Shoot BETTER and score HIGHER with SIMPLE steps! Lancaster Archery Classic 2026 preparations!

Hi, I'm Nate. This is Average Jack Archery Pro Shop and Range here in Phillipsburg, PA and AverageJackArchery.com where $99 and up gets you free shipping to the lower 48, including a lot of the stuff I'm going to talk about today. Today I want to talk about shooting indoor. The Lancaster Archery Classic has just kicked off. Obviously I'm filming this in the past, continuity errors, but I'm warming up here to go shoot on Friday at 430. If you do watch the live stream, look for my big dumb face and a bright blue elite jersey. You'll probably see me out there somehow trying to avoid shooting nines. I want to go over my setup, but also more importantly, my shot process for shooting indoor because if you're shooting leagues or if you look at the Lancaster Archery Classic or Vegas or anything else like that, man, I think I can do that and then you go try Vegas face. I got some tips for you to hopefully settle your pin flow a little bit, just get better at shooting indoor. It is unfortunately my best of the three major parts of archery, which is indoor, 3D and field. I don't do much field. I really love 3D, but I'm not as good as I would like, but indoor has been my game for several, several years. I want to talk about the ups and downs that I've had with it and things I've learned along the way. But first and foremost, my setup. This is an Elite Exalt LD. It's a 35 inch axle to axle bow. I shoot around 65 pounds and 31 and three quarter inches of draw length. I shoot a Hamsky Everest. I remove the cage, kind of cut the launcher blade down so it's more like a target rest. CBE axis sight with the VTX 41 millimeter scope. I like that larger scope for both indoors and out. I have a six power lens in there and a 19 thou fiber. I usually run a 10 or 15 thou fiber, although this fiber in the VTX lens is looking super crisp and I've been really, really enjoying it. Shooting a Hamsky peep, I shoot with no aperture whatsoever. Nice big hole. I like to shoot the same thing both indoors and out. As an amateur, it just works for me, but the little amount of practice I get to have with both. And so I like a lot of light regardless of the situation because you can shoot in some absolute dungeons in your local league. So this is the inside peep open wide up. I have no clarifier in here. So my target is just a blur of color downrange, but I still see all the circles. I just can't see rings and I have less chance of getting sucked into holes. When I run like an A, if I'm outdoors and I run for 3D, I'll run an A, maybe an A plus clarifier depending on how it looks with my glasses. I cannot shoot without my glasses on. I have a really bad astigmatism in my right eye and my pin just flares like a sun flare. It's just really bad. But for indoor, I don't need to see little tiny 12 piece rings or 50 cent piece, 12 rings on an ASA target or an IBO target. And so I shoot without a clarifier and it just allows me to settle on looking at putting my pin in the middle of the colors instead of getting sucked into a hole. Get a nice 27 hole in the target, you'll get sucked into it pretty quick. I shoot a 36 inch B Stinger Premier Bar out front. I like the Hamsky disconnect weights, the magnetic ones works really well. I shoot seven out the front. This bar is insane. With the weights, the quick disconnect and 36 inches, this is close to almost a 40 inch bar. But it's really nice because I'm 6 foot 4 and so when I put my bow down, it allows me to rest on it naturally. If I ran a 30 inch stabilizer, I was down a little too far and I didn't find it comfortable. So I'm able to run a longer bar with less weight. Feels really good. I have a total of 8, 16, 18 ounces on the back. So I'm doing about a 7 to whatever, 16, what did I say, 7 to 18. So it's about a 1 to 2 and a half ratio, somewhere in there. I like to live between a 1 to 2 weight ratio or a 1 to 3. That's true both indoors and out. In the past, I've run a V-bar when I shot in the hunter class and then when I started in open. But I just have found that this just works out just fine with just one back bar. It's a 15 inch back bar CBE Torx out the back. What else am I doing with this bow? I'm shooting with the smooth mods, no limb stops. Shooting at around 82 to 85% let off, I actually like a little bit higher let off than most do for targeting. I hear a lot of guys talk about 70, 75%. That's personally not for me. I really like the back wall feel of this at a little bit of a higher let off. I'm shooting the Ultra Premier 27s. I shoot the same air both indoors and out. This bow, when it's cranked up to 70 pounds and not around 65 for indoor, it's going about 295 feet a second with this arrow. It's going around 288, 289 right now. Shooting 3 inch Vayntek veins because my customers don't buy them, so I shoot them. Although, actually, I've got a lot of people shooting parabolic veins this year. I've got them on a left helical. I've got the gold tip aculite knock. I've got a 150 ultra point up front. These arrows tune really well. They fly really great. I get a lot of forgiveness out of