I took about 8 months off from the gym. It was a matter of a move, getting settled and finding a convenient and moderately price facility. Now that we’ve landed in Georgia a gym membership and weight lifting program is off of my to do list and part of my weekly training.
The gym I joined.
Lifting weights is an important adjunct to any athlete. After the Master’s Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia Tiger Woods was interviewed. During that Tiger pointed out the work it has taken him to try and bring himself back into competitive professional golf. One of his comments referred to time spent in the gym.
In nearly every sport there is an avenue among the training regime that leads the athlete to a weight room. Archery is no exception. It is obvious that not all or even most archers spend time at a gym.
Spending time lifting weights can become an asset to you during long tournaments where the weight of a bow and the drawing of an arrow can become physically draining. Not only can the arms and shoulders benefit of weight lifting, but also your core and legs (support the shot) should be part of your conditioning program.
Tomorrow is there’s a Georgia ASA State Qualifier about 38 miles away. I’ll shoot that hoping to qualify for the State Championship. The past week or so I’ve been cranking out arrows concentrating on 3D. (I’m a little behind in that discipline.)
In addition to archery practice I maintain a rigorous overall fitness program. It’s part of my training for archery and just in case there’s a race I’d like to try. There is a duathlon nearby in August and I am considering it.
At a recent tournament I overheard a “Pro” archer talking about his training schedule. He said he shoots for two hours a day and adds running and weight lifting to his workouts. That is an excellent way to go.
Aside from archery I run nearly every morning. I ride a bike almost every afternoon and I’m in the gym at least two days a week. Unlike that young professional archer I can’t recover as fast as I did when I was in my 50’s, 40’s, 30’s 20’s and teens. So, today after running I practiced archery for just an hour. I consider that sort of practice active recovery.
This afternoon I’ll ride a bike, but it will not be as intense a ride as yesterday’s. I may fling a few more arrows, but for the sports part of my day I’ll take it easy and save some for tomorrow. Sunday is a nearly total break while we go fishing. (I’m still on the hook today for several hours of yard and range work.)
I have written about having a plan or routine when it comes to fitness and training. In all sports you can find specific plans or routines used to obtain a specific goal. You can buy training plans online and you can find them free of charge.
A good free fitness goal oriented program is available at Ontri.com. Plans are available for archery. One is available through FITA. In a basic sense both Ontri.net and FITA are good places to start. (1,2)
For individualized plans Ontri.net does a decent job of setting up a routine for an athlete to follow. The plans are based on goals and experience of the individual.
To become a better archer you should have a training plan. Build a routine of practice and training. I’ll provide samples soon. (I try to keep these posts fairly short. Otherwise, no one will read them.)
Routine is good for training and practice. Many of you focus on archery as your sole means of fitness training. You won’t get a lot of cardio using that approach. You may not want any cardio. Archery may be the only sport that you can find time to fit into your schedule. At least you’re out on a range walking about a mile a day. Well, you’re probably not getting in a mile of walking. You may be coming close.
Cycling took me past the Mt. Carmel Church in Monroe, GA. Old churches have a lot of character.
It is good to have a routine for your training. In my routine I add running and cycling. If I cut out the running and riding I doubt I could get much more archery practice completed. I shoot several hours a day and physically that’s all I can handle.
This turkey os positioned so it can be targeted from three interesting aspects.
For instance, yesterday I shoot 90 arrows in the morning. Thirty at 60 yards, thirty at 50 yards and thirty at 40 yards. That took an hour and forty-five minutes. During the afternoon I fired off another 60 arrows on the 3D range. I didn’t shoot at all my foam animals. Instead, I worked yardages and difficult shots.
This angle on a mountain lion means you have to shoot straight. The trees are tight enough so that a range finder is worthless.
By difficult I mean interesting. All shots are the same when it comes to difficulty. The interesting part was the complexity of judging yardage. Although I practice 3D often I have not competed in a 3D tournament since last summer. Soon I will compete in 3D and judging yardage is my greatest weakness.
Other than that I did run and ride my bike. Running is an early morning activity whereas I ride in the afternoon between 1 PM and 3 PM. The goal is to have a routine so that I can create training plans to fit a schedule. It is getting close and next week I’ll have specific training plans that agree with out recent move back to Georgia.
Routine and training don’t mean doing exactly the same thing over and over. Although, being able to do the same thing over and over is a requirement for archery. More about this later.
