Last month sports reporter ROBERT ILES tried his hand at fencing. Now he's had a go at archery. Here's how he got on...
STANDING upright, eyes on the target, hands trembling.
I slowly pull back the bow back towards my chin while looking through the bow sight, trying to keep my elbow high and my other arm outstretched.
As I release, the arrow goes flying up in the air and over the boss.
Archery is much harder than it looks, although at least I have managed to hit the boss once already.
For those not familiar with the archery terminology, don't worry, the Head of Sport is not my target. The boss in this case is the round straw target on a wooden stand, to which two paper targets with the familiar concentric rings are attached.
Wearing an armguard with a quiver attached to my waist to hold the arrows, I am trying archery after being invited along by the Bowmen of Minchinhampton to one of their indoor training sessions in Stonehouse.
Archery is going strong in Gloucestershire at the moment with Dursley's Kieran Slater and Cheltenham archer Ashe Morgan both part of the Great Britain squad and hoping to make the Rio 2016 Olympics.
Slater took up the sport after his parents bought him beginners' lessons to train with the Bowmen of Minchinhampton for his 11th birthday and he is now an honorary member of the club.
Among those I'm training alongside is Karen Blanch, who is the Gloucestershire indoor and outdoor recurve champion.
After shooting my first three arrows from 10 yards – Olympic distance is 70 metres – without hitting any of the colours on the paper target, my coach Peter Munday asks me what I learned, to which I can't help saying: "that I've got bad aim".
However, Peter reassures me that this is normal for a beginner. What a relief.
"The emphasis on all of this is correct form, it does not matter where the arrow goes," says Peter, who is also the club secretary.
"The archer's more worried about that than we are. If people learn the correct form they won't hurt themselves, they will improve more quickly and they'll enjoy it more.
"You're pulling your head down and that's partly a reaction to pulling the bow. I want you to stand up, tuck your chin in and look straight at the target.
"I'm quite long and bendy, the same way like you're long and bendy so the coaches when I started did exactly the same as I'm doing with you, getting you to stand straight and getting used to the effort of pulling a bow properly.
"You have to be balanced and in a state of neutrality. It's almost like yoga."
As for my shaking hands, that is because I'm "over-bowing", Peter explaining that my draw weight is too heavy.
He has been kind enough to lend me his bow so I can have a go, which weighs about 20lb, but beginners usually start off with one weighing about 15lb.
Not that strength is important, Peter explaining that it is all about technique and learning to use your back muscles to shoot rather than the shoulders, which is where I feel the strain.
The bow I'm using is recurve with just a single string as used in the Olympics, though some use compound with several strings and pulleys attached.
Thanks to Peter's guidance, I start to feel more at ease and it becomes enjoyable. I even manage to hit the red part of the target with one of my shots.
"With 12 arrows, you only missed the boss twice, which is not bad at all," Peter says reassuringly.
"Part of the development for an archer after doing the beginners' course is letting these muscles relax and getting the elbow right in line with the arrow," Peter says.
By the end of my session I can see the appeal of archery and why members enjoy the mental challenge.
Peter took up archery five years ago. He said: "It was something I thought about on and off through the years and when I retired I had enough time to do it so I took a beginners' course at the club and I've been doing it ever since.
"It's a sport that relies entirely on you. You can buy more expensive equipment, you can buy cheaper equipment but it always comes back to the archer and that's something that appeals to me."
The Bowmen of Minchinhampton was founded in 1975 and won the team recurve competition at the County Championships last summer.
"We're a fairly small club, we've only got 50 members overall," says Peter.
"We want to enjoy archery, get better at it and help everyone else get better at it."
The club's next beginners' course starts on Saturday, February 14, outdoors in Woodchester and I might consider taking my fiancée for Valentine's Day. Cupid always carries a bow and arrow after all.
