Books - not just good for target practice, you can read them too!

There have been some great books and online recourses written recently on learning archery. These can be a great tool to remind and reinforce the lessons you’ve already been taught during our beginners couse and you'll learn a whole host new skills to help you become a great archer.

The following books are recommended for someone who has just started in archery hopefully after doing a progressive beginners course (see our courses page for current availability of our great weekend, 3 week ‘Fast Track’ or regular 5 week beginers courses in London Bridge). The best books at this level help you to develop a solid, consistent form without going into deeply technical variations on the standard elements of the shot sequence. All three of the following books provide a clear guide to building a good shot sequence and will help a novice archer achieve good consistent form.

Archery (Steps to Success): Kathleen Haywood (Author), Catherine Lewis (Author) 

This is a very good book for people looking for a structured way to become a solid archer. 

• Thorough - it's a very thorough book and doesn’t miss out anything that a novice archer needs to know.
• Easy to follow - provides an easy to follow program of exercises and provides space to record how well you have done on each exercise. A fun and interesting way to learn.
• Clear illustrations - good clear photos and drawings of each step to help you to conceptualise your body position.
• Bow tuning - a great section on basic bow tuning so you can get your bow up to speed at the same time as you improve your form.

Other good beginner books to try are:

Archery Fundamentals: A Better Way to Learn the Basics by Douglas Engh (Author)

Less rigidly structured than Steps to success, so is good if you prefer to structure your own training/learning your way.

The Archery For Beginners Guidebook by Archery GB (only available through archery stores, e.g. Clickers, Aim 4 Sport, Merlin etc)

Has a very good guide on archery etiquette and protocols in competitions and in clubs. 

The Following online sources can also be helpful:

KSL International Archery 

http://www.kslinternationalarchery.com/Technique/KSLShotCycle/KSLShotCycle-USA.html

This has a very good shot sequence. It's brief in its description but is free to look at so worth a read. It does get pretty technical though. 

Archery Interchange http://www.archeryinterchange.com/forum.php

A very popular UK archery forum, this can be a useful recourse for answering specific questions. Although do bear in mind that as it’s a forum there is often lots of arguing that can be distracting and confusing. The loudest voice is also not necessarily the most accurate!

These are the ones that I particularly favour but there are many more useful resources out there. Do let us know if you have any other recommendations that you've found useful on your archery journey!

Roger - 2020 Archery Instructor

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Affiliating to Archery GB - why would I want to and how should I do it as a 2020 Archery club member?

There are lots of benefits to joining Archery GB – membership is required in order to shoot with most other clubs (although not all) and is also needed to join leagues and enter competitions. If you provide your address you’ll receive the quarterly Archery GB magazine called Archery UK and you can also take part in the highly recommended 'Personal Performance Courses' at Lilleshall (details of prices etc are available on the Archery GB website). There are probably lots of other good things as well – have a click around on the Archery GB website for more. 

So, there are 2 different ways of joining Archery GB – one is through your club (in our case 2020 Archery) in which case you MUST also affiliate to Region and County. In our case this is Southern County Archery Society (SCAS) and the County of London Archery Association (CLAA)  - don’t worry about this step we’ll do this automatically for you if you affiliate through us. You can also join Archery GB as a direct member. The main advantages and disadvantages are that you’ll be responsible for renewing each year if you’re a direct member whereas if you join through the club we’ll just contact you and ask if you want to continue as a member through the club with a payment request. The other difference is that there is a price difference. Clubs are able to offer a pro rata payment system for joining at different times of the year but if you join directly there is one fixed price all year round. The fixed price for direct membership is £46 no matter when you join. 

The Archery GB membership year runs from October to October. This makes the total cost for joining through our club 

• Oct-Dec = £47.50 
• Jan-March = £38
• April-June = £28.50 
• July – Sept = £19 

The fees breakdown of the Archery GB portion is available here http://www.archerygb.org/support/services/join/fees.php - on top of the Archery GB fee we need to charge CLAA fees of £3 to join (at any time of the year), SCAS costs £1.50 to join (at any time of the year) and we charge a £5 admin fee to cover the costs of banking and admin. 

If you’d like to join directly please go to the Archery GB website (link below) where there is a link to download the direct membership form. 

http://www.archerygb.org/support/services/join/fees.php

If you’d like to join through 2020 please send an email into the office (enquiries@2020archery.co.uk) with your full address. We will assume you're ok with us storing this data along with your email address so that we can contact you at renewal time (usually July / August). Once we’ve received your payment we’ll send it off to Archery GB pretty much immediately. Once it arrives with them they’ll process it and your card should arrive - directly from Archery GB - within 2-3 weeks. 

If you are planning to shoot at another club or you’ve registered for a competition we provide a standard Archery GB receipt which we’ll email to you. This should work as evidence that you’ve paid club subs until your card arrives although we recommend that you alert people that you will be bringing a receipt of payment not an actual Archery GB card if you're pushed for time. 

Finally, we’re happy to answer questions about the administering of how this all works but if you require more detailed information on Archery GB itself (why join, what to expect etc) please go to their website at www.archerygb.org

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