So what is this bare bow thing all about?

Hi all

So as it says "What is bare bow thing all about?"

Well for those of you who are not aware it is shooting a bow with little or no aids on it, by aids I am referring to anything that helps the archer have a consistent and stable shot cycle, including stabilisers (long/short rods),weights, clickers, arrow rests, sights and plunger/buttons, yes even the rest and plunger are aids as they assist in a clean launch of the arrow from the bow helping to avoid the shaft contacting the riser.

But why would you give up all these wonderful little gadgets that help you put all your arrows in the ten ring I hear you ask?

The answer will vary from one archery to another, for me it is the absences of all those aids that makes bare bow attractive, because then it is all down to me to make the shot. The more aids on a bow the more I feel like I am operating a machine. I don't mean to take anything away from freestyle archers, even with all aids on a bow that you can use the shot still comes down to you and you are the only variable, you may have a bow that is rock steady with a one hundred percent consistent draw length, but you can still have a bad release, snatch the bow or drop your bow arm and the more stable and consistent your equipment the more those little mistakes hurt your score. So in part I think it is the fact that bare bow is a bit more forgiving and as I shoot primarily for relaxation that is a big plus.

I have been shooting freestyle for the last six years and wanting more than anything to shoot bare bow, the reason I have not is that just as I was about to put away my sight I was asked to be the caption of our clubs Summer Albion League team and I said yes. I then had to concentrate on shooting freestyle as my scores were needed for the team as we were struggling to put a team together for each match, now were have an excess of people wanting to shoot on the team (and most of them can out shoot me by a margin), last season we won our division and were promoted and in our first season the B division we came second. So I am not really needed to shoot on the team (I didn't make the cut for out last match) and we have a new captain taking over the team for next season (good luck Sharon). So now at last I am hanging up my sight.

Something has to give....

Hi all,

Here we are again at the beginning of another season and I have come to the sad conclusion that I am going to have to stop shooting bare bow for as long as I am captaining our summer league team. I just cannot shoot two different styles well and as I have made a commitment to the league team that will have to take precedence over my bare bow aspirations.  

 I know there are lots of people who shoot more than one style but how many of them can honestly say they are shooting both as well as the could, I was finding myself using the corner of my mouth, where I anchor for bare bow when I was shooting target when I should be under my jaw. I am going to shoot bare bow but it is going to have to wait until I can either pass on the summer league hat or until the team is at a point where my score is not so important, so I have  anew goal....get the summer league team up to scratch.

We have a problem with target archery at Noak Hill that I think I have mentioned before, unfortunatly it is also one of our greatest assets, we have our own record status ground that we can use from an hour after dawn till and hour before dusk 365 days of the year. "Big problem!" I hear you all shout, we should try only having a field for one or two day a week, when everyone wants to shoot at the same time and there is our catch 22. Because we can use the club at any time people are not tied shooting at set times and so they come whenever the can/want to. I see other clubs in the area with a busy shooting line with 20 or 30 people on a Sunday morning and then I look at us with  five or six archers on the line, the difference is that there will be the same number almost everyday of the week and field big enough for two independent shooing areas with a safety line in the middle we don't all have to shoot at the same time, which again splits us up. This is not a huge problem for established members as they tend to come over in the same group on the same day. For beginners it can be more of a problem as once they have finished their course passed their assessment and paid their membership they are left to their own devises, don't get me wrong we have lots of people ho are more than willing to give help and advice. But with on set shooting schedule they do tend to end up just shooting at a boss with no real aim other than shooting.

So we are going to try and get back to a regular Sunday shoot, using rounds that have several options for distance we will be able to accommodate anyone who wants to shoot and  start giving some direction to their shooting. The initial aim will be for archers to work up through their classifications and we will also have the odd week when we do not shoot a round but just spend the time working on good shooting maybe by pairing up a novice/improving archer with a more experience archer. I am also playing about with the idea of a sort of informal mentor type set up where each new member will have a go to person who will help them with their progression, this will I hope stop the old problem of being told six different thing by six different people. It will also mean that if you see a novice doing something not quite right you can tell their mentor and then they can deal with it with them.

So that is where I am going this season hopfuly I will be able to report back on good progress as we go forwards, but time will tell.

 

Long rod back on for one round and a bit of string walking.

Hi,

Well I was up at the club yesterday and had about an hour to kill before assessing a couple of junior archers so I thought I would have a play and see if I could hit 100 yards. Well yes I can but only aiming at the top of the white with my sight all the way in and as low as possible. After a few ends shooting as I have been with no long rod I decided to pop it back on just to see what difference it made and I could out a reasonable group on the boss. So that is something to pursue maybe next season.

Then I had a pair or young arches to assess and they were surprisingly good, I don't really have anything to do with teaching/coaching at the moment and so had not see these two shoot before. They both had nice forms and took notice of everything, I have assessed adults before and managed to take two steps over the shooting line before being spotted and someone calling fast, but this time I have barely put a foot over when they caught me.  Needless to say they both passed so well done them and well done their teachers.

