To my local friends, do you recognize where I’m at in the 1st picture in this post?? Yes yes you guessed right 🙂   Body Works Martial Arts in Concord NH.   We were not ready to do any shooting this time, but I had the wonderful pleasure of talking with Jeff Hardy, who has a vast background of 37 years of marital arts experience and some archery experience.   Body Works Martial Arts is owned and run by Mr. Hardy, his wife and their son and I enjoy talking to family owned business’s that make a difference in our community.   Mr. Hardy does have a compound bow, but prefers the more traditional bow such as the recurve bow.

 

One of the times that I was at the Olympic Training Center, Coach Lee (USA Olympic Coach) talked about how archery is a martial art.  Did you know that some styles of archery, such as the Japanese form called Kyudo, that the coach is called Sensei and the archery range is called the Dojo?

I took a 3 day Kyudo class at the Zen Mountain Monastery in August of 2010.  In the first picture below, you see me with my instructor guiding me through 1st shot. the first person (that is me) starts the form first and then the other students fallow with the guidance of the instructor also called Sensei   We had been practicing for over a day before we were told we could shoot our first arrow and the target was only about 5 feet away.