max strength, the harder it's going to be to be steady. And the less steady you are, you'll miss more. Rule of doubles part two. Get consistent at double the distance you want to be accurate at. And you don't even have to get consistent, but if you practice at that distance, when you move shorter, it seems easier. It's a psychological trick. For example, I max out around 40 yards with shooting traditional, but I like to practice up to 80 because at 80 yards, every little small negative tweak in my form, you see the visual massive impact on where the arrow lands. So as I start to dial in those little things at 80 yards and at 80 yards, maybe I'm in a two foot group, which is pretty good. Then at 40, my group starts to shrink because I've expanded my mind. And then when I bring it back 20 yards, it looks like a chip shot. There's this idea of blind bale or blank bale shooting. The idea is to focus on your form without aiming. You step up about two or three yards from a target, you can close your eyes, you can leave them open, but you're shooting at the target without aiming at the target and you're focusing on some type of form correction. This one has a couple of opinions. I can just share my experience. My experience is that I actually can build muscle memory through this drill. Some people say your mind's in a completely different place when you're doing this drill than when you're shooting a real shot. So it actually does no benefit to you when you're shooting. Maybe that's for them. For me, I think it actually has helped me out quite a bit. And here's my reasoning. Your body wants to do what's most familiar and what's most natural in life and habits and everything. And the same thing's true with archery. You're going to default to what's most natural and what's most comfortable. And what's most comfortable is what you're used to doing the most. But if you can use your focus and intentionality and repetition to make a new feeling what's familiar when you scoot back away from the target and start to shoot at a further distance, you have a new familiar. And you can start implementing that subconsciously because you practiced it so much. You practiced the unfamiliar so much that it became the familiar. And that's how I use this drill. For example, I've used this drill to help overcome plucking the bowstring. Where did my plucking the bowstring come from? Well, it was kind of a lack of back tension probably. Anyway, for me, what I think of is I need to actually get my elbow in line or my whole skeletal systems in line with the target down the arrow. Once I do that, when my fingers release, it naturally has a good release. But if I don't get all the way back in line, I'm going to pluck the string. So for me, and maybe I'm just weird like this, I'm going to come up here, get in line, do my shot. Now I have done that a thousand times before going back to shoot a normal shot. Now because I've done a thousand proper repetitions of the back tension, is it more likely now that I'm going to have proper back tension rather than stopping short and plucking the string? I think it's more likely. And in my experience, it helps. Maybe it'll help you. I think the reason blind bail doesn't work for some people is because they do 10 or 15 shots and assume something's going to change. In my experience, it takes a lot of repetition for a habit to change, a muscle to grow, something different to happen in your shot. It can be useful, but it's a lot of work. Growing up, I played sports and my dad would always tell me, practice like you play. And it's kind of this cliche thing, but there's a lot of truth to that. And when I relate that to archery, if you shoot tournaments, if you go hunting, whatever your competition is, and there doesn't have to be a competition, by the way, if you want to go out slinging arrows and you don't care where you hit, we're all for that. I'm all for that as well. But if you are competitive and like a challenge like me, how can you practice like you play? And to me, that means adding pressure or adding stress. And one easy way to do this is to add physical stress. So do some pushups and then shoot or do a sprint and then shoot. And these drills maybe aren't going to be as real enough scenario as if there's a bunch of people watching you under pressure or you're in the stand and you feel the pressure in the woods. That could be different. But what is relatable is that you're having different things try to pull your focus away from the task at hand. That's what converts. And when you're physically tired, your focus is more likely to falter. And so by purposefully putting yourself into the stress and then shooting, you can increase your focus and mental toughness. And I find these type of drills really useful. Plus they're kind of fun. Plus it kind of feels weird and looks weird. And I feel kind of weird and look kind of weird. So this next one is another way to add stress or intensity to each individual shot. Because when you're taking an important shot, it's only one shot that really matters, which is the shot at hand. So one of my very favorite things to do is to go to an archery range or a 3D range with a friend and then one shot versus one shot. Imagine walking an entire 3D archery course and only allowing yourself one shot per target. That's how good you are. One shot per target. This adds the stress. This adds the intensity on each shot. And it makes you care more about that shot. And it teaches you how to think properly under stress. It looks weird, but I've done