Leathersmith​/Archer

A Different View On Practice

 

If the answer to the question of “how do you get to Carnegie Hall” is practice, practice, practice, then the answer to “how do I get better at archery” is the same, practice, practice, practice. But first let’s discuss the basic steps of shooting an arrow.

 

A good bow shot starts on the ground, your feet and your stance. Many new archers stand with both their feet almost pointing at the target. Not good! This does not allow you to stretch out and use all the potential of your bow nor hold the draw long enough to get a good anchor and aim. Start with your feet perpendicular to the line from your shooting position to the target. That is, one foot close to the target and one foot behind it farther from the target. You are standing sideways to the target. You can experiment by moving your back foot back off the line to create a closed stance or move it forward to create an open stance. Byron Ferguson chooses to have his back foot perpendicular to the line to the target and the front foot slightly back off this line with the toes pointing at the target. This creates a very open stance which requires some practice to hold the draw.

 

After the arrow is nocked on the string you draw the bow. Your draw hand moves back to an anchor point. This could mean the base of your thumb is at the corner of your jaw or your middle finger just touches your canine tooth in your upper jaw. There are many anchor points as we are all built differently. The main point here is establish an anchor point and stick with it. Another critical issue about an established anchor point is that it locates your aiming eye directly OVER the arrow. If you are right handed, that is, hold the bow in your left hand and draw with your right, your aiming eye is your right eye. Just the opposite for left handed shooters. If you draw right and aim with your left eye you WILL have issues. Learn to shoot right or left handed as determined by your master eye (more on that later).

 

OK, bow drawn, draw hand at anchor point. To hold the draw you should be using your back muscles. I always tell people “stick your chest out”. Another way to think about this is try to make your shoulder blades touch each other. This causes your body to hold the draw with your back muscles which are stronger than your arm muscles and removes and wiggle or shake from the hold. Now you can hold the draw longer to get a good aim before release. While in draw relax and concentrate on a very small area of the target you want to hit. Visualize the arrow hitting that mark.

 

Now holding the draw the next step is to concentrate on the target. Don’t just see the whole target down range, see a very small area of the target. Our Royal Round targets have a black cross dead center. OK, from 30 yards, who am I kidding?  How about 20 yards, I can’t see that cross but I know it’s there. My mind sees it. I concentrate on that cross as I’m sighting down my arrow. Steady yourself, take your time. There is no rush. Then release. If you lose concentration or begin to wiggle holding the draw, ease down and start again. Often times I find my aim just isn’t lining up. I ease down and start a fresh.

 

When you release you don’t actually release the string. It is not physically possible for a human being to open their fingers quick enough to release the string. Instead of an action of release you stop an action by not holding onto the string. Relax your draw hand. Yes, not just the fingers, the entire hand. Two things should happen to that hand after release. One is the hand stays in the anchor position. This is called the dead release. The other is that the release is actually a slight movement of the draw hand backwards towards the rear shoulder. As the whole arm moves back the fingers get drawn off the string. It has been said that this release results in an additional five pounds of draw weight added to the bow. The finish with this method is the draw hand fingers just touch the rear shoulder. Some common errors in release are the draw hand flying away from the face, the head being pulled away from the string just at release, or the draw hand following the string slightly forward just prior to release. You will see all of these on any shooting line and you can see the results at the butts! One comment about anchor and draw, if you anchor with your draw hand at your chin you are short drawing your bow and most likely not getting full power out of bow. That is a 30 pound bow short drawn may only be delivering 20 – 25 pounds of draw weight. A very quick indication that you have issues with your release is the arrow swimming down range. That is, the arrow actually waggles right and left going down range. This is always due to release issues.

 

OK, draw, anchor, hold, aim, release. Sounds simple yes? So how do you practice all this? Pick one thing to work on. You can’t work on all of it at the same time. Practice only as long as you can concentrate. Simply going out and shooting 50 – 60 arrows is NOT good practice. A recommendation is to hang a burlap bag stuffed with plastic bags in a tree. Stand about 3 paces off the bag and shoot one arrow. You can just step forward to withdraw the arrow and shoot again. The object here is to practice your form. Call me weird, it’s OK, others do, I often shoot at a cylume stick on a butt at night with no lights and no moon. I can’t see anything but the cylume stick. I usually get pretty good groups just a little low of the stick but for the next few months my groups are much tighter when I can see my aiming points for elevation. The idea here is to teach my body muscle memory of proper form. If I’m spraying arrows all over then I need to spend some time on the hanging bag.

 

Watch the good archers. Every time they release an arrow everything is the same. That is the true secret to good archery, repetition. A good archer can tell if they have made a good shot the second of release. Often you will hear them say “Oh [expletive entered here] I wish I had that one back!” Howard Hill has his style. Byron Ferguson has his style. Pappa Bear had his style. It worked for them. Will it work for you? Maybe, but due to differences in physicality I would suspect that taking a little from here and a little from there and developing your own style and what works for you then repeating it over and over would yield you better results. Above all remember, if you want to get good at archery you HAVE to practice. Tiger Woods can’t bar hop for two months then go out and win a tournament. Neither can you……….although bar hopping might be fun. But that’s a whole different article!