Tell Me Your Blind Bale Experiences

[shortstroke 91]

One word of CAUTION...
If your going to do Rod's 30 day homework, make sure everything is where you want before you commit. I made the mistake of doing my 30 day blind bale religiously but my anchor wasn't where it needed to be. When I let myself aim I discovered that my arrow wasn't under my eye anymore and my left/right was off.
I had to start the 30 days all over to relearn my new anchor.

just my $.02

[AllenR]

Two things about the bale:

One - while you are developing your shot, to really do any good, you need to shoot the bale exclusively. The goal is to develop and ingrain your shot to the level that you trust it to run subconsciously while you immerse in aiming.   Once you have the shot that you trust, you can shoot the bale for warm up and tune up.  But while you are developing the habits of a good shot, you should not shoot at targets.

Second - bale shooting is useless and sometimes even harmful if you don't also run a disciplined bridge.  The bridge is where you find out if you really do trust your shot to run subconsciously.  Few archers finish their first round of bale shooting with a perfectly trusted shot.  At some point in the bridge almost everyone finds something that they want to "supervise" with their conscious mind.  This tells you what you need to go back to the bale to work on.

I've also had the good fortune to spend some time with Len.  It made more positive difference in my shooting than anything else I've ever done.  

Allen