Not Quite Lilleshall

Last weekend saw the Archery GB County Team Tournament at Lilleshall.  I wasn't there (see below), but two of our club members, Dave M and Martin C were representing Surrey on the Men's Compound team, along with Chris M from the Woking club.  I guess we are pretty lucky to have two talented archers in the club, especially as they are both really supportive of other members, whatever their level.

This competition is a tough one and takes place over two days. The first day was a 50m qualification round followed by a team head-to-head with winners decided on a cumulative score. The second day everyone shot a World Archery 1440 round for a cumulative score.  The head-to-head was timed, with all three archers having to complete their shots in sequence within a specified time, which increases the pressure somewhat.

The Gents compound team came 12th out of 21 teams, with the Surrey Ladies compound team taking first place.  The Surrey Gents recurve team were placed 11th out of 25 and there was no Ladies recurve team entered.  Full results including the head-to-head knock-out rounds can be seen here.

Surrey Compound Team - Martin C, Dave M and Chris M

This was a busy weekend for the EA family, as Mrs EA was away with Miss EA looking at universities in Leeds (Friday) and Birmingham (Sunday), while myself and EA jnr were at the South of England Showground in Ardingly, West Sussex for Scoutabout from Friday to Saturday night. This event is held every three years and 5000 Surrey scouts and guides have the opportunity to take part in hundreds of different activities ranging from parascending to making fake wounds.  As well as helping out with the catering and organisation of my own scout group, I had also volunteered to help run the bellringing on a portable mini-ring - three hours on Saturday morning and three in the afternoon.  This was my first experience of a portable ring of bells, and the first time ringing outside in the rain! Although the bells were relatively small, running have-a-go sessions for absolute novices was quite tiring.  EA jnr definitely didn't want to come home on Saturday evening, but home we came ready to shoot on Sunday.

While the more capable archers were at Lilleshall, three of the EA family were signed-up to take part in the Sheila Brown Memorial Shoot on Sunday, which is organised and hosted by Mole Valley Bowmen in Leatherhead.  EA jnr and Mrs EA had shot in the event last year, but it was a first for me. Although the official gents' round was a York, I have never shot 100yds so had entered the Hereford instead.  There was a good turn-out by members of our club with three compound and one barebow archer shooting Yorks, three lady recurve archers and myself shooting Herefords, EA jnr shot a Bristol II and our other junior shot a Bristol III.

Conditions were bright but cool during the longer distances in the morning, and the wind and cloud increased steadily towards lunchtime.  I was quite pleased with my first distance (80yds), but found conditions fairly challenging.  I was not alone, as many other archers were commenting on the variability of the wind across the field, which was affecting many people's shots.  At 80yds I am not able to aim at the gold using a consitent anchoring position, so had to aim at the flag above the boss, but that did not seem to affect my scores too much, even though the flags were very small and difficult to see.

The wind seemed to get worse during the afternoon and as the cloud built.  During the final distance we had a couple of sharp showers, which sent people scurrying for their waterproofs or the shelter of their tents. I work near Leatherhead and can recall a couple of occasions in recent years when there have been mini-tornados in the area, so I was half expecting to see one!

After the obligatory raffle (no prizes this time) it was time for the results.  The Nonsuch team managed to pick up six medals: Mike F won bronze for gents York barebow; RA won gold for Bristol III recurve and bronze for junior boys overall handicap; EA Jnr won gold for Bristol II compound and silver for boys overall handicap and I won gold for gents Hereford barebow.  I am pleased to come away with my first bit of archery bling, but I was the only one in that category and must bow to the others who got theirs by shooting better than other people.  If you are wondering why Mike is holding a bottle of wine in the picture below, it is his prize for being the first person to put an arrow through one of the brand new target numbers.

Mike F, EA jnr, Me and RA

I know it is not quite Lilleshall, but we put ourselves up against our peers and had some success.  Whilst it is probably a little late for me, I would not be at all surprised to see these juniors competing at a higher level than this in the years to come.

Coaching Session 1

This week was my first coaching session with Level 1 coach Beatriz.  Along with Andy (her Dad) she is training to be a Level 2 coach and, as well as attending their training sessions, they are required to coach a number of other archers over a period of a few months and record progress.  I think Beatiz selected me because I had recently converted to barebow: either that or she saw that I needed a lot of help!

