Beginners Courses Bowsights?

[Ski]

Originally Posted by rohenwto

May be Leaders award book £5 or Coaching manual £27 ?

It's called 'Beginners Manual'
Information taken from GNAS level 1 candidates pack and GNAS leaders manual. Put together by the GNAS National source group.2006.

If that means anything.

Ski.

[Trunkles]

It is available from Sue Williamson for £5 on a CD-ROM. Also has printable certificates.
Main problem is the manual has spaces for your club details but it is not set up as a PDF form to enter them

http://www.sportfocus.com/reguser/dy...fm?number=7650

[johnnyb]

Thanks for all your responses. I put it to a 'vote' yesterday and it was sort of decided that we might introduce sights in week 2/3 but then another 'can of worms' was opened as to whether we shoot blank bosses or put a face on! Yet another thread I suspect.

[Hidden Hippo]

122cm faces. Blank bosses will teach them to shoot at a blank boss but a face will give them feedback and some encouragement when they are hitting the middle.

[Murray]

Hi JB. I believe Hazel has given you all the information you need from our perspective

Give them targets. This IS a target sport after all. We start them on either 120cm or 80cm faces at 10y, then move the targets further and further back.Most beginners courses will have some, if not all, shooting back at 20y by the end of the 6 weeks. Pretty soon after they join, we move them onto 60cm faces, and then to 40m faces within 6 months.

[Rhys]

Originally Posted by English Bowman

We put sights on from the beginning. We teach the beginners to line the sight up with the gold and not to look at the arrow. We also tell them not to worry about adjusting them to begin with as the coaches will do the adjustment for them. We teach them how to adjust the sight on week 3
This works very well. We don't get many misses, and this way we don't have to change their anchor point midway through a course. We will teach barebow if someone insists, but advise them to finish the beginner's course first

Daniel

ditto.

They tend to faff far more trying to aim for the gold without a sight than with, also I see no reason to teach people to anchor in the corner of the mouth at any time.

I've actually been at one club where people came out of the beginners course without ever being taught to anchor properly, thus lots of novices shooting with sights, but anchoring with the arrow nock up high and wondering why they're having problems with the sight being set really low.

[Alexam]

As a beginner, having only had 4 of the 6 lessons, and not having the considerable experiance of those who have commented before me, I find this thread absolutely amazing!!! I really do.

With the concern of most clubs that they are not retaining members from beginners courses, or even retaining those who do in fact join the club where they have completed their beginners course, why on earth has there not been a standardised training course that is adopted by all coaches?

I am very pleased with the course I am on, but have seen a wide variation of those starting with sights, like myself, and those who had sights added at week 2, 3 or 4, some of which are the 'tinies', and I can understand them not having a sight initially which may confuse the issue at the outset.

With the more adult beginners, I can see no reason not to have a sight from day one, but far more importantly, in my opinion, is the importance of the right stance, draw, anchor and 'form' to be drilled before starting to shoot arrows.

I was pleased that on our course we were shooting arrows soon after the safety procedures were clarified and by the time the first lesson was over, having missed the target a few times along with some others, I was very pleased to have made a start. This is the 'feeling' that should be aimed at for the conclusion of each and every lesson.

Prior to strarting the course, I was already into my second book on archery, having sought as much information as possible and I believe that all those who wish to start a beginners course, shoud be asked to read a certain amount, pointing them towards a suitable publication that was appropriate, so that on day one, the beginners are basically aware of the actions of the stance, drawing the bow, the anchor and posture that should be aimed for. It certainly helped me on day one.

Those on our course were blessed with three coaches split up between 12 'newbies', so the hands on approach was great, but not all clubs would have this facility. But a specific routine needs to be adopted and practiced specifically along a designed path to success ............ otherwise there may be greater failures and less members to continue in such a great sport.

I'm an enthuiastic - 'busy body'' - putting in my two penneth for what it's worth.

Good shooting all..........

