So bad at keeping this going .........

HI all

Just a quick update, still shooting but not as often as I should be and my scores are showing it, on a lighter note so far this season our Summer League team has won all our matches and with one to go we look pretty good to.......no I won't say it and tempt fate but watch this space.

I seem to have covered pretty much everything I can think of in this blog so please do feel free to make comments or if there is some aspect of archery (shooting tuning or anything else) that you want to know more about do let me know and I will try to answer or find out the answer.

Happy shooting guys

A bit of a long one but it might contain something useful....or maybe not who knows.....does anyone even take any notice anyway............

I posted this to an archery forum and then thought it might be good on here as well.



Ok first off I am not a coach and to be honest I really don't enjoy coaching, mainly because it really hacks me off when someone asks the way to somewhere and when you tell them where it is they immediately go in the opposite direction. So.....


I had a spare hour or so the other evening and thought I would pop over to the club (because at 7pm on a Wednesday nobody will be there) and spend a quiet hour just working on my release (which to be honest has got a bit raggedy over the winter). When I walked in it was right into the middle of two members (no that is not a euphemism) discussing whether a bow was twisted/out of alignment or not. Basically the owner of the bow was finding it increasingly difficult to keep his groups in the middle of the target as they kept drifting further and further to the right, this had been ongoing over the last year or so and his sight pin was soon going to disappear if he moved it any further to the right. As I walked in he asked me if I knew how to tell if a bow was twisted, I said that it was more likely a limb alignment issue and indeed that was the case which was easily sorted.


But as he had been shooting the bow for two years and the adjustment screws were snug with no play I told him that he if he was shooting OK with the bow a year ago then that was not the problem. "Ah! it's my sight then, look how far you guy have your sight pin from the riser mine is much closer, do you think it need changing for a better one?", I told him to stop worrying about his bow and look at his form and release, "but that can't be the problem, I practise four time a week shooting about a hundred arrows each time" he said. Now we get to the problem he does indeed shoot lots and often, but he NEVER shoots a round or even scores an end so has no way to quantify how well he is shooting, we have all I am sure shot a round at at the end found that we have score much higher or lower than we expected and he was pretty much estimating over a years shooting!


I then watched him shoot an end, his bow arm was good and to be honest he has a pretty good form, but his release was not good and his arrows were 15 to 20 cm off to the right of a 60cm face at 25m, I asked him to do me a favour and just work on one thing. When he released could he make sure that his hand touched his ear, just touched it nothing more definite than that, his next three arrows were a group on the right hand edge of the face. "OK now I just need to move my sight", I told him not to but to just keep shooting slow and steady making sure that hand touched that ear, about four ends later he was putting three arrow in a fist sized group at nine o'clock red/blue. His main problem was that he had no reference for his follow through so as his hand came off the string it was moving away from his face but not always to the same degree.


By this time I had to go (having shot no arrows), see told you I don't like coaching.


I was told by my first coach that the unless you move something on your bow the only thing that will change is you and I have always looked at myself first when things start to slip, ninety percent of the time the solution is to slow down and go right back to how you were taught to stand, look, draw and release the bow. I see so many archers chasing their arrows around a face, shooting, spotting, adjusting, shooting, spotting, cursing, adjusting, shooting....you get the idea. If they shot three arrows before spotting then they might find that they have a group that is high, low, left or right of the gold and then they can adjust, but if they just have three arrows spread around the face no amount of adjustment will help because they don't know which, if any was shot well.


You cannot adjust you sight without a group, if you have not adjusted your bow, then any change in your shooting is almost definitely you and quality of practice is far more imprint than quantity. Shooing a hundred arrows badly will only increase you stamina and ability to shoot badly, shooting ten arrows well will improve your shooting.


I hope that within these ramblings there is something of use to someone, but if not at least I have let off a bit............

New year new things and resolutions.........

Hi all,

Well it has been a busy time in the G house hold over the last few months:

                                                                   New Drive.

New car to go on the new drive

A new provisional  driving licence and driving lessons to go with the new car....my first one at 48 years old.

New bathroom being completed as I type (only 2 more days to go).

G Junior has been doing his mocks at school and doing very well,

Mrs G has enjoyed her first term working as a newly qualified teacher,

and I really must try to work on my archery and loose a few pounds as well.

So there you are a good start to 2016 (apart from the bank account taking a hammering), and lots to look forwards to. As for resolutions, well they are the same as always, I must take my archery more seriously, I must really post to my blog more often and I really, really have to get rid of all this potential muscle around my middle. 

Will I keep any or all of them?

Well you will just have to keep checking back to see won't you. 

I hope you all had a great Christmas and New year and that 2016 will be good for you and yours.

Tony G. 

Going for a ramble.....verbally

Hi all, so been a few weeks since I posted anything on here and I just thought I would have a little ramble.
So good news, yesterday was our club championships and I managed to lift the freestyle re-curve cup, the only fly in the ointment was that the four people that I would really have like to beat to take the cup did not shoot, but hay ho I am the CHAMPION!  :)

while we were shooting I encountered a mystery to rival Loch Ness.
There was an archer who was bemoaning the fact that their sight marks were not working and that they were fine just a few days ago so something must be wrong. I try to say to him that if the bow had not been altered and the weather was not a big factor ( it was  a lovely  day with just a gentle breeze), then the biggest variable was the big fleshy bit hanging on the end of the bow. He was insistent that he was doing exactly the same as he always did and would not contemplate that it could be him, but he also insisted that he had not altered his bow in any way. So what could have caused this apparent loss of performance?

Well I think we all know the answer, it was those little green me...........

No it was the archer of course it was, but why did he not realise it?

Well I think it was that although we all notice things that make a big difference to our shooting, like a pull or a sprain that we can feel, we don't always notice the small things that can effect our shooting. We are not static our bodies are constantly changing, when things are not working as they should your first port of call should be you. Stop check that your sight mark is right and everything is tight, think about what you are doing, go through your shot cycle in your head, for me this is :

Nock arrow.

Relax shoulders and look straight ahead (for me that is at the archer to my right as I am right handed).

Turn head to look at target and focus on the gold.

Lift bow to put the pin on the gold keeping the shoulder down and the arm relaxed.

Open the bow hand as I start to draw slowly towards my anchor, loading the weight onto my back muscles.

As I reach my anchor my draw slows right down to a crawl but DOES NOT STOP ( this way lies creeping). Remember I do not use a clicker .

Let the pin settle on the gold (let it float a little).

Roll the draw arm shoulder back and relax the fingers just a little bit so they are pulled off the string and the hand comes back to brush my ear lobe (just cos I like it!).

Hold! don't move until you hear the arrow land.

 Then take your next arrow from the quiver.

 This might seem a very long winded cycle but by focusing on the minute you can exclude anything that is distracting. The whole of the above only takes me about ten seconds to run through in my head, about half the time it takes me to actually shoot an arrow. About ninety five percent of the time my second arrow goes right where it should.

Had my head turned....

Just a quick one here I have been looking at getting Bare Bow Revolution and had pretty much decided that I would ask the missus if Santa could bring me one....and then.....one of the members at the club mentioned that he may be selling his six month old Bernardini ...............and I sort of want it. Have to see how much he wants for it he has decided that he does not get on with the 25" riser and is going to get a 23" instead.

Watch this space for more info......

Feed Back

OK so I know there are quite a few people visiting this blog, but I don't know if they find it useful or if there is anything that they would like to know that is not on here so......

GIVE ME SOME FEED BACK...

IF you have a question ask it, if you have a Revo' let's see it and if you think I am posting a load of tosh then tell me.

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.