Author Archives: 2020

Important Information on Shooting at Downside Fisher – we must not assemble bows outside of area booked for archery!‏

Dear Club Members

This is just to let everyone know that Downside have specifically requested that no-one puts together bows outside of the area we’ve booked for archery and that we do not enter the room booked for archery until the session start time.

Our booked entry time on a Saturday is 12 o’clock and on a Sunday it’s 2pm. We also need to be out promptly for the session end time – if everyone can arrive on time to get set-up together & then stay to help pack-away we can maximise the shooting time in the middle!

Downside have had a safety evaluation done for all activities and the assembling of bows outside of the area booked for archery has been flagged as something that CANNOT be continued.

Please help us to stay at Downside! It’s a great location for us and the facilities are very well suited to our club. The more of our club members that are pleasant and respectful to Downside staff and their building safety policies the better our chances of continuing to grow and thrive as a club at this super convenient spot.

We really do appreciate the support of our club members as we all navigate our way forward.

Best wishes, The 2020 Archery Team

P.S. However annoying these new rules may be please don’t be angry toward the staff at Downside! We want to be the friendliest, nicest people that use the centre and we’re very appreciative that we’ve built up many special arrangements for using the centre over the years.

Meet the Instructors – Roger Huggins

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We thought we’d start a new ‘occasional series’ of blog posts getting to know a bit about the 2020 Archery instructors. We asked a few general questions and we also asked them what advice they’d most like to pass onto beginners and club members. We’re starting with Roger Huggins who leads at the club on a Monday evening and Sunday afternoon. He also does loads of our great archery corporate events / stag do’s and he is a regular assisting at Junior club on a Saturday morning. Over to the questions….

How long have you been shooting for?

I’ve been shooting since the year 2000, although I stopped shooting for about 7 years in the middle of that. So about 7 years in total.

How did you get started shooting?

When I started university I had the opportunity to try lots of different sports but archery was the one that I came back to again and again.

What do you remember feeling stuck with when you first got started / what was the hardest thing?

It’s hard to remember that far back, but my release has always caused me problems. It causes lots of people problems because problems with release are usually caused by other problems so focusing on it in isolation is usually not that helpful. It’s not until I focused on my posture and form that I’ve become happy with my release.

When did you get into coaching?

I started coaching about 3 years ago and haven’t thought about much else since!

What’s the best part of the job?

The best part is when an archer looks effortless when shooting. As a coach you can’t help but notice when, and usually why, someone is struggling. But when an archer just flows through their shot and they’re in perfect harmony it’s a beautiful thing to behold and an even better thing to feel. I always want people to feel that feeling and when you see someone achieve it it’s wonderfully satisfying.

What’s the one bit of advice you’d give to someone thinking of taking up archery?

When you go on a course make use of the instructor and ask lots of questions. That’s their job and they will most likely enjoy talking about archery as much as me! You and the rest of the class will get more out of the course this way and you will all come out of it with a better understanding and skill level.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Have fun! Find what you enjoy most about archery and do that. Try and shoot different types of bows, different rounds, different disciplines and try a competition or two. If you mostly like chatting to your friends at the club make sure you go to the same sessions as your friends.

And if you get stuck ask for advice, either from a coach of from an experienced archer, most clubs are pretty sociable and help is usually easier to find than you might think.

Club Newsletter about Move to Harris Academy

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Dear 2020 Club Members, I hope all is well and the Summer is looking good for everyone.

We have exciting news! As of Monday 28^th July and Wednesday 30^th July – we’ve changed venue for Monday and Wednesday evening to Harris Academy which can be found at 55 Southwark Park Rd (SE16 3TZ).

The advantage for Monday night regulars is that it is a little closer to Bermondsey tube station and the advantage for Wednesday night regulars is that we’ll be able to fit 10 bosses and have bags more room on the line. There are also direct buses from Elephant & Castle (bus number 1 towards Canada Water) which is an advantage if its raining / you have heavy kit and don’t feel like a walk.

