Well do ya? Do you want a rock solid bow arm???
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and give some "advice" on form that I maybe shouldn't since there are a lot more better shooters out there than I am. Why? Well, it's working for me that's why.
Over the last couple of years I battled target panic, short drawing and general poor form with some good results and some so so ones. I've beaten the short draw solidly and am making good progress with target panic and in the process have had to become something of a student of proper form. I believe poor form contributes more to target panic (and inacuracy) than anything else in beginning shooters. I've had the chance to see, talk to and shoot with some very good shooters in the last couple years and almost without exception ALL of them seemed to place great importance on and take great pride in having a rock solid bow arm. Sure a good release is important but the best release in the world with a sloppy bow arm will give sloppy results. Kieth Baine got me thinking along these lines and more or less told me that he could get away with an occasional bad release because he has a very good bow arm.
Well, how do you "get" a solid bow arm? Muscles? Concentration? Willpower? Sort of, but the bottom line largest contributor I've come up with is form. More correctly, proper body alignment with the target. By playing around with shooting blind, I found that when I drew with my eyes closed, I naturally settled into a very solid stance. Basically I believe that with the eyes closed the body holds things where it is naturally strongest because there are no visual cues or distractions to tell it otherwise. This is the "form" or body position where the bones are doing as much of the work as possible and the muscles are working the least. When I shoot from this position, nothing moves in my bow arm. And ya know what, the arrows go where they are supposed to WAY more often too.
So....how could I use this to my advantage I wondered? I messed around a bit and figured a few things out. I'd pick my target, stand where I thought I was lined up properly and think to align or "aim" my whole body instead of just my bow arm. Then I'd close my eyes and draw the bow. When I hit full draw, I'd open my eyes and see how far off target I was. Many times it was several feet! This flat amazed me since I could stand the exact same way and draw with my eyes open and everything felt just fine. I was compensating for poor body alignment with my bow arm because my eyes and brain told me to. Only thing was, when I'd shoot, my bow arm would move and accuracy was erratic. The only reason I could think was improper body alignment causes muscle strain in my arm and the strain turned to movement when I released the string. Now comes the important part... To fix the alignment problem, I'd draw with my eyes closed and then after opening my eyes, instead of adjusting my aim with my bow arm, I'd keep my upper body in that rock solid position and aim with my legs and hips. To aim lower, I'd bend my forward knee and hip and straighten my rear leg. To aim higher, I'd bend my rear leg and extend my forward one. Left and right is just a simple swivel from the hips down. What a difference!
My plan is to practice adressing the target and draw with eyes closed then open them to check how close I am to my "spot". I hope that with practice it will begin to come naturally and consistently. It's a lot like the old bit of advice everyone knows to bend at the waist when shooting down out of a tree stand but taking it one step farther to applying it to every shot.
Couple this technique with a consious effort to relax on target and follow through after the shot and the results are amazing. It's actually helped my target panic too because my confidence has gone up but I'm also taking some of Jay Kidwells advice about getting on target, then off, back on etc without shooting to break the conditioned response that caused the target panic in the first place but that is a topic for another thread.
If any of you try this (and I hope some of you will) let me know what you think. It seems like something that might not always work in a hunting situation where you are in a hurry but I think that if a guy could learn to naturally align his body with the target so that he hit his natural "sweet spot" or strong point in his form at full draw without thinking about it, it would really make a difference in his accuracy. In fact, I believe that most guys who are natural great shots do just this without realizing it.
Hey, I like that. A "sweet spot" in your form. It actually makes sense to me.
Dave
Topic: Want a SOLID bow arm???? (Read 4889 times)
