6 Release Tips For Beginners (Pt 1) - Recurve Archery Technique

The recurve release is one of the most difficult parts of the technique, especially for beginner archers. So today I'm joined by Mike Peer and we're going to talk about six tips for beginners to improve their recurve release. So thank you for joining me Mike. I think we're going to start off with your kind of first tip if that's all right. What would you say is the the kind of first thing that you want to mention here? My first one is more of how you frame With many of my tips I'm being 100% unoriginal. I'm stealing this from gold medal olympic coach Lloyd Brown because the way he presented it to me changed the way I looked at the release. He thinks a lot of the time the problem is when people think about the release and they think about the string and the tension on their fingers they think about the release as going from having, let's say you've got a hundred percent tension to hold the string and then when they think about the release either when the clicker goes or when they're just happy to release themselves they think the tension in their fingers must go to zero and because they think about it going to zero they think about opening their fingers and so often when you consciously open your fingers you then end up with a bit of a flappy release and I think we've all seen we've all seen releases like that. So yeah when he's teaching everything from beginners right up to someone like myself who was on the national team he wanted me to think of okay if it takes me 100% effort to hold that 50 pound bow just try dropping the pressure down to 40%. Now obviously if you drop it down to 40% the string is going to slip out of your fingers and we actually started off by putting a bottle of water in a carrier bag holding the bottle of water down beside me and just thinking about not opening the fingers just reducing the tension in the fingers and letting the string slip out and immediately I noticed that afterwards my fingers close and I've noticed on all the top videos I watch the string gets pulled out of people's fingers and then the fingers close and the hand comes back and when you're in that mind mindset of I'm gonna open my fingers the fingers open and they come away from your face and we end up with a we'll call it a substandard substandard release but changing that mindset and he said particularly right at the beginning when you're learning or even when you're teaching someone for the first time that they want to relax their fingers and maybe just keep a little bit of tension in there was actually a great way of starting to get people to have a more productive release rather than the what can end up being a bit of a flinchy forward release or even if it's not can just end up being a wide inconsistent release because it seems to me we're a lot more consistent in relaxing our fingers than than opening our fingers and even for someone like myself who had 15 years of shooting experience this change of mindset and practicing this was something that was able to improve improve my release even though I'd had 15 years of doing it wrong I was able to make progress by just that change of mindset we're not trying to go to zero and open our fingers we're just trying to relax our fingers and and drop the tension down so the finger to the string just slips out and the hand comes back that's really nice because I think a lot of beginners struggle with that especially because you know you've hooked onto the string maybe you've done a beginner's course and you're at full draw and you feel like how am I going to release oh I just I have to just like you say 100 to zero and then you get that you're going to open your fingers yeah you know everyone the reason everyone made most people make this mistake is because it feels like the natural intuitive thing to do and we're so often in Rico Varchari it's not the right thing to do exactly and to give some kind of color to what you were mentioning earlier as well you mentioned about the the kind of slipping through the fingers and the release this is a slow-mo video of me shooting where this shows like a good yeah who's this handsome guy um so this is someone yeah this is someone doing the release and essentially that's the slipping out of the fingers that you're mentioning right where you've just slipping out the fingers and then they instantly go back curled and I don't know what a frame like how many frames per second this was I think it was normally at least a thousand but you know this time between slipping out the fingers and then curling back I mean the arrow has gone about maybe a foot maximum this is probably this is probably at least 1500 be honest with you this is this is really quite good yeah a thousand it's still a little bit quick but this is probably one and a half and yeah this is this is this is what we're trying to get yeah we're not trying to get you open your fingers because when you open them they just keep on coming out and you just get that wide that wide release and this is a really nice example really nice example of a well done thank you thank you I think that guy's gonna be moderately successful maybe yeah that sounds about right if you're enjoying this video and want step-by-step guidance from me to improve your technique check out my Online Archery Academy video courses go to onlinearcheryacademy.com click explore the courses for a special discount now back to the video so that brings us on to the kind of the second point I guess or my first tip with the release which is especially for beginners it's really important to have something to pull against so what I mean by that is I was taught this from early on and I hear this taught a lot and I can absolutely understand why but especially at beginners courses often I'll hear just touch the string lightly to your face or just touch the tip of your nose or just lightly touch your chin all these kind of words kind of similar but essentially what that leads people to do is just feather on the edge of touching the string to the face and they're just kind of seesawing to touch it or oh I don't want to touch it too hard and then when you release you're not really pulling against anything you've got no like backward pressure here so essentially if you're just on the edge and you release it's just going to do this or even worse that so really important and this is why separate video but having a good anchor position is really important because you want to be able to pull against your chin and your face without slipping and getting chin drag and stuff that we talked about last week that's the thing I was going to come on to yeah yeah yeah because so many people take those so many people take those wise totally correct words but but it just sort of gets a little bit misinterpreted that's always that's always the risk that's the risk yeah um but yeah really important to have something solid to pull against I always give the analogy of if you're pulling against a rope and someone cuts it if you're pulling just the right amount of tension so that the rope is like almost taut but not really it's just taking the slack out if someone cuts it and you're pulling this rope someone cuts that rope then nothing's going to happen if you're pulling the rope with 50 extra tension than you need and you're pulling hard against it and someone cuts the rope in the middle your hand is going to go back and that's what we want to see with the release so if you're a beginner that's struggling with especially going forward or going outwards not having any backwards power on your release definitely try and make sure that anchor's good and make sure you've got something to to pull against it's me again here if you don't want to join the courses just yet but you want help from me sign up to my free weekly newsletter by putting your email address in at onlinearcheryacademy.com and clicking join now or click become a member to join my online membership community where you can get access to loads of exclusive content plus ask questions directly for me to answer in Q&A sessions so check that out if you want to and now back to the video and that brings us on to your second tip it's connected to the release it's not 100% but I want to talk about because when I think about the release I think about the finger tab and I think about the platform or not to have a platform on your tab because quite often I get I get I regularly get asked questions should I use a platform should I not have a platform should I have a platform that I put my thumb on top so it's actually my thumb touching my chin and my answer to that is yes sure all three of them are valid ways to shoot they're looking for me to give them that's that's the answer that's the guaranteed gold medal way to to shoot but be honest with you they're all popular they all have champions they all have record holders I think the important thing is is to is to try these different ways find out what suits you what's more comfortable because I I'm always a bit suspicious I think some of it comes down to the shape of your head and the angle of your jaw can just mean that what's super comfortable for me having a platform I used a platform my entire life I tried other things always went back to that and I can get I know I can give that same tab and that same shooting method to another person and either they feel like they haven't got contact or they've got so much contact they end up cutting their head cutting their face you know so it's it's it's about finding that the key points are you can tell that you're doing it you can feel that you're coming to the same place each time you can you can do it consistently is what I mean you can you have some feedback some sensation so you know you're in a solid position because if this is moving every time I can assure you your arrows are going to be moving every time so we want we want a consistent repeatable position that feels comfortable doesn't cut your face because I tell you over the years we've seen so many so many ways in which people have aggravated their chins and and cause problems so yeah there's not a correct answer the correct answer is to experiment and find what works for you because all three of those options are equally as popular I find