"The Mental Side" By Cara Kelly
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Cara’s top product picks from Last Chance Archery…
Let’s talk about the mental side of the game. I’m often told you look so intense out there while competing. Well, honestly, I’m focused on the process and task at hand. What is “the process,” you may ask? We are going to dive into what it means to have confidence in your process and how that can make you successful in any venue you compete in.
I often share with my students, practice with a purpose. I used to be the world's worst practice performer. I would show up and practice prior to leaving for an event and often say to myself, “I hope I got all the bad shots out now.” I was not focused on the process for my practice. It was about going out and getting an arrow count in, judging as many targets as possible and crossing off the, “I practiced today box.” Does this sound familiar to anyone? When I turned professional at the age of 18 I quickly realized that everyone in the class was incredibly good and if I wanted to take my game to the next level it would require a commitment to practice in a manner that I had never prepared for.
When you take to the range today, before you start your practice session, ask yourself, “What is it that I want to accomplish today?” The answer is one thing, not ten things. One thing that you can focus soley on perfecting. Become your own focused coach. Tell yourself today I want to focus on my aim, or I want to soley focus on shot execution. It is helpful to take daily notes on what you focused on and what you accomplished that day in practice. The next step is to dictate what you want to focus on for your next practice session; this keeps you accountable and allows you to build upon what you have identified as an area to be improved upon. This type of practice structure is what separates the good from the best. As you perfect your practice and you see improvements in your scores and game, what comes with that, confidence.
Confidence in archery is one thing that many do not talk about all that often. Confidence is believing you are capable of being the best. In competition, it is not the time to doubt your abilities. It is the time to take all that confidence you built in your practice routine and allow it to shine through. It is a time to believe in yourself, because if you don’t believe in yourself no one else will. Archery is an individualized sport; you determine your own destiny, and it is all too often that I walk around a vendor area at a tournament and hear people cutting down their performances. It is not the time, nor the place. Build yourself up in competition and at events. Replay the positive, killer shots, not the negative ones, we all have them, but it’s how we recover from them that makes champions.
One thing I always do before leaving for a big event is trust that my equipment is 100% ready by doing a once over with Last Chance Archery equipment. This puts extra confidence in my mind to know that my equipment is ready, and I can in turn put it right out of mind at the event. One less thing to think about or doubt at a tournament is the key to having confidence.
The moral of the story is to establish a process to your practice routine. A process that you go through every time you pick up your bow to prepare for the next shot. Write down that process, memorize it, prepare yourself mentally and build your confidence in your abilities. The one thing that has kept me hungry as a competitive archer all these years, is the fact that I’m never done learning. Even if you Win an event there are things that can be added into a practice routine to build your confidence and give you that mental edge when you need it the most.