The main thing that all archers need to be aware of is that the entrance is in front of the shooting line. This doesn’t mean that you need to time your entrance to fall between arrows – or zigzag under a hail of arrows like the cornfield scene in Apocalypto.. what it does mean is that we’ll be closing and locking the door once we’ve set up. If everyone could keep an eye out for latecomers it would be appreciated but, for the most part, we need people to aim to arrive on time for setting up.

ARRIVAL TIME FOR BOTH MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY is now 6.45pm to 7.15pm. We have the hall booked from 6.30pm if you do want to arrive early.. but we’re expecting people to arrive to help set up between 6.45pm and 7.15pm (the earlier the better). We should be all done and out of the hall by 9pm.

A quick reminder about archery etiquette – it should be fine to arrive late (as long as we spot you) or to leave a bit early – as long as you apologise to the other club members who have had to do all the setting up or packing away for you. We do not expect – or pay – instructors to do the set up and pack down on behalf of the club. In line with all clubs that have to set up and pack away everyone that is shooting should be helping at each end of the session. Everyone understands that occasionally something comes up which means an unavoidable late arrival or early departure – etiquette asks that you apologise to the people around you. You aren’t expected to apologise to the instructor as this perpuates the idea that it’s Diccon or Roger’s responsibility to set up or pack away and club members are just being nice and giving a helping hand. We can – and do – sanction club members who don’t help out.

Saying that, we know that we have had a problem with the weekend course sessions lasting for longer and we’re trying to sort it out. At the moment were trying to get better at informing the club when we’ll be having a 3 hr Sat / Sun session, ultimately I think we may be changing club or course times so everything is a bit clearer.

We’ve updated our Find Us on the web – if you want to have a direct click through here is Google’s route using Bus number 1 from Elephant & Castle.

Here is the walking route from Bermondsey tube.

We think this is a really positive move for the club and we hope that you will all like the new venue as much as we do.

Best wishes, 2020 Archery

Ask the Experts – Why do people put twists in their bowstring?

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This is a great question and something that is often confusing for beginners. It’s all to do with something called ‘Brace Height’ which is the distance between the bow and the bowstring. You usually measure this from the button (hole in the riser near the arrow rest if there isn’t an actual button yet) to the string using a bow square. There will be a general guide for each individual riser – this is a starting point. From the starting point (usually around 8.5-9” for a 68” bow.. can be slightly less for a shorter bow and 9-9.5” for a 70”) you then need to do some basic tuning to determine what the perfect brace height for your bow is.

Couple of things :

1. You should always have the SAME brace height. If you lose ½” of brace height you might lose 20 points on a Portsmouth (or more). Remember that archery is “the art of repetition” and its all about reducing variation. Check your brace height at the start of every shoot.

2. Putting in twists will make the string effectively shorter (think about twisting up a piece of string) which will increase the brace height; taking twists out will effectively give you a longer string and therefore smaller brace height.

To do the tuning – start with the lowest sensible brace height and shoot 3 arrows. Take off string and put in a few twists (you’ll probably need to miss an end to do this). Re-measure brace height and shoot 3 arrows. Listen to the noise the string makes and note your grouping. If you have a bad end and you know you shot badly you might want to repeat another 3 arrows at the same brace height. Keep doing this until you have explored the full range (8”ish to 9.5”ish). You should find two ‘sweet spots’ where the bow sounds quietest and shoots the best – one will be at the lower end of the range and one will be at the higher end of the range. I’ve never been madly successful with hearing this.. but you can usually tell that the bow just feels better. Choose the higher brace height out of the two not the lower. Remember this or mark it down somewhere.

Store the string by doing a simple loop through loop knot (any experienced archer can quickly show you how to do this) in order not to lose twists and have to start from scratch the next time you shoot.

Here’s a little You Tube video I found showing this : http://youtu.be/em_BP1uz2Gw?t=32s

Quick tip : you know that the brace height is too low if the string hits your wrist. As longbows need a much lower brace height than recurves the string ALWAYS smashes into your wrist. This is why longbow archers wear much thicker arm guards and they tend to be worn much lower down the arm.

