Training and bow changes crucial for Lameg to have successful comeback

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT is presented by WIAWIS.

From long layoffs, whether it be due to injuries or personal reasons, athletes easing their way back into the swing of elite sport is often the preferred option to rediscover their finest form.

Therefore, going straight from a five-year break to perform substantially well at the highest level of the sport does seem a far reach to be expecting of someone. 

But that is exactly what Bryanne Lameg intends on doing in the upcoming outdoor season as she awaits to represent Canada on the shooting line for the first time since 2019, all whilst juggling her responsibilities as a student and part-time worker.

“In the past two or three years now, I’ve only really attended one or two events per year, and I never did any locals or anything like that, it was all national level events,” said 25-year-old Lameg, who won her national team compound women’s place back after winning the Canada Cup West last summer.

“After all the regulations and all that changed, the ranges opened up, the gyms opened up, and my availability became a little bit easier after dealing with other things during COVID-19. This year I feel as though I am more adequately prepared to take on the task of competing internationally.”

Before the pandemic, Lameg was well and truly on her way to being a mainstay for the Canadian compound senior team.

The Winnipeg based archer had ended 2019 after competing in her first senior Pan American Games in Lima, where she came fifth as a 20-year-old and a year earlier had won silver in the World Archery Indoor Championships in Yankton as part of the women’s team and made her debut World Cup appearance in Salt Lake City that year.

The global lockdown therefore firmly halted Lameg’s development in its tracks with her local ranges and gyms closed, her schoolwork completely switching to online which she admitted gave her “difficulties” and an unfortunate loss of two family members.

Now, Lameg finds herself as a full-time student at the University of Manitoba, where she is majoring in actuarial and entrepreneurship whilst she tries to discover how best to prepare for her return to world level archery. 

“I feel as though when I was competing in 2018/19, I had been shooting every single day, and my goal was to try and shoot 300 arrows a day and take breaks with my studying, going between work and everything there.”

“It’s something that you can’t just pick up and go right off the top, and that’s what I had been doing for a lot of these national level events,” she added.

“I wasn’t training enough to feel confident in my shooting, so I want to get back into that.”

Although the shooting side of archery may have been pulled back a touch during Lameg’s absence from the shooting line, her passion has failed to cease as she is also the archery lead technician at a Cabela’s Canada store in Winnipeg, a sporting goods chain.

In the role, she has oversight over all archery repairs and work orders at the shop which has given her the opportunity to experiment and finetune her own bow’s design, poundage and arrows as well as relieve some financial pressure being a student brings.

From her increased knowledge and exposure to bow technology, Lameg’s current training involves shooting at 90 metres, 40 more than the usual compound distance, to encourage development of the muscles archery requires at quicker pace, with a draw length just shy of 25 pounds, and longer arrows for better grouping and aerodynamics.

Lameg said she could do with a lighter bow to begin with to increase her current output of 200 arrows per week as she prepares for the upcoming World Cup, archery’s premier international circuit, but is determined to prioritise quantity over quality.

“I have run into issues in the past where I’ve got an injury from shooting too much and I want to avoid that,” explained Lameg, who is set to compete at the first stage of the Hyundai Archery World Cup in Central Florida in April.

“The bow riser that I have is intended to go with limbs of a recurve design but I’m putting more of a parallelism design on them.” 

“I feel as though I have a good idea of what I want to do with it and how I want to make those adjustments, it’s just going to take me going to the range and feeling through the shots and seeing where those adjustments will be needed to be made.”

It’s always difficult to predict archers’ outcomes for seasons, particularly when they have endured such a long hiatus away from the shooting line like Lameg, but make no mistake, the Canadian is doing everything she can to best prepare herself for a comeback five years in the making. 

Her competitive athletic edge has never left, hence why she still always competed in national events and now finds herself back at the highest ceiling of archery.

Lameg detailed her excitement for returning to the warmth the World Archery community brings, and whilst dealing with a whole raft of life changes the past couple of years, she must now get back to the mindset of an elite athlete as shealso looks towards the Hyundai World Archery Championships in Korea in September, this time along with her duties as a part-time worker and full-time student.