After a bit of a chat and a cup of 'something' warm, I went back out onto the line and as my long rod was still on decided to shoot an albion with it (I know a week early but just once won't hurt). Well I don't know if it was from shooting with out the long rod but I shot my best ever 80 yards with 238 for three dozen. That's 32 more than when I shot my last personal best, so the game was on. The problem was at 60 yards the whole thing just fell apart and I ended up with 232, less that I scored at 80! (I had 268 with my last PB), then at 50 I pulled it back a bit with 288 (against 278) and ended up on 758 a new PB by 6 points but It really should have been nearer 790 grrr!

Then I had a bit of fun, Dennis our club chairman and awesome bare bow archer was shooting next to me and as he knows I have an interest trying bare bow gave me a little taster. I used his Bernadini Nilo and for the first time shot a bow that felt similar to my revolution. I also had my first taste of the mystique art of string walking, which is weird but quite fun and while I tried out his toy Dennis shot a couple of ends with mine and was quite surprised at how well it shot even compared to his Bernadini. So an interesting day all round,  my bare bow weight should arrive from AS Spigarelli  any day and then we'll see what that does. I will talk a bit more about bare bow in my next post but that's about it for now.

First class unstableised

Yes folks I did it, yesterday I managed to shoot a 706 albion without the long rod, and I still have one and a half weeks to go before I put it back on, so I might even equal my PB of 752. I am still really feeling like it is hard work for my bow arm by the end of the round which is another thing to keep an eye on when I put the long rod back on. This is also effecting my score at 50 yards, the last round I had 267 at 60 but only 256 at 50 and with the long rod on I almost always beat my 60yrd score at 50.
I started the round thinking that I would really pay attention to my release after it had been pointed out how inconsistent it had become, but as I shot things went from bad to worse. The more I tried to keep my release clean the bigger my groups got. By the last end I had given up and just shot normally and of course everything came right back. I carried on for the rest of the round and you know how it ended.

What can I say I just love shooting this bow naked....err... the bow not me....hmm

An unstable day.........

Well I was thinking to myself that as I had shot quite well without a long rod last week, I went to the club yesterday  with the intention of shooting an albion with no stabalisation.
So off I went to the club and got setup and things started pretty well at 80 yards I scored 202 with three dozen arrows which is not too bad with my best end pictured below.

(Oh and I think I had forgotten just how nice my Revo' feels when it is bare.....)

At 60 yards I scored 244 and at 50 yards 250, for a total of 696 (only 4 points off a first class score). The only distance I was a bit disappointed with was the 50 yards , as I know I can shoot close to 280 even without a long rod at that distance. 

The only thing that stands out is that by the time I got down to 50 yards my bow arm was really starting to feel tired. Now this is not a problem I normally have shooing even long rounds, so all I can think is that I was  feeling the extra work I was having to do to keep the bow still with no long rod. If that is the case then one of my reasons for shooting with no stabs' (to strengthen the muscles that give fine control) would seem to be working.

My theory is that although it is fairly easy to build strength into the  big muscle groups that do all the hard work such as lifting the bow and drawing the string, it is much harder to build strength into the smaller muscle groups that control the fine movements. But if you take yours stabs' off and shoot with a sighted bare bow you will have to use these very muscles to hold the bow steady, then when you put your stabs back on you should notice a difference.....in theory. 

The other interesting thing was I scored 10 golds in total at 80 yards compared with 9 when I shot a PB on Sunday in the league match. Now this is a one off so far but I am going to shoot for the next three weeks with no stabs and see how my scores go and then put my long rod back on and see how it effects things. 

  

Great weekend

We had a league match against West Essex last Sunday (15th June), after not being able to field a full team  for last months match I was just hoping for a good day and getting five archers on the line so we would have a fighting chance. On the day we did not have the minimum five archers but six! So a good start, four of us were quite experienced with one of the others shooting in their second and one their first ever league match and only the second time they had shot at 80 yards!
The weather was kind with almost no wind, cloud cover to keep the sun off and a comfortable temperature if a little on the cool side. I was shooting with two great guys from West Essex, Brian and Sean and we had a really good time (well I did and think they did too). The long and the short of it was we won by 192 points, of our top five scores (you field a team of up to eight and then the top five scores count), the lowest was Peter who was shooting in only his second league match and scored just over 400, I think he came along thinking he was just making up numbers, but on the day without his score we would have lost, so well done Peter. Our other novice Sheila was shooting with such a low poundage bow that even with the sight reversed at 80 yards she was aiming at the tree tops behind the boss, she had the option  to shoot along side at a shorter distance but decided that she would like to shoot with the team so another well done.
As for me after my last round I was not expecting much but ended up on a personal best of 752, it was just one of those days when things clicked (or didn't) for me. Not much else to add except to say that West Essex as usual were great hosts and I expect the tea afterwards was up to their usual high standards, but I had to scoot off straight away and catch a train to Norwich for an urgent meeting in a bar with two old school friends, which led to a really good couple of days during which we ate far too much drank just about enough and did some things that some people think we are getting too old for....but that's a whole other story.

