What to do when “oops” happens

By Joe Pallansch  NFAA Pro

 So there you are on your league night or at a tournament, you are shooting good and you are about halfway done with your round, when all of a sudden you have an arrow leave your bow without your permission. Maybe it was because you were daydreaming at full draw or maybe it was because you dropped your arm but whatever the reason you have just shot a bad shot. What you do next is very important in determining how you will finish your round.

 If you do the wrong thing or things more than likely you will have a round that is not so great and probably not very fun to finish. Here are a few examples of the wrong things to do, the wrong thing to do is lose your temper, the wrong thing to do is to let that bad shot affect your next shot, the wrong thing to do is to give up.

 So what are the right things to do? Well to start with keep a positive attitude, if you are wearing binoculars look at your arrow to see were it is exactly, it may be closer than you think. The next part is the tricky part, no matter were your arrow is, you have to move on. Now, in order to move on and not have your last shot affect your next, you must let go of all of the emotions you are feeling about making a bad shot. What are those emotions? Anger, disappointment, feeling like you let yourself (and the people that helped you get were you are) down.

 Moving on, really starts well before you even get to the range. If you have a plan you will be able to react the right way when “oops” happens. I like to envision every possible scenario before it occurs so that I will be able to deal with it the right way. I know that no one likes to think about bad things happening and if you dwell on bad things it just reinforces them, but you do need to be prepared for when they happen. When I am thinking about an upcoming tournament I like to envision myself shooting well and with ease and everything is going great, but I have a simple back up plan for when things start to get tough. If I have an arrow that was tough the first thing I remind myself is that each arrow needs to be shot one at a time, the second thing that I do after a bad shot is to look away from the target and take two breathes I count them to myself, one….two. I do that as a way of letting go of all of the emotions I was feeling about the previous shot. It is just my way of letting go of those emotions. I do something similar when I let down from full draw, I always unhook my release so that I have a fresh start, thereby letting go of the reason that I let down from full draw.

 My point is that you need to have closure for your negative emotions so that you can move on and not adversely affect the rest of your round. I am sure there are a million ways to do this, these are just a few of mine.