1. First, do no harm. I have been the victim of coaches with no such creed, and will go to far corners of the earth to avoid causing harm to any athlete (or person) that I have the blessed opportunity to mentor. As a pharmacist I automatically share knowledge, carefully and appropriately, and as an archery coach I do the same thing, using all that I am and all that I know, and, importantly, all that I CAN learn. As such, this writing is something of a series of pieces of my coaching philosophy, which I own with all my heart and soul, and things I have either come up with to solve a problem (see the FAQ at www.joad.org for another such summary I wrote years ago), or that I have gently purloined from other coaches, each I try to give due credit to if I did not "invent it" myself.
2. A new bowstring will change lengths. A failing string might change lengths. An archer, ANY archer, might assemble the limbs incorrectly or a mounting bolt might loosen. So once I have a bow setup, tiller set, brace height perfect, etc., I nock an arrow, and then use a color of fingernail polish of the archer's choice, and paint a small dot right on the arrow right against the plunger. Repeat for every arrow. An additional benefit - if the archer is trained by me to use this dot to verify that the paint matches the plunger, a glance down during the setup, during the same time she is setting her bow hand and her string hand, she will ALWAYS detect the faint chance that the arrow ended up ON TOP of the plunger. Admittedly this is a newbie mistake, but I have seen fliers from advanced archers, that could be explained by such a misplacement of the arrow.|
   
   What does this do? It replaces the bow square. The archer can verify every time an arrow is nocked whether something is changing on her. Even while on the line, and I teach that she can call an equipment failure if she detects that the brace height is suddenly wrong. She can also detect if the arrow got nocked upside down. In other words, putting this mark (just on the top) on every arrow is simply a mechanical safety check that is always available to the archer for a variety of potential problem prevention. I've never seen anyone else teach this, have no one to blame for the idea, but it makes sense to me.
3. Never return home from the Arizona Cup without dismantling and air-blow-clean EVERY metal joint - every threaded socket, especially the stabilizer and the sight, completely apart and cleaned. The grit from the AZ Cup range is NOT sand. It is much harder grit, and can LOCK up a mounted stabilizer, for example, making it nearly impossible to unscrew/dismantle the stabilizer from the riser.
4. 3. Non-exercising water consumption needs to be 1/2 of your body weight, in ounces, per day in a consistent and measured way - I am speaking to the normal human like a coach, not the training or competing athlete. Consume this amount (I weigh 221 lbs, 100 kg, so I should drink 52 or so ounces of water, say THREE 7-11 big gulp(tm) glasses of fluids. )
   Drink not the entire amount all at once of course, and not in the last hours prior to bed. Also important that the first thing each morning is to consume at least 8 ounces of water as a bolus (just drink it down) to top off the tank and allow the kidneys start your day by removing waste products that build up overnight - I call it flushing the radiator.
   IN ADDITION, the athlete must be trained (!) to always sip in-between ends. If he or she does not end up needing to visit the portajohn at least once per round during a "sweating condition" tournament then a hydration deficit is building up and she will lose power/strength and skill, a few percent over time. Since the difference between standing on the gold step and "butts in the stands" is a few mere percent, this is entirely relevant. If they do not sip continually they will either fall far behind in hydration, wherein many studies show a measurable loss of muscular contractility, decision-making ability, their strengths, in other words, or else they will gulp too much and have a sloshing stomach, which can distract, lead to thinking of their gut instead of their shot cycle, and STILL fall behind in hydration. CHO drinks, like gatorade(tm) and powerade(tm), DO have a place as an ALTERNATING fluid source - the athletes drinks a bottle of CHO, then switches to a bottle of plain (cool or cold better than warm, warm better than nothing) water, then back to a CHO.
5. After a training session, particularly if hard muscle exercise was involved, actually drinking chocolate milk has in a few studies been shown to SPEED MUSCLE RECOVERY. Chocolate milk has a lot of sugar, some proteins, some fat, in apparently a good ratio that the body can make good use of faster than the typical CHO drink. More studies are underway, and of course if the athlete does not tolerate milk products this would be a very bad thing to administer. I feel certain that the makers of CHO drinks will no doubt soon market drinks with the same or similar compositions as "chocolate milk".