them both indoors and out. I think that's all I got here on the bow. I'm shooting an Elevation Quiver, a Vortex Binos, and I'm shooting a Scott. I've been beaten to absolute ... I mean, look at how tarnished this thing is. I've been shooting this Scott Apex release now for several years, both indoors and out. Just get a nice, good heavyweight coated, stainless coated brass feel out of that. Let's go downstairs. Am I in frame? I look like I'm in frame. Few rules about indoor. Rule number one, I'm not an arrow twirler. I also forgot to mention I'm shooting an E-Tac light kit. Love the E-Tac. I paid full price for this sucker. Bought it right off of Lancaster, because yes, even though I'm a shop owner, I still use Lancaster. I think that's three X's down there. That'd be wild. It is. It is three X's down here. Holy smokes. And no question about them either. So I have three big rules when it comes to indoor. One, repeat, repeat, repeat. Two, gravity always wins. And three, there's no need to hold onto it. Just let down. I promise. So rule number one, repeat, repeat, repeat. When I go into a competition or even when I'm practicing, I do everything the same as much as I possibly can. Obviously, now I'm taking a break out of my complete routine to explain this, but I pull the arrow out the same. I don't twirl it. It pulls out. Throw it in here. My feet are set exactly the same. I'm not like here, and then, okay, I've got to reshuffle. Usually I knock the arrow first. I hold it. I have a towel over here on my left hip. Use that to dry my hand off, because yeah, I get sweaty when I'm nervous. Pull this up. Throw it in my hip. Click this in here. Set my right shoulder. Set my grip. And then I'm into drawing. And then drawing. I want the drawing to be the same speed every single time as much as possible. What happens is when you do the same thing over and over and over again, you know immediately when something's out of whack, when something is done differently. And so if you can do something the same every single time in practice, when you go into the range, and I do this when I go into the practice range. So at Lancaster, in Vegas, your elbow to eyebrow, if you're not used to shooting belly to back to people, it can be really daunting. And so I don't mind, when I'm in the practice range, being right up next to people, being sandwiched right in there, because I want that initial experience when I'm warming up. I don't, you know, as much as nice as it is to stand here right now in my own range, completely alone, not indicative of what I'm about to do. The follow through, you want it to all be the same. And so whether or not it's accurate or not, you want to find just a routine. Doesn't matter what the routine is, as long as you have a routine. If you're doing something different every single time, if you're knocking something up something differently, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'll go as far as to say the clothing that I'm wearing. So I like to wear a type of boot, right? I like to wear, I don't even care if they're steel toes. I didn't care if they're my hunting Kenetrex. I want to wear something that I'm always wearing. I'm not going to practice in hey dudes, and then go compete, you know, in flip flops or vice versa. You know, maybe the pros can, but as an amateur, I find it's not repeatable. It's not consistent. And I just like having a stiff bottom, ankle support footwear when I'm shooting indoors because I just feel, and outdoors too, I really don't like shooting with no ankle support. I got a really bum right ankle. And so when you're on your feet all day, particularly when you go to something like Lancaster or Vegas where, you know, you could be on your feet for three, four, five hours at a clip, sitting down periodically, having some sort of ankle support for me really, really works. Really feels good. Again, it feels just repeatable and comfortable. So same thing's true of like shooting in a hoodie. I don't like shooting in a hoodie, but I'm not going to come in here and shoot in my shooter jersey. But when I do shoot indoors, I always wear some sort of like thin base layer. So I wear like the Huntworth Casper base layer. It's a really nice, warm, but not too warm, close fitting, breathable base layer. And that just covers my arms and my chest. It just feels comfortable underneath my jersey. And it's that way if a building has weird temperature fluctuations, stuff like that. Oh, that one a little bit too long. We'll get to that. But yeah, just finding things that are repeatable. Don't do different things. And just in your local league, when you're practicing at home, even if you're not shooting indoor, you can do that at home practicing for hunting because your brain's going to take over. If your body does the same thing over and over and over and over again, when you go to do that skill, your body's just going to be like, yeah, that's what we're doing. Stuff as simple as like when I hit full draw, I exhale. Like I kind of like already just naturally in the middle of my breath. And then when I hit full draw, I exhale. And then inhale as I'm coming into anchor. And that