Archery

My book finally arrived.

Total Archery ~ Kisik Lee.

It’s really really good. Published by Samick so I think it’s only possible to get through archery (probably target archery) shops.

I need to increase my overall fitness. And the total number of arrows I shoot per week.

Arrows per week is a problem, since at the moment there is no way I can shoot at home. Getting to the club it quite a trek to do each day. I’m not sure how to tackle it, but I’m going to do visualizing and drawing practice to start with.

I’m not sure where to start with goal setting, so I’m going to start by gauging what is easy and then set something a bit higher. Start with a weekly goal maybe?

Tomorrow I’m going for a short jog.

This is me just now after a 2am bike ride home from archery.

The visor is fogged up from my breath, plus the flash made it worse.
It’s a great ride at that time. It’s a little foggy in parts, but no traffic gets in your way. On the good (non foggy) corners you can do them technically. Leaning a lot, looking ahead, not at the road beneath the front wheel, and keeping a steady pace. Most of the corners you don’t need to slow down for (speed limit is 70, though I acidentally do 80 too much).

I’m wearing my new winter gloves, now my hands are warmer then my feet (which are in massive boots and woolly socks). They were definitely worth it.

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.

The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have always been special for me.

A great friend of mine made me love them.

Every album I’ve been interested in even though I drifted away for Californication, but Stadium Arcadium has sparked my interest more then ever before. I’ve been listening to it on my mp3 player constantly. I shoot archery to it sometimes.

They really made an awesome album. I have so much I want to say about it, but I have to go.

I’ve become obsessed with archery. More then I’ve ever have been before, and I’ve been doing it since I was 10.

I’m impatient that my body is so slow to react. I’ve been shooting for hours many nights per week. Going to the gym, doing ballet, doing yoga. And still I’m skinny little me, struggling to stay strong for the day with 44lbs at my fingers.

I found some training info on how to systematically increase my strength and endurance for my draw. It’s simple science really, but it will take weeks to reap the benifits. So I rush it, do more for longer.

Oh well.

Sigh.

This is very unlikely, if I had the money I’d probably get the second top of the range not these ones. Still I’m thinking the gray. Blue would be nice if it was a bit darker. Also I’m not sure it it’s got a gradient or it’s just the light.