What Exercises?

WARM-UP Mobility exercises: Slow and controlled movement

1.     Squats – as far as you can. 

2.     Torso Twists – cross arms over chest, slowly turn entire torso and hold 2 secs to the left, 2 to the right.  Repeat. 

3.     Robots – With arms extended to the sides at shoulder height, bend elbows up, palms forward (like a right turn signal).  Keeping elbow locked, rotate shoulders so hand goes forward downwards – alternate arms, like a robot!  Repeat.

4.     Arm circles – Both directions, palms up and down, slow and controlled

5.     Arm slides (not on wall) – think about muscle between shoulder blades

6.     Light bulbs – arms up at chest height, bend elbow so hand points to ceiling, “change the lightbulb” to warm up forearms

7.     Neck Turns and tilts (ear to shoulder) (not rolling)

COOL-DOWN Stretches: static stretches – hold for a few moments

1       Shoulder stretch – arm across body

2       Pec stretch against wall or High 5 with a partner, turn body away from arm, hold.

3       Lats stretch – bent over at waist, hands against wall, or with a partner, pull hips back

4       Hamstrings and Back – drop forward from waist and hang, sway if you like.

Decision Thinking

Our Club is totally volunteer run, and has ego issues as all clubs. It is considering becoming connected to another club...

So what is my position on this?

R...........: (club president)

First, let me thank you for being president and bring some order to this group. It is a tough job, and I would support you staying on for a second term, should you wish to. Volunteer groups are much more difficult than any business to run well. We are all committed to our individual needs, not necessarily to the groups needs. If these are concurrent, well success is possible. If not, all we can do is wish you luck. It is worse than herding cats.

In this inter club discussion, I have been struggling in deciding what my position actually is.

A bit of history about this concept of a archery in Sherwood Park might be in order. I do not know all the history; however for more than forty years I have been bumping into this concept, all the while being outside of the archery world. The first time was a fun shoot/turkey shoot/ membership drive/ thing about 1974 where the aim was to raise money for a property down payment, where the Sherwood Range is currently at. That split the club, with the dissenters leaving.

In the late In 78 or 79, the plan was still alive, and there was much dissent. Some of the names are still the same, only one generation later.

In 83 or 84 Fish and wildlife tried the same thing in Leduc and got as far as building a combined gun/archery range on the Lede property, but once again succumbed to internal club issues. It is still an unsafe outdoor gun range today.

The building west of the Leduc airport by a different group has too many issues to be considered, and was promoted as a combined range, however, I never heard of any archers using it. The original construction was bad, and required considerable repairs soon after construction. The original group disintegrated, and left a financial mess, and unpaid bills from construction. 

We have seen private ranges come and go since I have been here, most of fifty years. I doubt if there is enough concentration of desire for this grand "archery center for excellence" to work without substantial long term support of at least one level of government or other source of funds or economic space. 

It is much more important to me that I try to meet my current needs; and, where practical, a few of our club needs, rather than some dreamy future iffy ideal, of other someones vision of what they would like for the future.

If you want to test the support, simply ask for a donation of say fifty dollars toward the project, and see how far that goes. That will separate the verbal support from the real support. I wish you all good luck.

Volunteer Coordinator

Volunteer Coordinator is a badly needed position, but it is the cat herder position, that will offend some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time. It is a no win position. But that is the way all volunteer organization operate, all the time. We get offended and we go away. But the offense must be kept to a minimum.

The ideal cat herder need to attract cats, entice the cats to willingly follow, and be heading the direction that most of the cats naturally wish to follow.  That says most of the cat, well some of the cats anyway. At least not repel the cats.  

The volunteer coordinator needs to be charismatic and energetic, and produce a vision of the club of the future.

Drop in and try out archery

For this last winter I have done the 1.00 PM drop in, try out archery class on Saturdays. The attendees are a widely mixed bunch, seniors to too small children. Someone made a decision that we will let in children, as long as they can pull our smallest bows. These under ten year old are dangerous to themselves. I do not wish to see any of them injured. I should step back and let someone else do it.

 

Volunteer Coaches

At our club, Capital Region Archery Club (CRAC), all coaches are volunteer. We are not employees, we are unpaid. The term coach position is a misnomer. Where the ego of the coach get in the way, there will be discord. To bad, so sad. Other coaches may just go away. Or return to just shooters. We are free to do so. And then the wonder why they have not enough coaches.

Some people just do not get along with others. Some of us teach different styles. To a beginner, learning two different styles is troubling, if not problematic. So the coaches must have a standard style to start, but if that standard style is not satisfying... or practical for shooting... what is there to keep us shooting?

There is a considerable difference in style of shooting with and without sights. Without sights, there are three common different aiming methods. If I am in the process of teaching one style, and along comes a different coach, and tries to teach a different style... what does the student learn?

All volunteer organizations have similar issues. What is the purpose of the organization? Does that organization fit with our desires to serve? Or is this just a social self service group? Do we serve our members desires, or do we serve others, or just provide a common facility? Most of the volunteer effort will be provided by a few people. Something to do with social responsibility or what we see our social responsibility as.  

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.