Unstable

Hi all, I got to the club yesterday in the end (or rather the beginning) nice and early to get in a last practice round before our next league match, against West Essex on Sunday. It did not go well, so not well that after the first two ends at eighty yards I decided that I was not going to get any kind of reasonable score so I might as well just enjoy myself. Off came my long rod and I shot with just the sight on the bow. Now the first thing lots of people will tell you is that without the long rod your gonna get hit by your bow as after the shot it will rotate backwards instead of forwards as modern bows are made to be shot with a long rod on them (if I was cynical I would say that is an excuse for making a badly balanced bow in the first place). But they will then be proved wrong as even with just a sight on it the Revo' (well mine anyway) stays vertical after you release, I also find that my sight marks are much better without the long rod pulling the bow down. To cut a long  story short I ended up shooting 673 for an albion, which I didn't think was too bad with no stabilization (well not after the first dozen which I only scored 53 with) against a personal best of 748.

Once again the thing that really hit me was just how much I like shooting my bow without the long rod on it, I think next year I am going to have a serious look  at doing some bare bow work.

Ouch II

OK so i didn't shoot for seven weeks while on some major anti-inflammatory pills and then came the weekend of the 11th May and the first of this years Summer League matches what to do?

Well the Friday before I had an appointment to see the Doc' and see where to go from there, my elbow felt about 85% back to normal so it was decided that an injection into the joint, which would have made it effectively unusable for two to three days was not warranted. I asked what the are implications for me shooting without it fully healed and his reply was.
 "Well it's going to aggravate it again and most likely put you back a bit on complete recovery, but having said that if it was me a few years ago and I had an important rugby match then I know I would have played. So there you are"

Well of course I shot and in the words of my thirteen year old son I shot  "Meh!", 634 is hardly something to shout about. The effect on my elbow was OUCH!, by the end of the round I was really struggling to hold at full draw and not just let go, but it did seems to ease off quite quickly even without taking anything. Shooting again three days later felt pretty good up to the last one and a half dozen, with a score of 666. I then followed that four days later with a 734 and then three days after that with a 748, so that's two first class scores for this season and I really feel that there is better to come.

This was my first end and while not the highest scoring end it was my best group I had at 80 yrds.

 Over these last two weeks what I have noticed is that my elbow seems to be standing up better each time I shoot and it is taking less time to recover after each session, so it seems that Laurie's advise was the best.

A strange week

Ok I have been very remiss keeping the blog going and am going to try and do better.

Last week was a bit of a strange one for me, on the thursday I shot a personal best on an Albion of 715 and then on the Sunday I shot just about my worst score this year at a LEAGUE MATCH! I just could not settle and just did not feel comfortable (if that is the right word) in my form). The on wednesday this week I was shooting a my club and happened to look at my bow and noticed that I had negative tiller set on the bow (the bottom limb was wound in further than the top one), now most bow are recommended by the makers to be set with positive tiller and with the Revo' they recommend starting with a neutral tiller. The difference is normally just a  millimeter or two between the top and bottom limbs, my bottom limb was all the way in and the top one was about 5 mm out (could be why it felt weird). But the last time I had the bow apart was back at the beginning of the year.  So I put it back to neutral and wow back to a sweet quiet bow, I had not realised how unbalanced it felt until I put it right.
The other thing I wanted to mention was long rods and side bars, do any other target shooters ever shoot without them, because if you don't you should try it. Start at a short distance and work you way out, I average about 80 pts/dozen arrows at 80 yards with a long rod and 75 pts without. Not a big difference when when not in a competition but boy does the Revo' feel nice without the long rod, remember it was designed to be shot with no extra stabilization and if tuned should not need any damping. So go on give it a try and then please give some feed back on how you thought it felt....oh and check your tiller and even if you are set to positive try it with neutral and again let us know how you found it.

Hello again,

I went out and shot an Albion round on Wednesday my second long round of the year so far and I was quite pleased, my score was 607. Last season I had managed to get to a personal best of 701 but then I did not shoot for about eight weeks and that put me back a bit and the winter set in and well you know how it goes. But now it is a new season and I am going to get my first class classification this year ( I think). I managed to get some groups of three four and on one end five arrows out at 80 yards, which is nice because now I can start to get my sight setup properly. I see so many people adjusting  their sight almost every end and sometimes every arrow, what is that about?

You cannot get you sight adjusted unless you have a group, otherwise it just does not work and all you do is chase your arrows around the boss. Once you have a group (all your arrows don't need to so close that they are touching as long as they are all in an area maybe a foot in diameter that's a group) you are shooting consistently and  then you can adjust your sight so that they are centred around the gold.