Getting started: archery from the beginning

I wrote these pages for people coming to archery now: someone who has watched a competition and wants to have a go, a parent looking for a course for their child, someone who has just finished a beginners' course and has to decide what to buy. They are the questions I am asked most often on the range, and I have put them in the order in which they usually come up.

Wherever a guide deals with rules, distances, membership or fees, it follows the federation's own rulebook, whether World Archery, FITARCO, FIARC or IFAA, and names the edition. Where a figure varies from club to club, the guide tells you who to ask, because a made-up number is of no use to you.

Before you start

1. How to start archery: how to find a club, what a beginners' course involves, the safety rules on the range and when your first competition comes along.
2. How much does archery cost? The course, federation membership, club subscription, equipment and competitions in the first year, with official fees where they exist and where to find the others.
3. Which bow to buy when you start: why it pays to wait until the course is over, the take-down recurve, the draw weight of your first limbs, bow length and your first arrows.

The bow and competitions

4. Parts of a recurve bow: riser, limbs, arrow rest, pressure button, clicker and the rest, what each part is called and what it does.
5. Distances, target faces and scoring: distances and faces for recurve, compound and barebow, the ten scoring zones and the X, the line rule, ties and the set system.
6. Types of competition: outdoor and indoor target, field and 3D, what changes from one to another and how matches work.
7. Field archery: the course and its targets, the pegs, marked and unmarked distances, the divisions with and without a sight, and how to get started.
8. Barebow: what the rules allow and how you aim without a sight, with string walking, face walking and gap shooting.

Once the bow is yours

9. Recurve bow set-up for beginners: brace height, tiller, nocking point, centreshot and pressure button, sight marks, in the order in which you set them on a new bow.
10. How to choose arrow spine: what spine is, why draw weight at your draw length matters, how to read a manufacturer's chart and how to check it by shooting.

More reading for the early months

• At what age can you start archery? When a child can begin, which bow young competitors choose and how much draw weight matters while the body is still growing.
• Common beginner mistakes: the ones seen most often in the first months, from posture and release to equipment, and what the measurements made on beginners show.
• Experts and beginners: what changes: what an expert archer does that a beginner does not yet do, and how far the studies support each difference.

Two tools to use straight away

• Draw and arrow length calculator: from your arm span it estimates your draw length and the arrow length to start from, to be checked on the range with your coach.
• Quiz: where are you losing points? Seven questions about your shot, useful once you have a few months of shooting behind you, to see which area it makes sense to start from.

When you want to go further

The rest of the site is an evidence registry: it takes the things people say on the range, from the release to spine to training, and for each one sets out the studies that have put it to the test, year by year, with a status that shows how solid the evidence is. You do not need it to get started, but when an explanation you heard on the range leaves you in doubt, that is the place to look.

If you are not sure where to begin, Where to start offers four reading paths depending on who you are, and What people say, and what the studies say gathers the ideas heard most often on the range, each with its own page.