This first practical session was delayed due to work commitments and transport issues and came a couple of weeks after an initial information-gathering session, where Beatriz made a note of my equipment, then discussed what my goals should be for the short, medium and long terms.  She explained that, when goal-setting, you should remember the acronym SMART:

Specific - Being clear about your goal means you can be sure you have reached it
Measurable - Goes along with Specific - allows you to quantify progress
Achievable - No point in aiming for the impossible
Relevant - No point in doing something pointless (!)
Time-bounded - Set a time to do it otherwise it will never get done

The very same idea is also used in business management training and other areas.  Bearing this in mind we agreed my goals are:

Short term (first couple of months) : Reduce my misses to zero
Medium term (this year) : Achieve First Class barebow classification
Long term (end of next year) : Achieve Bowman classification

I guess it is arguable whether my first goal is actually achievable in practice, but it is a goal to be aimed at!  Looking back to my first post of this year, I set four personal goals to achieve before the end of the year and, I am glad to say, I have already achieved them!  A week or so after the goal-setting and information-gathering session, Beatriz took 15 minutes or so to observe me shooting and to make some notes on my technique, preparatory to the first practical coaching session.

At the beginning of the practical session we reviewed my goals and then Beatriz highlighted what she thought were the priorities to work on to achieve the first of them.  She also observed me shooting again for a few ends to confirm, and attached a length of light string to the tip of my top limb to judge how far back my drawing arm was moving.  This simple device made it very clear that my drawing shoulder was not coming round far enough at full draw, so that it was out of alignment with the rest of my body.  She also noted that the handle of my bow was not resting in the optimum position in my bow-hand.  The 'flat' of the handle should rest against the fleshy part of the hand below the thumb, and not in the crease between thumb and forefinger.

To get my shoulder round, Beatriz suggested that I first part-draw the bow using arm muscles (pricipally the biceps), and then finish the draw by rotating my shoulder round and back.  It was surprisingly easy to do, and I immediatley noticed that my arrows were landing on the target in a fairly tight vertical line, and that my drawing hand was not flapping out as it had done previously.  We discussed the reason for this and concluded that previously my shoulder rotation was very variable, which meant that my left-to-right alignment was not consistent.  In the worst case at least one of my arrows per end would miss the target left.  I shot a good few ends and, with the exception of a few boo-boos, I was getting consistent results and the whole shot process just felt better.

With the left-to-right consistency adressed, we discussed vertical alignment. I have noticed, in the month or so since starting to shoot barebow, that I seem to be relatively more consistent at the longer distances than the shorter ones.  I was discussing this on the line with Mike, another club member who switched to barebow last year and has been really helpful in these early weeks.  What he suggested, and Beatriz agreed, is that I may find problems with string-walking at shorter distances using my current, plastic Hoyt super-rest.  With string-walking, the shorter the distance, the further away from the nock you have to draw, which sets up some uneven forces in the bow and results in increased downward arrow pressure on the rest during release.  To confirm this, Beatriz used a slow-motion capture app on her iPad and we could see where the arrow pushed down on the rest as it left the bow.  The rest responds and sets up a vertical oscillation in the arrow so that it does not fly as straight as it could.  As we were shooting at a relatively short distance of 30m this effect was being seen as a large vertical spread on the target.  The solution is to change the rest to something more substantial, so I have now fitted a Spigarelli ZT wrap-around rest, which has a strong steel wire and is widely used by barebow archers, including Mike.

At the end of the session, Beatriz set me some homework.  This is to use a mirror to ensure that my body is perpendicular to the shooting line when I draw, and to work on getting my shoulder round so that my bow arm and drawing arm are aligned.  All this can be done with the ubiquitous stretchy band beloved of archers everywhere, and which I haven't touched since my beginners' course.

The next session is in about a month so until the I will be putting the training into practice with the hope (expectation?) that my shooting will improve.

Second Class Citizen

It is just over one month since I decided to strip down my recurve and start shooting barebow.  In that time I have shot nine scored rounds at distances ranging from 80yds down to 40yds with mix of both imperial and metric rounds.  My first round was a Long Metric II (3doz at 70m and 3doz at 60m) for which I scored 182 giving a handicap of 67.  As this was my first attempt at 70m barebow, I initially struggled to find the correct string-walking position, but eventually found that drawing immediately below the nocking point allowed me to sight the point of my arrow at the top of the boss. 60m was better as I was able to sight on the gold with a drawing position slightly lower down the string.  For the first time out I was quite pleased at achieving a third class score.