P.S. its also a good idea to check the brace height on club bows. We try and check them as often as we can.. but the more club members take the responsibility the better they’ll shoot. Just ask an instructor where the nearest bow square is.

May Member News from 2020 Archery

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Hey everyone – two pieces of news for May 2014.

You can now book a place for our next Sunday Handicap Competition on Sunday 8^th June

We’ve re-opened the Direct Debit system with new pricing options

Save the date for our next handicap competition – or better still click through and book!

Our upcoming competition will be on Sunday 8^th June! And we’ll be having an Autumn one on Sunday 14^th September. To improve the system we can now accept bookings for the handicap competition ahead of the normal website opening! To get things rolling in advance we’ve added competition places to our normal ‘vouchers’ page. If you click through here you’ll be able to buy yourself a place on either the 12 noon session or the 2pm session.

There will be a few improvements this time, primarily there will be categories to the competition so you can enter as a longbow archer, a sighted recurve, barebow recurve etc. We will need at least five people in a category to award a prize.

Re-opening Direct Debit Programme

The other great news is that all the pre-payment shenanigans have now died down – we even got some love from a few people for not having to remember to get cash out before the session. Phew. We’re glad that’s all taken care of.

We’ve also made huge inroads into getting the Direct Debit people to re-open places / alert us if for some reason they can’t attend and we seem to have successfully passed the message on that there is a limited number of missed sessions that we can cope with if you’re on programme.

So.. we’re re-opening the system. A little bit new and improved.

1 shoot per week : £25

This seems to be really popular and we don’t want to change a winning formula

Unlimited shooting each week : £65

As we’ve now got less sessions than before it seems fair to make the unlimited price a bit cheaper. It also makes sense to only differentiate between once a week people and, beyond this, to open it up and make it a bit more viable for any of you that want to come as many times as you can in a given week and practice.

T’s and C’s are the same as before.

To give a quick rundown – we can’t guarantee that sessions will go ahead – particularly where Acts of God are concerned (or ‘Acts of Downside’ as we refer to them). At least once a year Downside forget to tell us about a closure (or have an explosion – I believe they melted part of the road on Druid St last time) and – not even joking – Southwark Academy changes parents evening to a Monday night with about 3 days notice at least on an annual basis. Last year they booked in a sports hall resurfacing which closed the venue for three weeks and only told us the week before. Still, it adds another frisson of excitement to London Life for all of us. We definitely know that we close for a little bit at Easter and over Christmas, and Bank Holidays are usually closed too. We can’t refund DD payments, carry over credits or anything similar, and we’ll (very nicely) ask you to go back to PAYG if you miss more than 3 sessions in 3 months which we didn’t have enough notice to get filled.

Happy Shooting! Heidi and the 2020 Archery Team

May Member News from 2020 Archery

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Hey everyone – two pieces of news for May 2014.

You can now book a place for our next Sunday Handicap Competition on Sunday 8^th June

We’ve re-opened the Direct Debit system with new pricing options

Save the date for our next handicap competition – or better still click through and book!

Re-opening Direct Debit Programme

So.. we’re re-opening the system. A little bit new and improved.

1 shoot per week : £25

This seems to be really popular and we don’t want to change a winning formula

Unlimited shooting each week : £65

T’s and C’s are the same as before.

Happy Shooting! Heidi and the 2020 Archery Team

Club Member Richard P’s Competitive Weekend of Archery!

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It was a busy weekend for a few 2020 Archers over the weekend of 1^st / 2nd March as we went along to two separate competitions on two consecutive days! The King’s Cup, hosted by the Chessington Bowmen, was on Saturday 1^st March. This is a world record status FITA 18 event (60 arrows at a 40cm target 18m away) and a group of regular 2020 shooters went along to take part. Some of us were representing 2020 (Me, Roger, Kim and Jeff) and some shot for their other regular club Sutton Bowmen (Bryn, Trent and Tim).

