The archer’s paradox: Why trying harder makes you perform worse

At 18, one of us—Juan Carlos—arrived at the Spanish indoor archery championship expecting to win. He was shooting better than he ever had. But he was an outsider in the Spanish archery community and was training with unorthodox methods at the time. He and his coach, who came from handball and gymnastics, had been the subject of much criticism. So he competed to prove a point. From the first arrow he tried to achieve perfection. When he didn’t, it rattled him. By the halfway mark he was thinking about the rankings, about what the critics would say, about everything except the next shot. He finished near last and took the public bus home alone and devastated. After some reflection, he understood what happened: The harder he had tried, the worse he had shot. Archers use the phrase “archer’s paradox” for a quirk of arrow flight. We have adopted it for something archers know and rarely say out loud: The more you want to hit the center, the more likely you are to miss. In archery, the mechanism is physical. Pressure creates tension, tension degrades fine motor control, and the archer who is trying too hard grips the bow too tightly, holds their breath, forces the release, and watches th…