My colleague and good friend, Markus Wagner of Germany, made a comment that wasn’t exactly a question for me to answer, but does provide a topic to explore.

He said. among other things, regarding target panic: “I contend that knowledge of a neurological context is necessary. How does conditioning work in the brain? What is empathy in detail? How to read body language, facial expressions? So, non-verbal communication. Of course, these issues are best dealt with by a educated mental trainer. But a certain basic knowledge should also part of the technical trainers. Unfortunately, I don’t see any such approaches in any of the training systems there.”

Now Markus is a better educated coach/trainer than am I. He has acquired extensive certifications to become a mental sports coach, among other things, and his students have had more than a little success.

I acknowledge, however, that archery coaches are not looking for a university education in sports psychology, so some targeted trainings seem to be desirable.

I suggest the way to begin formulating those trainings would be to create a list questions that need to be answered. Here are a some to get the ball rolling, as they say, and I hope you can contribute more. Possibly we can then take our list of questions and submit them to our archery organizations who would then solicit answers from universities, etc.

So . . .

1. What is target panic?
2. Why are the symptoms so varied, even contradictory, e.g. freezing and not being able to loose vs. uncontrolled loosing?
3. Is the cause mental, physical, or a combination of the two?
4. How does one treat it?

What would you add to this list?

Originally from A Blog for Archery Coaches.