allows me to have a nice fresh breath and I do that every single time. And I notice the times where I don't do that, the shot breaks down because my body's like, this is different. Five alarm fire. If you want to see somebody who does the same thing every single time, like every single time, go watch Michael Brayden. Michael Brayden, inarguably, Michael Brayden and Dan McCarthy, they have two of the most distinct get ready into the shots that I've ever seen. Go watch them in the ASA shoot downs here on YouTube. Michael shoots in the senior pro and Dan McCarthy shoots in the open pro. Just Dan McCarthy has this thing where he comes to full draw and then he literally looks over here and then comes into his peep every single time. Michael Brayden comes back and he does this one, two, three, every single time, every single arrow. It is so repeatable and they're incredibly accurate. There's three more X's. Fantastic. The same thing goes for warming up. Like don't shoot three arrows to warm up one day and 12 arrows the next day or 600 arrows, whatever the number is. Try to stick to the same thing, right? Try to stick to the same pacing. I know at Lancaster, now obviously, you know, it's the week of Lancaster now, so it's a little bit late, but the week of Lancaster, I'm going to be spending five, six minutes in between ends. It takes two minutes to shoot the arrows and then 10 minutes of farting around. So get used to it, right? So here I am, you know, talking to the camera, right? This is obviously different. Someone is calling me. What's up? Rule number two, gravity always wins. So this has to deal again with kind of going back to number one with repeat, but also has to go with the shot sequence. So when you are shooting, there is never, in my opinion, any incentive to just get on target and then start fussing around. I am always above the target. So I'm just going to greatly exaggerate this for the sake of this. So here I am, I'm way above target, right? I'm nowhere near it, right? I'm still nowhere near it. I'm still coming in, I'm still nowhere near it, nowhere near it, now I'm on target, okay? The concept being, if I'm going to come down, gravity is always going to come down. Never once have I been like, wow, I feel like I just keep blowing it out the top, right? Unless you're doing drive-bys, which you're like holding underneath and you throw it up and you try to squeeze the trigger at the same time, simultaneously, right? Because if I find that I get right on target, then I get in and then I start squeezing, I'm losing. I'm losing the gravity. It doesn't matter if I'm shooting a hunting bow, target bow, indoors or out. I want to come back to full draw, I'm still, now I'm not 18 feet above the target, but I'm above the target. Still not on, still not on, still not on, still not on, still not on, okay? The concept, and I think I got a half-shaft X and an inside-out X down there. The concept being that by the time I'm ready to start squeezing, I'm just about to get into what I'm trying to hit. I've spent years and years and years lollipopping, and not from target pinning, but because my brain, I grew up learning to shoot iron sight firearms. That's how I competed. I competed in shooting iron sight firearms when I was a kid, you know, doing 4H and stuff. Did very, very well. I was trained to lollipop, so I actually can see what I'm trying to hit, but my iron sights are underneath it. Maybe they're half underneath it or all the way underneath it, depending on my instructor at the time. When I came to archery, I was doing the exact same thing. I know if I want to hit that deer in the lower third of the heart, I'm almost to the belly line, right? Because I know that's what I'm trying to hit. I'm actually looking at what I'm trying to hit, and my pin is kind of tertiary. When it comes to indoor, though, you will give yourself target panic. So, you will just sit there, and in my case, I'm like right here, just constantly dip-banging, right? So, I get these big swells out the bottom, and I still have dip-bangs from time to time. Do not get me wrong. But I've just noticed in the past couple of years where my indoor game has really excelled, I was only on target there for maybe three seconds at the most. Two and a half, three seconds. And it's either a half shaft X or maybe just out into the 10. I'm not saying that I'm perfect, but I've found that that, to be for an amateur, to be a really successful thing. Don't let gravity win. Instead, focus on letting gravity be your friend where you are, you know, you're not sky-drawn, okay? But you are drawing above the target, and you're still settling as the bow is moving. I also don't want to have a point where I just like stop moving, right? I kind of want to always be moving, moving, moving, moving. Okay, I'm in the center, and I'm squeezing, and I'm pulling, I'm floating, poof. I can hold the bow upright for, what, three to five seconds before it really starts to break down. That's rule number three. We'll get there. But if I'm on the move, right, you ever notice when you're like, if you do run, or if you walk, or whatever you're doing, or if you're