Back from the World Archery Championship I came hyped. Willing to work harder and better than ever, with the new knowledge attained from the competition and from watching absolutely amazing archers perform on the big stage I was more confident than ever. Having the experience of shooting with the best of the best doesn't only give one confidence but it also gives knowledge of the sport, in such a technical sport like Archery where details do matter quite a lot you can learn a lot of things by being very observant. I always though I have good analytical skills, having a camera that can record with very high resolution doesn't hurt either, so what I did was very simple, I approached some of the best archers (tried to approach archers with very good skills, South Koreans are the best at that so yes a lot of S. Korean archers) asked them if I could record their shooting style and when I came back I started to study what it is that they are doing which makes them better than the rest of the world.
Right after the competition I also got a gift from my coach, the book of one of the best archery coaches in the world Kim, Hyung Tak Archery. This book is pure gold, it has the best explanations about the technique, the best explanations about possible mistakes (which I was doing loads of back at the time) and the best solutions to some of the mistakes on the shooting form and technique. Being armed with this new knowledge I knew that it was only a matter of trying, putting time into it and working as hard as I possibly could until I started improving my shooting.
With time you figure out things, among the first things I started to do right after I came back was to create a training plan. Keep in mind, this wasn't done by some highly paid professionals, this plan was create by my coach and myself. Both of us were learning a lot of things daily and this training plan helped smooth things and made tracking the results easier. When you start training according to a prepared plan you have some advantages, among the better ones for myself I would say it was that I had to do things according to a schedule (I am kinda lazy sometimes, so I would from time to time skip some training sessions or just wouldn't prepare as much as I could) which pushed me.
The training plan:
As I said earlier this wasn't a plan conducted by field professionals but still it was rather well constructed training plan, I will try to write the guidelines to this program.
1. Running - Running and/or hiking became something I loved to do with time, I enjoyed it even back then during the years 2013-14. I started waking up early in the morning possibly before 7 am, I would run and walk for around 1 hour around the city or in the football pitch (I enjoy running in the football pitch more than I do if I run in concrete, running on soft land feels better for my knees and joints). It is interesting, a lot of world class archers don't do a lot of running, I don't know this for sure but judging from their physical forms I guess I am correct. A lot of world class archers are very bulky, South Korean archers who are the best in the world are fed with different foods with high calories so they have more endurance during the shooting days, another reason why they get bulkier is to have power in the upper body which is needed in this sport. I do understand why they do this, I, however, don't agree with this and I love to be physically fit. I might be wrong about the sport needs but I love to run and walk a lot and I feel very good in my body in that way.
2. Shooting - This part of the training is the most important part, in my country/city I have a lot of difficulties since I don't have a proper shooting range outdoors/indoors so I have to improvise. Before the world archery championship I would shoot a lot but I wouldn't do it in a smart way, I would just shoot and leave and I wouldn't really pay a lot of attention in my technique, all I wanted to do was hit 10's. It was different after the competition though, I learned that everything that matters when shooting is the form, the good scores will come eventually as you progress with your skills so I was focusing only on my technique. Finding small things to improve daily was difficult but whenever I or my coach would find something we would work on it as hard as we could.
3. Gym and Fitness - This part of training is something I enjoyed, I enjoy and probably I will always enjoy since it is very healthy and relaxing. Until this time I wasn't very fit, I mean I could run, I could exercise but I wasn't in a good physical shape. Right after I started gym I saw my weaknesses with my body and I committed myself fully to train myself to become a better version of myself. I didn't want to become this big muscular guy but I definitely wanted to become stronger. Together with running, shooting and gym I had all my days full and I could see improvements daily.
This was a period of getting back to my essentials, going back to train the very basic things was something smart, sometimes when you do something to long and you focus only on the very detailed stuff, you tend to forget the basis. I was doing that, I noticed it and decided to change it. From time to time it is very good to go back to the roots, to check what you are doing good and what you're doing wrong in your very basic skills and start to improve from there.
Right after the competition I also got a gift from my coach, the book of one of the best archery coaches in the world Kim, Hyung Tak Archery. This book is pure gold, it has the best explanations about the technique, the best explanations about possible mistakes (which I was doing loads of back at the time) and the best solutions to some of the mistakes on the shooting form and technique. Being armed with this new knowledge I knew that it was only a matter of trying, putting time into it and working as hard as I possibly could until I started improving my shooting.
With time you figure out things, among the first things I started to do right after I came back was to create a training plan. Keep in mind, this wasn't done by some highly paid professionals, this plan was create by my coach and myself. Both of us were learning a lot of things daily and this training plan helped smooth things and made tracking the results easier. When you start training according to a prepared plan you have some advantages, among the better ones for myself I would say it was that I had to do things according to a schedule (I am kinda lazy sometimes, so I would from time to time skip some training sessions or just wouldn't prepare as much as I could) which pushed me.
The training plan:
As I said earlier this wasn't a plan conducted by field professionals but still it was rather well constructed training plan, I will try to write the guidelines to this program.
1. Running - Running and/or hiking became something I loved to do with time, I enjoyed it even back then during the years 2013-14. I started waking up early in the morning possibly before 7 am, I would run and walk for around 1 hour around the city or in the football pitch (I enjoy running in the football pitch more than I do if I run in concrete, running on soft land feels better for my knees and joints). It is interesting, a lot of world class archers don't do a lot of running, I don't know this for sure but judging from their physical forms I guess I am correct. A lot of world class archers are very bulky, South Korean archers who are the best in the world are fed with different foods with high calories so they have more endurance during the shooting days, another reason why they get bulkier is to have power in the upper body which is needed in this sport. I do understand why they do this, I, however, don't agree with this and I love to be physically fit. I might be wrong about the sport needs but I love to run and walk a lot and I feel very good in my body in that way.
2. Shooting - This part of the training is the most important part, in my country/city I have a lot of difficulties since I don't have a proper shooting range outdoors/indoors so I have to improvise. Before the world archery championship I would shoot a lot but I wouldn't do it in a smart way, I would just shoot and leave and I wouldn't really pay a lot of attention in my technique, all I wanted to do was hit 10's. It was different after the competition though, I learned that everything that matters when shooting is the form, the good scores will come eventually as you progress with your skills so I was focusing only on my technique. Finding small things to improve daily was difficult but whenever I or my coach would find something we would work on it as hard as we could.
3. Gym and Fitness - This part of training is something I enjoyed, I enjoy and probably I will always enjoy since it is very healthy and relaxing. Until this time I wasn't very fit, I mean I could run, I could exercise but I wasn't in a good physical shape. Right after I started gym I saw my weaknesses with my body and I committed myself fully to train myself to become a better version of myself. I didn't want to become this big muscular guy but I definitely wanted to become stronger. Together with running, shooting and gym I had all my days full and I could see improvements daily.
This was a period of getting back to my essentials, going back to train the very basic things was something smart, sometimes when you do something to long and you focus only on the very detailed stuff, you tend to forget the basis. I was doing that, I noticed it and decided to change it. From time to time it is very good to go back to the roots, to check what you are doing good and what you're doing wrong in your very basic skills and start to improve from there.
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