6. Extremely cold drinks will not be absorbed as fast as cool or tepid water - cold causes vasoconstriction of the blood vessels, the micro capillaries in the stomach wall. Less blood flow means less transportation of fluids from the stomach into the bloodstream, and athletes in performance typically do not have as much digestive region circulation since the body can actually decide to favor muscular circulation and turn down digestive circulation simply due to exercise. COLD water can actually be good, though, and can outweigh this need for max hydration if the athlete is overheating and not sweating enough - in the case of the athlete having fallen behind in hydration to the point of risking mild heat stroke. If the athlete should be sweating and is NOT displaying signs such as wet armpits, the coach must be alert enough to take action. One job of the coach is to be the part of the brain that the elite athlete has properly turned off - an archer intent on competition will NOT be as aware of the small things relatively speaking and that is the job of the coach. Putting cold into the core WILL help as long as it is not overdone - too much leads to cramping and an ill feeling, counterproductive to ideal. NOT correcting the underhydration and the too-high-core-temperature of the athlete not only can defeat the competitiveness of the athlete but also violates the pact between coach and athlete to "first, do no harm" through inaction in this case. IOW, the coach must be prepared to act FOR the athlete, and if necessary, pouring water (not CHO drinks) on the athlete's shirt, in effect creating the cooling effect of sweat the athlete is not doing.
7. The coach supporting a contestant must be "visually different" so that the athlete can pick him or her out at a glance, such as an usual color cap, or a color shirt/jacket that is different from everyone behind the coach. Most events this will not be difficult but the coach must be prepared - put a neckerchief on, a different cap, turned around perhaps, anything. The athlete will have tunnel-vision due to the pressures, and being able to glance back and get that one clue, tip, bit of advice, from the coach, even if it is just a smile of confidence, by SEEING THE COACH in his or her tunnel is very important.
8. The coach in the box must know the rules, and be as mindful of what the opponent (and his coach) is doing as he is of what his own athlete is doing. And be ready to ACT. An arrow shot can never be taken back, but if the officials make a timing error, you must be ready to stop action, intervene with the on-field judge, to STOP the action if it is about to damage your athletes performance. This is a hotbox for the coach and there is no room and little for error. I have personally witnessed the loss of a paralympic gold medal and a world record because the athletes prevailed but the coach failed the athletes through his own actions. First, do no harm, but neither allow harm through your own inaction or ignorant action. The athlete has worked for 10,000 or more hours - the least the coach can do is spend enough time learning the rules to protect the athlete.
9. The best place to find tackleboxes for separating and carrying all of the bits and pieces of archery gear is an arts & crafts store, followed closely by the fishing department of sporting goods places. To support your athletes you need to have a little of everything, and having it all in small separate compartments or containers where both you and the athlete can get to it quickly as needed.
10. An archer must have the fundamental knowledge that her bow is 100% reliable - set up AND tuned properly. It is best if the athlete and the coach work together in the process, but even though tuning may actually be less important than many would think, confidence (in gear) has an incredible psychologically positive effect.
11. Make sure the athlete understands that the vibrations of the bow being shot can loosen any joint, screw, piece of gear, including the screws in the fingertab and must be taught how to lessen the chance but also to check these routinely during assembly and disassembly. Clear fingernail polish can be a good alternative to the "sure-lock" products that are designed to be applied to threads of screws and then cure as a kind of glue against vibrating loose.
12. Most archers will re-fletch all of their arrows just prior to a major competition, and this is ok, it is a "ritual" that provides comfort and as long as the quality of the results are verified before stepping on the field.
13. I like to have the archer to use a sharpie to mark the key fletch/vane for any arrow "in the gold" during practice or even competition. (This I did not come up with on my own as with the previous tips - I got this one from Janet Dykman) The logic appeals to me, as it identifies visually the arrows that have been giving the archer solid results, and during head-to-head shooting, the archer can easily figure out which arrows have the most marks, and therefore psychologically invest confidence in those arrows.
14. Likewise, be absolutely certain you do not have any packs of nocks in your tournament kitbox that are the wrong size. Murphy's law insures that the athlete will somehow choose that wrong bag, and then get to the line to begin competition only to realize (or not) the arrows are clinging to the string too tightly and drastically altering the tune. Young athletes especially might make such a mistake and NOT mention it to the coach. If arrows suddenly start kicking strangely on loose from the bow suspect this immediately, and check the nocking resistance. It certainly IS reasonable to change the nocks in preparation for a tournament - during the practice days just before a competition nocks can be fatigued, weakened, cracked, bent, and give variable performance. A nock like that can fail disastrously upon loose of arrow, and actually damage the skin sufficient to gouge flesh, draw blood, and destroy armguards - one archer had this happen to him TWICE (two years in a row) during the National Target event, and this told me he did not learn from the first time that an archer must check all nocks when pulling from the target, often review them during the walk-back from the bale, or before they are put into the quiver.