My second and third scored rounds had to wait until Bank Holiday Monday, nine days after the first, due to other commitments, and they were both WA 70m rounds, forming a double round.  As you are probably aware, with double rounds like this, only the first of the day can be used for calculating official handicaps or for claiming (single round) records.  Of course, you can still claim a record for the double round.  This time, I had a better basis for sighting, so I had fewer misses overall on the first round, but all went-to-pot on the afternoon round, resulting in a score that was 57 lower than the morning score.  I am not really sure what happened, but maybe it was tiredness setting-in after lunch.  Whatever the reason, I was happy with second class scores (59 & 62 h/cap) for both halves (of which I could 'count' only the first).

The following evening I shot a National with a score of 264 for a handicap of 62.  The difference this time was the lower proportion of misses compared to the 70m rounds the day before.  Clearly, the shorter distance will have an effect, but I think being able to sight on the gold rather than at somewhere else above it also helps.  Anyway, I was happy with the another 2nd class score.

My next scored round the following weekend was another National.  I scored a little lower this time but managed another 62 handicap, giving my third, second class score and qualification for a Second Class award.  Looking back at the dates I realised that I had achieved this within a week.  However, looking closer at my round statistics, I could have achieved so much more.

Two of our club members are working to become AGB Level 2 coaches, and one of them approached me to ask if I would mind being one of her 'learner archers'.  I will write separate posts on the training sessions, but one of the first things we agreed was a set of achievable goals for the short, medium and long terms.  My immediate choice of short-term goal was 'less misses', as this problem has plagued me for the last few months both in recurve and barebow.  As I have just started shooting barebow, I have found it easy to put more statistics into a spreadsheet for analysis, and this time I have added the number of hits and total arrows per round, then calculated the percentage hit rate.  You can see the numbers in this table:

Date	Round	Score	Handicap	Class	Hits	Arrows	%Hits	Adj Score	Adj h/cap
17/05/2014	Long Metric II	182	67	3rd	41	72	57%	320	59
26/05/2014	WA 70m	195	59	2nd	44	72	61%	319	52
26/05/2014	WA 70m	138	62	(2nd)	40	72	56%	248	56
27/05/2014	National	264	62	2nd	56	72	78%	339	57
31/05/2014	National	254	62	2nd	54	72	75%	339	57
01/06/2014	Hereford	396	61	2nd	94	144	65%	607	54
03/06/2014	National	296	60	2nd	60	72	83%	355	56
08/06/2014	Short National	327	64	3rd	67	72	93%	351	62
15/06/2014	American	388	63	2nd	74	90	82%	472	58

As expected, there are less hits at longer distances, but my hit rate does seem to be improving slightly.  As an exercise, I decided to calculate a notional score if I had a 100% hit rate (Adj Score), based on the average score for my actual hits and the equivalent handicap (Adj h/cap).  Two things stand out: (1) the worst adjusted handicap figure is at the shortest range and (2) four of these handicaps are at a first-class level (although not necessarily at qualifying distances).  This validates my short term goal of less misses and has given food for thought on why there appear to be problems at shorter ranges.  I have some ideas but that will have to wait until the next post.

Back to Basics

I have decided that it is time for a change.  'But why'? I hear you ask.  Well, the bottom line is that I have not really been enjoying my archery as much as I should lately and have found myself in a bit of a rut.  You know that I have been recording my scores and handicaps for this blog, and the graph of the handicap figures on my records page tells a story.

My best shooting was during July and the back-end of August last year, when I got quite close to achieving second-class scores (handicap of 50 or less) on a couple of occasions.  However, since October, my handicap figures have headed upwards so that they are currently bouncing between third-class and unclassified, with no apparent downward trend.  I have tried some one-to-one coaching to help me with technique and clicker setup, which has helped me shoot in a more relaxed manner but it does not seem to be having the right effect on my scores.  My conclusion is that I am thinking too hard and need to simplify things.  A number of fellow club members suggested that I try barebow.

I tried barebow last week.

I liked it.

