The Plan of Attack for 2014

As the indoor season winds down and the Field season approaches, I’ve been thinking about what goals to set myself for the next season, and what it is going to take to achieve them. To that end, I have developed a training plan for 2014 that will look at the main points that I need to improve and work on for the next year.

The Archer..

My general fitness is pretty good, and over the last 4 months or so I have begun to exercise regularly again. I enjoy running and run around 20k in an average week, plus gym exercise so I have lost 1.5st since September and I am in much better shape with stronger cardio than I was last year. This should make a difference when fatigue and endurance becomes an issue as the day wears on.

I would say that by biggest obstacle that I need to overcome is confidence. I need to trust my shot sequence and know the shot will go where I want it, and do not let doubt or worry interfere with the process. Physically my shot is quite strong and consistent but it is not perfect. The main points that need to be addressed are bow hand positioning, and release trigger action.

My bow hand position has changed in the last year. I tried a more relaxed hand but I found it hard to repeat so I went back to having my fingers pulled in out of the way. I have a little tension in my hand from this, but I find it easier to repeat so I am going to stick with this and practice keeping a strong bow arm after the shot so that I do not collapse and drop the arrow which I am prone to do from time to time.

Release wise, I do not punch the trigger as such but the release is not as smooth as it could be so I am working on activating the trigger from increasing the tension and pulling through it. This seems to be working and my indoor scores have improved from this so I am going to dedicate a few sessions to solely this.

That leads me on to a big change - the way I practice. When I go to the club I generally just end up shooting arrows. Most of the time it is just end after end of shooting at a target - all good practice no doubt but it doesn’t have much value in training specifics. This year, I am going to use each session to focus on one particular aspect each time . And make better use of blank bossing to focus on these without the pressure of holding on a target.

 

The Equipment…

All of my field archery equipment is high quality, and I cannot see any reason to change anything on my field bow - I am happy with all of it so I need to do a little fine tuning to squeeze the maximum performance out of what I have.

I am 100% satisfied with my Insanity CPXL for Field, and unless there is a quantum leap in technology I can see me shooting it for a long time. I have given the bow an overhaul, making sure everything is clean , the parts that move do and the parts that shouldn’t don’t! The strings have been cleaned, waxed and burnished down ready to face the elements. The only thing I haven’t done is creep tuning so I will sort that out before the first field shoot.

Arrow wise, I’ve been tempted to pick up a dozen top of the range arrows such as Easton X10 Pro Tour or Carbon Express Nano Pro but I think I can still get more out of my Carbon One’s yet, so I am going to stick with them for 2014. Before this season begins in earnest though, I am going to strip them down, refletch them all from scratch making sure they are as weight matched as possible and for the first time ever, I will spine index them..

Indexing is something I have never bothered with before, but I feel I am reaching the level now where every point counts so I want every advantage possible. No arrow is perfectly uniform, and the spine does vary on them so you will find that the arrow shaft is slightly stiffer in one plane than in all others.  Spine testers to accurately verify this range into the hundreds of pounds, so I decided to make my own - No bad for about £25 all in!

The arrow is sat on bearings so it can rotate freely with little resistance, with a dial indicator accurate to +/- 1 thousandth of an inch resting on the arrow. A 2lb weight is hung on the arrow, and the amount it bends is visible. As you rotate the arrow, you will notice the needle will jump indicating the stiffest plane of that arrow. You mark that plane with a dot/sticker and fletch your arrow so that this plane is vertical.

The theory behind this is that arrow movement on release for a compound is vertical, rather than horizontal as seen when shooting off fingers. By making sure that the stiffest plane is aligned to this on all arrows, it should be more forgiving of an imperfect shot and ‘fliers’ should be reduced. I put my arrows on the tester and sure enough a stiff plane was easily visible. A few of the arrows were almost correctly aligned already but most are off, so this is why I will be refletching them all.

Once this has all been finished, I am going to go to a practice evening at St Athan’s gym with the Llantwit Major Archers to make use of their large indoor facility for a walkback test, and verify my long distance Sightmarks under ideal conditions.  Where else can you shoot back to your max distances indoors!

Hopefully, all of this should make for a strong, successful and higher scoring 2014 – fingers crossed!

The Brigadier, and the FITA Welsh Senior Indoor Championships

After shooting a couple of indoor tournaments with the Brigadier, I have concluded that this bow doesn’t suit me and I am going to pass it on. I am a bit disappointed because I put a lot of money, time and effort into setting this bow up and I really wanted to like it, but it just doesn’t ‘feel’ right to me. I think a large part of this is because of the bow that I learned to shoot with.

My first compound was a Guardian, which is a hunting bow. It is short, has parallel limbs for high speed and is very quiet – all features you want for hunting. Target bows are generally much taller, have regular limbs and are usually louder because noise levels aren’t a concern -  I’ve never seen a paper target jump and run away because it heard a bow go off!!