15. A good coach will verify the changes an athlete makes to his arrows, gear, and bow - for example indexing the nocks/vanes of all freshly fletched arrows. Leave nothing to chance.
16. Develop a path of communication with your athletes that rely on key word or phrase. These become subconscious cues to the athlete. For example, speaking the same words in exactly the same way, at the same time, during practice means that during the worst pressures of a head-to-head match, you retain the ability to center your athlete's mind. "Deep Breath" spoken deeply, just prior to the raise of the bow, triggers not only a zen breath but the cleaning of extraneous thought from the athlete, focusing on the coming shot and forgetting the previous shot result. For the athlete with issues of confidence or target panic (which I prefer to call shot choke), a key word is even more important, "Decide" can mean to commit to the shot 100%, or that it is time to shoot as the clock reaches a certain countdown point.
17. The coach must always be mindful of the time on the clock, and be ready to infringe on the athlete's awareness if the athlete has become distracted by wind conditions. Agreeing with the athlete WHEN the athlete wants to be reminded (ie, at 8 seconds) BEFORE a competition (ie, during training) is very important if you want to do good with your interference and not bad. You will throw off your athlete if she does not expect your voice to appear out of the blue during a competition.
18. Read. Just as your athletes must learn, you must continue to gather your own wisdom and gain knowledge from others.
    1. John Wooden - anything by him, particularly his little blue book, "Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections"
    2. For Target Panic, Jay Kidwell's book, "Instinctive Archery" - you do not have to agree with everything in *any* book, but you should be able to ID takeaways that fit your philosophy of coaching.
    3. Of course, for archery, the books by Kisik Lee contain the most logical and sound principles for the delivery of an arrow into a target that I know of.
    4. Look not only to coaching books, but also to nutrition, healthy living, diet, etc. to become a well-rounded coach that is capable of understanding and complementing the training of the human body in all aspects, not just physical.
    5. Keep an open mind. "He had a mind like a steel trap - only it was rusted shut" is the worst indictment of a coach (second only to "he did more harm than good" as a coach. Reading and studying a wide range of topics insures you have as many arrows in your coaching quiver as possible.
19. If you cannot find balance you are not a good coach. Balance to me is that ability to offset any critique or potentially negative coaching observation with an equal or even more powerful positive assessment of the same action you were initially moved to take. Some call this the "oreo cookie" approach but do not truly understand what it means. I try to always insure that the last thing I leave the athlete with when I have a one-on-one intervention is hope. "While you are dropping your bow arm on release, instead of holding it in position until the arrow hits the target, I can tell from your strong release that you have the right idea. Keep working on that and I know you will get it". Speak the truth, but be sure you do it in both the right order AND for the right reason.
20. Sport is not an end, or even a means to an end. It is simply life. The good coach will insure his athletes understand that everyone will lose in sport at some point, and they may think that is "cruel". If the athlete thinks that, after giving her best effort and followed your best coaching, neither has failed the sport but you, the coach, have failed your own obligation to your athlete, failed to teach her what is truly important about doing the sport: it is simply a way to prepare for life, life which is neither fair nor unfair. It simply "is" what we choose to do.
21. If possible, never ever sell away any bow gear you have. As a coach, you will need it again at some point. Injury may require an athlete to drop in poundage, and having that pair of lower weight limbs that he grew out of, to fall back to for training purposes, gives the coach a much greater freedom and power to aid the athlete. Or, you may end up with a new student that cannot afford some piece, which you can loan out to greater worth than what you might have recouped by selling it away.
22. Archery has lost the meaning of "personal best" to a high degree. It is wrong, but we instead count coup, assign prestige, based on who we beat rather than "did we do our best?" Coach your athletes to understand that the fates may prevent say, winning a medal at the Olympics, but if you are a good coach, the athlete will perform at his personal best, and will realize this and be able to take sufficient pride in it. Remember, only one person will take the gold, every other athlete will not. How will your athlete accept this reality? As Wooden said, "Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong question. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort? That's what matters. The rest of it just gets in the way."
