Hi guys. This is NUSensei. While many people start out in archery on their own,
advancement in archery is greatly aided, if not made possible, by a coach.
Getting the basics of archery right isn't that hard, but there are so many
things that require someone else to identify, preferably someone with a lot
more knowledge and experience.
That said, often the relationship between a coach and a student can be a hard one, and this
applies to any sport. I'm certainly not the perfect, innocent student, and a lot of
this has come through hard experience. For those who are self-taught, you are
your own coach. So you may find that these things affect you and frustrate
you as well. So without further ado, here are five reasons why your coach probably hates you.
You Think You Know Better
Archery is unique in some regards. Because it's an individual sport which
primarily involves you competing against yourself, you don't get that feedback
loop that drives you to become better.
Consequently, there's a tendency that you think that you're doing fine. After all
your coach isn't the one who's shooting. It's you, and you know yourself best.
That's really frustrating.
Understand that your coach can't force you to do something.
They can greatly encourage or discourage you from doing something, but they can't
force you. Now, this isn't an open invitation to ignore everything your coach says.
Remember, there's probably a reason why you have a coach in the first place.
You don't know what you don't know. That's why the coach is there to tell you.
So if you go "I don't want to change this, my way is better,"
then your coach will
generally let you have your way. Part of this is because, to an extent, there's an
element of trust, and that you should be allowed to make mistakes, but don't be
surprised when you do make those mistakes.
Unfortunately, this may mean that your growth as an archer is stunted by
months, if not years. If you're the kind of person who is a bit self-conscious , or
gets defensive when receiving feedback or criticism, you may want to let go of that
and give your coach some respect.
They probably know what they're doing.
You probably don't.
You keep buying stuff you don't need.
Buying archery equipment is an addiction.
You don't just buy one thing. You buy a new finger tab.
You buy new arrows. You buy new limbs.
You just want to "pimp" your bow with the newest and often more expensive stuff
to get more feet per second, and I get it. Tinkering with your bow can be fun,
except when it ruins what your coach has set up for you. If you've been spending
any amount of time with your coach, your coach will be familiar with your
equipment and your form. Your training sessions will focus on addressing certain part of
your form that are causing problems. Equipment is fairly easy to diagnose, so
when your bow is in tune, it's mostly form practice.
So when you suddenly decided change something, and you start shooting poorly,
your coach is going to be completely puzzled, because he or she might not know
that you've done something unnecessary to your bow. That may be something as
simple as changing a bow string, or replacing an arrow rest, or even adding grip tape to
your bow. While these things may seem better to you, you might not actually
need them, and your bow now needs to be retuned. Again, your coach won't force you to
do things his or her way
however
understand that changing your equipment is going to change how you shoot, and
upgrading part of your bow isn't necessarily going to make things better.
You should consult with your coach before buying something different. This
is partly so that you understand why you're getting it in the first place and
not just doing an impulsive buy.
You get too much feedback from other people.
This one is especially true if you're a keen, fast learner, and a perfectionist.
Instead of waiting to get feedback from your couch,
you're looking to get feedback from many other people. It might be from your friends.
It might be from posting a video online asking for form checks and comments, and
there's nothing really wrong with this in itself.
The problem, however, is that your coach knows you more than anyone else . They
know your equipment. They know your style. They know your strengths and weaknesses.
They've planned out what you need to work on, and they need you to follow that plan.
When you start asking around for more advice from different people, you start
getting some contradictory/conflicting advice.
It might be an observation on your stance or your grip, or it may be a criticism of
your choice of brand or archery equipment. Most of the time it's not
meant to be an ill intent, but sometimes people just say things for the sake of
saying things. It's like, for example, you shoot with an open stance, and someone tells you
"you know, you might want to try a closed stance."
There's no reason to change unless there is a need.
If the coach identifies a need, they will encourage you to try something else, but
don't just act on random opinions and try it out, because that messes you up.
