Archery Coaching Case Study #3 - Learning back tension

Hey there guys, Jared here from Rogue Archery with Coaching Case Study number 3. Now thanks to your patience of waiting for this video to come out, I know it's been a little while but I needed some new recruits to bring into it and to show you some of the elements I wanted to make it kind of progressive. Now in today's video we go through something really important which is how to train back tension. Now back tension is a concept that a lot of people are aware of but it's my view that most people in back tension have kind of a superficial understanding of kind of what it is and how to implement it. I see a lot of really ineffective training methods out there of people trying to implement this and not having much success so I'm sure you're going to get a lot of value out of this video. Today I'll show you a drill called X-draws which stands for execution draws where we use a theraband looped over the elbow to kind of train and make a connection with the elbow and the back when we draw the bow and this is a really good precursor to working with the form master or the shot trainer or whatever variation of that training aid you prefer. But in today's video I have a group of new recruits who have been working with for the last couple of weeks. They've been working on shot process and technique structure and then we go through and teach them this new drill. So I think you'll get a lot of value out of this video. If you do, don't forget to like and subscribe. Give this training drill a try. Let me know in the comment section how you go with it. Okay, good luck team. Okay, so you guys have been smashing obviously your tech draws, smashing your SPT. We've gone through our shot process, our technique structure. The next thing I want to talk through with you guys is a concept called back tension. Now have you guys heard of back tension before? You kind of heard of the principle? So back tension is a really important concept. I think it's one of the techniques where a lot of people are aware of it but everyone has kind of like a superficial understanding of what back tension is if that makes sense and I think if anything, I think people have a really poor understanding of how to implement back tension or how to teach back tension. Does that make sense? So what you see a lot on the archery range and with a lot of coaches is that they'll walk up behind an archer, they'll kind of poke him between the shoulder blades and say something like, you know, or use more back tension or pull with these muscles in your back or something like that and this is one of the most frustrating things for an archer to hear, right? Because it doesn't actually teach you what to do and it kind of teaches back tension as more of an academic concept rather than teaching you how to actually implement it. Make sense? So that's kind of like what not to do and the reason why that's not a good way of learning is because in no other skill do we ever teach you a skill, a kinesthetic skill by telling you what muscle to contract, right? So think about it, think about if I was trying to teach you how to kick a soccer ball. Now just think for a second if I tried to explain that skill to you, which is a relatively simple motion, but if I tried to explain it to you in only muscle contractions, right? If I said, okay, first you need to contract your quadriceps in your left leg and then stabilize your calf, you quickly realize it's like there's so much complexity to even a simple movement that you can't explain it in muscle contractions. Make sense? So how do we actually teach? We teach motions, right? We teach movement, we teach planes of movement, we teach motions, right? So if I'm teaching you how to kick a soccer ball, I'd say put your left foot next to the soccer ball and then swing through the ball, connect with here on your shoelace. It's all about motion, it's all about because people perceive movement and motion much better than they do about kind of internal feelings of muscle contractions, make sense? So this is why I say I think people have a superficial understanding of what back tension actually is. So I mean what it is, the way I would define back tension is that it's a coordinated movement of the scapular retractors and posterior calf and it's very important for the expansion and execution of the shot, okay? It gives us our strength and direction in the expansion and release, make sense? So it is very important, you need to maintain that tension in the correct muscle groups to actually get it correct but it's not as simple as saying use your back muscles because it's quite a coordinated, sophisticated movement for a whole group of back muscles, not just one. And so you're using your traps, you're using your rhomboids, you're using your levator scapula, you're using your subscap, you're using your posterior calf and that includes your infraspinatus and posterior delt, it's a whole muscle group and it's like a coordination of all of these, not just one muscle you're trying to focus on in particular, right? So again, I'm just trying to give you the context of what back tension is, why it's important and I guess I'm going to start with what not to do, then I'm going to get into how to do it. Are you with me so far? Yeah. Alright, cool. The way I like to teach it is to focus on movements, like I