Malcolm

[wanshu]

This below quote I agree with, as most beginners are being coached towards target recurve archery anyhow. I understand there are clubs who favour a certain style of shooting and if that is the case they will push that style. Teaching barebow recurve technique of referencing when the intention is to quickly more to target shooting referencing is as waste of time uless you then go back over it before the course ends. Otherwise the technique can be lost and forgotten.
We currently treat archery learning like you must first learn the historical draw principal and then just as you get used to that, it's "OK folks you can forget that way of doing things, we will now move on to what you will be doing from now on". Having a sight on a bow from the start will not over complicate things if it's explained at the start with a quick demo of what to do to alter the sight.

I remember Marcus mentioning in a thread some time ago that he also includes the clicker at an early stage. Someting else I agree with.
The clicker is treated as a secret tool that you are not allowed until you crack the secret code. Its there as a tool to help, not hinder.
Wonder if the students Macus teachers do better than others in the area because they are comfortable shooting with all the helpful parts on the bow from the start?
I appreciate why its done the way it is. I just question why?
I've often found that we teach the way we were taught. Was it right then?

Originally Posted by English Bowman

We put sights on from the beginning. We teach the beginners to line the sight up with the gold and not to look at the arrow. We also tell them not to worry about adjusting them to begin with as the coaches will do the adjustment for them. We teach them how to adjust the sight on week 3
This works very well. We don't get many misses, and this way we don't have to change their anchor point midway through a course. We will teach barebow if someone insists, but advise them to finish the beginner's course first

Daniel

[Tragic_Comic]

I am actually taking part in the beginners course which JohnnyB is discussing here. For my part I am desperate to get sights on the bow, but did actually find the 1st week with no sights and the 1st half of the session without targets on the bosses to be very beneficial.

Like Alexam, I have been doing some pre-reading prior to my beginners course (mostly Steps to Success) and was fairly sure that I understood the techniques of stance, anchoring, release and such. Ha ha, I'm sure you more experienced guys will testify, there's no substitute for getting in and doing it, the reality of it is, I knew extremely little!

Prior to starting Archery I spent 20 years shooting Target Air Rifle, including doing a fair bit of coaching in that time. I found that beginners would get a little over obsessed with where shots were landing on the target. This made them focus on aiming being the root cause of their wayward shots (which like archery are inevitible when you first pick up a gun/bow) and in many cases try to hold the gun in the aiming position far longer than was good for them. With the mindset of concentrating on lining the sight rings with the target perfectly it became very difficult to try to introduce elements such as trigger squeeze, correct breathing and the like as the advice was forgotten the minute they shouldered the gun. These are traits I also am aware of in myself.

Rambling now, but what I'm trying to say is that I thought that not having sights or targets was a good way of avoiding anything that was going to detract from getting some semblence of technique before introducing the targets and sights.

I have no doubt that my archery will always involve the use of sights (definately targets lol) but I did enjoy the experience of not using them and can see the reasons why the course was started like this.

Reading this through it seems like a great discussion to me. All of the sports I have experienced through my life have always had variances in training and coaching methods from club to club and coach to coach, it's discussing them like this that allows us all to refine them and raise the standard. I think care has to be taken with how much training courses are 'standardised'. My feeling on this is that there should be standard topics covered, but not in a regimented way that makes everyone teach it the same or else we are in danger of having nothing to discuss in forums like this and nothing developing and improving.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by Murray

Hi JB. I believe Hazel has given you all the information you need from our perspective

Give them targets. This IS a target sport after all. We start them on either 120cm or 80cm faces at 10y, then move the targets further and further back.Most beginners courses will have some, if not all, shooting back at 20y by the end of the 6 weeks. Pretty soon after they join, we move them onto 60cm faces, and then to 40m faces within 6 months.

Hi Murray, yes Hazel did give me all the info on what you do and it sounds much more considered than our approach.

After the first hour we did provide 120cm faces. I think it made a positive difference and, of course, it's what they expected to see. We will move targets out over the 4 weeks of our course but still maintain a large face. I was a little concerned on your swift move to 60/40cm faces then realised that you are talking indoors and we are outdoors! (I'd be hard pushed to find a 40cm face in our club!).

This week we are considering putting sights on, for the more able beginners, but I think it may well be a 'discussion point' as several of my fellow instructors are longbow shooters......!!