Do You Have a STRONG Bow Arm? | Bow Arm Reaction For Better Scores

Today we're going to talk about bow arm, basically the most important thing when it comes to shooting archery and being successful at it, shooting high scores, is having a good strong bow arm, good stable bow arm. And I'm going to show you a few different things that you should look at as far as when the shot breaks, which direction your bow arm is moving, and that'll help determine whether or not your bow arm is strong or not. So we'll get right into it. So I want to talk about the bow arm. You know a good coach will always talk about how important a strong bow arm is to being successful, to shooting high scores, shooting tight groups, things like that. You cannot replace a good strong bow arm with anything else that's good. If you have a weak bow arm or a bow arm that's just not stable, it will rear itself into erratic groupings and all sorts of problems in the future. So I really want to talk about something that we can easily measure, easily visually check to see what the bow arm is doing, and then make a determination on whether or not it is moving correctly, and whether or not you are activating or stabilizing the bow arm in a manner that is needed for really high scores in archery. Now you may not want to compete. You may not, you know, want to even make a team or anything like that. You just want to shoot some arrows in your backyard and have a good time. I don't care the shooting style you're shooting, compound, recurve, barebow, traditional, you name it. It's all the same in my opinion as to what's required for a good stable strong bow arm. Now some of the other styles of Asiatic styles and, you know, horsebow and all that stuff, they require a very different style. So this may not be directly applicable to that, but I think still some of the reaction of the actual bow arm after the shot and how it moves is really indicative of are you stabilizing and activating muscles within the system of the bow arm to shoot really well. So one of the main things I like to do and to look at is just the simple movement of the hand of the bow arm and what direction it moves when the shot breaks. I'm going to demonstrate using a stretch band. It's a super simple little tool that you can use to still mimic form and it'll still give you the dynamic reactions of what's happening within the shot because, you know, you have some tension you have built up and you get into position and when you let it go the body does a reaction based on the tension you've built up within the system. So the tension being if you have a bow and it's 20 pounds, 40 pounds, whatever it is, you've got energy you have to exert pulling back but you also have energy you have to exert going forward otherwise if you exert no energy going forward you don't have a bow arm. You don't have anything to pull on and you just it's a wet noodle up front. You have to add something in the front and of course you must also add something in the back otherwise you don't pull the bow back. So that's what I mean when I'm talking about tension. Now as far as the direction of the tension is concerned I have a very specific method that I like to talk about in regards to the bow arm tension that you use to actually help you shoot higher scores. I'll have a link in the description below and a card at the top up there for an earlier video I've produced talking about tension and direction and the importance of that and if you haven't checked that out or heard me talk about tension and direction I'd check that out in addition to this video because it may help solidify a bit of the point I'm trying to make. So if I use this stretch band to basically mimic a shot if you were my target and I really will just I'll use my thumb as my uh my aiming device and I'm going to use a under the chin anchor like I do on my recurve and watch the direction that my bow hand moves. You'll see that it does move towards you and it does move down ever so slightly but if you look at the actual movement of the hand itself in space not necessarily relative to my body you'll see that it tends to move one direction or the other and all three of those shots do slightly and I'll go frame by frame so you can see this or in slow motion you'll see that the hand as the shot breaks it jumps towards you and then it slightly moves to the left. That movement towards the left is really important in my opinion to illustrate if you are activating the bow arm correctly or not. Ideally in a perfect world the bow hand would not move at all on release and it would stay perfectly still and I can do that I can hold it perfectly still ish relative that one wasn't perfectly still it moved the right but it's not possible to have this arm not move the reason being is that our arm cannot split in two and we cannot draw the bow back where the string moves inside of our arm if that was the case then the the tension would be straight into the arm but because we're essentially pulling the bow outside of the center line or we're resisting the bow from moving outside of the center line of the direction of the tension that the bow is built up you can see this as an example obviously over exaggerated the tension is heading and wanting to pull my hand this way as I draw back yes that line moves in further and it gets closer to my