23. Do not permit an athlete you are coaching to lose it. I certainly never accepted a coach that could not refrain from "losing it". The day I saw my "coach" throw first his finger tab as an immature display of disgust with his desired performance, and a few ends later, actually throw his bow down, was the last day I respected that coach and certainly the last day as a parent I allowed my own athlete to be subject to such a coach. That athlete never had a coach teach him what was important in sport.
24. Be a "Realistic Optimist" as defined by Wooden. Don't know what that is? Fine. Read the damn book. A good coach must at times APPREHEND knowledge - go out, seek it out, trap it, take it, seize it, grab it, fight for it, heck, sneak up on it from behind and jump on it with both hands - but never stop trying to get new knowledge.
25. The previous means you set realistic goals, those that you can reach, and you keep trying until you get to the goal. You remain positive (optimistic) about everything because you continually set a goal, reach it, and then set it again only farther out. And you must coach your athletes to do the same. Prepare them properly. Wooden said the most important goal is to make the most of your abilities. I can't argue with such wisdom, and my goal as a coach is often to do that with an athlete - get the most from her abilities. Of course, that means changing their abilities continually.
26. I am not sure there is anything that is too small for the coach to pay attention to, in relation to his students. HOW that coach pays attention to it is critical to his credibility. Wooden said it is the perfection of the smallest details that make the big things happen. He even taught *every* athlete how to put socks on feet properly.
27. The coach must insure the athlete understands the cost of a goal, any goal, accurately. Cost is not just dollars, but also literally a part of what that athlete holds most dear. It will vary from person to person, what is most inconvenient or hard for that athlete to pay. Just because you the coach are willing to invest of yourself, be sure that the athlete is equally willing, or your relationship will not potentiate into success. Trying to teach a horse to sing only irritates the horse and frustrates you, when the horse "only" wants to be a horse and not an rock star. In such a case, who is most at fault: you, the stupid coach.
28. I spoke earlier that the coach must be ready to act, when in the coach's box during matchplay. It is critical that the coach not react in this sharply acute way during training, to every little thing. Patience during the acquisition of adequate information in order to venture a coaching interaction is highly underrated. Yes, you may often be able to snap a judgment and immediately impart a coaching moment to your athlete, but it is usually the better way to watch and insure you are seeing not only "the problem" but also correctly analyzing the cause of the problem. This way you only have to give one set of instructions, not many, to achieve the desired change in the athlete and most importantly, you lessen the risk you will do harm by giving weak or wrong instruction. Avoid impotence by insuring correct identification before acting. The trick, if there is one here, is to not befuddle yourself or your athlete with too much study nor too much instruction. Get the facts, and act on them when you are certain. Will you always be 100% right? Most likely not. But your desire should be to increase the accuracy, always, as an obligation to your students.
29. "Looking back it seems to me, all the grief that had to be Left me when the pain was o'er Stronger than I was before." (by unknown poet). A good coach knows to continually present challenges to their athletes, making them stronger. Doesn't have to actually be painful but you must strain and stretch them, and insure that they improve rather than quit, persist rather than surrender.
30. I admire the concept of the Olympics, but I admire more fully the practice of the Paralympic. One has become the race to the green instead of the gold, while the other remains "citius, altius, fortius" despite the insults of life to the corporeal self. And I regret that some of my most admirable fellow coaches fail to grasp this.
31. I have always taught to smile. No matter what the result at the target, the archer must smile, and be truly happy, as much as possible. Since you can't be happy without smiling, smiling is a great start to being happy, accepting what you've done. An archer that frowns after each shot only teaches herself to be negative and thence perform negatively. Besides, your line neighbors will sense your positive outlook and attitude, and THAT can do wonders for your own performance.
32. Seldom is an archer an island. Usually there is a circle, a support group if you will. Friends, and especially family. A good coach must be able to seen when it is necessary to coach the entire circle to some degree. Especially true with young athletes, where peer pressure is never greater during life. Be a influential and positive part of the circle.
