The Draw

There are many ways to draw a bow, but you'll want to choose a method that lets you save energy and maximizes your body's mechanical advantage. I'll explain the pushdown draw, which is a method that will let you shoot military wave bows as well as making light and moderate wave bows more comfortable to shoot. The pushdown draw that I'll explain is based on Gaoying's Ming military archery form, an analysis of traditional military and hunting archery forms from other cultures, as well as an understanding of the anatomy involved in archery, and practical experience just shooting really heavy bows. Broadly speaking, there are three main categories of draw, depending on what you do with the elbows to open the bow. First, there's lifting draw, where the elbows go from down to up. Then the horizontal draw, where the elbows stay at the same level. Then there's the pushdown draw, where the elbows go from up to a level position. Once again, the lifting draw, then the horizontal draw, and then the pushdown draw. Now of these three draws, we can immediately discount the lifting draw, primarily because even though you might be able to use some of the central back muscles to draw, you're also relying heavily on these middle and front deltoids to lift the arms up. This is a pretty weak draw. Now even if you might start with a pushdown draw and end with a lifting draw, this is still suboptimal because you're having to finish the draw with a lifting motion using smaller muscles. With the horizontal draw, you're using your central back muscles, particularly the rhomboids, the middle and lower traps, to bring those elbows apart and to bring the shoulder blades together. This is a relatively strong movement, but you're not using your full back's potential with the horizontal draw. Now the pushdown draw introduces a vertical component to the horizontal draw. If you've ever done pull-ups, you're able to hold onto a bar and lift your whole body weight, then that's a pretty strong movement. The reason is because with this, you're taking advantage of the latissimus dorsi, the lats. So what it looks like here is this. So in addition to a horizontal component, you're adding a vertical component to your draw as well. Not just the horizontal, but with a pushdown, you've got a vertical component as well. Now the reason the pushdown draw is great for military-style archery is because it brings balance to the back. The draw and the bow shoulder are essentially doing the same thing. The bow shoulder, recall, is settled by depressing and retracting it towards your spine. And then the draw shoulder is also depressing and retracting towards the spine. So they're almost mirror images of each other. Here, I settle the bow shoulder by depressing it and retracting it towards the spine. With the draw shoulder, as I bring the elbow back and down, I'm going to depress it and retract it towards the spine. Military archery is about making balanced use of the back muscles, but then you notice this little lean, especially in traditional military and hunting cultures. So why is that? Well, let me explain. So the alternatives you consider are to have an upright torso shooting at a level target with a level bow arm. If you draw until here, which you see in some target shooting forms, you're actually making asymmetric use of the back muscles because the lats on the draw side are lengthened compared to the lats on the bow side. And so they're not exerting symmetrically. You're not making balanced use of your lats. And so you're not using your full potential back strength in this kind of position. So let's say you draw longer so that the humerite of the draw side and the bow side are even. But in this position, you're liable to have the bow shoulder hunch because of the alignment of the joints here. Remember, in military archery, we'd prefer a slight sloping up of the bow arm in order to direct the force of the bow down into the rib cage. This is much better for your body here. So then we have this slope of the arm, and let's say we're contracting the back muscles evenly here, and we're going to match the slope on the draw side as well. So it's balanced, it's balanced, it's balanced. The back muscles are still exerting themselves in a balanced way, but the problem here is that I'm aiming up into the sky. That is why for the military styles, you actually take your torso as a unit and you cant it slightly to aim level. See that? It's even, it's even, it's even. Now the humerite are even, the back is exerting itself evenly, but I'm aiming up. So to aim level, I have to cant the torso just a bit. And that's why you see the leap. And that's why it looks like, well, oh, the shoulders are not even, but it actually, they're both settling down and towards the spine. It's just that you're canting a bit in order to shoot level. Now, the mistake you want to avoid is to deliberately hunch that draw shoulder up as you draw. Like if you tried to, you know, hunch it up like