Welcome to the post after lesson three, which takes us past the half-way point of the five week course. I managed to make it to the scheduled lesson this week! One new face to me was one of the ladies who were not at the first session, whose name I can't really forget; it is the same as my wife's with the exception of one consonant in our surnames. As Mrs EmbryonicArcher also shoots at the club, I can see a fair deal of confusion ahead!
We had to string our own bows this time and select the correct arrows. It helps that arrows of the same length have the same coloured nocks, but two sets of arrows had the same colour fletchings, so there is an additional ring of coloured tape to distinguish them. Usually archers will also personalize their arrows even further by using decals to apply their name or initials. I got to thinking what colour fletchings I would choose when I buy my first arrows, and concluded that red and white would be a good choice, the colours of my favourite football (soccer if you are reading in the US) team. At home later I happened to see Mrs EA's arrows, and guess what colours she has... Back to the drawing board!
Bows strung and arrows selected, it was time for the warm-up. This week the coaches decided that the students should lead the warm-up, so we each led one of the exercises. All of the warm-ups are movement exercises whilst the warm-downs are stretches to release the lactic acid from the muscles to reduce aching. The coaches asked if anyone had any aches and pains after the last session. One person had, so the coaches promised to look into the possible reasons and try to stop it happening again.
Finally we were ready to shoot so on went the armguard, sling and tab and we moved to the waiting line behind the 20 yard shooting line. One major equipment change for me this week was the tab. Rather than the simple leather tab I have used in previous sessions, I was trying a platform tab given to me by Mrs EA. This has a metal plate on top of which is a plastic platform that should be positioned under the jaw at full draw. There is still a piece of leather to protect the fingers.
This week, as well as the three coaches we had a Field Captain, which allowed the coaches to give their full attention to the students. There was a quick test to make sure that we had remembered the signals and were warned that someone would be shouting 'fast' at some point during the session. We split into three groups of 2, 2 and 3 - myself and two other gents made up the three.
The first half of the session was more consolidation of the techniques we had learned in the last two weeks, with the emphasis much more on self-awareness when anything went wrong (or right). However the coaches and field captain would always offer advice, and it was very valuable to stand and watch the other students to see their shooting style and listen to the feedback from the coaches. There were two specific problems that were picked up with my technique. The first was that I tended to raise my head after turning it toward the target, rather than keeping it level. A few 'dry runs' away from the line helped me determine how it would feel when done correctly, even though I looked like RoboCop. The second problem was that sometimes the string would catch behind my armguard after release, caused primarily by me allowing my left shoulder to come up when raising the bow. A correction from Martin really helped : imagine you are a policeman stopping the traffic!
After a good number of ends - including reminders about how to safely pull arrows - we had a short tea/coffee break and enjoyed some homemade flapjack brought by one of the students (yum!). During the break A and B showed us their recurve bows before having a 3-round head-to-head. Their bows are basically the same as the student bows we are using, but with some differences in materials used in the risers and limbs. The sights have a more complex mechanism for adjustment, but they do the same job. The obvious difference is that they both used stabilizing rods, which adjust the centre of gravity of the bow and at the same time reduce the amount of movement. This works because the rods are weighted at the end, which increases the inertia and makes it harder to move the bow.
Despite trying to psyche-out her dad, A beat B by three ends to nil. After the last end we all went to look at the target, which was about half the size of the targets we are using. We also noticed just how deep the arrows went into the boss and how hard they are to pull - an arrow puller is definitely needed. Finally A and B showed us the correct way to move a boss, either by itself or on the frame. It is certainly a two-person job, especially with wet straw bosses.
After the break it was time for the "Bake a Cake" game, which was a really tough test of the skills we had gained so far. The object of the game is to win the ingredients of a cake by shooting arrows into the correctly coloured rings: flour (4 x white); water (5 x blue); eggs (2 x gold). Finally you need to bake the cake by putting it in the oven (6 x red). We split into three teams and tried for one of the ingredients in each end, with varying results. One nasty twist was that shooting a black would wipe out all of your ingredients for that end, which I managed to do :-( At one point someone kicked a football (the spherical type - see above) onto the range, and one of the coaches shouted 'fast'. Whilst everyone brought their bows down safely, it was noticed that non of the students had shouted - a reminder that range safety is everyone's responsibility. The ultimate winner of the game was not clear, but it didn't really matter - the game took our minds off pure technique and allowed us to put into practice what we had learned so far.
Finally the junior learners led us in the warm-down stretches and we packed up the kit. The coaches were straight off the the field for an afternoon 'Frostbite' competition and students were invited (sadly I couldn't make it). This competition is actually an International match against the Falkland Islands Archery Association (http://www.fioga.co.fk/ArcheryNews/) where each club shoots at their own field and scores are exchanged by post (or email). This is the latest of a number of matches with the Falklands and I look forward to taking part in one someday.
No comments:
Post a Comment