Target Panic - Familiar vs Unfamiliar Distances?

[Flehrad]

I shot my first FITA at the NSW State Target on Sunday when I noticed something which really annoyed me severely.

At 90m and 70m (which I have not much practice at ), I suffered target panic severely, to the point where when my scope was at the red ring in any direction, I would let the release go off (thumb release). But at 50m and 30m distances, I had no target panic at all, and put the arrows exactly where I tried to put them (wind conditions allowing of course :lol: )
I only managed a half decent score for 90m and 70m by roughly compensating the "off aim" on my sights. Compared to my last 70m practice where I scored a 306, I only managed 251 on the day.

Do our minds have a tendancy to suffer such attacks in mental capacity or confidence in our shooting ability when we shoot distances or scenarios that we are unfamiliar with? I would postulate that I probably would also suffer target panic if I tried shooting field for the first time, however in my own refute I never had any problems with target panic when I shot a 18m indoor the first time, scoring a decent 280.......

Any possible explanations for this?

[Richard_Stock]

I get that too. Guess what I did to fix that. Practice the long distances.

[Marcus]

Most likely you were suffering from TP brought on by the stress of shooting a tournament. There are 3 solutions:
* Shoot more comps and hope it goes away
* Exhibit self control and while shooting work on not punching (easier said than done)
* Buy a back tension release and beat the TP issue before it gets worse.

[mike]

Practise. It is the only answer. 90m is difficult. Its easily the hardest range of the lot, so it demands practise.

Yep, we all got panickey when we did 90m for the first time I think.

[recurve boy]

Tell yourself its indoor. difference in aparent sizes of targets isn't all that much really.

[clever_guy]

Marcus has some good suggestions.

I would suggest getting a ring app for your scope. You have to train yourself to stare into the gold (or point of aim if aiming off), let the ring float, and trust that the arrow will go where you are concentrating - it takes a lot of practice.

My guess is that 70m and 90m caused some anxiety because of the relative difficulty and overaiming (trying to over-control the process). You won't get over that until you have confidence in your abilities at those distances.

-CG

[Flehrad]

Practice is probably the best solution for me since I don't really like backtension release aids.
Being my first competition, I got over competition nerves during the practice ends at 90m, but I have realised that another reason perhaps is that I have lost arrows at 70m at homebush, so perhaps that has affected me mentally :lol:

I am hoping to do better as the more competitions I shoot, so we'll see if it happens again in November at the state ranking round.

Thanks for the advice though.

[andy]

Do you do many/any smaller shoots? Not just FITAs? I think starting with some smaller tournaments helps a bit and then work your way up to FITA stars etc.

[Flehrad]

I have only really done club shoots and the small university events, but they have only ever been a Canberra/Sht Canberra, Adelaide or Geelong rounds, which are fairly close range compared to the FITA rounds

[The One]

I also used to get taget panic when I first started 90m - I was only 15, using limbs that were way to heavy for me, and with every shot, I was hoping to hit the target. Luckily things have changed, though to some extent I still don't perform as well as I should at 90m.

A technique used by another club member at the time was to pretend that you were shooting at 30m, to try and remove his stigma of 90m. (He wasn't exactly the best shooter, but the theory was still there.) As target panic is psychological, you should learn to combat it psychologically - this entails having confidence, and if need be, deception of the mind, making yourself believe that the distance is easier than it really is (though that could really apply to any distance or round).

Having said that, practice is the best solution to help you with this problem, but if you combine the two, you should gain a lot more confidence and get out of this habit.

Good Luck :D

[Harald]

You could try a scat release as discussed in this thread
http://www.archery-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=84909
Release are delayed after pulling the release.
But you should kinda threat it like a BT to keep the pressure up
Like Teelow says its nice to set it on slow triggering and then concentrate
just on aiming (no anticipitation of trigger moment)