Expensive lessons in archery
I have been doing archery for 8 years now. It's great sport to do, especially in Bay Area because there is plenty of indoor and outdoor ranges here. Some are incredibly scenic and overall it's a good thing to focus on every weekend. I watch most archery youtubers and follow archery reddit and I keep seeing similar, well intentioned advice, which I felt just did not work for me. I will highlight some expensive and painful lessons I learned over time.
Eye dominance matters
I hate it when people go to a store to get a rental and the owners don't try to get their dominant eyes, thinking it's just a lesson and it doesn't matter. It absolutely does. It's freaking crucial. It can turn a pretty good grouping into completely missing the target while not understanding why. Using the wrong eye, the archer can see the tip align with the target, making it look like it will fly straight, but the arrow is actually pointed to the side. I bought my girlfriend a right handed bow and we couldn't figure out for weeks why she shot off the target, until we did the dominant eye test. We went to a store before and I assumed they checked her dominant eye.
Note, some people can have weak eye dominance for both eyes, in which case you might want to close it. But it is still important to find your dominant eye!!!!
- Don't assume your eye dominance based on dominant hand (it's related but not completely)
- you can check using youtube videos
Archery is not cheap, and being cheap can get expensive
A common advice is not buy high end equipment, because beginners can't tell the difference. This is absolutely true. As a beginner, your biggest blocker will be technique and not your gear choice. I remember a person at an archery store say they don't shoot well because of the (arguably awful) rental equipment. It was obvious to every experienced archer they were wrong.
However, being cheap can ruin a lot of things for you.
Just get a samick sage
The default advice for beginners is to buy a samick sage or equivalent wooden takedown bow. I had one too and it was ok, but it's similar to "no one got ever fired for suggesting IBM". It's a solid, consistent default choice with one caveat: The limbs are too short. Limbs are certified to have their poundage up to a certain draw length (which depends on the limb length). For most adults, their draw lengths are significantly higher than expected for a 62 inch bow, which means they will experience stacking (the force required to pull the bow fully goes up significantly). This means a 30lbs beginner bow can hit 35lbs and be pretty tough.
Now this depends on your individual commitment to archery, but if you plan to regularly shoot or compete at some point, just buy a ILF setup with the correct draw length. It will help you massively.
Cheap equipment needs extra care
My first riser (the metal thing you attach the limbs to) was around $120 and worked really well, except it had loose limb pocket screws that would fall out due to vibration of the limbs. As a beginner I did not even know what a limb pocket is and I happily shot it until the screws fell out. This changed my limb alignment significantly, which changed my shot and I couldn't figure out why until someone pointed it out. It does not happen with fancier risers.
I also had a sight (avalon tec one) that would rattle and unscrew itself every 3 shots making it a huge pain. I would need to glue the sight pin which means it would not be adjustable. Definitely not worth it and a complete waste of money, because it meant I spent $99 on tec one and $300 on a shibuya sight instead of buying shibuya outright. My bought a bunch of cheaper accessories like arrow rests and plungers, and it always bit me in the ass.
I recommend doing a lot of research and don't underspend (800 total) instead of buying the cheapest equipment, otherwise you will just buy double the equipment anyway.
Buy once, use forever is a fallacy
As an opposite example, a lot of people (mostly me) buy fancy equipment and argue it will last them forever. This is probably true. If taken care of, my equipment will probably last a decade or two. However, it is unlikely that you will stick with your first choice. This is because your preferences and technique (and well, budget) will change dramatically as you shoot more. I thought I really want carbon risers but after 3 years of them I can probably switch to aluminium risers.
Don't overcommit (or overspend) to your first set. Your equipment will evolve over time and you will definitely prefer different setups. It's probably unavoidable to have a garage full of archery stuff (ask anyone at a range), and it's Kenough.
Skipping bow weight
A common tip is to buy the cheapest limbs for the weight you have until you reach your target poundage. People (again, me) often skip poundages to save the hassle of selling the old ones. This can have catastrophic consequences. Apart from safety, the added strain can impact your shooting for months. It might be okay if you are really strong, but I would just not recommend it ever. I went from 34lbs to 38lbs and it took me almost half a year to get back to my previous scores. I was stubborn and bought my final limbs and thought I can power through it, but it was awful. Make steady progress.
