We had our first tournament yesterday. We've done a couple of "postals" and done okay, plenty of club nights and done okay but the competition yesterday was rather large wake up call; the sort that either encourages to up my game or puts me right off.
So many hours, a bit of shoulder aches, some issues with anchor point (I think my wrist release might have stretched - it's moved back to behind my neck!!) and a bit of digging deep, I ended up with a Hereford score of 1101. 71 golds, 143 hits (1 miss). Now in isolation that might have been quite good but compared to the others, I was quite simply, pants. 6th out of 6. First time I've ever come last in anything! I did one "6 in the gold" at 60 yards (once, several 5 golds) and several at 50 but it was not nearly enough - some errant "twitch" releases and a general lack of consistency just killed the score.
The high score was 1243, 5th was about 40 points ahead of me. I managed to "beat" a couple of female compounders but that was it.
My poor son (8) shot a Bristol IV and was so tired, he was in tears at one point - he got a medal (being the only one of his age that shot that round) but it was pretty hard on him too. And 40 yards is a long way for a little one!
So do we seek more coaching, should I change to a more solid release (thumb trigger maybe), should we practise more or something else?
It felt like we were progressing well - we started in February. Maybe expectations are too high? Anyway a bit of a knock back TBH.
I should probably add that archery is just a fun thing to do for us - we do a load of other stuff (running, surfing, karate, etc) so it'll never be "our lives" but it's nice to be decent at it.
So many hours, a bit of shoulder aches, some issues with anchor point (I think my wrist release might have stretched - it's moved back to behind my neck!!) and a bit of digging deep, I ended up with a Hereford score of 1101. 71 golds, 143 hits (1 miss). Now in isolation that might have been quite good but compared to the others, I was quite simply, pants. 6th out of 6. First time I've ever come last in anything! I did one "6 in the gold" at 60 yards (once, several 5 golds) and several at 50 but it was not nearly enough - some errant "twitch" releases and a general lack of consistency just killed the score.
The high score was 1243, 5th was about 40 points ahead of me. I managed to "beat" a couple of female compounders but that was it.
My poor son (8) shot a Bristol IV and was so tired, he was in tears at one point - he got a medal (being the only one of his age that shot that round) but it was pretty hard on him too. And 40 yards is a long way for a little one!
So do we seek more coaching, should I change to a more solid release (thumb trigger maybe), should we practise more or something else?
It felt like we were progressing well - we started in February. Maybe expectations are too high? Anyway a bit of a knock back TBH.
I should probably add that archery is just a fun thing to do for us - we do a load of other stuff (running, surfing, karate, etc) so it'll never be "our lives" but it's nice to be decent at it.