this and then do the push down, then that's, that's absolutely wrong because you're going to create pain on the neck muscles on your draw side. I mean, you'll notice it right away. That's why I mentioned, you know, the, the bow shoulder and the draw shoulder are mirror images of each other. You want to settle and retract the draw shoulder blade as you're drawing back. It only looks higher than the bow shoulder because we're canting the torso towards the target. If you want to avoid, you know, crowding of the draw shoulder blade, you know, you don't want to just draw horizontally here. You want to use this push down motion to spread the shoulder out, then depress it, and then retract it towards the spine here. Like so. The similarity in posture between military and hunting styles of different traditional archery cultures is quite striking. In the upper left, you have an excerpt from Ming Chinese painting. The upper right, Mark Stratton and Joe Gibbs, both English war bow archers. On the lower left, a Liangulu elephant hunter from Africa. And on the lower right, Japanese military archers. In all cases, you see the characteristic lean or cant of the torso, a push down draw being executed, as well as the settling of the bow shoulder, as indicated by the slight upward slope of the bow arm from the shoulder to the hand. These folks are shooting bows weighing from 90 pounds to 130, 140, and up to 200 or more pounds. Generally, I recommend keeping the draw side elbow in line with the draw hand upon reaching full draw with a push down. This allows you to have a relaxed line between the thumb, the thumb knuckle, the wrist, and the elbow. It'll feel like you're pulling with the elbow, when in reality, you're actually using your back muscles to operate that elbow. Gao Ying's recommendation was to only drop the draw elbow upon release. If you haven't yet released, then don't drop that draw elbow. Now there is one exception, and that is if you have a very long draw and you're keeping that draw elbow closed during the draw cycle. It looks like this. So this push down draw reaching the same position as before, but let's say you draw even longer, then that draw elbow has to make room for the draw hand to go further back. That's what this looks like. Now you want to avoid keeping that draw elbow open, like so, because that engages the draw side triceps, which is pretty small compared to your back muscles. I've yet to see an archer shoot a really heavy bow using this sort of open elbow posture. And the other situation you want to avoid is having a short draw and dropping that draw elbow prematurely, like this. I call this the chicken wing. And you see a lot of beginners doing this when they haven't figured out how to use their back muscles to pull, especially if they haven't figured out how to use the draw side lats to help them with the draw. So again, the chicken wing, this is a weak posture, something you want to avoid, and this actually risks injuring your draw elbow as well. Once again, that one situation where you can drop the draw elbow before release is a really long draw and you're keeping that draw elbow closed through the draw cycle so that you're using your back muscles to operate that draw elbow. And you'll see this in certain styles and also people with particular inanities as well. For example, I have friends who have very broad shoulders compared to their arm length, and so they find this to be more comfortable, whereas I have pretty long arms compared to my shoulder width, and so I find this to be a comfortable full draw for me. Now there are a number of variations to start the push-down draw. One thing you want to avoid though is the sky draw. Sky drawing is where you've got the arrow pointed up at pre-draw or during the draw cycle, and this is dangerous because of accidental looses, and it's impolite. It's disallowed at all ranges pretty much. But you know, it's very, very rare that you're in a place where this is allowed. So generally, when you do the push-down draw, you want to find a variation where the arrow is level or pointed down during the draw cycle. So there are a number of possibilities you can consider. Experiment a bit and see what works for you. For example, you could do a high push-down, hands above you, or you could do a high front position to start the push-down. Or you could start in the lower position, leaning forward a bit, and you lift the bow into position while executing the push-down, and having a settled shoulder as well. Now my preferred variation is a pre-draw bow tilt. So the bow arm is in close to the final position, but you tilt the bow down. This encourages you to have a nice arc of the elbow. This is a good position for beginners to consider. But yeah, each approach has its pros and cons. Again, experiment a bit and see what works for a useful technique to incorporate into your repertoire, whether it's for shooting heavy weight bows or for making lighter bows more comfortable to shoot with.