Knockoffs
There are always people obsessed with getting a good deal, which is perfectly valid. I remember a lot of conversations about Nika Archery and Sanlida saying it's the same factory as the korean/american brands which means you get the same quality for less, because it's the exact same CNC machine building them. There is always a guy arguing the arrow speed of Nika/Topoint archery carbon limbs is comparable to Uukha (fancy carbon limb brand) and spends more time measuring performance than shooting.
After buying a lot of equipment from those, I would say they are pretty good, but you do get what you paid for. Sanlida risers are inconsistent between production runs which means r-core, a company making custom grips, refuses to give you a warranty if you buy a custom grip for sanlida. It's because the risers vary so much. And when I bought it, I indeed had to manually modify it to fit. This does not happen for Hoyt or Win and Win risers.
The lesson here would be: There is no secret sauce good value equipment, and branding is not a rip-off.
Don't assemble your first bow by yourself
One expensive lesson I had was to follow youtube videos about assembling your own bow, trying it myself, messing it up and having to go to an archery store to fix it. When I bought my final (LOL) bow I just went straight to pacifica archery to have it assembled and tuned. If there is any possibility of you going to a store (even hours away) with bow technician, do it. Even consider going to an archery club to get help.
Trust the store, once you did research on it
I originally did not intend to add this, but after my experiences with a local archery store I would recommend:
- Having your bow ordered and assembled by your nearest store
- BUT doing some research on archery stores before you buy from them, maybe by asking local archers.
This is really unfortunate, but I had it happen several times that my friends did not get the optimal equipment (limbs too weak, too short arrows, incorrectly put in plungers) which left a really sour after taste. This depends on the shop clerk and sadly there is just no way for a beginner to know if they got screwed or not. Maybe the lesson is even archery stores can mess it up. A good way to check is to ask at your local archery club or range and ask them where they but gear. Turns out a lot of archers have memorized catalogs on online stores and can help you out pretty well!
Archery is often about the boring things
People romanticize archery in literature and movies, or god forbid, Lars Andersen videos, but the real thing is infinitely less exciting. Archery during olympics is really boring (you watch people hit 10s and 9s over and over again) unless you can see and appreciate the technique. There is nothing exciting and explosive or surprising, the archer on the podium is just showing off how many shots they did before and how consistent they are over time.
During archery training you just shoot, figure out if there is any inconsistency in your technique, and shoot again. I call it the debug cycle, or gradient descent where you take derivative of muscle activations with respect to the grouping. It's self-reflection on steroids. That's it. Nothing dynamic or surprising. Important things that improve your grouping in archery is stance (how stable you are standing), are you engaging your core, are you swaying in the wind, is your elbow at the right height, are is back muscles tension equal on both sides, is the string at the same spot, did you rotate your head.
Aiming is a very, very minor part, which unfortunately a lot of beginners obsess over. But in reality this only gets you so far, because:
The human mind is exceptional at compensating technique
One observation I had when teaching friends and newcomers is, you can shoot incredibly poorly, and still hit the target. I remember a person who did not anchor the string at all, it was floating in front of their face, but they brute forced it and had an OK grouping. Their brain was incredible at guessing where it would land and I figured where instinctive archers came from. (hell) This is not sustainable long term. Archery is not about the points of the last 3 arrows, but the grouping of the last 10000 arrows you shot over time.
We want to ingrain our process as part of muscle memory, but we want to make conscious decisions which parts to memorize in flesh and which ones we leave to autopilot. (supervised vs unsupervised learning)
It really, really is not about the score
Unless it's a competition, archers will not really comment if you hit the gold accidentally once in 6 shots. (They might if they are polite, though!). Archers compliment your grouping, or how close the arrows are to each other. Archery is only about consistency and finding a personal formula for repeatable "good shots". I believe you become intermediate once you can distinguish between good shots and bad shots. A good shot feels right, you know you did all the steps and all the muscles had the correct tension and when you release you don't care if it's in the bullseye or not. I can tell I had a bad shot the moment the string leaves my fingers.