33. In archery, progress seldom comes "every day" in the eyes of the archer. It is up to the coach to insure that A) the archer does improve, and B) the archer has some metric, some way, of realizing the progress she is making. And even more rarely is there a quantum leap, a vital step, up in performance. If you as a coach are fortunate enough to realize this in your athlete, you must take adequate steps to insure this improvement is permanent and the athlete does not back-slide. The trick is knowing what that particular athlete needs to realize it. Once I have the sure-fire formula for that I will write a book and make a million dollars, but until then I, as you, must always be vigilant and creative in responses.
34. Again with the Woodenism: The Laws of Learning:
    1. Explanation
    2. Demonstration
    3. Imitation
    4. Repetition
    Does this sound like archery? It should, and I commend to any coach that #2 is the most critical, and to aid my argument, please find V.Ramachandran on www.ted.com by searching for "Mirror Neurons Ramachandran". Our evolutionary path has blessed us with brain cells whose sole function is to mirror (and therefore learn) what we see. Every coach needs to understand this, and the application it has in teaching the Kisik Lee method.
35. Reading List (Bold are perhaps more useful to me):

    1. Athlete's Edge: Faster, Quicker, Stronger With Vitamin D by John Cannell (I feel this is the highest payoff for your time and money)

    2. Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
    3. The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
    4. Spark, the Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey and Edward M. Hallowell
    5. Food Inc. - How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer, by Karl Weber
    6. The Mind by John Brockman (S. Pinker, V. Ramachandran, and others)
    7. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
    8. The Tell-Tale Brain- A Neuroscientist's Quest For What Makes Us Human by V.S. Ramachandran
    9. Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing In Three Dimensions by Susan R. Barry
    10. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
    11. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves
    12. Choke by Sian Beilock
    13. The Essential Wooden by John Wooden and Steve Jamison
36. Fixing My Gaze contains the nucleus for what I think is the remaining quantum leap in archery performance to be had, since the development and release of the Kisik Shot Cycle. In essence there is one set of muscles that has not yet benefited from modern scientific training that has become recently available. Train the muscles of the eye to focus faster and more accurately, and perhaps even stretch the ability to focus simultaneously on BOTH the aperture AND the target with no effort. There are only 400 or so OPTOMETRISTS in the USA capable of teaching this. It won't be cheap to develop it, and perhaps some day I will be granted the funding by an archery organization to pursue this. When I asked one, the best coach I have ever met, my notion was met with "huh, a Korean with only 10% vision just set a world record", as if this completely negates my concept. I wonder how much better that record would have been, had the archer the training to focus on the target, then the aperture, then the target, in an "instant"...this type of training has never been done, so we will never know. But I was very disappointed in the response, regardless.
37. When coaching, fewer words are only better than many if the coach chooses the right words. Brief, bite-sized phrases are better than speeches. There, I have said it twice, so it must be important.
38. I feel it is incredibly important that a coach (not an instructor) be able to quickly decide what needs correcting, and in what order the flaws should be addressed, in order to build a better outcome for the athlete. It must, will, vary with each individual athlete. If I learned nothing else from Don Rabska, it is this, and it is incredibly important. Repeat: it is incredibly important. Repetition is a very important, no, an incredibly important part of the learning process.
39. A wise coach insures that he understands what the initial goals are an athlete has (and perhaps the parents of, for youth archers). He knows how to "keep it real" for the athlete to insure the athlete ultimately realizes success, whether or not that original goal is met. Wooden: "Success is peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming". If a coach allows unreasonable goal setting, success becomes unlikely and it is not the athlete that fails, it is the coach that fails the athlete.
40. Nutrition - knowledge of what is needed to be "healthy" is critical to any self-respecting coach, as is knowing what does not create health in the athlete.
41. Vitamin D: every athlete deserves to be coached into a blood level of approximately 50 ng/ml by either sun, sunbed, or capsule supplementation. See http://www.vitamind.arcarmichael.com for documentation.
42. The archer must be able to turn his or her head fully on to the target. Rotating the head may be more or less difficult for this reason: We always have a favored side, that normally has a better range of motion. If that happens to be the side needed, all the better. My daughter taught me what she learned from her physical therapist (that reminds me what the next tip is going to be) - to increase your range of motion, FIRST, drop your chin down and like an owl, move your head back to more over your spine. JUST as with your shoulders, lowering gives you greater range of motion, AND helps with the fundamental NTS concept of keeping your chi lower. You will also be able to gently and carefully work the range of motion and increase your ability to turn your head towards the target, again a fundamental piece of the NTS Pie. Using tricks: If you can have your athlete swim laps, require them to always breathe out of the desired side, so that every time they roll their head towards air/target, gradually gaining more freedom, range of motion, so that they can better face their target. Perhaps moving the chin down and the head back over the spine will become a part of the Kisik Shot Cycle some day.
