In my last piece, I talked about how most of what we perceive as Autistic behavior stems from how our brains perceive information: while allistic folks typically filter a broad scope of stimulus and pick out just one thing to focus on, Autistics often perceive everything at once and with greater intensity. We’re often hyperaware and hypersensitive, and often this is true for both internal and external phenomena.
This can make certain parts of life, and obviously archery, difficult–busy, loud tournaments can be distracting–but it doesn’t take much extrapolation to understand how this could also be a benefit. This has been my experience of Autism in general, that what we perceive as a challenge is actually the weakness of a strength, and while acknowledging our challenges is important, focusing on our strengths can be empowering. So while the hypersensitivity can be a burden dealing with outside stimulus, it’s absolutely given me an edge when it comes to my internal awareness.
Perception Turned Up To 11
One of the funny parts of Autism is that while my fine motor control isn’t great (writing by hand has always been really hard, and I’m definitely the clumsiest electrician you’ve ever seen), I’ve always had a very fine-tuned understanding of my gross muscle movement. Rock climbing, ice climbing, and archery have all come relatively easy to me, for no other reason than I have a natural heightened perception of what’s happening internally.
Perceiving everything at once can be overwhelming with outside stimulus, but it also lets me feel every fine detail as I’m shooting: the way the grip feels in my palm and against my knuckles, the way the string blur lines up, the way the back muscles move, the sensation of coming into alignment. All of this is felt in a nuanced, relaxed, but very precise way. When I’m dialed into my shot, I find using word-based cues doesn’t work nearly as well as just feeling everything. Instead of thinking of words or steps, I can just steer my body into the sensations it remembers.
In my experience, archery is a sport where the real game is removing gray-areas from your shot. While our shots don’t have to be 10,000 step shot-processes, there shouldn’t be much ambiguity in them either. For me, a good shot process is simple but detailed. I’ve found improvement follows every time I find an area of my shot I wasn’t being conscious of and bring some intentionality and direction to it, and with that natural hyper-awareness there aren’t many spots missing, or they get filled in faster than most.
I’ve worked with several coaches who have commented I have one of the most detailed body-awarenesses they’ve seen, and it’s led to an absurd consistency when I hone in on what I’m doing. When I talk with other Autistic archers, I’ve found we can talk about muscle movements and perceptions in a much more finely calibrated way, whereas I’m used to other archers staring at me blankly when I describe these things, or realizing they never had thought about it before.
Awareness and Skill Acquisition
I think this awareness is also one of the reasons I’ve been able to learn skills faster than some. I’m almost never a natural at anything, in fact I'm hopelessly awkward at most things at first, but with just a few sessions I can quickly hone in on the details and internalize them. A part of my training routine has been recording roughly how long it takes me to internalize a change, so I can know if it’s a good idea to incorporate changes leading up to a big shoot. Sometimes I’d rather do something that I know is wonky but dialed, rather than try an untested technique. From what I’ve gathered, my timelines are often accelerated compared to most folks, and I believe this hyper-awareness is the reason why.
To be clear, the right training plan helps this immensely: having periods of repetitive drilling, broader sessions where I integrate and focus on the whole process, and randomized training challenges all help me dial in the details, and have accelerated this natural awareness.
Conclusion
Is my form perfect? Not at all: old injuries in my shoulder and back make my shot not nearly as beautiful as it could be. The draw elbow is way outside of the string line, the shoulders are stacked higher than most, the whole thing admittedly looks weird, but it's an intentional and finely calibrated weird. If I had to choose between having a body that let me have perfect form and a mind that couldn't perceive it as well, or my banged up body that I can be so intensely aware of, I'd choose the latter every time. I'd rather be aware of my limitations and push them than have untapped strengths. Sure, it looks weird, but it's consistently weird.
Also: “Consistently Weird” would be a great title for my tell-all biography that absolutely no one would read.
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