The venue at Chessington is great as it has loads of space, it’s nicely heated and the club has a very friendly atmosphere. All was going well as we arrived – we had a little chat and got ourselves registered. Then as I started to put my bow together disaster struck! I hadn’t packed my sight! This was going to make my shooting a little difficult as I am rubbish at barebow. Fortunately with so many generous 2020 shooters around I was able to borrow a sight from Bryn and the organisers allowed me to move my session so I could shoot later.

It was also a stroke of good luck that in a World Archery round you are allowed two rounds of two minutes to shoot as many sighters as you can. This meant that I was able to set up the new sight and get a sight mark…. and hope for the best! In the end I managed a score of 509 which I was pleased with as this qualified me for a FITA target award for breaking 500! It also secured me a 10^th place overall.

Roger and Tim had a bit of a nightmare by their usual standards, but I think that most people were reasonably happy with their scores.

Richard Parker (10^th) – 509

Trent Rosenbaum (21^st) – 476

Bryn Bache (24^th) – 471

Kim Li – (25^th) – 470

Jeffrey Chan – (32^nd) – 449

Roger Huggins – (33^rd) – 449

Tim Tilford – (5^th) – 324 (Barebow)

The following day – Sunday 2^nd – brought the Southern Counties and Sussex Indoor Championship which was held at the K2 in Crawley. This is a really impressive venue with 66 targets (!!) set up. They were even selling event t-shirts! This time the round that we were shooting was a Portsmouth – the more familiar round for indoor club shooters.

There were just the three of us this time myself, Kim and Jeff once again representing 2020 – and this time we were also representing the County of London! Jeff gave us a bit of a scare as he arrived just in time due to some issue with the trains. I was hoping that would be the only excitement today…

The organisers kindly put us together on adjacent targets and on the same detail so we could chat between ends. We were interspersed amongst a group of archers from Hillingdon – all decked out in green. They were a very friendly bunch which was great. It seems that Kim and I and are getting known on the competition circuit as a couple of the Judges came over to have a chat with us.

So off we went! Everything seemed to be going well and with one end to go I was on 523. I knew that if I could shoot 27 or more it would be a personal best for a competition. So, I walked up to the target for the last three arrows of the day trying to clear my mind in order not to pressure myself.

The first arrow looked to be a 10, then, releasing the second arrow, the bow kicks strangely in my hand. This was followed by a loud ‘clunk!’ My longrod has parted company with the rest of my bow..! Thankfully it didn’t result in anything less than an 8. Also thankfully, I am able to declare an equipment failure. The clock is stopped to allow me to put my bow back together and shoot my last arrow, I have 26 seconds left on the clock.

Once the stabiliser is securely screwed back into place I trot back to the line (now on my lonesome) and shoot my last arrow – a 9! Leaving me with a joint competition personal best of 550.

We are all happy with our scores (Kim hadn’t shot for two weeks so it took him a while to get into the swing of things). There were 114 Southern County entrants overall to help you make sense of the rankings.

Richard Parker (47^th) – 550

Kim Li – (89^th) – 501

Jeffrey Chan – (97^th) – 479

I hadn’t realised that the three highest scores for shooters from the County of London would be entered as a team score but they were – and we came 8^th out of 10. Not brilliant but I don’t think there were many County of London shooters as mine was the best score.

The indoor season for competitions is drawing to a close now but I would encourage all club members to think about competing when they can. It’s another great way to track your progress, the atmosphere is usually very relaxed (despite the rules and regulations) and where else will you find so many new archery fans to chat with?

Club Member Richard P’s Competitive Weekend of Archery!

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Roger and Tim had a bit of a nightmare by their usual standards, but I think that most people were reasonably happy with their scores.

