IMO, anyone who is not interested in the psychological archery probably won't reach their full potential (unless they're just naturally gifted in that area). The AT stuff is interesting, and certainly worth a look for anyone who feels their psychological approach is holding them back, however, I'm not entirely convinced by it, particularly the way in which it's marketed as a panacea, and never EVER suggested as a method which can be self taught (of course not, otherwise why would you pay ?35 an hour to a tutor
) - an interesting article here (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1638964,00.html and the other - rather thin - side of the argument here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1643320,00.html) however - I don't want to get in to an argument as to its benefits, or otherwise - go find out for yourself, and let us know if it works for you!!
Focussing on bad shots, and what created them is IMO, a fairly pointless exercise... why do you want to know what makes a bad shot?? What you really want to know is how to shoot a good shot - what makes up a good shot? How do you replicate a good shot? The time you spend analysing the bad shot is, in my opinion, lost opportunity to spend time replicating the good one.
In terms of making a list of "what could go wrong" - how long do you have?? Of course, archery is the art of repetition, but we are, by nature, imperfect and rarely can conciously repeat exactly the same action twice either for physical reasons or mental reasons, you'll never summarise them all in a list which makes sense to everyone, and has a list of potential solutions beside each common problem.
The real answer, of course, is how to increase your bad shot to good shot ratio. EVERYONE makes mistakes - it's part of what and who we are... the difference is that a beginner might make a mistake on 90% of his/her shots, where a top archer might make a mistake on 5% of his/her shots - the mistakes also get less in severity (simply because the process should become more refined with practice).
And it comes to practice - some say the more we practice good shots, the "easier" they become... I'd suggest that they don't become easier, they just become more frequent, which improves confidence, which enables us to let go of the fears we harbour and make the shot, which has more of a chance of being a good shot... go to step 1... (perhaps the "easy" feeling is a lowering of anxiety rather than some physical ease)
Many problems come from over-thinking the shot, over-feeling the shot - which requires a conscious intervention - all of my best shots have been controlled, but didn't require significant amounts of analytical intervention, and again the best method I know of to avoid over thinking, is to get high-quality practice in an environment where the archer can "lose the fear", i.e. shut out external distractions which otherwise may make him/her anxious about the result (in some ways, this is how blank bale helps - the archery knows that neither the archer nor anyone in their vicinity will criticise, or even consider, their group on a blank bale - but on a target, there is the pressure to perform and produce a successful result).
The more good shots we shoot, the more the mind will understand what a good shot "means" in terms of emotional, physical and psychological content - and this may be different for each individual to some extent, so again it comes down to practice and training exercises, designed to instill in the form that which produces good results. We must be wary though, in that it's possible for the mind to decide a shot was "a good one", just because the arrow landed in the middle - regardless of whether it was actually a good shot or not - on the other hand, a shot which "feels good" might not got in the middle (this is the downside of too much blank bale shooting - it can instill bad form!!)
I think this is such a broad topic that I'd better stop there as I've prattled on long enough :footinmou. The bottom line for me is that most mistakes on the shooting line happen because of a lack of the right volume of the right quality of practice and the right level of feedback.