For the first time in months I felt that I was able to shoot 'instinctively', without worrying too much about aiming, back tension, etc, etc. I simply left off my sight and stabilisers and didn't use my clicker.  To aim I used what I subsequently learned was the 'gap' method, where the string is held at the nocking point (as in recurve) and aiming is by means of sighting the end of the arrow at a point below or above the gold.  At first I used trial and error and fired a lot of arrows very high over the target.  However after a while I found that I had to aim the arrow at a point on the ground halfway between the 30m shooting line and the target, which is really quite strange at first, but you do get used to it.  Once I had found my aiming point on the ground (a convenient clump of daisies) my shots became remarkably consistent, considering I was not using a sight.  I even managed what could pass as a group.

Over the week I did a little more research into barebow techniques using some basic knowledge I had picked up from other barebow archers at the club, and concluded that I should try an alternative aiming method: string walking.  The idea is that the point of the arrow is aimed at the gold on the target, but that the drawing hand is moved to a position below the nocking point to give the correct arrow elevation before release.  A position close to the nocking point will give an aiming point farther away than a position further away from the nocking point.  The key is to find the correct position for each of the distances in a round.

On Tuesday evening I decided to bite the bullet and removed my clicker and sight block altogether.  I took some advice from Dave about the basics of string walking, then took myself off to the practice range.  At 30m I again missed with the first couple of half-dozen arrows until I found the correct position of my drawing hand.  Many barebow archers who string-walk use a tab which has a vertical line of stitches, and these can be used to repeatedly gauge the correct hand position.  As I was still using my recurve platform tab, I had to rely on what I had available, so I used the width of my fingers as a guide, which was surprisingly successful.  However, the finger spacer and platform made this method quite tricky, so I went and found a basic, leather 'beginners' tab and used that for the rest of the evening.  This made measuring easier, but was much harder on the fingers so I will be ordering a barebow tab before long!

After about half an hour at 30m on the practice range I decided to see just how far I could shoot barebow, so joined some other members who were shooting a National round on the short range and had three ends remaining at 60 yards.  The first end I had six misses over the top; the next end I had three on the boss and the third end I had six scoring arrows, totalling 18 points.  It doesn't sound a lot, but is more or less what  I was getting at the same distance with my sighted recurve bow. I always found 60yds difficult - more so than 80 yds.  At 50yds I had a few misses, but managed scores of 30, 22, 26 and 22 for the four ends I attempted, giving a convenient average of 25. If this is converted to a handicap, it gives 63, which is not very far off what I was achieving at recurve.  But, as the AGB classifications for barebow differ from recurve, a handicap score of 63 equates to a second class score whereas it would be unclassified for recurve.  The 30-point end equates a handicap of 59, which is not too far off  a barebow first class score.  If you want to see the relationship between classifications and minimum handicaps, I have prepared a cross-reference table for all age groups and bowstyles.

All of this may be beginner's luck, of course, and I may fall back into bad habits.  Nevertheless I will continue as long as I am still enjoying myself and will do my best not to overthink things again.

Why is scoring a ten so hard?

At the end of an enjoyable morning's shooting yesterday, we got talking about the size of targets. I have covered this subject in an earlier blog post (Small or far Away?), but this time Martin R mused about what proportion of the target face would score a one (imperial scoring) compared with scoring a gold.  Knowing the size of a face, the number of scoring rings and the equation for the area of a circle (I knew that Engineering degree would come in useful one day), I decided to fire-up Excel and see what numbers fell out.  The results surprised me!

Ring	Metric score	Imperial score	Outside dia(cm)	Inside dia(cm)	Area (sq.cm)	%area (metric)	%area (imperial)
Outer white	1	1	122	109.8	2221.07	19%	36%
Inner White	2	1	109.8	97.6	1987.28	17%
Outer black	3	3	97.6	85.4	1753.48	15%	28%
Inner black	4	3	85.4	73.2	1519.68	13%
Outer blue	5	5	73.2	61	1285.89	11%	20%
Inner blue	6	5	61	48.8	1052.09	9%
Outer red	7	7	48.8	36.6	818.29	7%	12%
Inner red	8	7	36.6	24.4	584.49	5%
Outer gold	9	9	24.4	12.2	350.7	3%	4%
Inner gold	10	9	12.2	0	116.9	1%
					11689.87

Before looking at the results, it is worth looking at how the calculations are done.  I decided to work with a 122cm diameter face, the largest in common usage in target archery.  There are, of course, ten scoring rings on a standard face, two each of white, black, blue, red and gold, working from the outside inwards.  Each of these rings is the same width so it is easy to find that for a 122 cm face, each ring is 6.1cm wide (122/20).  The inner gold is the only complete circle, having a diameter of 12.2cm.