2018 has been a blur of activity. We moved to Georgia. We added more construction to the property in Georgia. I’ve cleared, mostly, about 3 acres for a 3D range. I’ve added a target range for 50 meters and out to 80 meters.
I also completed a USA Archery Level 2 Coaching program. Competed in four tournaments and weekly league style shooting. Plus, I bought a new bow.
New Elite Victory 37
The new bow is another Elite. This one is the 2018 Elite 37. To be honest, my scores are pretty much exactly what they were with the 2015 Elite 35. In the long run I think the 37 will be worth the investment.
Another benefit to being here is the running and cycling. I can run in my neighborhood but must to laps to get in any serious miles. There are excellent trails to run all within a short drive.
Cycling is the best. The terrain here near Athens, Georgia is rolling hills. Rolling hills are my favorite type of road. Flat gets boring. Too steep becomes more of fight to go up and then coast down. That was pretty much how I trained when we lived in Pittsburgh. That too got old. When we lived in Kennesaw, Georgia the roads were rolling hills. From my experience, rolling hills are the most fun for training.
I am yet to get a decent long-term training program going. Typically, I run, shoot, rest, ride and shoot. I’ve gotten that in a number of times but the past 12 weeks have been a challenge.
Years of planning and a bit of luck helped me retire at 57 from a typical job. When I retired I considered focusing on winning a major endurance event in my age group. Now, I’ve never won a lot of races. I had earned a spot on a USA World Championship Team for the Long Course Duathlon, which was pretty cool. I also got to compete in the Ironman World Championship on Kona, Hawaii. That is the Super Bowl of Triathlon.
Kona, Hawaii 2008.World Championship, Long Course Duathlon 2007
But, I’d never won something like a marathon or a 140.6-mile Ironman. I’ve done a lot of 70.3 and 140.6 Ironman events, but I never finished among the top athletes. I did better at the shorter distance triathlons.
Get out of the water under your own power
The sprint distances were where I did my best. See I not a great swimmer, I am a pretty okay runner, and a really decent cyclist. My plan for the shorter races was this: Swim well enough to finish the swim in the top 25%, pass everybody, the better swimmers, during the bike portion, hang on to my lead during the run. That worked for me a number of times. (There was often that athlete that is better at all 3 disciplines)
Finish at Kona – Ironman World Championships
But, the more I thought about it I realized I’d never be a good enough swimmer to place well in the major events. Sure, I can swim. Sadly, while I can swim far, I will never be fast. It’s a matter of genetics and body type. (My best time for a 2.4-mile swim is 64 minutes) So, I put that out of my mind while relaxing in my front yard shooting a newly acquired compound bow a little more than four years ago. There is where the thought hit me; maybe I could do well in archery. Time will tell.
Picking up some hardware
In the meantime, I can’t let go of endurance racing. I tried for a year to pedal around on a bike, jog every morning and swim at the YMCA. I stayed away from racing any distance. Essentially, my day is this:
Up between 0530 and 0600 , stretch
Eat breakfast, run one to six miles.
Shoot my bow for one to two hours.
Eat lunch
Take a nap
Ride a bike ten to 30 miles
Shoot my bow one to two hours.
Often, one of the last things I do at the end of the day is take a walk through the woods with my dog, River.
If there is water, River will find it.
It works out to from 4 to 6 hours a day of exercise and training.
In 2016 I ran a number of 5K races for fun. Each time a little more slowly than the previous race. These were for fun and I had not been training for speed. Still every day I think about racing. While planning my 2018 archery schedule I thought – why not add a duathlon. So, I did.
2017 USA Archery National Indoor Championships, Snellville, GA
I’ll still train about the same amount of time only now I’ll add speed work. I’ve added a spring dualthon onto my calendar. I’ve got 5 months to get into shape. On top of that there are a number of significant archery tournaments where I’d like to perform well all occurring around the same time frame. Nothing gets me going like a good challenge.
I just finished a book. I don’t mean I just completed reading a book. Seriously, I wrote a book I plan to publish.
During the 45 years I spent in the medical field I had a hobby or sorts – aging. I published a few papers that dealt with aging and worked on methods to help prolong a vibrant life. It wasn’t my primary area of expertise. But, over the decades of reading and studying how we age and why there are differences in the aging process among individuals, all of which I find fascinating, I’ve piled up a lot of information.
I’d never planned on writing a book about aging but the idea popped into my head one afternoon and I had it outlined before I went to bed that night. Actually, I completed the first draft in about two weeks. The hard part is the editing.
