Report -4 th FITA World Coaching Seminar November 3 6, 2009, Rome Italy.

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1 Report -4 th FITA World Coaching Seminar November 3 6, 2009, Rome Italy. Four coaches from Canada attended the 4 th FITA World Coaching Seminar Vladimir Kopecky BC Denis Rousseau QC Joan McDonald ON Gary Gillies ON. Joan and Gary attended with the assistance of an Ontario Quest for Gold professional development grant. The seminar was held at an Olympic Training Centre in a northern suburb of Rome and was within easy walking distance of the trains to travel easily to downtown Rome. The accommodation at the training centre was excellent and reasonably priced but the food was not very good. The first part of the seminar was a study of the history FITARCO, the Italian archery federation. Italy has consistently produced world level archers in all disciplines of the sport and the first part of the seminar was to study how they have been able to accomplish this. Federazine Italiana di Tiro con l Arco or FITARCO was recognized by FITA in At the time, FITARCO consisted of 6 clubs and about 40 archers. Today, they have over 200 clubs and 30,000 members. The new organization selected three areas to begin their work: internal organization, technical support for archers and coaching development. During the 60 s they hired several part time coaches, mainly from France but the coaching system was not effective with little difference between coaches and archers, with few coaches dedicated to coaching and most collecting information to improve their own shooting. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1960 s the organization had expanded to 17 clubs and 200 archers, mostly in the north of Italy. In the 1970 s the organization continued its progress in three directions, organization, competitive success and coaching development. In the early 70 s they hired a part time polish coach Miecislaw Nowakowsky who began the preparation of Italy s two most famous archers, Giancarlo Ferrari and Sante Spigarelli. In 1974 they hired their first full time coach, Mario Codispoti who trained the Italian team from 1974 to 1980 through a period of great international success including two Olympic medals and several world championship medals During the 1970 s FITARCO also began to develop coaching education with the help of K. B. Johnson from the US and using the Power Archery philosophy created by Dave Keaggy Sr. in the US. KB Johnson was in Italy for two years ( ) after which there were a few neo-coaches who began to develop the first Italian

2 coaching manuals. During the 1970 s several coaches were sent to the US camp, Teela Wooket in Vermont for more training with US coaches. It is interesting to note that during this time, is that it was clear that the development of coaching for the Federation was designed to develop general archery skills in the archery population and in all disciplines, but it was recognized that coaching at the national team level was not the same thing. The two were complimentary, each helping the other but neither was more more important. FITARCO continued to solidify its organization both locally and internationally. In 1972 they hosted the world field championships with a very small group of volunteers and learned a lot about preparing international competition. By the end of the 1970 s there were about 117 clubs and 3,000 and had achieved a firm foothold with the Italian Olympic committee with the quality of their results. In 1981 FITARCO hosted the 1981 World Championships in Punta Ala in a beautiful area of Tuscany, a well organized tournament that Joan attended. In the 1980 s and the 1990 s FITARCO continued the development of it s organization while adding more technical support for archers in all disciplines such as the part time coach Berggren from Sweden who developed skills with barebow athletes. This period included gold medals by barebow and recurve archers at world field championships, the world indoor championship by compound archers, junior outdoor world team championship and a recurve team bronze medal at the 1996 Olympic games and a silver team medal at the A noticeable arrival during this time was a young man called Ilario di Buo, unquestionably one of the world s great archers. His first Olympic team was in 1984 and he has been on every Italian Olympic team since a total of 7 Olympic Games so far! During this time the coaches who were originally trained at Teela Wooket in the US were continuing to develop top archers. The national team was coached by Mario Codispoti, one of the Teela Wookit generation and then Victor Sidoruk, Italian Franco Basili and Pietro Suk from Korea. From 2000 to 2009 the success of the organization continued winning major competitions in almost all categories, women compound and recurve, juniors, field and barebow including an Olympic gold medal in Athens in 2004 and an Olympic silver team medal in Beijing in The coach in 2008 and the current national team coach is Filippo Clini, previously a world junior team champion. The organization was also very active hosting 4 major international events including a world indoor, field and 3d championships and in 2011 will host the world target championships.