To work out the area covered by each of the rings, simply calculate the area of the circle from the outside diameter of the ring then subtract the area of the circle from the inside diameter of the ring.  If you cast your memory back to your schooldays you will recall that the area of a circle is Pi times the radius squared.  Using a spreadsheet means that you can do this fairly easily, but it might help to know that in Excel, the function PI() can be used in a function instead of typing 3.1.4159265.....

The actual areas of each of the rings are shown in the table above.  I then summed them before calculating the percentage of the total target area for each ring.

As I said earlier, the results surprised me.  What immediately stood out was the difference in percentage area of the outer white (19%) and inner gold (1%).  The 19% figure wasn't that much of a shock, but the 1% definitely was.  To score a ten, you need to almost twenty times as accurate as scoring a one.  That probably explains why I get significantly more ones than tens, and has nothing at all to do with my ability!

The other oddity I noticed was that the percentage areas form a linear progression: 1%, 3%, 5%, 7%, 9%, 11%, 13%, 15%, 17% and 19%.  There is probably a sound mathematical reason for this but I cannot work it out.  let me know if you find out!

The above calculations are based on ten-zone, metric scoring, but you can easily find out the area percentages by summing the two figures for each of the coloured scoring zones.  I have included these figures in the table above.

So, what about the smaller targets?  Clearly, the areas will be smaller, but the proportions of each of the scoring rings are identical to the 122cm face, meaning that the percentages will be the same regardless of the overall diameter.

Equipment Failure Annoyance

Mrs EA and I have decided that we are never again going to shoot on the same boss in a competition, if at all possible.  Why?  I hear you ask.

Last Saturday we took part in the King's Cup, an indoor FITA 18 competition run by Chessington Bowmen.  We regularly shoot with them in this venue and had been looking forward to the day for a while.  There were three sessions timetabled during the day and Mrs EA and I were booked into the second of the three.  Because he entered later, EA jnr was shooting in the final session of the day.

We arrived in plenty of time and set up our bows.  During practice Mrs EA found her arrows flying too high and adjusted her sight to compensate.  However, the adjustment didn't seem to be doing anything.  Eventually she realised that turning the adjustment knob did not moved the sight block as expected because the block was not free to move.

The only thing that had changed since the sight's previous outing four days earlier was that I had changed the grub screw securing the sight pin to a more robust, socket-head screw.  As an aside, I had to do this on my own sight a couple of weeks earlier because the sight pin kept shaking loose between ends, and the grub screw did not allow for sufficient tightening without burring the hex socket.  I found a suitable screw (M4) in my box-o-bits (rescued from a dead shower mixer!), but when I tried to replace the same screw in Mrs EA's sight, I found that the thread was different (M3).  They are both SF Elite Carbon sights, but hers is a few years older than mine, and there are a couple of other, minor differences if you look carefully.  I ordered a pack of 10, M3 screws from my favourite eBay supplier and fitted the screw on Friday.  The sight pin has not moved since.

Back to Saturday - Mrs EA was getting more and more frustrated at her sight not being adjustable and it was affecting her performance.  Her blaming me for the problem was affecting mine!  I did manage to moved the sight block enough for her to get some accuracy, but she did not regain her confidence.  I was distracted enough to pull my arrows before scoring on one end! We both ended with our worst-ever scores for the FITA 18 round and the only saving grace is that I didn't come last.  Whilst putting away our kit we noticed that we seemed to be the only couple who were shooting on the same boss, so we have decided to request being separated in future!

Having written-off our session we sat down to watch EA jnr in his.  This was his first time scoring an indoor round shooting compound and he was the only junior compound entry.  The other three compound archers on his boss are all very capable, so any bad shots from him would be apparent.  He ended with a score of 445, which is very creditable given the circumstances, and it put my score of 275 in stark contrast.  As the only competitor in his class, he was awarded gold medals for the session and for the overall competition.  Some might say that he got them by default, but many people were impressed by his performance and were surprised that he had only been shooting compound for less than a month.  Because there are so few junior compound archers around us, he will be setting new club and county records rather than breaking them, but I guess someone has to be the first. Perhaps it may spur other juniors to try compound, too.