working, right, you're doing some sort of manual labor, right? You're cutting the grass, or you're hauling brush, or whatever, or you're painting, anything, really. If you just keep doing it, you can just keep doing it. But the moment you sit down to rest, you're cooked, right? It feels like you just, you couldn't go another step, but when you were working, you were like, okay, I still feel pretty good, like I can keep doing it. That's my mentality when it comes to shooting a bow. If I'm still moving, I'm not even where I want to be yet, if I'm still moving, I'm fine, right? Then, okay, now I'm here, now I've got to focus for like three to five seconds, and I'm squeezing, squeezing, and I'm just accepting my float. I also find that if I come in from movement into the center of the target, or into the 12 ring or 11 ring on an IBO target, I have a lot less pin float. It's a lot less jittery. If I go here, okay, I'm in the target now, I'm already on target now, and my pin starts shaking. Instead of my pin kind of looping in, and then it's looping, it's still looping, it's still looping, and then the shot's able to break. I'm not saying you need to shoot fast, I'm not saying you need to punch it, I'm not saying you need to do a drive-by, but I am saying that moving into the target, and that time that you are completely ready, again, repeatability, right? From the time you're completely ready, you're not on target until you are ready to execute. Instead of being on target, then fussing around with everything, and then executing. I just find it's way less accurate. And survey says, three X's. I'll be darned. Rule number three, just let down. There's no winners and losers for those who let down. Now, we do have a joke here at the shop. We have a Kelly Weathersby, who shoots in our store, in our open division league. He had a quote, famously, after he won Lancaster, I'll black out before I let down. So, we always joke about that, but there is real truth to letting down. Just don't shoot a crap shot. If the shot is crap, that cycle in the beginning, right, those repeat, repeat, repeat, is off. You go way past the target, and now you're fighting to come up. Just let down. Just quit. Just quit on the arrow. It's fine. There's no sense in like, I'm going to save it, right? You don't get a gold medal for saving the shot, right? So for example here, if I come up on target, and I do something like this, and I'm coming in, everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's, whoa, just forget what I'm doing. Just let it down. I got all kinds of time. Got all kinds of time. Reset. Your shoulder's now been thrown out of alignment. Your body's been thrown out of alignment. Your eyes are no longer thinking about your routine. Your head's now, what the heck was I doing over there? And that's when you shank bad shots, okay? So recovery, repeat, and there's an X, okay? That is so important to me now. I did not think about how important it was that it doesn't matter like, okay, I'm not aiming right, or I'm shaking too much. Is anything thrown out of whack? If it's thrown out of whack, just don't do it. So that will then teach you, as someone who's had time run out of him at national events. A couple years ago at Lancaster, I ran out of time on my last arrow. There went 11 points down the drain. But if you get into, again, getting into that routine, same thing with 3D, same thing with 3D. You get into the routine, you get into it. If it's not immediate, then get out of it. You have two minutes to shoot three arrows. We all can do it. It's better to do your routine quickly than to do your routine poorly. Oh, that one almost a little too long. Started to kind of break down, get the jitters instead of it being looping, it was the jitters. I think I have it right side. Might be an X, but it might just be a three-quarter shaft 10 there. Target's pretty chewed up. But now, we have to hang a new target, see what happens. But anyway, my camera's running out of battery, I'm going to get this shot so I can go home and have dinner with my family. If you see me at Lancaster, please say hello. Love meeting new people, love meeting friendly faces. If you are shooting at Lancaster, good luck to you. Hope to see you down there. Practice these things if you're brand new to the sport of indoor. And I know most of you are like, well, he's not a pro. What does he know? That's true. I'm not a pro. I'm just a guy with a bow, maybe even average. But if these do help you, do leave a comment down below. If they're brand new to you and you have other questions about shooting indoor, just shooting competitively in general, feel free to come into the shop, 21 North Front Street in Phillipsburg, PA. Happy to help you out with all of your target archery and, of course, your bow hunting needs because we do panic in the woods too. Maybe a little bit worse and there's no audience watching there either. If you need to, averageagarchery.com orders $99 and up, get free shipping to lower 48. This is going to run out of battery, so I'm just going to time lapse the rest of this and I hope you have a great day. Not my normal outro, but we're going to do it.