Effort or Effortless?

There is certainly merit to be given to the idea that effort reaps reward and laziness gets you nowhere. In a sport such as archery it is important to put that effort in where it is most valuable. 

Effort in training is vital, but not discussed in this article. This article covers the effort required to shoot an arrow. In short, too much effort makes the shot tiring, you’ll fatigue earlier and struggle to maintain consistency, too little effort makes the shot weak so the bow will react differently to each shot.
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Some muscles are required for your shot and others aren’t, and this exact list will vary dependent on your own technique, but it’s important to know when your skeleton is taking the workload, and when your muscles come into action. All the muscles you decide shouldn’t be playing a role you want to have doing nothing, working at 0% capacity. The important factor is consistency, and it is much easier to consistently have your muscles do nothing, than work at 5%. A side tip; your smaller muscles used for fine motor control, such as fingers and wrists, are best left relaxed in most circumstances, as these are harder to get consistent and can make the biggest difference to the shot.

The muscles you determine should be active, such as your rhomboids and core muscles, should work at high capacity, determined by their endurance level. The higher the capacity they work at the more consistent you are likely to find your shot, the nearer the end of the scale, 0% or 100%, the easier this is. Yet, you can’t have your muscles work at 100% capacity as this is unsustainable. Archery is an endurance sport, and you must be able to complete an entire tournament with the same shot process throughout. Your capacity should be determined by your own endurance through experience, so try different amounts of effort in practice over an entire day. If this amount of effort is quite low, and you find it difficult to make it consistent then it is important to work on your endurance, either through volume of arrows or by getting to the gym.
 
It’s very important to find where the effort should be put in. Your skeleton is far better at consistency than your muscles, so put as much load on it as you can, sensibly, though, to avoid long term problems. Effort should be applied only to manage stability and your execution; your positioning should be supported as much as possible through your skeleton. The smaller muscles should be relaxed wherever possible, especially your bow hand and wrist. Your release wrist should be entirely relaxed to allow for the alignment to be accurate and the release to be executed more smoothly. The release hand fingers must be tense, at least until release, and so should be exactly as tense as necessary.

​You can alter which muscles are active and which aren’t in practice to find what works best for you, or get a coach to suggest where some extra effort, or some less effort, might be useful.