said, because believe it or not, that's what muscles do, right? Muscles actually create movement. So if I teach you the correct movement to do, as a consequence, you will engage the correct muscles. Make sense? I hope you're following my thought process here. And this principle applies to like all kinds of different training techniques. So you can see I'm holding my TheraBand here. So I'm going to show you a really basic drill that we use to kind of teach you the correct motion and the correct kinesthetic feeling of the motion we're trying to achieve through back tension and that will actually kind of reinforce what back tension should be for you and your shot, right? So the way we do it is we actually start with our TheraBand and we loop it over the point of our elbow like so. And then we kind of do a variation of tech draws where we come into full anchor and then we can actually squeeze all the way back into that follow-through position and then control it through the eccentric range and then repeat. So just in terms of how to set this up, you want to kind of hold it in your hand like so, loop it over the elbow, and importantly, you're not gripping the TheraBand with your hand. Just let it slide through your fingers because the forearm, as you know, when you shoot should be relaxed. Now, another really great thing about this exercise is it won't allow you to cheat because if you come around here and you kind of have a tendency to pull in with the hand rather than drawing from the elbow, you can see what happens and that the TheraBand will actually open up like a bit of a triangle like that, whereas if you do it correctly, you can see that it's all in one straight line. I'm just doing the angle so you can see. Make sense? So, a couple of other things with this, it does take a little bit of coordination and it may accidentally slip off your elbow from time to time. That's just something you're going to have to get the hang of. But the reason why this exercise works is, you know, you've heard me say over and over again that when you're drawing, you draw from the elbow and let the hand follow. And by teaching the connection with the elbow, what that does, and by teaching the correct plane of motion with the elbow, what that does is it actually kind of engages the correct muscles in the scapular retractors in the posterior cuff. And this drill also allows us to go through, like I said before, through to the full follow-through position. So you can go from here, as one fluid motion all the way through to follow-through, squeeze at the back, right? And then control through the eccentric range back to pre-draw. And repeat. Pre-draw and then pause. Oh, pre-draw. Pause. Okay, good. Check your posture. Chest down. Good. Okay. Now drawing from the elbow. Going to full alignment. Just anchor here. Good. Now you can see you've got a really good alignment because this is nice and close, right? Now, what you want to do from here is you can continue to draw the elbow around all the way through in the follow-through position. Hold your posture. No, no. Chest down. That's better. Cool. Stop. Pause. Keep eyes on the target. Good. Holding the shoulder set. Excellent. Now this is your follow-through position. Now in a controlled manner, let down to anchor. Good. And then to pre-draw. And then let down. And reset. Oh my god. Not easy, right? Yeah. No. Well done. Yeah. Now see here, it's quite open. Yes. Like this. This is good. Now, hold your posture. Drawing from the elbow. Going to anchor position. Good. Now, from here you can see you've got a little bit of a gap in here. You want to try and get your alignment. And see how that closes up? Yeah. Now, hold the posture. Hold the front shoulder set. And then continue to just hold this as you draw the elbow around further into your follow-through position. Let me just guide you through it. Okay. Just without that. Just go into pre-draw. Anchor. Okay. Just relax. It's there. Oh yeah. Right? One more time. Just relax. Let me guide you through it. Now, hold that position. And here, what I want you to do is focus on squeezing the elbow back. And hold that squeeze for five seconds. And by squeezing for five seconds, we're kind of priming the scapular retractors to be activated. Now, come back and you do the motion by yourself without me. I didn't say it was easy. Yeah. Okay. So pre-draw. Force. Good. Now drawing from the elbow, come to anchor. Just here. Now continue to draw around. Boom. Squeeze. Now, with the rubber band, you'll control my way back forward. Like so. Oh wow. I can feel that a lot. I didn't say it was easy. That's actually activating everything I think that doesn't get used. Oh, that's the idea. Good. Now, drawing from the elbow, go into anchor position. Pause, good. Squeezing this elbow back, keep the shoulder down and back, all the way through your pointy position. Oh, this is better. Okay, hold this position, hold your posture. Front shoulder's looking good. This is good. Now, control it on the way down. Keep your shoulder aligned as you come forward. You dropped the elbow too much. I dropped it, I failed that. Yep, so control back into anchor. And then back into pre-draw. Pause, and let down. It's funny. Yeah, yeah. One of the things I noticed you doing, can I demonstrate? Yeah. You have a tendency to drop the back elbow too much. So you have a tendency to go like, it's looking