Hitting the target
Pasco Ray responds to our Research Digest.
19 May 2023
As a less-than-elite amateur archer, I was intrigued by the snippet (Digest, May 2023) about heart rate as a measure of stress and its effect on the performance of elite Olympic archers.
I believe that in sports such as archery and shooting (and darts too), it is the heart rate that is a crucial element, rather than stress per se, as the pulse causes minute muscular movements putting one off-target.
The ideal is to fire or release the arrow in between two heartbeats, and the slower the pulse, the easier it is to find and use that gap. I believe that in the past some athletes in these sports used beta-blockers to slow their heart rates, but this is now outlawed.
I do take beta-blockers for purely medical reasons, but sadly the effect on the accuracy of my archery is minimal.
Pasco Ray
Richmond, North Yorkshire