arm and it can get very very close to my arm as you can see here but obviously if anybody has shot archery before the closer you get to the your arm sometimes that can cause some problems like you know hitting your arm with the string or things like that so you can never actually get inside of the arm it's just impossible you can't draw back in a straight manner it always has a slight amount of offset forces this direction so because of this in order to stabilize the arm correctly and have it stable here and not continuously moving this direction because again the force is pulling my hand this way I must also not only in addition to resisting the bow from hitting me in the face you know for that illustrative purpose I'm also adding a little bit of tension that direction not on purpose but what I'm doing is I'm trying to stabilize and hold still because I'm drawing outside the arrow line I'm adding forces forward adding forces to the left a small amount of forces and when I let go of the string and continue to have these forces that I've built up into the system maintain the shot break and the hand will move forward and to the left that is the direction that your bow arm should move every single time you shoot a good strong bow arm will have that bow and hand bow hand pop to the left if you're a right-handed shooter or pop to the right if you are a left-handed shooter it's just simple physics simple dynamics the way that the tension is being built up primarily it's straight back towards me but it is slightly outside of center and so therefore there must be a little bit of tension heading to the left and when you have a really really good strong solid shot the bow hand will go to the left obviously I just exaggerated that this is like 12 pounds 8 pounds something very light if I were to have you know my recurve where it'd be up in the 40 you know mid 40 and up range and it would have a lot of weight eight pounds or so seven pounds or so the hand will launch towards the target pop to the left and then slightly come down because of that added weight of the bow so it ends up popping out to the left and then will drop ever so slightly so the bow hand in in its ideal form in my opinion without adding any sort of extra tension upon the shot breaking it has to move to the left for me being a right-handed shooter it has to pop out to the left and then because of the weight of the bow it will move then slightly down so that's all pretty normal and what is expected the reason I'm saying this now and addressing this in this manner to you is I've been working with a lot of younger shooters and newer shooters and all the time not all the time but a lot of the time the bow hand will move this way ever so slightly when the shot breaks they'll move their bow hand to the right usually in youth when that bow hand moves to the right it's because when they're aiming they're aiming they're aiming they shoot they want to see where that arrow goes because they're excited they're peaking but as long as they're not trying to specifically look and see where the arrow goes the hand movement to the right is indicative of a weak bow arm there is no tension that they've built up in the system to counteract those outside forces and they're really struggling and struggling to maintain the tension and the power of the bow and manipulate it and control it in a manner that results in tighter groups down range that typical movement to the right usually is accompanied by a collapse on the draw side and that will usually show up in something that looks like like this type of movement where the hand comes forward or the hand comes out from the face and it's a pluck that bow arm typically will tend to move to the right as well showing you know just more of overall what i would like to consider a weak shot a good strong shot will always have that bow arm pop out and to the left instead of popping out into the right out into the right is me looking for the arrow or indicative of a collapse on the draw side a loss of tension and direction and overall just not in my opinion an ideal way to manipulate that bow arm in a manner that results in higher scores tighter groups and overall just better shooting stuff that you can enjoy at home even if you're not competitive that's cool too so videotape yourself watch yourself watch your bow arm move watch the bow hand move what does it do after the shot does it launch towards the target move slightly to the left and then lower once you have a bow in your hand or does it pop immediately to the right because you're peeking to see where that arrow goes or are you doing something else and changing the tension and direction upon release when you cut that string loose when you hit the trigger whatever it is and if you're trying to maintain stability and everything and you're you're commanding the shot which is okay but that bow arm is not moving to the left that means you're also manipulating the tension up front to stop all this movement and i argue you'll end up doing that before the arrow leaves the bow and that will open up your groups over time i just wanted to give you a little quick video quick tip here on how to manipulate and control the bow arm it's something to just keep a overall eye on to see what is happening within your shot and hopefully this will help you out at home so