Archery Stress Marksmanship, Part 2

By Rob Shaul

Work continues and we continue to evolve our Archery Stress Marksmanship system. We’re trying to shoot daily, and here are the changes we made since last week.

• Increased the sprint distance to 20 yards
• Now the same shooter runs the drill 3x in a row, with … 30 seconds rest between.
• Standardized the balloon size to 8″ in Diameter

1. Develop an Archery Marksmanship system which is both efficient and effective in train stress marksmanship
2. Identify a maximum shot range for each individual hunter by establishing a drill standard

• – Sprint distance and time interval for the standing position are 90% set.
• – Performance quickly plateaus at drill performance just doing the drills again and again. We learned shooting carbines that marksman have to step back and practice the fundamentals. We developed Range Fitness “Training Sessions” which always started with a drill “cold” out of the gate. Then stepped back to work on fundamentals … trigger control, follow through, position and weapon handling, then finished with another drill. Sessions became entire training cycles – which is where I’m headed with this on the archery side.
• – Drill target and size: Balloons, 8 inch diameter.
• – Training session format: (1) Stress drill cold, first thing, repeating the highest level (distance) the athlete has achieved previously. 3x Total Shots (2) Fundamental work – 20-25x total shots. (3) 3x Through the Stress Drill – 9x total shots. Total training session shots: 32-37. 45-60 minutes long.

• – How to incorporate all three shooting positions (standing, kneeling, sitting) into the standard. 20 yards and 30 second intervals works for standing, but the time interval could be too short for kneeling & sitting. If so, plan now is to decrease the sprint distance to 15 yards for those shooting positions and keep the time interval at 30 seconds.
• – Fundamental shooting drills, and target size. Right now my sense and experience tell me trigger control and follow through are most important. With carbines, we use ball and dummy drills to train trigger control. Not sure the most effective way to do this for archery. Target size for fundamental work? Right now thinking 1/8 sheet of 8×11 paper for 20-30 yards, 1/4 sheet of paper for 30-40 yards, and 1/2 sheet of paper for 40-60 yards. Paper is simple and cheap.
• – Finalizing the Standard. Though right now is the drill “cold” – no warm up – 3x Through. First time, standing position, 20 yard sprints. Second time Kneeling Position, 15 yard sprints. Third time, Seated Position, 15 yard sprints. To achieve that distance, the athlete has to hit the balloon on all three shots.