By Mark V. Lonsdale
Continuing on from the previous post on setting goals for beginners, the next step is to track progress. With decades as a high performance athlete and coach, I’m a firm believer in having a written training program and a log to track progress. In the past, this was a hand written ledger, but now it can be done on the computer with the added advantage of being able to add images. Most athletes and coaches make regular use of their smart phones to both video form and photograph targets (in addition to a plethora of social media posts).
The importance of keeping a training log is to be able to track not only the focus of each training session, but to also track consistency. It is too easy to shoot a couple of Xs or 11s and call it good, but the champion is the individual who can do this on a regular basis with a high percentage of hit in the gold.
The following images are an example of a photo essay tracking improvement in training for barebow competition.
Finally, the word of the day is “consistency.” In other words, if you shoot ten sets of 3 arrows, how many sets were all in the gold? Even the top archers occasionally throw a red or a blue, but the goal is to self-analyze that shot and understand why that happened.
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