I bloody love doing archery; it reminds me of adventure trips as a child and plenty of trips to Center Parcs as I got older. Despite loving it, it doesn’t mean I’m any good at it! I have awful hand and eye coordination and being ambidextrous I never know which is going to be my best arm to use. When I was offered a session at Archery Fit, I jumped at the chance to see if I could improve my skills with a proper lesson!
The Venue
Archery Fit, an indoor archery club in Greenwich and was founded in 2015 by a family of two young entrepreneurs. They have lots of interests and hobbies, however, their current goal is to deliver the best archery experience in London. They are conveniently located in West Greenwich and are 5 minute walks away from Greenwich Overground, Greenwich DLR and Deptford Bridge DLR stations. Archery Fit is open 7 days a week far between 8 and 12 hours a day so you’ll always find a time to suit to visit!
They have 2 separate archery ranges, each 18 m long which is the standard distance for Indoor World Championships and one of those is extendable to up to 30m which is the standard distance for indoor fun archery! But don’t worry you start a hell of a lot closer than that!
After a very quick, but super interesting theory session learning about all of the types of bows there are, and trust me, there’s a lot more of them than you think, you are matched up with perfectly sized arrows for your arms length, a wrist guard and finger cover. You’re then left in the capable hands of your instructor for the session and ours was the lovely Kristina!
Kristina is a long-standing barebow and traditional archer, with two wins of the Archery Fit championships in Pro groups meaning she’s pretty bad ass with a bow and arrow. She is also a history fan conducting a PhD research on the subject of archery societies in the 18th century England, which, I think, pretty much makes her an archery genius!
After a brief intro, Kristina matches you up with a bow named after a Marvel character. Mine was aptly named Captain America which fits with my colour scheme in life very well!
The Shooting
You’re taught all the basics, such as how to stand, hold your bow and load your arrow safely and have two rounds of ‘free shooting’ to work out your aim and where your arrows tend to cluster as this shows how you should be changing your aim.
A balloon is then placed on your bullseye, or spider as it’s known in professional competitions, to see how well you have worked out your aim from the previous rounds. Safe to say I missed with all eight arrows I fired at it. Told you I’m not very good, but in my defence, this was my first time trying archery left handed!
Before your sessions comes to a close, you battle it out against your fellow teammates in the highest score wins round and a round with a one arrow shoot off.
There are no prizes for guessing that I didn’t win either of those rounds but I did certainly learn a hell of a lot about archery! I certainly feel like I improved over the session and learnt a hell of a lot about how wonky my aim is!
The venue itself is so quirky, all of the staff we met were lovely and I love how easy it was to find! I think I need a few more lessons before I sign up for the next Olympics games though!
I was invited to try out this session by Love Pops London, all words and opinions are my own.
I'm Squibb Vicious, better known as Haydy!
Happiest with a craft beer in hand, eating til my heart is content or exploring somewhere new.
Here you can read about my adventures!