Archery Safety Issue

We are each responsible for our own personnel safety. Can life be any other way? No one but us makes the decisions, and we have all control that anybody has. We need to pay attention to our own lives, or own actions and take responsibility for our own life, in all aspects.

There is a safety issue when too short of an arrow is used, and the arrow is pulled of the arrow rest, and the arrow is then discharged, loosed, or released. The arrow can drive into the hand of the archer. Fortunately the two recent occurrence did not result in any serious injury. One became a self shot, the other was recognized and grabbed by a coach.

The first event was a "wrong, too short, arrow", the second was "pull behind their ear"; an ignore the anchor issue. There is also a third way, that is growth of an archer during the lesson season. Either way, a substantial hand injury could occur, or a wild arrow goes down range.

The only way to prevent this is to have the archer pay attention to what they are doing with both hands themselves. This is the limiting characteristic, the maturity level required to safely train archers. It is the old rub your belly and pat your head at the same time test. Some children are just too immature to use pointed objects.

Selecting the arrow length required is dependent on the style of archery; that is depending on the style of bow and anchor point, the arrow length will be different. If you use a traditional face anchor style, do not do a draw behind the ears with the same arrow. This is a problem with youth when they become tired and have used toy bows and pulled beyond the ear. Note that the pull beyond the ear is a valid instinctual style, but the equipment must match the style.  


 

What is the easiest way to "learn archery"?

So now we have a group of coaches who are trying to teach competitive Olympic style recurve to a group of beginners, and at the same time, same days as my traditional style classes.  But wait, this is not a fair comparison since my traditional class gets bumped once a month for a FITA event, and it is being used as a drop in when you like "help me" class, and as an overflow or other classes. Only before Christmas, unless that gets straightened out.

It is my contention that teaching traditional first, that is to start with muscle development through shooting using arrow aiming as a slow method of shooting with a long setup sequence is the ideal way to start. This allows unassisted shooting, simple bows, without the issues of competition. We do not want to lose a bunch of people who do not win that is typical after every competition; those who suddenly or just feel, well I am not good at this, I do not enjoy losing, and all those other emotional concepts that do not drive the student forward. We do not deal with the psychology of competition, or for that matter... psychology of life...philosophy of life... in these classes, or anywhere for that matter. That is a problem, not just for archery, but for life.

It seems that many of the youth that come to archery are just not interested in much, but they need something, and then there are those who want archery. These are two separate and identifiable groups with different interests and objectives. One group are low energy, the other just need space, equipment, and a little guidance.  I will not deal with the self actualized, they just do archery anyway.

I feel that the easiest way is to get them going on arrow aiming traditional, and if they chose, they can make the choice to go on to competitive recurve, compound, or barebow or instinctive.