Hi Folks,
I’d like to introduce myself.
My name is Jason Wrigley. I live here in Cobh, Co. Cork, where I work as an mechanical engineer. It is my honor to work with some fantastic young archers here at Rebel County Archery Club. I’ve been practicing archery for 25 years shooting both Compound and Olympic style recurve bowstyles. I feel privileged to have won national titles, held and still hold national records and to have represented Ireland. I am immensely proud to have worn the green of Ireland at major international archery tournaments including World cups and European Championships.
50m Record
The best advice I could give anyone looking to start archery is to seek out a club that runs an Archery Ireland accredited “Introduction to Archery” course such as the type we regularly run in Cobh. I can’t emphasise how important it is to get the right advice early on. Almost every piece of archery equipment, from the appropriate poundage, to the correct spine of the arrow, needs to be tailored to each individual archer. To skip this important step could mean less than optimal performance at best and serious injury at worst.
For the aspiring archer there is a lot of content available on the internet – some good, some bad. Archery GB, for example, have taken huge strides in their coaching programme. They even make their content available online. But, nothing, in my view, should take the place of good coaching, to a set course, in a controlled and safe environment.
I like to think I spent my experience wisely when shooting at international events, probing elite archers for their method of setting up their bows, along with pointers of how they dealt with the mental aspects of the sport and have given me some very interesting insights into their processes and methods and what goes into having their bows sit as still as possible. I hope someday to document some of these methods so they are there for the benefit of the shooting public and not just our club members. One of the many great aspects of archery is the concept of “archers helping archers” and most of the worlds top athletes are very approachable when it comes to helping others.
I like to study good Archery coaches like George Ryals IV who does something similar over at the Archery Learning Centre and he has posted some awesome material for both compound and recurve shooters. Most of the other material I teach is learned from experience, content from good sources like World Archery, Archery GB and GRIV and finally from coaching must reads like “Inside the archer” by Kisik Lee and KimHeung Tak’s Volume “Archery”. I believe that, if you learn from the best, you can couple that to your own experience and produce the very best archer possible.
It stands to reason that if you give the best training possible the archer will enjoy the sport more and will be more likely to stay within the sport long term thereby helping to bring the next generation of archers along. >>>——–> Jason.