it before. Standing at a line on an archery range with other people shooting. I have four arrows in my quiver or whatever. I take one shot. I'll just set the bow down. I'll wait three minutes until everyone's done shooting. Whatever it is, we'll all walk out. I'll get my one arrow. I'll walk back. Okay, I got one shot for the next five minutes. How am I going to do this? What's my thought process? And that pressure you put on yourself, I think, makes you a lot better. Well, I know it makes me a lot better. This next one's kind of a drill, but kind of also like a check to see if you're doing something right. And I got this from Tom Clumb. And the concept is that to know if you're having proper back tension is to see on your release. If your elbow's extending further back that way, then you probably don't have proper back tension. But if you have proper back tension, you're already pretty much all the way extended. So when you release, your elbow goes behind you. If that's the case, you've got proper back tension. So how do we test this? One idea is to shoot right up next to a wall so your elbow's against the wall. And then if you hit the wall, you know you have a bad release. But if your elbow slides this way, you have a good tension. Not release. You have good tension if your elbow slides that way. If it hits the wall, you have bad tension. It works, but I find I get a little trigger shy when I get that close to a wall. So I recommend having something behind you that you can hit without causing you pain. So when I'm doing this drill, I like to rig up something like this. I have just an arrow hanging from a stand. You can find some way to rig it up. But now, when I shoot bad form, I'm going to feel the arrow right there, but it's not going to hurt my elbow. So then I'm going to feel more confident standing close to it, and it'll give me a good quick feedback without hitting the funny bone. The other thing you can do is utilize your phone, film yourself in slow motion, and that helps a lot, especially when you know what to look at, like where your elbow's going. The next one is to count and set new personal records. Set some new PRs. In other words, record where you are. Have different tests to know how good you're shooting. Here's a good one I like to do. Let's say I'm going to practice, and let's say I practice four days a week. On each one of those days, I'll take 10 warm-up shots, and then shot 10 through 15, I'll shoot on a target, and I'll track my shots. And I'll do this each day of the week. And then I'll average my score for those four days that week. I'll write that down in my notes in my phone or something, and then I'll do that the first week of each month. And since we're extending over four days, and we're getting an average, we get to see our trend, whether we're getting better or worse. A wise man once said, only what's measured can be improved. Here's idea number two for measuring shots. Create yourself a specific dimensional target. It could be 2 inches, it could be 3 inches, it could be 1 inch. It doesn't matter. Maybe it's 8 inches of a circle. Whatever your goal target size is, nail that down. And then, make 10 in a row from that area. Can you do that consistently? Can you make just 10 in a row? Could you make 100 in a row? At 15 yards, how many times can you hit in that circle? At 20 yards, are you 6 out of 10 person, or are you 9 out of 10 person? Most of us believe we're better than we are, and would think, oh, I could easily hit 8 out of 10 at 15 or 20 yards inside my 4 inch circle. Prove it. Not to me. Go prove it to yourself. Be confident in it. And know by testing and recording how good you're getting. Our emotions play with us a lot, especially day to day. And if you track things over a period of time, and then retrack with the same testing results later on, you can know if what you're doing is working and you're getting better, or if not. I think most people will overlook this one right here, but if you don't, it'll be very beneficial. Keep a band in your kit. Here's why. I recommend a 20 pound band. Pull it 15 times for warm up. Grab your bow. Pull it 15 times for warm up. Grab the band. Place it over the bow. Make sure it's on the riser. Pull it 15 times for warm up. Now my muscles are warm, and I've just pulled my bow 20 pounds heavier than my bow actually is 15 times. So when I step up for that first shot, now my bow feels really light to me. And then I tend to shoot better. I don't know if this is just a psychological trick, I mean, don't baseball players do something like that? Maybe I get better just because I'm stretching and I'm warm. I think our mind is anchored to the higher draw weight, and then when we reduce it down, it just feels easier to pull. One of these bands is like $3 or $5. It folds up to nothing, and you can easily keep this in your quiver or somewhere like that. But I find it very useful, especially before I shoot to warm up. Whether the band is placebo or a psychological trick, or maybe it just warms up my muscles, I'll take the benefit of shooting better if I can get it. I don't think you should apply all these drills at once. I think you should pick one and focus in on it, and that'll help you get better probably the quickest. From my experience, these have worked out great, so stay shadowproof, my friends. Thank you for sticking with me. If you want to see another video, stick around. My wife's calling me. I'll see you on the next video. Hey, how's it going? All right. What time is it? 8.30? Okay, I'll come home soon.