The Soft Break-Up
Note: this is very long, disorganized, and raw. It’s more for me than for you.
If you’re reading this, odds are you know that I am a Team Canada senior team archer, and have been for a few years now. If you even just follow my public persona, you probably also know that I have been struggling with performance for the last couple of years. And if you know me a little more closely, then you also know that I have been struggling with motivation. It is hard to stay motivated to continue putting in the work and hours when there are no results to show for it. From February to May of this year I had been shooting 1500 up to nearly 2000 arrows per week. Three hours of training time before work each week day, and four or five hours of training time both days of the weekend. That is on top of my usual “40 hour” work weeks at my day job career, which in the same time frame were often closer to 50 hour weeks. Add in time to prepare and eat meals and make some attempt at maintaining my apartment. I was not left with enough time to fulfill my strength and conditioning (S&C) training obligation, nor any other hobbies or relaxation or decompression time most weeks. Hell, I was lucky to get more than 6 hours of sleep on any given night.
During this time frame I was selected to attend an Archery Canada training camp in Mexico, which was in preparation for the World Cup in Antalya Turkey, where I also competed. At both the camp and the World Cup I again did not meet my (or the program’s) performance expectations. And again, as had become the norm, I didn’t enjoy shooting my bow at either event.
Then in mid-May, we had our national selection tournament to determine who would be the Berlin World Championships team for this year, which would also be generally the same team for the World Cup in Medellin, Colombia. This result would also factor in to the further team nominations for the World Cup in Paris, France.
And again, I didn’t perform up to standards. I only managed 7th place after qualifying on the first day, and after the head-to-head matches on the second day I only improved my position to 6th. Only four athletes can be sent to a World Cup and only three to the World Championships, so it was clear that I would not be selected for Medellin, Berlin, or Paris. And, yet again, I didn’t enjoy shooting the tournament. It was a grind mentally, and all I wanted to do was be elsewhere, doing something else.
Last September I felt very much the same way about the Pan American Championships selection trials for Santiagio, Chile. In fact, at that time, I was so burnt out from the long training and competition season that I told our then- coach that I was considering dropping out of registration for the trials. He advised me not to do that since it would affect my eligibility for carding (government funding) for this year, so I showed up and shot the selection anyway. After the #1 ranked archer declined his placement due to scheduling conflicts with work, I was bumped up in the ranking and was nominated to attend. This stretched the season a further two months. It was gruelling. Our coach also announced he was leaving the team at this time. That coach had always been my coach since I started competing, so this didn’t help my motivation either. I was thinking about quitting the sport while I was in Chile. But I figured I was just burnt out from the season, and after taking… a whole 6-8 weeks off until the new year, I would be refreshed, motivated, and ready to go.
Well, not really. Not at all. Training resumed in January and I still did not enjoy shooting. But I did not want to quit. Not yet. Not so close to the end of the Olympic quadrennial. I could still do it - there was still time. I would put in more time. More work. Solve my mental performance, and the results would follow. Right?
This is a much longer and more rambl-y post than I had anticipated, but I don’t have the motivation for editing this, either. I guess I am writing for me, not for you.
Some time before the Mexico training camp this year, my brother called me one morning. He asked me if I wanted to go to the archery range near where he and my parents live and shoot with him. I told him I couldn’t - I was already on the way to the archery range near where I live, because I had to go train, and I had other things to do that afternoon. So I turned him down, because I had to go get my training in before leaving for a training camp.
My brother is the whole reason I started shooting. (Nearly)[0] the first time I picked up a bow was because I had gone with our mother to pick him up one day those years ago, where he was one of the first archers to join that little club. The same club I had turned him down to go visit that morning before the Mexico camp. He has been my #1 supporter and fan on this journey.
So after the weak result at the recent selections, I did some more thinking. Some soul-searching. Could I really close the performance gap? I wouldn’t be attending any international events until near the end of the year, when there would be another selection for the Pan American Games (also in Santiago). This also meant I wouldn’t see our interim national coach, either. The S&C program was restarting, so I would need to find time to fit in the workouts on top of the schedule I outlined earlier. Could I do that? Could I sustain that for the whole year? And next year, through to the Olympics?
I really didn’t see it anymore. For the first time in my archery journey, I had to look ahead to the Games and forecast if it was really achievable. In the past I had always been able to say “Yes” or “Not like this, but there is time.” This time my answer was “I don’t really think so, and I don’t know if I want to try.” I decided I at least needed to give myself a break from shooting and not touch a bow for a few weeks, but also to not make any rash decisions straight away in the wake of a poor performance.
So I weighed out the options and tried to assign probabiltiies to the branching paths. Was it realistic that I would make it to the Olympics? Probably not, but maybe. Was it sustainable to continue putting in the work and hours I had been, or even more? Certainly not. Maybe I could still get there with less time invested… ?
And then I remembered that phone call from my brother, and how I turned down his invitation to go shoot. “I shoot because my brother got me into it, and he’s my #1 fan.” How do I reconcile that identity with my actions? That’s a big thing my sport psych had taught me. If you want to change your patterns of behaviour, you have to change your self-identity. My self-identity was at odds with my actions, and I had a moment of clarity here - I didn’t want to change that identity. I wanted to change that action. I wanted to go back to being that guy who loves to shoot, and spends time at the range with his brother as often as possible. This realization broke me and I am even proud to say that I had a few minutes of hard, ugly crying over this realization. As soon as I could see through my tears I hit Send on the e-mail draft [1] that I had written for Archery Canada declaring my intent to retire. That was already nearly three weeks ago.
Now I am retired from the team. On the one hand I am sad to say it, because I did have so much fun with it at times. It’s a good feeling and achievement to make it to that place, to wear the jersey, to represent your country. To travel with teammates, to become friends, to share memories. Those are the best parts of sport. Unfortunately, for me, at the end, they were the only enjoyable parts left. I quit the team before I got to a point where I felt my love for the sport was unrecoverable. I need to take the pressure and expectations of competing and outcomes out of it so that I can love the sport again. I want to want to shoot. I will still shoot, and you will still see me around. Probably not with so many accessories on the bow. Or maybe shooting a camera instead of a bow.
So that is the soft breakup. I’ve been officially retired, quietly, for three weeks. But I haven’t been training, and have been mentally checked out, for a few weeks more. I have seen a few friends/ex-teammates around and admitted it to them in private, and a few more people have figured it out since I posted a bunch of my equipment for sale, but today I finally had the energy to “gather” (somewhat) these thoughts and write it out.
What’s next? The next chapter, of course. But that’s still not written. I’m excited to write it.
[0] I did also shoot a bow for a week, or however long, for “recreational gym class” in high school. I hardly remember that experience at all. Clearly it didn’t have much impact on me - nothing compared to the “first time” I picked up a bow at that local club near where my family lives.
[1] Here is the e-mail in its entirety:
Hi all,
I am writing you today to express my intent to retire from sport, the Archery Canada National Team, and all High Performance programming, as well as from the Sport Canada Athlete Assistance Program.