Richard Parker (10^th) – 509

Trent Rosenbaum (21^st) – 476

Bryn Bache (24^th) – 471

Kim Li – (25^th) – 470

Jeffrey Chan – (32^nd) – 449

Roger Huggins – (33^rd) – 449

Tim Tilford – (5^th) – 324 (Barebow)

Once the stabiliser is securely screwed back into place I trot back to the line (now on my lonesome) and shoot my last arrow – a 9! Leaving me with a joint competition personal best of 550.

Richard Parker (47^th) – 550

Kim Li – (89^th) – 501

Jeffrey Chan – (97^th) – 479

2020 Archery First Handicap Competition of 2014!

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Competition Date: Sunday 9^th March, 2014

Start time – session 1: 12 noon in the Sports Hall, Downside Centre

Start time – session 2: 2pm in the Sports Hall, Downside Centre

These are competition only slots. Everyone shooting will be required to join in the competition shoot (even if you don’t have a handicap you can still join in and record your first competition score).

The broad premise is that everyone who wants to take part will shoot a Portsmouth round – all starting at the same time with 6 sighters.

If you take part your score on the day will be added to the allowance for your current registered handicap (as listed on the 2020 Archery website: https://www.2020archery.co.uk/club/archery-competition-info).

The final rankings will then be decided by the highest total.

What is the handicap system in archery?

It’s basically a way of tracking your progress over a period of time. Handicaps in archery are recorded between June of one year and June of the next, and as handicaps can only get better not worse in any one year, your handicap should be gradually getting lower (1 is the perfect handicap). Handicaps ‘reset’ in June of each year so if you’ve, for example, sustained an injury and your scores have been getting lower and lower your ‘good’ pre-injury handicap will last until June. Once June has passed the next 3 scores you put in will form your starting handicap for the next year.

In golf you can define a handicap as “a measure of the performer’s current ability over an entire round of golf, signified by a number. The lower the number, the better the golfer is.” In archery we use a similar system – at our club we usually only shoot one or two rounds but many archery clubs will shoot many different rounds over the course of a year (up to 100 yards outdoors). You can click here for a pdf of common rounds shot in the UK. The handicap (1 to 100) is generated by averaging the highest three scores achieved on any given round in a given year, and then checking this against the Archery GB handicap tables. An average score of 500 on a Portsmouth round will give a handicap of 50 – mid way through the table.

A nice nuance of the system also allows for 2 or more ‘players’ to compete against each other despite a difference in current scoring performance. This is done by providing an extra ‘allowance’ for your handicap when shooting a given round.

Example as follows:

The Average of Johnny’s top three scores are 526 and he has a handicap of 43.

If you have a handicap of 43 you will get 922 points added to your score.

Johnny shoots a Portsmouth score of 523, giving him a total of 1445.

The Average of Cathy’s top three scores are 429 and she therefore has a handicap of 60.

If you have a handicap of 60 you will get 1024 points added to your score.

She shoots a Portsmouth score of 435, giving her a total score of 1459.

The Average of Trev’s top three scores are 553 and he has a handicap of 31.

If you have a handicap of 31 you will get 881 points added to your score.

Trev shoots a Portsmouth score of 540, giving him a total score of 1421.

Final rankings:

1st) Cathy – 1459

2nd) Johnny – 1445

3rd) Trev – 1421

So, what this basically means is that if you’ve had a splendid day and increased your personal best by 30 points.. no matter whether you’re usually shooting 560, 490 or 380.. if you’ve done really well you get credit. If we don’t use the handicap system then the top people on the leaderboard will win every time even if they have a horrible shoot (compared to their usual performance) on the day.

Phew. Lots of info!

So, I love handicap comps! We’re trying to implement at least 4 each year – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. This one will be the inaugural Spring handicap shoot.

It’s mainly for fun but there will be some prizes!

Please come and support us!

£10 each to enter or use a pre-paid shoot if you’re on programme.

PRIZES:

1st) 2020 Archery club hoodie + month of free shooting

2nd) 2020 Archery t-shirt + 3 free shoots

3rd) 2020 Archery water bottle + 1 free shoot

Best of luck!

2020 Archery Team