CHARLI LONG February – In archery practice at Benton Middle School, we do multiple drills to ensure we are becoming the best we can be. My favorite exercise is when we are shooting at shorter distances than what is in NASP® tournaments.
In this drill, we shoot at roughly 5, 7, and 8 meters. We make sure to aim at a spot of the target that is not in the middle because we do not want to damage our targets. At shorter distances, your arrows should be in a tighter group if you have a repetitive process and have good form in each shot.
The reason we do this drill is to ensure that we have good form to be able to group the arrows. The tighter the group the better! If you can have a close group at 5 meters, then you can get a group at 10. After we complete the drill we can find out how good our form actually is because we are not focused on hitting the middle every time. Whenever you are not aiming for the middle it is much easier to shoot better because there isn’t as much pressure as I have found out the past year doing this drill. It works with any type of bow as well. If someones arrows are spread out then they know they need to work on something that has to do with their form.
I have found this drill to be really effective at practice for me because I like to know the reason why I am not shooting as good. If all my arrows are suddenly going to the left then I do not know if it is something to do with my form or if I am aiming in the wrong spot. Whenever I do this drill I can figure out if my form isn’t correct, or if I need to adjust my aim-spot.
This drill is also one of my favorites because you can do it with any bow at any target. Before I went into a shoot-off at the NASP® Open Championship last year I did this drill with one of my friends. We shot at a smaller target in order to get in the most practice we could before the shoot-off began. And it must’ve worked because I ended up winning the shoot-off!
~Charli Long is a 2023 student contributor~