This makes dedicated Target bows feel totally different and after spending so long shooting the Guardian, and then a year and a half with my Insanity CPXL (also technically a hunting bow) I find that I don’t get on with Target bows and don’t like how they feel and react. They shoot very well, but I don’t shoot them well.

I shot the Brigadier at the Indoor Nationals and was disappointed compared to the previous year when I shot the Insanity. Last year I shot a 569 and made the cut, this year with the Brigadier I only scored 560 and it was a struggle.  I was losing faith in the Brigadier at this stage so after that result I decided to shoot my Insanity, still set up for Field for the WFAA indoor champs after the new year. I did this and came in 2^nd place, very close to a perfect score.

The final nail in the coffin came last week when I decided that for the Welsh Senior Indoor Champs (a FITA 18) I wanted fat arrows to get as many line cutters as possible. I didn’t want to change anything on the Insanity, so I dug out the Guardian and stripped the BowHunter setup off it, and fitted it with the Indoor Target equipment off the Brigadier.

 

I only had one night at the club, 2 days before the competition to set it up. I couldn’t do a walkback as it was dark and raining outside, so I set centreshot by eye and paper tuned to get it more or less right. I shot a few dozen to sight it in and set the stabilizers up. By now I only had time to shoot 2 scored dozens, but I scored a 114 & 115 which was better than I was getting with the Brigadier so I decided to take this one with me.

The day came and I drove down to the National Sports Institute at Sophia Gardens where the tournament was being hosted and got everything set up and signed in. We started on the morning session and right from the off, the Guardian felt nice to shoot and I soon settled down to shoot consistently. I had a nice run of 10’s, with most shots falling inside the recurve 10 and the bow felt like a dream to shoot. I realized I had missed shooting my Guardian!

The scores were totalled up and I finished on a new tournament PB of 572! I have never shot higher than 569 in competition, hitting that score several times previously so I was very happy with that result.  A group of us from Pentref went to the pub across the road for a Sunday roast dinner, and then came back over in the afternoon for the results and it turns out that I had taken 2^nd place and won the silver medal!

 

There I was, holding the silver with a new PB using my original bow that was hurriedly set up in one evening.  That sealed it for me that the Brigadier is not for me and it is time to let it go. I am going to be listing it for sale and haven’t decided what to use the proceeds for. After losing out on points (and possibly first place) at the UK & Ireland champs because my bow was knocked in transit, I’ve been tempted to get an SKB hard case but they are around £200. If the Brigadier sells I will have the money so I may treat myself. The bow’s cost a lot of money and a lot of time is spent setting them up, so it makes sense to invest in a quality case that will protect them properly. We’ll see!

 

The WFAA Indoor Championships 2014

Hi everybody!

Sunday 12th of January this year saw Llantwit Major Archers host the WFAA Indoor Championships, at their new range in the gym hall at RAF St Athan.

We arrived at the base nice and early and had our ID inspected before we were allowed in. We didn't think some archers would get in because of ID issues (St Athan is an active RAF/MOD base so security is tight) but the guards were helpful and everything was sorted out. We were escorted across the base to the gym and got set up ready for the day.

The gym is huge! It is a converted hangar that used to house several large aircraft, so the LM Archers can shoot almost 90m indoors! What a practice venue! Everything was set up ready for us, so we went to work! I was shooting my Insanity CPXL for this one with my skinny carbons as I wasn't happy with my indoor setup (more about that in the next blog post).

We shot the sighters/practice end - all X's so on the right track... we start scoring and BAM, I dropped a point out of the spot on my 4th arrow of the first 5 arrow end.. typical! At least the pressure was off now to shoot a clean score, so I settled down and focussed on making strong shots instead of chasing a score. I only dropped one more point in the second half, finishing on 298/300 with 46 X's.

Shooting in the cavernous sports hangar! There's about another 70m of space behind us here!
 

In the afternoon, I shot my new Impala to have a bit of fun and wind down and even though I did appallingly with it, I had a great time! It's a very fun bow to shoot but the traditional archers made mincemeat of my attempt to compete with them, fair play!

I ended up in 2nd place, losing the title from last year but I have to tip my hat to the winner! It was Geraint Thomas, a pro archer who shot a perfect 300 with 58/50 X's - taking the win and setting a new Welsh record in the process, a very impressive performance. We retired to the base rec building, Harlech Flight for the award ceremony and the medals were presented by the base commander, Wing Commander Ball.

All the medal winners - I'm hiding in the back!

Not a bad day!

New Toy, and the Pentref Christmas Fun Shoot!

