Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 138 i Bow International

JANUARY As usual, first thing in January the whole of the archery world involved in trade decamped to Louisville, Kentucky, for the ATA, the world's largest annual archery trade fair. A very large proportion of it is dedicated to hunting, but Bow went along to tackle the target side and look at new products from manufacturers including Win & Win, Easton, AAE, Hoyt, Shibuya, Truball, Bohning, Beiter and many more. Win & Win showed off their dizzying new array of recurve limbs (they’ve added a couple more since then). Bow will be back there in January 2020 bringing you all the new gear. January also saw Nîmes, with the top Korean pros invading the recurve divisions and Lee Seungyun taking gold – in his first ever indoor tournament. Mike Schloesser…

"I am always thinking about what will make us better, even if they are small things and I also try to think of the big picture for the team and learn from the past so we can improve from previous mistakes." Coach Woo has coached in Mexico, Great Britain and the USA – and she's not stopping anytime soon. Like a lot of archery lifers around the world, her family were involved. It was the same in Korea. "My Dad and Granddad used to shoot Korean traditional archery even before I was born, so immediately grew up on the archery field. I remember playing with my brother from a young age - maybe five years old - and digging the ground up all the time. I'm not sure the archery…

Hoyt does not always update its top-of-the-line Formula riser at the same time as the ILF range, but this time the Formula X riser of 2019 has been tweaked too, to add the same features as with the Xceed. The Xi is produced in the same way as the Xceed and – as you would hope at this price point – is beautifully finished. Unlike Mark, I really enjoyed the narrowish high composite grip currently supplied with the premium recurve lines, particularly the material and the feel on the skin, but grips are very personal and if you are in the market for a riser like this, hopefully you already know what you might need. JVD had been kind enough to supply us with a set of 28lb Velos limbs,…

NESPOLI WINS GONG Italy’s Mauro Nespoli was named the best male athlete of the Minsk 2019 European Games by the Association of National Olympic Committees during the annual award ceremony on 17 October in Doha, Qatar. Nespoli was recurve men’s champion at the continental multisport event, as well as taking mixed team gold and men’s team bronze. Italy also won a women's quota place in Minsk. “I’m extremely happy and I want to share this honour with the staff that has supported me,” he said to the Italian archery federation. Nespoli was fourth at this year's World Championships, and came second at the World Cup Final. He is also a two-time team medallist at the Olympic Games, on the Italian men's teams that took silver at Beijing 2008 and gold…

Having a robust shot routine that you can depend on is crucial; it’s the blueprint to executing your shot in the same way each time. And what’s more, it becomes your reset switch if things aren’t going to plan in competition. Everyone is individual and you need to spend time uncovering your shot. So, how do you do this? WRITE DOWN AND VISUALISE Start by visualising and writing down your current shot routine. Detail what you do at each stage of your shot right up to the moment the arrow hits the target. Ask yourself: what do I do, and how does it feel? If you find certain stages of the shot are particularly difficult to imagine or describe then you don’t know this part of your shot well enough.…

We’ve always been aware that many a true word can be spoken in jest, and as an archery journalist who first put pen to paper some time ago, I have accumulated innumerable examples. Some may well raise a smile, but all will have an archery message well worth implementing. “IF YOU WANT TO BE NUMBER ONE, THEN YOU NEED TO PRACTICE LIKE YOU’RE NUMBER TWO.” when I'm asked “how intensely should I be practising”? “COACHING AND INSPIRATION COMES FROM OTHERS, BUT MOTIVATION MUST COME FROM WITHIN.” “Anything that's worth doing, is worth overdoing.” “THIS GUY IS SUPPOSED TO BE WAY BETTER THAN YOU – WELL HE PROBABLY IS – BUT NOT THIS AFTERNOON.” A coach comment to a competitor facing a famous opponent in a head to head elimination. “You…

You thought the outdoor season was over? One tournament was left: the Asian Archery Championships. This and its corresponding para tournament, which wrapped up in October, were also qualifiers for Tokyo next year. With many of the best archery nations competing, this is one of the highest level outdoor annual tournaments in the world; four of the biggest: Korea, China, Chinese Taipei and Japan already had the full six Olympic spots, leaving a bunch of smaller nations scrapping for the handful of individual places on offer. After a topsy turvy year for the Korean national team, with some high profile losses at two of their 'majors' – the Asian Games and the World Championships – the stakes were high. Every year, the KAA choose eight men and eight women as…

Last month Bow received a question for the Ask The Experts section which said this: "We are often told that overall fitness is crucial to archery, yet I have to say I look at a lot of elite archers and they are obviously not athletically very fit. Which is it?" We decided to let Lucy O'Sullivan, archer and fitness trainer, answer it more fully. This is the age old question for archers, we are constantly told that we should be ‘fit’, and yet many get results at all kinds of apparent sizes. So what should we do? I don’t think it is ever fair to say that someone is fit and someone else isn’t fit – as a personal trainer I coach so many different kinds of “fitness”. I have…

Have you, recently, picked up your phone – or opened a new browser tab on your computer – intending to do one thing, and without thinking found yourself doing something completely different? Has your attention span apparently got shorter recently? Do you find yourself tapping on an app or clicking on a link without realising why you have done so? Or found it difficult to sleep? Or finishing reading a book? Or starting one? Let’s get more sport specific. Have you ever been unable to concentrate during a session? Unmotivated to complete a round or achieve a specific goal? Continually distracted or fidgety while shooting? Archery, when you really hit a groove, is about getting into a state of ‘flow’. Flow is a scientifically documented state when you are operating…

Our expert panel answers your questions. . Send yours to john. stanley@futurenet..com HOW AM I GOING TO EXPERIMENT WITH GRIP HEIGHTS WITHOUT SPENDING A FORTUNE OR RUINING MY CURRENT GRIP? Firstly, take a pause and decide why you want to change your grip. What is it about your current grip that you feel is wrong? The grip is an integral part of the geometry of your bow and any uninformed changes can do more damage than good. The main reason that most archers look to change their grip is to rectify the feel of the grip in the hand or to reduce rubbing and sore marks. In many cases this is down to poor hand positioning and these should be addressed first. If you look at the grips used by…