3 ADVANCED Archery Mistakes I Wish I Learned Earlier

My goal of this video is to shorten the learning curve regardless of the level of archer that you are by learning from my mistakes. With that, let's jump in. Mistake number one. This is perhaps one of the biggest factors in accuracy as an archer and bowhunter, but it is also one of the most difficult things to learn. When we are all initially taught how to shoot a bow, we are told to simply put the pins in the middle of the target and pull the trigger. Simple as that, right? Wrong. It seems to make sense, but by practicing only that, we are leading ourselves down a path of anxiety, holding low or off target, and what many refer to as target panic. This is because our body is bracing for impact from the explosion that it feels from our release breaking as our tense muscles relax as the bow goes off. By triggering our shot when only the pin is in the middle, we are training our body to feel this explosion any time our pin is towards the middle. This causes flinching, this causes holding off target, and this causes even worse execution than what we had before. I struggled with this for years from practicing the bad habit of commanding the shot any time the pin hit the middle, giving myself this muscle memory that made it even harder to get away from. Regardless if you've not even had this problem yet, or even if you have, it can really be solved by one main thing. Proper release execution. So what is proper release execution and how do you know you're doing it right? Well from my own personal experience, along with many professional archers and bow hunters that are out there, it really comes down to one thing. A surprise release. Many will argue as a bowhunter, I don't want a surprise release. I want to be in exact control of when I fire my bow. My argument is that if you're doing it correctly, you are in control of when it fires, you just don't know the exact millisecond of when it's going to go off. So how does this work? Well by training yourself to hold the pin in the middle and execute the surprise shot, the pin is always in the middle and your body is learning to not anticipate the explosion of the shot because it doesn't know exactly when it's going to happen. With each shot you are training yourself to gain confidence, hold your pin in the middle, and execute a perfect shot by achieving the surprise release. With all of this said, it is much easier said than done, especially if you have a history of commanding the shot much like I did. All it takes is a willingness to learn, proper instruction, dedication, and discipline. One video would simply not be enough to share all this information needed to help overcome target panic, but we plan to create a course in the future to help you with this. With that said, I will give you the right information to get you on the right path to fix this common problem that every archer faces at some point in their shooting career. From my personal experience, this next part is key. Regardless of the style of release you use, once you've got your pins on target and your aim is complete, the only conscious thing you need to focus on is the movement that causes your release to fire. For a wrist strap, that is pressure pulling straight back on the trigger. For a thumb button, that is pressure building straight back on the trigger. For a hinge, it is only rotation that will cause it to fire. For a resistance release, it is only the physical pressure building against the release handle that will cause it to fire. This can't be a quick movement. It has to be controlled, yet at a continuous speed. You have to be able to feel the movement or feel the pressure building continuously until it fires. For a simple way to achieve this, hang a big target close, like a paper plate or just a big target in general. And when I say close, I mean five feet close. Put your entire sight on the target up close, and once that aim is complete, your only job is to focus on the movement that causes your specific release to fire. That is the only conscious thing you are thinking about. You have to be able to feel the slow and steady increase in pressure in order to give your body feedback to know that you are executing. When you can feel it, it gives you that feedback to know you are executing the release, and it helps you stay in that conscious focus to keep building that pressure, keep building that pressure until your release fires. Using words in my head like pull, pull, pull, keep me in that conscious focus of executing regardless of the situation. And visually, if I imagine seeing myself building pressure as I pull against that trigger and build pressure against that release, it also helps me stay in the moment of executing. I said I wouldn't go too in-depth with this, so if you would like to learn more, please let me know by commenting below, and I would be happy to share more information. If you master release execution, you are well on your way to achieving your maximum potential as an archer and bowhunter. Mistake number two. I see this over and over with some very experienced archers and bowhunters, and embarrassingly enough, this took me years to even figure it out for myself. Once you do figure this out, you will almost instantly see more accuracy in your shooting because more arrows will be hitting the mill. As avid archers and bowhunters, we are constantly tinkering and messing with our setup to achieve the maximum accuracy we can out of our equipment that we have. Sometimes we're not even making the right adjustments, or we're prioritizing the wrong things, so we're not getting the results that desire. This is such a simple and easy mistake to fix that when I say it, you're going to think that you're already doing this, but I really encourage you to put more effort and focus into this because chances are you're like me, and I made this mistake for years before I even realized that I was doing it. When you are sighting in your bow, you must go off of the average. You cannot go off of what feels good or what feels right because what feels good or what feels right might not be the average of where your arrows actually land. What you'll probably find over time as you make this a focus is that you'll realize you are grouping good, but the target or the dot that you're aiming at isn't necessarily being hit. You're always just off just a little bit one way or another, and you're not making the appropriate adjustments to correct it. You get 60 yard group, huh? I really learned this when I started to shoot a lot of indoor target archery as the fresh arrow holes and the fresh target showed me where my real group of arrows were. The shots that felt good that hit the middle might have felt good, and they seem to hit the middle, but if the majority was outside of the middle or on the edge of the middle, then my sight actually might not be sighted in, and those good shots might not actually be good shots. We determine this by averaging our arrows and where they land to determine where we need to adjust our sight to to achieve the maximum accuracy out of our setup. Shooting a fresh paper target will give you history of where your arrows land so that you can make the proper adjustments on your sight so that you can sight in perfectly. By going off of the average, you will ultimately be making your bow more accurate by taking those tight arrow groups that you shoot and moving them so that they're all hitting the middle. One last thing with this mistake as we talk about sighting in and advanced aiming is what do we focus on? The target or the sight? It is commonly taught in the military while shooting a handgun that you focus on your front sight. Although this may be true for shooting a handgun with iron sights, it is not true for shooting a handgun with a red dot just like it's not true for shooting a bow. I'm not saying that everyone has to do this because everybody is different, but try focusing on the target and allowing your pin and sight to slightly become blurry. This will tie back into our first mistake that we covered with release execution as when we are focused on the target, we are less focused on actually aiming and trying to hold the pin on the middle, allowing us to have more conscious focus in our release execution. Even if you're a top-level archer like Levi Morgan or Jesse Broadwater, your pin is always going to move. You have to be able to let it float. I promise you won't be able to hold it any steadier by forcing the pin on the target. On to the third biggest mistake. As passionate archers and bowhunters, we get so in-depth and meticulous to make sure that our setup is perfect by adjusting releases, trying different fletching combinations, different arrow setups, just to make sure everything is perfect. But sometimes we have to take a step back and really realize, are we spending our time and energy focusing on the right things? Don't get me wrong, everything we do to make our arrows more consistent, our bow more forgiving, and our gear more dialed will absolutely make a difference in our downrange accuracy. But sometimes we just have to take a step back and realize if we don't have good form, we don't have good execution, and we don't have as much time behind our bow, none of that stuff is ever really going to matter. A three-fletch or four-fletch left helical versus right helical or bigger Noxette gap or smaller Noxette gap isn't going to make a significant difference if we don't have good form and good execution to begin with. I encourage you all to practice more, focus less on new gear, and instead invest that money and knowledge and wisdom from those you want to learn from. Because there is no piece of gear that will improve your shooting like practice and education will. And that is the biggest lesson of them all. Please help others by sharing your own mistakes in the comments below so that we can all continue to improve as archers and bowhunters. If you found this information useful and you want more resources to help, please visit the link in our description below. Thank you all for watching, and we will see you on the next one.