Arrow Whisper - Intuitive Shooting

The term is more familiar to us shooters than to many others. Yet for a long time I didn't even begin to understand what it meant. Since I think many other people feel the same way, I'd like to go into it in more detail here. For a long time I thought I was one of the intuitive shooters. Today I actually believe that only a few of them shoot exclusively intuitively. This assumption is easily explained. If you assume that intuitive means doing something without thinking about it, then unfortunately I can't claim to be one hundred percent among them. And I know very few people who at least regularly manage to stop thinking about their technique, their performance, the distance or anything like that while shooting. Of course I realize that you're always thinking about something. To better understand what exactly I mean by that, here's an example.

Imagine you're sitting at the dining table at home. Your meal is in front of you, and you're about to start eating. Then you realize you don't have any cutlery. So you get up to get some. You sit back down and enjoy your meal. In that situation, would you have even thought for a moment about leaving?

It's an activity we've learned through imitation and countless attempts, and ultimately perfected over the years. Not through constant review and self-criticism. Unfortunately, many people cling to the theory that they have to achieve absolute control over their shot; otherwise, they won't hit the target. I believe that if we're already good despite forcing ourselves to do it, we could probably even shoot brilliantly with a slightly relaxed attitude and more enjoyment of the task. I've also heard that it's actually impossible to achieve consistent shooting performance if you don't follow a system. In fact, I'm convinced that's not true. I think it's more a question of mental strength in this case, and you should work on it. Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with reviewing your technique. But there's a huge difference in remaining in this review phase. Unfortunately, we all too often tend to want to control everything. We focus on even the smallest detail to avoid making mistakes, and in doing so, we lose sight of our goal.

But if we truly want to learn to trust our intuition again, we inevitably have to give up some of our control. It means truly surrendering to our own abilities. In other words, it takes self-confidence to become self-assured. I think every shooter has experienced this before. Ultimately, for a shot to be "on target," it's never necessary to check the shot during the shot, but rather to sense the right moment.

The moment when your fingers almost release the bowstring, your focus completely on the target, and your mind still and completely at peace. That is true intuition.