3 This is obviously an organization with great leadership and tremendous energy. I think several things have made them so successful. Right from the beginning they focused their energy on providing the technical support that archers, in ALL categories needed to be successful. They acquired and provided highly qualified coaches for all disciplines while at the same time making a concerted effort to train local coaches, recognizing that they will be the ones that will find the future champions. Following is what we learned about their technical support system for archers. In 1992 Sante Spigarelli became the chair of the FITARCO Technical Commission ( commission is interchangeable with committee). The elected committees of FITARCO define the objectives of the Technical Committee. The elected Committees are: The Executive Committee The Federal Council (equal to the Board of Directors) The President These objectives are carried out by the nominated or appointed committees The national technical committee The judges committee The athletes committee The coaches development committee The anti-doping committee The youth committee The National Technical Committee is made up three sections technical directors for both recurve and compound archery Chairman of youth archery Chairman for field and 3D archery The Federal Council determines both the short and long term technical and budgetary objectives technical committee. The National Technical Committee decides the programming for each of its three divisions. The National Technical Committee is also responsible for balancing it s activities amongst its divisions, both technical and economic, deciding the selection criteria for different national teams and coordinating the different competition calendars and deciding on the criteria for remaining part of the central training centre. They are also responsible for making suggestions and/or providing technical advice to the Federal council. In the early 2000 s, FITARCO built a national training centre near Milan where archers and coaches can come to train. At the national team level, recurve archers come to the training centre for two weeks out of every month. For the other two weeks they return to their clubs and their regular coaches. The national coaches

4 work with the archer s personal coach to develop each archer s training program. The training centre provides expertise with mental, physical and technical training, physiotherapy and nutrition. Compound archers attend the training centre for shorter training camps as they are usually older and don t have the flexibility of the younger recurve archers. Athletes (mostly recurve archers) who are on the national team are members of the Italian military or funded by the Italian Olympic Committee so in effect are salaried to be competitive archers. Athletes must improve and execute the plan from the training centre to stay at the training centre. The national coaches still work with archers who are not able to be on the national team but not at such an intense level. Currently there are 9 recurve men and 6 recurve women and 7 compound men and 6 compound women who are considered residents of the technical centre. Believe it or not, the annual budget for the national technical centre is 1 million euros. To be selected for international teams, recurve men must shoot a minimum score for 3 FITA rounds of 3960 (an average of 1320) and for women a minimum score of 3930 for 3 FITA rounds (an average of about 1307). Compound men must shoot a total of 4155 (1385) and compound women 4110 (1370). The compound coach, Tiziano Xotti gave a short presentation and outlined the following key points for compound shooting. Identification of the correct draw length and Teaching and evolution of the surprise release He also made the following points. Most commonly, compound draw lengths are too long A preliminary determination of arrow length can be made by asking the archer to stand with their arms out to the side at a 90 degree angle to the body and measuring the distance from finger tip to finger tip. 40% of this distance, + or half an inch is the correct draw length. The height of the peep sight is critical The anchor point needs to have the string on the nose A longer draw length needs a longer axel to axel bow length Speed does not equal accuracy, so shorter, high speed bows don t mean accuracy (below 38 inches). Back tension releases should have the palm facing the ground and the fingers pointing to the target. In back tension releases the main finger is the middle finger, the index finger is a safety finger

5 Trigger releases should have all fingers relaxed and the trigger in the first joint, not the tips of the fingers. The archer should acquire their anchor point and have the string on the nose and then look through the peep sight. If they look through the peep too early, it might control the head position, so the head and anchor has to be correct and then the peep should be in the correct place. The peep height might be different depending on the archer s specialty, for instance it might be different between 18m indoors and 70m outdoors. If an archer has target panic, change to a back tension release. Cams which are best if the bow is well set up and set up to the archer, most cams will work well. If the cams are set up well and the archer pushes against the wall, there will be no movement. If the cams are not synchronized there can be some movement. There was a talk by the sport psychologist who works with the national team, but I found it wandering and without a focus. A very interesting presentation was made by a pair of Italian coaches who have developed a program to track archer s progress and plan their future training plans. At the moment it is only available for PC s and Palm devices but will be in English and perhaps other mobile devices in February of 2010, although probably not for the iphone. Enquiries can be sent to Patrick.lebeau@free.fr An excellent presentation on basic recurve technique was made by Kim, Hyung Tak from Korea where he runs an archery training centre. He is also a well known author with several great books on the market on teaching archery at many levels. He went through quite a detailed description of basic archery technique using pictures and slides developed for his book Archery. I would recommend this book to all archery coaches for it s clear diagrams and explanations of basic recurve archery technique. Mr. Kim also spent some time explaining that building basic technique in younger archers is excellent but the real art of the advanced coach is in working with athletes to find the small variations in that technique that allows top archers find their personal technique for putting arrows in the gold. If you ever have the opportunity to attend a presentation by Coach Kim, be sure to take advantage of it. There were several other presentations, one on the Olympic Solidarity system, which probably doesn t apply much to Canada as an advanced country, one on physical preparation that interesting but dealt with a lot of theory and not a lot of practical information.

6 However, the main point of the week from my perspective was that the organization, i.e. FITARCO in this case, has to have a strong and transparent organization with a mission to create competent archers at all levels and in all disciplines, including the development of internationally competitive archers in all those disciplines. Without this strong national leadership, the organization may produce the occasional top competitor but it will not produce the kind of consistent performance that has been developed in Italy.