Back home after the competition I took a good look at the offending sight and I think the problem was a combination of things.  The previous weekend, Mrs EA had tightened the retaining screws that pass through the block onto the vertical track because the block was wobbling.  This did not cause any problems until the block was moved to the very top of the track, where it wedged.  Any attempt to use the screw adjustment resulted in a click and no movement.  By the liberal application of some WD40 and the use of an old toothbrush, I cleaned out the block and removed a lot of dirt from the threaded rod.  The block now moves freely again.  The prospect of having to buy a replacement sight on top of all of the other changes was not very welcome, but this one is clearly reaching the end of its (reliable) life.   Mrs EA has hinted that it could be a good birthday present, so I have until July to save some pennies.

Domestic bliss has been restored.

All change on the equipment front

The last few weeks has seen a large turnover of archery kit in our household, mainly due to Christmas and two birthdays (mine and EA jnr).  Mrs EA has also upgraded.

So what has changed for me?  Santa Claus brought me a backpack case to replace the hard case I had inherited from Mrs EA, and an Easton quiver and belt to replace the cast-off I had been using.  The backpack case now holds all of my kit except the quiver (as I don't want to fold it) and seems to make bow assembly and disassembly more efficient.  I no longer have to go scrabbling around in a separate bag for my stand or sight, and the integral arrow tube means one less thing to carry.

The end of January sees my birthday on the 29th and EA jnr's birthday on the 30th.  Mrs EA gifted me a pair of limbs bought second-hand from eBay and I received some cash gifts that have gone towards buying a new set of arrows and a new button.  The button is a Shibuya DX and the limbs are SF Premium Carbon limbs with a nominal draw weight of 28lbs, a small increase on the 24lb limbs I have been using since the start of the last summer season.  Before fitting the new limbs, I measured the actual draw weight of my bow with the old limbs and found it to be 29lb.  This sounds high, but the riser limb bolts were adjusted right in and I do have a longer draw than the nominal 28".  I adjusted the limb bolts right out before putting on the new limbs and found that the new draw weight was 30lb - not very different to what I am used to but with plenty of scope for increasing over the next few months.

The arrows were ordered as components: 10x Easton ACC 3-04 shafts cut to 28.5", 80g parabolic points, red/white/blue EP16 vanes and white Easton G-nocks (small).  The delivery of the arrow components turned into a saga of problems, with some items being out of stock, wrong points being sent and used items being sent out as new.  The retailer has held up his hands and been very apologetic, to the point of losing a couple of staff for incompetence.  I am still waiting for a couple of items, but I know that this is out of his control and I did have enough components to make a usable set of arrows.

I shot the ACCs for the first time indoors this week without adjusting my bow, and was really quite pleased with the result.  The flatter trajectory was apparent as I had to adjust my sight up from my previous sight mark for 20yds.  This weekend I intend to fit my new button and go through the exercise of tuning the bow properly, maybe slightly increasing the draw weight.  Once that is done I will need to get new sight marks for all distances again!

EA jnr has undergone an even more radical change - he is now shooting a compound bow rather than recurve.  Aged 14, he has more growing to do so it was important to get a bow that can grow with him, but that he will not outgrow too soon.  We sought the advice of Dave, a very experienced compound archer at our club and we independently decided that a Mission Menace bow seemed a good choice.  Along with the bow, we bought a second-hand sight through the Archery Equipment for Sale UK group (thanks, Jon!) and a release aid and scope from Dave.  Dave also donated a bow bag that had been cluttering the loft (or so he says), and gave up his Saturday morning set the bow up properly.

This left EA jnr's recurve kit redundant, so we offered it as a complete set to one of the club's new juniors, who was delighted to leave the field totally equipped.

Finally, Mrs EA bought a new set of limbs (the same type as mine but shorter and higher poundage) and a used Win&Win Winact riser from another club member.  She is still getting used to the new setup and has yet to reach the same level of performance she had reached before the change.

I think that is going to be it on the equipment front for a while, unless I start doing the lottery!