pretty good till here. On the way back, it's looking okay. Then you kind of wanna do this, right? Yeah. And you're kind of losing it in this plane. So you kind of need to maintain both the front shoulder loaded and the back shoulder loaded and the elbow through that correct plane as you come forward. Not this way. Yeah. Yeah, because that's an indication of a weakness you have in your chop swing. All the way through to your follow through. Good. Now control on the way back through to your anchor. And then back to pre-draw. Good. And now back. Yeah. Now anchor again. Flow through to the release position. Good. And back to anchor. Okay, so you guys are doing that pretty well. Couple of things that I noticed you both doing is obviously when you first start this exercise, it's kind of broken down into chunks and it won't be very fluid. What we're trying to train is one motion from here all the way through to the follow through position. And we're training that fluidity through this plane. Now at the moment, this is really new to you guys. So it's very much kind of one, two, three, four, five. It's kind of broken down into chunks. And that's okay. Because it's a new movement, you're just trying to learn the motion. And with practice and with time, that fluidity will come. Yeah? The other thing that you're starting to notice is that this exercise doesn't allow you to cheat. You're probably noticing it a lot. It really engages the scapular tractors, right? The scapular retractors. Am I correct? Roxy? Yeah. You're realistic. Yeah, you can't fake it. And then the same thing with your alignment is that when you're doing multiple repetitions, if you're coming forward but you're losing your shoulder alignment, it kind of opens up that angle of the rubber band. And so it also gives you that kind of good feedback loop just when you're focusing on learning shoulder alignment as well. So yeah, really good exercise. So pre-draw. Anchor. Now just go into anchor first. Make sure you actually go through the correct anchor position. Through your follow-through. Yes, that's very good. Getting better Nick. Hold the button. Roll on the way back. You want to go back through the anchor as you come forward. That's good. Keep the elbow up. Yep, that's what it is. It's looking good. Well done. Roxy. One thing I noticed you're doing is that looking really good, but after you do your first repetition up to that follow-through position, when you come forward, you're actually losing your front arm. You have a really beautiful set position for your front shoulder and internally rotated front arm, but when you kind of come back here, it kind of pops up. So you want to maintain this and this through the full range for multiple repetitions. Okay? And now you flow through to the follow-through position. Nice and slow. Nice and controlled. Pre-draw pause. Good. Now from the elbow. Anchor. And then through the follow-through position. This is much better. So I think you can see what I mean about you need to learn this skill kinesthetically. Right? You need to learn the motion and then through learning the motion, you will activate the correct muscle groups. Right? And so even after just five, 10 minutes that we've been working on this, you guys have improved a hell of a lot and that will be able to translate into your shooting. Make sense? So we incorporate this drill as part of our warmup drill. When we're warming up, this is one of our staples because it kind of primes the correct motor groups for your shooting. And it's also a really good drill. This kind of leads onto another training drill we'll do in the future, which is like with the form master or shot trainer, which is another training aid, which loops over the elbow. And you will actually, you've seen them? Yeah. So you'll actually shoot and it kind of loads the elbow again after release with the full weight of the bow. So my recommendation is that you first learn with the TheraBand and that this is the first progression. And then next we will, and at the same time, we're right now focusing on a lot of shot technique structure. You know, the stance, the posture, the alignment, all that stuff. And then when we start focusing on the expansion and the execution phase of the shot, we'll also build in the shot trainer or the form master drill as well, because that helps you kind of tie it all together. But to do that without first mastering this, I think would be like too big of a jump and people kind of struggle to get it right. Whereas if you learn this first, then it kind of translates very well into that form master or shot trainer step. Make sense? Cool. There you have it guys. Hope you got something out of this coaching case study. A little bit of a shorter one today, but again, really, really important concept that I hope you can implement into your training. Now these extras, this drill that we're doing to train back tension is really great for developing archers as well as experienced archers. And it's really good to incorporate into your warmup and warm down routines, but it's also a good precursor to working with the form master or the shot trainer or whatever variation of training that you prefer. So if you've got something out of this video, give it a try. Let me know in the comment section below how you go with this drill. And yeah, I look forward to seeing you guys on the range.