
Hari Shukla Member of the Great Britain Archery Team
Hari Shukla Member of the Great Britain Archery Team
Features and News by Nino Severino
It’s widely accepted by coaches and athletes that developing the mind is a very important area of sports performance. One of The Hub elite athletes and his team have taken this realisation one step further and have implemented our Mind Power 4 Success mental Skills Programme into their training and development strategy. His name is Hari Shukla, he is a member of the Great Britain Archery Team.
I became aware of Hari Shukla through St Joseph’s College in Ipswich during a presentation that I delivered to parents. Hari’s mother, Laura, approached me immediately after the presentation to discuss a mental skills programme for Hari, this was the beginning of a very positive relationship with an outstanding young athlete.

During our introductory meeting I asked Harry about his journey through archery, he said “I tried archery for the first time at the age of 8 after watching my dad, who took it up as a hobby”.
Laura said “He naturally took to the sport and hasn’t looked back since, remaining a member of Braintree Bowmen Club ever since. He was the youngest athlete to be accepted into the archery GB national age group academy which takes on the top athletes around the country. Hari has recently moved up age categories in his competing and subsequently doing more local based training but still alongside his archery GB coach. Hari trains across the week in strength and conditioning as well as shooting itself. Hari has always maintained his goal is the Olympics”.

With the attitude I have witnessed during our sessions, I do not doubt for a moment that Hari will realise his dream of becoming an Olympian one day. He committed to a large and structured Mind Power 4 Success mental skills programme, staying super focused through every module. Hari is very mature for his age, his interaction, and his ability to communicate his thoughts and feelings made our sessions very valuable.
I set Hari tasks at the end of every session, he completed these with incredible discipline and thought, it gave us a great base to build on during each follow on session. Building a strong and stable mind is important in any elite sport, in Archery I think it is even more important. It’s such a fine art sport technically, delivery through static positions that need to be held are physically very demanding. The sport of Archery is also mentally demanding, with the realisation that fractions of a millimetre incorrectly positioned up the chain of the body could have disastrous outcomes in terms of making the target.

Hari is without doubt is an incredible role model for any other young athlete who aspires to be one of the best athletes in the world at their sport. Becoming a champion is much more than conquering the technical and tactical demands. Becoming a great athlete is also about understanding that there are many components that athletes need to place into their training programme, mental skills being one of them.

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