Even though I shoot modern bows in competition, I also have a love for Traditional archery and the old styles. The modern bow is the pinnacle of power and accuracy that can be found in a bow, but I feel that even though I enjoy shooting them, they lack the spirit of the old ways. If I had to sum it up in a sentence I would say that “modern compounds are for precision target shooting, traditional bows are for archery.”

I had a bit of a bonus from work, and felt like treating myself to a new toy and after trying some traditional bows at the club I was impressed with the Ragim Impala so thought... why not! I bought the regular impala but after some issues with the wood quality, I was upgraded to the deluxe version by Kevin at Wales Archery – what a guy!

 

 The laminations look beautiful and it is very comfortable to hold and shoot. It is 40lb at 28” and shoots very quickly with my wooden arrows. They are spined for my Flatbow at 45lb so even though this is 40lb, it is a faster bow and the arrows match it well. I also treated myself to a new back quiver to use with this bow.

I had the chance to use it at the Pentref Christmas Fun Shoot and we took my son Daniel out on the course! He’s only 5 but is an enthusiastic little archer, with his own bamboo longbow (about 5lb draw weight!) and a 10lb fiberglass beginners bow and he absolutely loves it!

 

The weather was terrible though, with lots of mud and very heavy rain all day . The targets outside were coming apart in the rain so we only shot about 10 targets before calling it quits and going inside. Once we were in though, there were archery games like popping balloons, smashing a piñata full of sweets with blunt arrows and all the kids, and the adults had a whale of a time! We had a pot-luck where everybody brought a plate of party food as well so we were all well fed!

Daniel really enjoys going up to the club and shooting when we have had open events, and he is almost old enough to join up. We are going to sign him up after his 6^th birthday this year and he can start coming up the club on Fridays to shoot if he wants to, which I think he will jump at!

Going indoors..

Once all of the field shoots were over it was time to go indoors, and enter the local indoor Target shoots. I had a bit of a break in October and used the time to set up the Brigadier and get used to it, but I wasn’t 100% with the way it was shooting. It’s a good bow, but I just don’t seem to be getting on with it and haven’t shot any particularly high scores with it.

I shot a local FITA 18 with it and came in joint 2^nd place with it, but didn’t enjoy myself and  still didn’t have much confidence in it. The next shoot was the big one – the Indoor Nationals in Coventry so I made some final changes and took the Brigadier with me as that’s what I bought it for after all.

I travelled up to the shoot with my friend Chris and we were on adjacent targets all day so had good company for the day. The shoot was well organized and it is a fantastic venue to shoot at, with a huge hall full of targets each side and a trade show down the centre. My sponsors, Wales Archery Specialists had a large display so I spent some time (and money!) with them.

 

The shoot went alright, but I am sad to say that the Brigadier didn’t really perform for me. There were a few bad shots, and it felt like a struggle towards the end – partly because I had lost confidence in this bow early on and wasn’t enjoying shooting it. I finished up on 560 points which is below my average and to be honest, I was lucky to get that much.  I didn’t make the cut for the shoot off’s so we packed up and headed home, after a much needed food stop for a consolation Burger King!

 

Been a while - time for an update!

Hi everybody!

It’s been a few months since I updated my blog and there have been a fair few shoots and events in the gap with some great results, so I’ll summarize the events of the last few months quickly so we can get back on track!

Following on from the last post, the next shoot was the Welsh Field Masters Tour – round 5 at Dinefwr archers. This was shot on the 22^nd of September and for a change, the weather was actually quite kind to us! It was quite bright with hardly any wind so some pretty good scores were submitted. I finished on a 529 and took first place, coming away with the gold medal.

 A few weeks after this we had the WFAA AGM meeting where the awards for the last year were presented, and due to my scores I won the WFAA Field Masters Tour for 2013 – taking the title for 2 years in a row! I was absolutely thrilled with this result as it was a close game all the way. Fingers crossed I can keep it up and take the title next year to make it a hat trick!

The next shoot after this was the final field shoot on my calendar before the indoor season began in earnest, the Welsh FITA Field Championships hosted by my own club, Pentref Bowmen. This was a 2 day FITA shoot, unmarked on day 1 and marked on day 2. We had a little bit of a rain and wind to contend with, but nothing too serious and I put in some fairly good scores and had some cracking targets.

35m - stacked on the spider!

 

 When the results were compiled, we had the award ceremony and it turns out that this year.. I won!  I was the 2^nd highest overall so had a silver medal for the open, and I was the highest scoring Welsh compound archer so I won the gold medal and the Welsh Championships Trophy!

 

  I’ve never won anything before at the FITA Welsh as the competition is tight, so to say I was thrilled with this result is a bit of an understatement haha! The trophy has pride of place on the bookshelves at home and looks very good next to the medal & memento board. I need to work hard to defend it next year!