Episode 9 | Reference

Transcript

We've looked at - and where we're up to is - we've looked at the posture and how everything fits together. Now the crucial part. Many people are taught - recurve or compound - that there has to be a movement somewhere in here to achieve this alignment, or the right position to make the shot.

What I'm going to say in this next part is that it is just about what were are going to do with this hand. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about with a release aid in our hands for the compound shooters, or with a tab for the recurve shooters.

The crucial parts. This hand position, this interface with your jaw line etc must be positive. It must be consistent, and it's vital that you understand that positive and consistent are not necessarily things that you have to work hard at.

If we grab the compound for a second - we'll look at the recurve as well in a second - having got to this position, what do I do here. You will see a lot of people making a lot of movements like this. This is a fairly natural position - drawlength obviously is right on this and we're just going to make a movement in onto the jawline, and because it's a short axle to axle bow I'm going to have to move my head forward.

It is crucial that you have a 'reference' position and so at this point I'm going to say that we are looking for a reference on the hand here or here with the compound, and we're looking for the string (for a right-handed archer) being on the left hand side of the nose. I say at this point because - especially for the recurve archers - there has to be a trade off between the shape of your jaw, and what you can do here but we'll come to that at a later stage. So for most people it is going to fit together in the way that we will go through now.

The most important parts of good recurve archery - if you walked down a line and you were trying to pick out the people who are most successful, the people who were best, you would look at what this front end does - not push on here, no bad alignment here, and then you would look at what they do with this.

A lot of people have platforms on their tabs (this one doesn't have a platform on it) and are making a reference on a platform - they don't care about this part of their hand. And this, after you've worked so hard to get this closed position, one solid thing here, you then if you anchor like this, if the platforms here, you have a flexibility about what you do with this - we've said we don't want that.

I've left the platform off this for a reason. My advice to anyone would be (with a recurve) would be to learn to anchor in a good position and then add the platform and see if it brings anything to it.

What are we looking for. This index finger is going to have to make a contact with the jawbone. The thumb makes a natural position, a sort of 'V' that is going to sit on the jawline as well. Depending on the shape of your face, and we're not taking about going so far back that this V sits of the axis of jaw, we're just talking about that the thumb sits underneath the jaw and it sits in a solid position like this.

And why is that important. Well, it allows you to have 2 references, but it also means that if we think about 'what am I going to do with this?' - I can't see it, I can't feel it - how am i going to put this in a place? If this sits tight, this now is one unit that is anchored by the face and there's nothing I can do about this position. I can't move it around. You can see that better with this. As we draw this, first of all if we don't have this reference - so if we were just using a platform this can move around, however if we bring this one position then I no longer have - as long as that position stays - I can't / don't need to think about the location of the rear elbow.

And let me say something else about how deep this needs to be with respect to your face - as I say I've left the platform off for a reason - when I was out in Korea they were teaching schoolchildren - and the children thought this was very funny that when you draw a bow, the instructor would talk and it looked like a good enough anchor point and he would talk to the class. He would say - what you require, how deep this is meant to be / how much 'under' this has to be is simply [demonstrated by] the fact that as you talk, as you draw the bow if it's tight enough your voice is going to change as we are talking about being tight in to where your voice box is.

There are some incredibly good scoring archers who possibly don't have the best posture in the world, who possibly make an error somewhere else in the shot - (if you can pick out a postural error) you will see that this is very tight and very consistent - and it gets them out of trouble. It will cause you to be consistent - massively more consistent than if this is just resting on a platform with nothing there to fit.

And so again just to show, you are looking for nothing on the front end / pocket for the hand / closing motion / in tight.

And with the compound this allows you to have something that i really like in many of the top compound archers in the world. This idea that the whole of the draw is set by not the drawlength (you set the drawlength to be right for you) / not an elbow position. It is set by these being in line, and then these archers can then fit their head in and off the string. There is no manipulation of the actual physical draw or a creep because they are moving this into position. This is where it sits, fits in (as i've said before short axle to axle I have to nod my head forward) however I could lift my head out, and back in. Each time I don't have to make any adjustments for the peep site.

Your body sets up the shot - recurve or compound - sets the position of the clicker, sets the position of how things line up. Your head has infinite movement and should fit in and fit out at will.