Getting Started In Archery

The best possible advice is, join a good archery club.

How do you get started in archery?

A lot of people will have tried archery on holiday or at activity centres. That’s great if they have been shown how to shoot by a qualified coach, unfortunately that often isn’t the case. I have lost count of the number of people who have said that they were put off archery because they kept getting hit on the arm by the bowstring. That really hurts after a few hits! A proper archery coach can show you how to avoid that. Another complaint is, “sure I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn”. Again, a coach will show you how to use the bow properly and you will be hitting the target on your first night. So if you are interested in archery you really need to go to an archery club and get shown how to do it right.

How much does it cost?

Surprisingly little! Most archery clubs let you borrow all the equipment you need to get you started. At FVAC we let our members use club bows and arrows for as long as they are with us. If they don’t want to buy their own gear there’s no pressure. A basic set up can cost about £150, that’s for a beginner’s bow, some arrows and a quiver. You can go to the other end of the scale and spend two to four thousand pounds for a top of the range compound bow with sights, stabilisers, carbon fibre arrows and all the gear but that really is at the very top end. In comparison, how much would you pay for a bicycle that would be competitive in the Tour de France or a set of golf clubs to play against Rory Mcilroy?

Benefits of Archery

1. Exercise

Archery is a sport that can be practised by all, no matter age, gender or ability. At FVAC we have done courses for the RNID and DSNI. While physically drawing a bow does expend energy, so does walking to the target end after end to collect arrows. During the London 2012 Olympic Games they calculated that a male archer who made it all the way to the gold medal shoot-off burnt only a few hundred less calories than a marathon runner. The type of archery we do at FVAC is a bit different, we do Field Archery. So instead of there being a line of targets at a set distance on a nice flat field, our targets are laid out in fields and forests where there are slopes and trees and even rivers or streams to shoot over. In fact, the more obstacles there are the better we like it. During a typical competition we walk for miles over all sorts of terrain and shoot four arrows at each of twenty-eight targets. The longest distance we shoot is eighty yards, so almost the length of a football pitch.

2. Strength

Drawing a bow puts tension in the chest, hands, arm and large upper back muscles, and non-core areas of your anatomy like the rotator cuffs, which support your shoulders. Shooting lots of arrows really does build up these muscle groups. We also work on posture, it’s very important that you stand properly when you’re shooting so in the long term it has great benefit for your back.

3. Focus

Archers learn to maintain focus on their shot routine, avoiding distractions like wind, distance, noise and their competitors to shoot the perfect arrow. I was lucky enough to go to a coaching weekend that was taught by a well-known American coach called Larry Wise. He asked us all how many arrows we shot during a tournament. We all had fairly similar answers somewhere around 150. He said that what we should focus on is shooting just one PERFECT arrow, just one.Then shoot that same arrow 150 times. When you achieve that level of focus, anything is possible.

4. Coordination

The steps required to create a good shot combine to form a high-precision routine that needs to be ingrained into an archer’s muscle memory and sub-conscious. There’s so much happening at the same time – and with such little margin for error – that the coordination of all these movements becomes almost instinctive. For adults, think about what it was like when you were learning to drive. Initially there is so much that you have to remember to do that it seems almost impossible that you will ever get proficient at it. After a while it gets easier until it becomes practically second nature. Your muscle memory and subconscious take care of most of it leaving you free to pay attention to the important stuff like other road users and pedestrians. Archery is exactly the same, you start out all fingers and thumbs but you soon get a feel for what you’re doing.

5. Patience

Archery’s easy to learn, but difficult to perfect. Although fun, it can be frustrating – and patience in practice is essential for a longer-term future in the sport. Having the determination to precisely repeat a technique makes you a better archer and, consequently, a better person!

6. Relax

Staying calm and accurate under pressure is an ability that archers develop by managing their breathing, concentration and nervousness. When you’re shooting well, hours can pass by in a blink of an eye – and, as much as the sport can be sociable, when you’re on the line, archery is only about you and your bow.

7. Self-confidence

In competition, your greatest opponent is yourself. Identifying what to improve and setting clear goals is important – after all, results are all based on easily-measurable scores. Progression breeds confidence, and there’s no better sport to measure that than archery.

8. Socialise

If the only archery you have seen was at the Olympics you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a very lonely sport. Just you and your bow. That’s true enough on the shooting line but before and after there is great craic between archers at the club and at competitions. There are very few sports in the world that allow the world’s best to compete on the target with someone fairly new. Tournaments in archery are, often, without barriers – and enable friendships between individuals from all walks of life. You never know who you’ll end up on a target with next. At my first ever competition I was shooting beside a gent who has become one of the UK and Ireland’s top coaches. I was new to the sport and had no idea who he was. He took time to help me with my set up and gave me advice on the shooting line that helped me to win a silver medal that day. That’s the sort of encouragement that stays with you and now that I am one of the highest qualified coaches in Field Archery I like to repay that by doing the same thing.

Different types of Archery

To start with, there are so many different types of bow that I wouldn’t even try to list them. There’s everything from a bow that looks like a stick pulled out of a hedge, to ones that look like they were designed by a NASA engineer. In terms of different types of archery there are basically two different types. There is target archery which can be like what most people have seen at the Olympics. You have a target at a set distance from a shooting line and you stand and shoot all your arrows from that distance. That’s 70 metres at the Olympics. We have another type of target archery called Field Archery which is what we do at FVAC. When the weather allows, we shoot outside in fields and woods with targets set at different distances up to 80 yards. We shoot up and down hills, in between trees and over streams or rivers. In fact we make it as tricky as possible just for the craic. The other type of archery that we do is called 3D Archery, or sometimes Bowhunter. 3D Archery involves shooting at animal models made out of heavy foam rubber and they have circular targets moulded into them which are the high scoring areas. Some people get a bit concerned at the idea of us shooting at animal shaped targets but remember, it’s just a game, similar to shooting at things in a computer game. The main difference is that when you are doing 3D Archery all the adrenaline that you build up gets burnt off, you are burning energy both by shooting the bow and by walking for hours around an archery course.

Inclusive

Archery really is a sport for everybody. At FVAC we have 10-year-olds up to folk like me who are let’s say, past the first flush of youth. At some clubs I would be one of the young pups! I have done archery lessons with groups for the visually impaired and for Disability Sport NI. It really doesn’t matter what your physical abilities are, you CAN do archery. If anyone doubts that, just Google “Matt Stutzman, the armless archer”. He was born with no arms and he uses his feet to load his arrow and draw the bow. He has a special trigger system that he activates with his mouth and he probably shoots better than I do.

I hope you have found this useful and informative and that it has encouraged you to come along and give our great sport a try.

George Heath

IFAA Level 3 Instructor