You no longer have consistency, and, look, your coach isn't an egotist. They're not going
to claim 100% of your training because it's their method.
They just need to know what you're doing. By the way, this is also very important to keep in
mind for yourself. If you go to a tournament, and especially when there are
new archers on the line, you may feel tempted to add your own commentary to
what they're doing, or going to point out things about their equipment, and
again it feels like you're doing the right thing, but just keep in mind that
these archers have probably been trained to do certain things for a certain reason.
So if it's mid-tournament, and you mention something about their stance, it's going
to throw them off, and that's really bad sportsmanship. It's something which, again,
people mean to say so, but it's just a culture where people will just criticize
things, and it really messes people up. You just shouldn't do it.
Especially with new archers, it causes a lot of confusion. It leads them to make bad
decisions based on one person's, probably very biased, opinion. Look, while getting
different perspectives can help, keep the conversation going with your own coach,
and, look, they have the most perspective of you. So value things
differently. Weigh things differently. If people you trust are sharing their
experiences, weigh that against what your coach will say, because your coach knows
you better than anyone else.
You don't train often enough.
New archers, especially
those taking archery as a sport, tend to treat it as a weekend recreational
activity and not a sporting commitment. This is fine.
Much of the arch experience is social, however, to make progress with your
archery you have to train. I don't mean shooting.
I mean training. Training involves drills and skills, and things that may not be
fun, but you've got to do it. If you're only shooting once a week you're not really
going to make much, if any, progress. For those who only shoot once a week the
expectation the coach has is that you are going to do something throughout the week to
train. This might be shooting in your garage, or doing conditioning exercises,
or using a stretching band. You need to build up the fitness and the muscle memory
to use your equipment well. Also keep in mind that if you're only turning up once
a week on average, that's on average.
This means that there are weeks that you won't turn up,
maybe because you're feeling sick, or maybe you have another commitment and that's
normal, but if you're not maintaining a training regiment, you're going to
regress, which means you're going to feel less inclined to shoot, and then you end up
dropping out of archery. That's a fairly typical doom cycle. This may seem like a
very drastic flowchart, but this happens to more people than not. It's just that
people who lose that motivation to train will lose the motivation to shoot. Your
coach doesn't just want you to train because he wants to make you feel bad.
Your coach wants you to stay with the sport. If you don't want to become better,
you're not likely to keep on shooting for more than a month. Archery rewards people who
have that intrinsic motivation to become better. To become better shooters and to become
better individuals, and if you don't want to become better, if you just want to
shoot for fun, then it's not something which will motivate you to keep on shooting.
You're too ambitious.
This is my primary fault, and some might say this isn't a fault. After all, it's
great to see hunger and drive and personal bests, and many archers get into
competition and make state team selection within months. Archery is a
sport, and, like any other sport, some people can have talent and hard work and build
up foundational skills faster than others. Your coach might simply not consider
you ready. Now this doesn't stop you from entering competitions,
nor should it, but it's important
to go in with the mentality of enjoying the experience rather than trying to set
records. What ends up happening is that you might become fixated on getting higher
scores and shooting more events and neglecting your training. Again, training
is not the same as shooting. Shooting events will give you scores and ranking points
and experience, but you still have to train. Sooner or later you reach a
plateau. You just can't exceed the score you want, and you start to regress
because, you know, you've forgotten that you are still a learner, and still need to consolidate
your form and technique before you can compete seriously. You need to build muscle
memory and consistency and endurance. If you are competing for fun
that's great, but if you let it get to your head, you start making every mistake
your coach has warned you about, and he'll be there going "I told you so."
Anyway, that's my quick list of things that I think will annoy coaches. I'm curious
about your experiences. If you have your own coach I would like to know the
things that your coach finds frustrating with you, and, if you are a coach,
what are the things which disappoint you.
Anyway, this is NUSensei, hope you found this interesting,
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.