Thanks. Great advice on back muscle tension. Apart from "having fun", the most important thing is to keep having fun. Archery has given me that for 40 years. You are a good teacher, this old dog has learnt some new tricks.
This is the video I recommend people start with. Stuff I'd add: 1) Keep your toes in line with the target, bow shoulder toward target. 2) Keep both eyes open. 3) Dynamic release. You did mention "proper follow through", which I guess is dynamic release. But by the time I figured that out, and started trying to understand what it is, I had some static release to unlearn. I wonder if I'll ever feel up for making a similar video.
Got to say, back tension is vital and sadly, something I wasn't taught at all, I was taught to imagine I wanted to elbow someone behind me. I'm just starting my third year of archery and currently the county champion, have county records, and finished 6th in my countries (Wales, UK) rankings last year and my 1st year outdoors, all good you may say, but all done with pulling throught the clicker with my arm and not using expansion (W&W AXT with 46lb EX Powers) I was never taught how to get it onto your back and expand. As a result, I'm resting a right shoulder injury, tight biceps only, no rotator cuff tear fortunately and having sports massage therapy. I believe that correct form should be taught right from the start, sadly, it's not always taught from day one, nor are warming up methods, many a time, I see archers arrive at a competition, set up and get onto the line having never warmed up, but that's another topic.
Maybe I should rather watch youtube to learn to actually succesfully grow a vegetable garden, before learning archery here to learn how to keep the parasites out of it. Lol
If you want to shoot well on your first session these are great points as always. From my lot I'd rather they paid more attention to safety on lesson 1 - I've just told you not to do that so stop doing it!
When I practice, it's a thing of intense concentration. To train myself to detach from the the world, I have a special collection of high poundage bows that I dry fire. I keep at it, meditatingly until, one by one, each bow explodes in my hands or my face. I do not flinch. If I flinch, I lose.
I bought a Samick Sage bow and started shooting for the very first time this afternoon. I love the way you give instruction, very clear, easy to understand and 3 people that watched me shoot today asked, is this really your first time shooting? Thank you nusensei!
I have to remember those tips and hope to become a good archer with practice. Thanks for sharing this information with us and I enjoy your information and plan to use it when I get my bow put together and find the arrows I want.
Focus on trusting your instructor and listening to what they say. ;) The main issue I had on my opening lessons (and still have to a certain extent) is caused by the fact that my draw arm has a torn rotator cuff -- I can't raise my elbow high enough to show full/proper position, and as a result I'm compensating a lot with strength.
This is just an idea, but if you fitted a laser pointer to the arrow, (just for instructional purposes) this may highlight the trajectory of the arrow. Just a mad thought. Thank you.
Not really mate, remember that the trajectory of the arrow will depend of the position of your bow, if you are holding correctly the bow, if you are doing a correctly draw; will also depend of the distance, the weather, the altitude... So the best if you want to use a laser, you can use laser sight on your compound bow
Thank you for this video....I have an AR15 Rifle and a Beretta 92X but now am interested in getting into ARCHERY since pullets are so very expansive and I feel like I want another weapon for protection, but where can I learn everything that I need to know? Can anyone tell me where to go, please! where should I buy my first Bow?
When I had my first 9 hour session of archer in the span of 3 days, The instructors were telling me to anchor below my chin instead of anchoring to my cheek, beside my mouth. They also didn't teach me or even remotely mention anything about back tension. I remember after the first 3 hours my bow forearm and shoulders were starting to get tired by the end of it. At the time I hadn't done enough research about archery, but in hindsight that was a clear indication I was using my bow arm more. The fact that I was artificially adding a follow through I think reinforces that. I'm pretty tall. 5ft11, very heavy set and was given a 16 pound bow with flimsy sights that needed adjusting every 20 shots or so. What's the difference if I anchored the arrow underneath my chin or anchor it on the cheek beside my lips instead? How would the 2 different anchors affect where the arrow lands? Will I still feel the back tension clearly even when draw weights are as low as 16 pounds?
Generally a mouth anchor is for bare bow or traditional as you want the arrow closer to your eye, with a sight this is not needed and a chin anchor is used. At such a light weight i don't think you will feel much when applying proper back tension, or will have a very hard time telling with such a low counter force.
Hello mate, you are excellent whatever tutorials you have made so far I have seen. I have a question for you ,how many times we can use or shoot 1 arrow?
I know some people that don't use a sight whose anchor point is next to their eye instead of their mouth. Is that a good practice? They say that you can aim to the middle instead of below, but their accuracy isn't that great (note that none of us are professionals) I use a sight, so I don't know if they're right or not...
I'm not sure if you still answer these comments, but here goes. I learned archery in Boy Scouts. I still have my bow. Now I'm well beyond those fun years and I will be doing archery with my high school students. When I draw my string back, I think that my thumb anchors on my face, next to the lips. Is that an OK anchor point?
We don't normally use the thumb as an anchor point. The thumb pivots a lot and doesn't provide a close contact surface. A lot of beginners to do it because of an inherent anxiety with touching their face with the string, but it's quickly trained out for stronger anchors using the top of the hand/index finger.
Can I hope to learn this when I have a dominant eye? I am not seeing depth, so in my mind I need to just build experience with different lengths, but is there a tutorial vid on youtube that attempt to figure out a problem like mine? Also... Should I alternate which arm to use?
Yes but only if you paint it with a clear invisibility paint. Having the ability to clearly see the target through your bow limbs will improve your shots. Make sure though that you don't accidentally get any of the paint on your arrows. Shooting with invisible arrows is really hard. You'd end up having to try and shoot purely on instinct and no one can shoot instinctively...
No archery proshops where I live, I had found the bow I wanted and had it sent to basspro store. Went to pick it up and the clerk was setting up the bow while I used the pay machine. I looked up to see him step on the bottom tip and hand bend the upper limb to seat the string. Needless to say I didn't purchase the bow.
Unless he was really bad at doing this, or it was an expensive bow, this would seem like an excessive reason to forego the purchase. Though people should be using a bowstringer, the push-pull method is reliable, especially for a lighter bow. I'd be more worried if he was using the step-through method.
It was a 45 pound recurve. The only one in stock. Since it was to be my hunting bow and not for target practice i just selected a 50 lb draw weight instead.
That is always a good topic for a video. I've lost count of people who criticise me for push-pull on my ELB or step-through on horsebows while using a bowstringer so far off the ends of the limbs that you can see their bows torquing as they string it. As long as you know what you are doing these methods are safe.
Bouse Master when ur a busy full-time professional, do a lil archery, and make RU-vid vids on your spare time, you have very little time left for dedicated exercise XD
