Archery Form

I ordered a book by a famous Korean archery coach (in archery anyway).

Until it arrives however I’m stuck on my own. I shot for about an hour, using a camera connected to a dvd/hdd recorder and tv (the club has this), it plays back on a delay (I set it to about 10 seconds).

I tried it from behind for a while.

Then I tried it side on looking at my back, with my shirt off. It revealed so much. You can tell when the shoulders aren’t aligned, and when the spine isn’t straight.

I’ve identified some of my most common problems.

I often lean forward (over compensating, ie paranoia) too much. It starts at the hips then curves back so that my shoulders are level. This seems to often combine with a slight backwards arch. It causes all sorts of problems. Eg. Making it more difficult to keep my front shoulder low.

Another thing I seem to do is after the draw my back shoulder is too high. Meaning higher the my front shoulder by quite a bit. This leaves my draw arm high too of course, but also means my shoulder blades aren’t symmetrical until after the release (if at all). The rememdy to this seems to draw downwards as usual with my draw hand coming below my chin and bringing the rear shoulder down at the same time, then raise the hand to the anchor without moving the shoulder or shoulder blade. This is actually quite a natural movement although it doesn’t sound it. Before I’d seen this on my own back from behind I’d no idea what this really meant. When you do this, the draw (pre anchor) lines up both your shoulders height wise, and your shoulder blade. Then moving the hand up into anchor coincides with the steadying of the shot. The final squeeze through of the back muscles makes much more sense and is much more natural if the shoulder blades are in proper alignment. When I did this correctly I could actually see my shoulder blades being pulled slowly together. This is only possible if my spine is straight. Otherwise the final step never works. It gets faked.