I really am unsure as to what I should be putting in these blogs but now that it has been set up I guess I will start with this…… Clickers, how to use them and not blame them!
This subject just keeps re-surfacing on web boards and is a popular question when I am coaching or giving lectures. A clicker is a piece of kit that makes the recurve archer let go of the string, it is a trigger that the archer becomes conditioned to which will give a sub-conscious response. It is not, within intermediate and above archers, a draw check.
The draw check is dealt with by good, consistent, posture as can be seen in the chapter on dynamic posture which is on the resources page. A draw length is designated by how the whole body fits together in a kinesthetically clean manner with the lowest use of physical and mental resources.
So back to this clicker thing…..
It is part of the kit on a recurve and should be included from the first few sessions. When learning, one would set the clicker at roughly the right position (perhaps a bit long) and let the archer learn how to make the click happen without too much descriptive teaching. I personally always teach my novices to watch the arrow as they are drawing back and to look up and aim when they see the clicker blade dip on the point. As an archer’s skill gets better and their posture and alignment become wholly consistent they will draw an arrow to within a couple of mm of the same place everytime, irrespective of whether or not they have placed a piece of spring steel over the arrow, SO IT AIN’T A DRAW CHECK 
If posture and alignment are good then this last couple of mm to make the clicker go off is not achieved by any cognitive movement at all, but just by letting the big muscles that have been used to get to this position interact with the clean lines of the body structure.
The problems with using a clicker are two fold:
1) Poor Posture: for example, if the front shoulder climbs, the clicker can never go and if the back shoulder is over emphasised in the draw then similarly it will require cognitive effort to execute the clicker.
2) Self report information and poor teaching techniques. These have built up a collection of myths and lies about how clickers are executed! As soon as someone tries to teach this by talking about a movement at full draw just dont listen. This kind of explanation has been fostered by asking skilled performers how they make the clicker go off, the bottom line is they don’t MAKE it go off, but they have to say something and so the myth of back tension was born
Like ALL aspects of a closed skill the athlete puts their body and mind in a position to let it happen.
This is why many top archers look at the clicker before aiming. This allows them a moment of cognitive appraisal that all of the feedback they are getting through their body’s senses is “correct” and then they get on with it. They stop processing internally and change the focus to external when the bein to aim and so the shot “happens”.
Enough for now!