43. Down. In the BEST/NTS method, "down" is almost always a consideration and a goal. Keep the center of power(chi), center of gravity, shoulders, chin, ALL down. Allowing these to rise up from the down' position defeats the archers' attempt to shoot the KSL shot cycle properly. The athlete who loses the "down" literally rises up, out of himself, and is then subject to bad influences all around, such as the wind.
44. A shelf should not be a part of a finger tab at any level - it causes tissue damage if the archer anchors properly. The fist nuckle, the joint at the BASE of the index finger, is what you must place in close, solid, hard contact with the underside of the jaw. Metal shelves are a form of cheating, and allows the archer to give less than 100% to loading.
45. Never fail to use experts when needed and available: Physical Therapists, like Michael Tillman of Austin, TX, are wonderful in helping you to help your athlete. To minimize recovery time and to devise the best method of movements to recover from an injury. Totally undervalued by many coaches, the competent PT should be a part of your plan, an arrow in your quiver.
46. Backup bows: having one usually means you never need it. If you use every device on the face of the earth to measure one bow's parameters and apply them to the same brand and models of another bow, you will only get identical performance in the rarest of luck. The "feel" of the bows will match only through effort of the archer to tune one to match the feel of the other, and it is rare that all the measures will match. So does this mean that the parts of the two bows are "interchangeable"? Not really. If a part fails during a competition, do you want to get it from the other bow, or should you really just move to the other bow? A good coach will insure the athlete can easily step from one bow to the other and not miss a beat, in fact, I believe the athlete should be TRAINED to step from one bow to the other routinely. I also like being able to have the athlete shoot BOTH bows on the morning warmup of a big tournament, and choose which one she likes the feel of, at that particular moment. TO AVOID confusion, I use good old colored fingernail polish to paint all the bits and parts of each bow to identify them as the "gold" or "red" bow, so they always assemble into the same full bow. Consistency. Highly underrated or even ignored through well, ignorance. The same for "feel" - as a coach, I do believe the most important question to ask your athlete after ANY physical activity especially the shot, is "how did that feel" because you must get the athlete into a higher plane of understanding about his or her body's functions relative to the shot cycle.
47. I will never use "target panic" as a label, instead I've chosen "Shot Choke" or "brain overload" - based on a greater understanding of how when an athlete's frontal brain takes on too much of an activity in THINKING about what must be a non-thinking activity. The frontal cortex is like the RAM of a SMALL computer, able to juggle only a few things at a time, and it is conditioned to constantly range about and shifting focus (Ohhh, lookatthekitty!) rather than focusing down, drilling into, one single thing at a time. When you see someone in the throes of this agony, their frontal cortex has siezed control from the back areas of the brain where INSTINCTUAL process can successfully perform the entire Kisik Shot Cycle without ever once hiccuping the flow. When we learn something as intricate as the KSC we must, must, do so one piece at a time by involving the frontal cortex with it's miraculous mirror neurons, and repeat until that piece can be shifted back into the subconscious, whereupon the coach teaches the athlete to put a NEW piece into the processor(the frontal cortex) and begin working on it. With training, the athlete then learns how to move EACH piece of the KSC pie into the Frontal Cortex(FC) and then OUT and into the subconscious where the brain MAINTAINS all of the accomplished parts as the FC deals with the next piece of the pie. Only once the arrow is in the target does the athlete then get to ENJOY THE COMPLETE PIE, oh so briefly, and savor the flavors, and then reset to rebuild that wonderful pie once again. To understand this, you must as a coach embrace many things: The Kisik Shot Cycle (KSC), the teachings of V.Ramachandran concerning what makes us conscious human beings (see my reading list) and view him on TED TV, online. He is a fascinating human, himself<G>. Shot Choke. Brain Overload. Not target panic. Call it what it truly is, a brain overload...that can often be controlled with understanding and a total commit to the Kisik Shot Cycle.
48. This one? I am learning this one now....

If I am through learning, I am through - John Wooden
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely help another without helping himself - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Alan Ronald Carmichael: husband, parent, child, coach, and pharmacist