The moment an archer has a good grouping, moving the group becomes trivial. As a beginner, do not obsess about score or where the arrows are on the target. Don't overaim or overcompensate to hit the gold. You should really only care about getting a hand-sized grouping at whichever distance you shoot at.
Archery is hard to self-learn
When I started, I read a lot of various archery books and followed Jake Kaminski on youtube. Every time I tried his technique I shot significantly worse. I paid for archery online academy and took notes from each video. That also made me shoot awfully, even though every thing made sense and I repeated it in the mirror. One problem in all of these is, for a lot of amateur people it is very difficult to map body feelings to position. For example, I can pull back my string but I don't actually know where exactly my elbow is until someone points it out so I can connect the feeling in the shoulder to the right position. Beginners often think they are anchoring the string on their face until you show them a photo of the 1 inch gap. It's notoriously unreliable and a coach / archery partner can help you make huge improvements in a shorter time.
I partially picked archery because you can do it completely alone, but it is very difficult to progress that way. We need both internal feedback (a check list of things we did in the shot) and external feedback (verify if we are stable, and how we released). Once those two are combined, we can progress.
TL;DR get a trainer at least for a month or two, or make friends at the range :(
Archery is super safe until you fuck up
Every archer loves to say how safe archery is and beginners should not be afraid of the bow. This is usually because beginners are afraid the string might hurt them and won't pull it all the way to their face. Well, that part is pretty safe, the string won't hurt you. Archers however conveniently forget about all the times things went wrong. I personally bought a new custom string. It was excellent, but the serving was too thin which means it did not hold the arrows completely.
Upon release, the arrow fell of and the string hit my forearm with 38lbs force. (it also dry fired, meaning all the energy got transferred into the limbs which is incredibly dangerous) It was not pretty at all. It is also 100% my fault and avoidable.
A beginner shooting a properly assembled bow under supervision will likely not hit these issues, but they do happen. I feel most injuries happen when archers get too confident. Respect your bow!
Danger from yourself
Unsafe arrows
Terrifying injures can happen if we hit a hard surface with a carbon arrow, making it crack. If we shoot it again it can explode and hit your arm with carbon shards. If you ever hit a wooden/metal pole or rock with your arrow, carefully inspect it and toss it without remorse if you see any crack. It's never worth it. All the posts on reddit asking if the arrows are usable: NO. That being said, if you just hit the bale, you will be safe.
String slaps
A common mistake for all archers is to forget rotating the arm holding the bow. This leaves the forearm in the path of the string, leading to the string hitting it on release, aka string slap. String slap is not usual and you should not buy extra large armguards to compensate. It is 100% technique. And even experienced archers forget or get distracted and get string slaps.
- Always wear an armguard regardless of experience level
- When you hit yourself twice in a row stop, and rethink your process. Don't power through.
Finger protection
Some people say they don't like finger tabs because they can't feel the string and feel it's less accurate. I honestly don't know whether that is true or not, but I do know holding the string without a finger tab cuts off your blood flow and can cause nerve damage. It's up to 45 pounds of force held by your 3 fingers. It's just not worth it.
Clothes
Your string can get caught and ripped if you have baggy clothing. We wear armguards and chestguards that flatten them, but it is generally good practice to wear fitting clothing. I tried to shoot in a windbreaker in the rain once and it changed how my shoulder moves.
Danger from others
Toe the line for the love of god
Please read the instructions at every archery range and stand with the shooting line between your feet. This is not suggested line (like speed limits), it's absolutely a safety measure for everyone. I remember a person stepping back from the line because he wanted to shoot longer distance. My girlfriend was shooting at the target next to theirs. At some point they were standing behind her and a simple twist would mean she would get shot. We had to yell at them to move forward and they were not pleased. Just don't do it. People will yell at you to be on the line, and you should absolutely inform others.
Always yell clear
Once we saw a family with a kid shoot at one end of the range while the rest shot at the other. When we yelled clear to shoot, the family thought they can keep going because they were so far. Nope. If the signal is clear to pull, no one should shoot.
Crossbow people
Just go to Arizona, please.
Conclusion
Archery is an amazingly accessible sport that promotes self improvement without being too physically straining. It has a great community (I made archery friends every country I shot at) and a solid progression system. It's just not cheap.