The self development journey of a Lambousa Archer, Part 2

By Chris Elliott…

So, it’s been about 5 months or more since I took up archery and proceeded on the journey of discovery and frustration when you experience good shooting and then issues you don’t understand and don’t know how to correct.

So, I now decided I needed to take a deep archers breath and move forward so the first thing I decided to do was to check out my hotchpot of second-hand bow and a few accessories plus arrows and a few other things I borrowed from the Lambousa Archers group.

As I was unable to leave the TRNC to go equipment shopping down south due to waiting for my new residency permit to be approved, I reached out to Osman Tez of the Girne Archer Club and I went to visit him and said what I thought I needed and he guided me on that choice with my current experience in mind and now I have a slick set of equipment he organised that I need to master as well as tips to developing a firm and consistent shooting form. Thank you very much Osman for your valuable help.

So on the next occasion, as there was not a lot of publishing to do, I went to the Lambousa Archers shooting session and walked to the shooting line and fired two new carbon fiber arrows only to see them fly high over the target and “silly me” I had not checked and made a full adjustment to my new sight so lesson learned and with other archers on the range I could not disrupt their shooting whilst a tried to solve my problem.

I have at home a target and as soon as I had the time, I set it up and with my recurve bow and carbon fiber arrows I spent a couple of hours shooting and back-pacing the length of the range I was shooting on and adjusting the sight as I went to get the focus maintained on the target gold as best I could.

So the next Saturday came and I went back to be with the Lambousa Archers in Lapta and not wanting to launch more of my expensive new arrows into the weed-covered end of the field, I spent my time hammering arrows into the short-range target and our leader Nick Gough came and made a horizontal adjustment to my bows sight and then the arrows were then grouping closer to the center.

Now here is the difficult part of archery, yes the bow and sight news to be set up correctly but if your shooting form is not correct and consistent, you will be in a deep hole of frustration if you cannot read your own drawing errors from the following:

1. Anchoring the draw hand under the jawbone.
2. Aiming ( and holding/expanding ).
3. Expansion  – moving the arrow.
4. Release.
5. Follow through.
6. Relaxation and (analytical) Feedback.

So, at the end of our group shooting session, Nick moved the short-range large target I had been using to our maximum shooting range and then everyone was invited to the traditional end-of-shooting day competition to shoot at the can we hang on it.

Here we go I thought more of my new arrows going to park in the weeds and with a slight cross breeze blowing I took my turn to shoot 3 arrows and to my delight I hit the can with one arrow with 2 close to it so on the next shoot I have so much to consider to get that consistent form correct and the video below shows where it starts.

I have now taken on board the words of Olympic archer Jake Kaminski who in one of his YouTube videos below said just start by burning your eyes into the gold spot on the target and let and maintain all that follows in your shooting form and you will be on target. See the videos below.

That then is my archery forward plan and I will be writing more in the weeks to come.