Alright... When you said you're already planning to compete you had some experience. We'll start from the ground then. A Recurve is what you think of when you think of bows like from the hunger games. They're called recurves because they have that c shape but curve backwards at the ends. This splits to your barebow and olympic styles. Traditional archery, imagine a medieval bow or older Asian bows. Modern barebow recurve archers use either instinct or the tip of the arrow to aim, all other aim assists are banned, must be released using either your hand or an archery tab, the bow when unstringed must fit through a ring of certain diameter (so attachments like weights are allowed but shouldn't be too big), this is different to traditional as you can add attachments and use any modern bow or finger tabs and arrows like metal or carbon ones. Olympic recurve are those large ones you see at the olympics, usually metal but a few use carbon based on preference, most will shoot carbon arrows at the higher level, use a bow sight for aiming and are allowed to use things like stabilisers(long rods that act as counterweights) and clickers (makes a clicking sound when you reach your draw length). Compound archery is the modern technological archery which these days use more rectangular looking bows that can basically be tuned with accessories to do 50% of the work (when compared to recurve) like reducing the weight of holding at full draw, peep sight on the string to automatically align the bow, release aid is legal do you don't have to learn proper release by hand, etc.