This is the last section of my series on Target Panic and the one likely to cause the most controversy.

Some relevant preliminary comments first before I stick my neck out. During my 50 years of on and off archery coupled with rifle and pistol shooting, I have not only experienced all of the difficulties associated with those sports but have taught myself to overcome most of them, so what I say about these issues is based on hard won experience and not simply theory.

In archery I have watched endless numbers of beginners ranging in age from 8years on up to people in the early 70s, commence coaching courses at a variety of clubs, seen them taught in the same way, with a recurve bow, watched their struggles with it and, after a short period of time, watched most of them drop out of the sport either because they found it too hard to achieve a good level of performance and/ or they were beset by Target Panic.

I have a rather simple (some would call it simplistic) philosophy about training people in sports (or any activity if it comes to that) and it is based on the premise that right from the outset, you should be giving the beginner the oppportunity to be successful. At the end of even the first lesson, a newcomer to any activity should be able to go home with a feeling of inner satisfaction that they had achieved something worthwhile, which was worth telling their friends and family about and that they are looking forward eagerly to their next experience.

Based on that philosophy, the way I approach training is to do whatever is necessary to ensure that a beginner's first experiences of an activity are as easy as possible and I try to keep it easy for them as they progress in the activity. What I am seeking is incremental improvement but always based on success. There's nothing revolutionary about this approach. There is no point in trying to train a person to fly an aeroplane by plonking them in the pilot's seat, giving them the controls and say "Fly". It just won't happen and no reasonable person would it expect it to be otherwise.

We do it with our beginner archers, though. After some rudimentary instruction about what a bow and arrow looks like and does and a demonstration of how to string an arrow, draw the bow and shoot it, we give beginners the bits and pieces and in effect say - "Go on - shoot it!"

The reason we do it this way is because this is what the beginners want to do. They want to be able to pick up a bow and arrow and shoot it straight it away. As I said in an earlier posting on the subject of target panic, the Koreans won't let their beginners touch a real bow for nearly six months - yet when they do, they immediately start to score well. OK, we aren't of that mindset and no westerner would ever tolerate such an approach but the Korean approach does give us some hints as to how we might do things better.

First up, the greatest difficulty any beginner is going to have with archery is bringing into use muscles and parts of their bodies that they either haven't used before or if they have, not in that way. In addition we are going to load them down mentally with a lot of information that they are going to forget the very instant they pick up a bow and start to draw it.

So, knowing that the effort to shoot a bow is going to take it out of them physically and mentally very quickly, my view is to make arrangements so that the physical effort involved is at a minimum and the mental load is minimised.

Therefore the first thing I would do is to put away the recurve bow and take out a compound bow of very light draw weight and very high let off. That deafening noise you hear as you read this sentence is the howl of protest and derision at such a suggestion. How do I know this? Because that has been the reaction at every club at which I have suggested it.

Anyway, ignoring all of the background noise, I am now going to give the beginner this compound bow which has a draw weight of no greater than 20lbs and at least a 65% let off - higher if possible. I'm going to get him/her to use his/her fingers to draw the bow back without an arrow in it just to feel what the let off effect feels like. As far as I am concerned they can wrap their whole hand around the string, as long as they can draw it back without any feeling of discomfort. Usually, there will be a little smile of joy as they do this, when they feel the left off come in. Now I'll get them to do this a few times in succession, only now, I'll ask them to hold at full draw in the valley for at least 5 seconds at a time.

Very few, if any of them, will have any trouble doing this. In fact they will be able to do it so well that the bow won't waver around all over the place. This fact is IMPORTANT. The next thing I am going to introduce them to is a simple Back Tension release. Now I don't want anyone to laugh when I describe this because it would offend my friend at my club who makes these up and that wouldn't be fair, because they cost virtually nothing and work a treat.

He makes them out of a length of broomstick handle (1 inch dowelling, preferably hardwood, but soft wood will do) about 3 to 4 inches long and drives a heavy gauge nail through it crosswise about 2/3 of the way along. This nail is bent over at the end into a 90 degree bend and the inside surface is smoothed and polished.

Hang on, I asked you not to laugh and now you are all getting hysterical!

This is a very crude drawing of this homemade BT release:



Continued in Part 2