Well, here you are, a fairly accomplished shooter who is looking to get better and better. Where do you focus? Perhaps the first thing to do is take stock of where you currently are with your form and if that form is supporting the scores you wish to achieve. What do your videos reveal? What does your coach have to say? What information can you get from your groups? Are your misses close, or egregious?

All of these things will lead you to focus on a certain area of your shot. More likely than not, it will all boil down to something very fundamental. Perhaps this is not what you want to hear, but good archery starts and continues with solid, repeatable fundamentals. It is very easy for someone who has put many thousands of arrows down range to lose sight of some of these building blocks.

Write your shot sequence down on a piece of paper. Check every piece of the sequence. Look at all the static positions. Evaluate all the dynamic moves. Poor dynamic moves are almost always a result of poor static positions.

I think by now you’re saying to yourself, ‘This is a lot of work!’ and of course it is. It’s not sexy. There are no miracle fixes. And constant vigilance must be undertaken to maintain a sound shot.

The heart of the matter is that advanced shooters should pay as much attention to shot fundamentals as beginning shooters. Perhaps even more, as those things learned many years ago are taken for granted and perhaps have changed over time. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, The price of archery excellence is eternal vigilance.