It is really difficult to edit your own writing. If you’ve read many of my posts here you already know I am a failure when it come to editing my own work. Still, I need to edit the book a time or two before I beg for help from better writers or professional editors.
In the past I have used professional editors. Believe me, they truly have made everything I provided in need of help much better. All of those works were manuscripts. Easy work generally less than 2500 words. Books are longer and the one I just finished is no exception.
The book isn’t my first. It is my third. The first was on how to preform a medical physical exam and the second on neonatology. Both were written for industry and weren’t available for general purchase. My copies have long since disappeared along with the knowledge I once held that provided the insight into those two books.
This third one, once it is edited, is a labor of passion. Decades of reading medical journals, making observations, and drawing totally unsupported conclusions have gone into the words of this latest book. Now, it is just the misery of editing and I’ll see if it can be published or even self-published. I expect to earn tens of dollars from the effort.
Practice was rough, today. It started on a sour note. It soured while shooting a 5-spot. Since August 3, 2017 I have not hit a blueberry. Today, during the first round (60 arrows after a 5 arrow warm-up)) shooting a 5-spot I hit blue twice.
I ended up with only 42 Xs. The X count has been my primary metric for 5-spot practice. It was a sad day when I hit blue twice and scored 42 Xs. The second round of 5-spot practice nothing in the blue but could only manage 40 Xs.
Finally, 3-spot practice was just as weak. For this final round of work 60 arrows would be enough. No warm-up; I was plenty warm. That led to a conclusion with just 22 Xs and the rest of the shots nines leaving a final score of 562, eight points below my minimum-scoring objective.
Things started out promising
Archery practice is more difficult than most people realize. Physically, the effort to hold a 6.2 bow steady over and over can certainly build up a burn along deltoids, levator scapulae, splenius capitis, rhomboid, and to some extend trapezius muscles.
Not only do these muscles feel the burn, hand muscles and abdominals are not immune to long archery practice sessions.
But, it is not the muscles that wear out – it is the brain. Working to clear the head of everything and letting the shot happen becomes an effort. After hours of shooting any little distraction takes on significance. There is no choice, practice has to continue.
Why? Well, it makes you better in the long run.
So, today wasn’t great. Yesterday was better. Tomorrow could be worse, but down the line there will be that excellent day.
Coco, River’s good friend, has had a hurt rear leg. So, I’ve kept River on a lease when we run past Coco’s house to keep both girls from going dog crazy playing.
Now, Coco is better and River has a hurt from leg. As hard as it was for both of us, I had River stay home while I ran.
The girls when they’re feeling better.
Morning runs without the girls aren’t nearly as much fun.
It’s been a week since heading out for a run along Deep Creek Road here in New Hope, North Carolina. In that absence I pounded red clay, gravel, and dust that covers Buckhead Road and the surrounding trails in Tignal, Georgia.
River, my lab, joins me on runs. In Georgia, there were plenty of new smells to entertain and satisfy canine olfactory curiosity. More than one fox trotted within sight to begin a chase with River, the fox never losing.
Deep Creek Road, here in New Hope is the main passage to our home as it dead ends into River Cove Lane the road where we live. A secondary passage to our house is by water and is often used by friends that live on the other side of Little River.
Deep Creek Road leads 3 miles to New Hope Road. From my front door to River Cove Lane then Deep Creek Road it is one tenth of a mile. The round trip to New Hope is an out and back 10K. Over those kilometers are veins of ditches and creeks. Those tributaries, natural or man-made, to larger bodies of water are dotted with dogs.
The dogs dotting the ditches and creeks are well known to River and me. Within a half of a mile into the run today we were joined by Coco, a lab, and a close and cherished friend. Shortly thereafter a third entered our pack.
The third was also a lab. We’ve met in the past. He’s young perhaps a two year old yellow lab. He’s been over to our house before. I know because I have him on a trail camera stealing a shoe. The photographed shoe in his mouth was the second stolen.
After the first went missing I installed the trail camera to capture for record if the criminal indeed returned to the scene. He did. There are no hard feelings and I denoted the shoes to the yellow furred thief. By now it and its mate certainly have been thoroughly chewed and buried for tenderization with future plans for more chewing.
The youngest lab and I have never been formally introduced so I do not know his name. He was last in and first out. The girls were a little rough on him.
I enjoy running with dogs. They seem to enjoy it, too. It’s good to be home and among my furry friends.
