# Bow Arm Follow Through



## ssxd (Apr 15, 2015)

I came across this short article, penned by GB archer Naomi Folkard, the other day.

http://www.bow-international.com/features/technique/ask-the-experts-follow-through/

While I often hear about drawing arm follow through, where on release the elbow comes back and the hand moves behind the head / neck (ideally, anyway -- I still struggle with doing this consistently), this was the first I've heard about bow arm follow through, in the sense that there should be some lateral movement across your view on release.



> The other part of the follow-through is the reaction of your front arm. The strength and direction in your front arm and shoulder should continue on execution and follow through towards the target while pulling across the target a few inches. This is an unnatural reaction for most people because we like to continue looking at the target the whole time, which is a great thing to do but we need to allow the bow to cross the picture of the target. Of course the head and body should be still on execution. Remember, the shot isn’t finished until the arrow hits the target.


Is this something everyone strives for? I'm guessing that the fact that I don't do this at the moment is the reason that my tipping bow just hits my leg rather than doing the large rotation that most top-level archers seem to have.


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## jmvargas (Oct 21, 2004)

i'm a bit confused by this....

once the arrow completely leaves the bow there is nothing else that could affect it...

i for one just continue to point my bow arm towards the target as long as i can and also let my drawing arm react backwards naturally after release...

similar to my follow thru in golf i just let my body continue to move due to the momentum created with my swing and trust that i made a good swing..

assuming my form and execution of the shot in archery is correct i just do the same thing..

no need to overthink this----i think.


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## jmvargas (Oct 21, 2004)

jmvargas said:


> i'm a bit confused by this....
> 
> once the arrow completely leaves the bow there is nothing else that could affect it...
> 
> ...


....just to clarify my 2nd sentence...."once the arrow completely leaves the bow there is nothing else that THE ARCHER CAN DO TO affect it"...


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## erose (Aug 12, 2014)

Hum...considering that the sight picture of the target is on the bow arm side of the riser, is he referring to pulling the bow back across the target?

I think that what he is referring to is icing, i.e. One's flare or style, much like the NTS system recommending dropping the wrist after release. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## jmvargas (Oct 21, 2004)

erose said:


> Hum...considering that the sight picture of the target is on the bow arm side of the riser, is he referring to pulling the bow back across the target?
> 
> I think that what he is referring to is icing, i.e. One's flare or style, much like the NTS system recommending dropping the wrist after release.
> 
> ...


....i think you're right..

i have seen some moves AFTER the shot that have been pretty dramatic much like a golfer trying to will his ball to move right..or left...after he knows he's made a less than perfect swing..


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## Viper1 (Aug 21, 2003)

ssxd - 

The bow arm really shouldn't move - at all (as in dead, not rigid). How possible that is, varies from person to person. 

When someone tells you exactly what supposed to happen and why, look elsewhere for an answer. 

Viper1 out.


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## blackxpress (Apr 2, 2013)

I don't think this is something you should try to manipulate. My bow arm does this naturally whenever I make a good shot. It isn't something I can control. When I have executed the shot properly my draw arm flies back behind my head because of the release of tension (surprise release). If my draw arm stays pretty much at my anchor point it's because I punched the release and caused it to go off prematurely. I have observed that when I make a really good shot with a true surprise release my bow arm just naturally crosses slightly to my right (I'm right handed). Not really sure why it does that.


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## StarDog (Feb 17, 2007)

I just try not to drop my bow arm after the shot or grab the bow. 'm not entirely sure what the purpose of the bow roll is to be honest. If I do this right, arm up, open and, the lower limb just taps my thigh. (me trying the bow roll is a recipe for disaster). 

Maybe someone can enlighten me about the purpose of the "bow roll" as "icing.".


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## Georgemay (May 27, 2008)

Just watch this two fine archers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIvKZ026-LA
and see how "dead" their bow arm is.


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## larry tom (Aug 16, 2012)

ssxd. FWIW, I agree with the other posters. My own experience, after unsuccessfully trying to implement the bow roll, is that my must successful shots involve keeping my bow arm as still as possible after the arrow is released. in fact I have my stabilizers weighted so that the bow is balanced and I can shoot with a dead stick. I also try to keep all of me as still as possible until the arrow hits the target. Regards, LT


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## erose (Aug 12, 2014)

StarDog said:


> I just try not to drop my bow arm after the shot or grab the bow. 'm not entirely sure what the purpose of the bow roll is to be honest. If I do this right, arm up, open and, the lower limb just taps my thigh. (me trying the bow roll is a recipe for disaster).
> 
> Maybe someone can enlighten me about the purpose of the "bow roll" as "icing.".


I'm the same way. There is enough to work on in the shot sequence already that trying to have my bow roll around and hit me in the groin is not on my short list of things to work on...in fact it isn't on my list at all.


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## damiaan (Feb 17, 2014)

> Is this something everyone strives for? I'm guessing that the fact that I don't do this at the moment is the reason that my tipping bow just hits my leg rather than doing the large rotation that most top-level archers seem to have.


nah you don't strive for it, it just happens as a result of the forces you have in the bowshoulder, there is a reaction force forwards and a small moment counterclockwise (seen from above RH archer) because the bowarm is not in the line of the force. The closer the bowarm gets to the line of force (IE the line between pressure point and drawhand) the smaller the moment needs to be.
when the string is released the bowarm rotates counterclockwise (seen from above RH archer) which results in the bow moving to the left across your view.
its perfectly normal. 

Shoud you force it? no, but its an indication of balanced form.


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## Georgemay (May 27, 2008)

damiaan said:


> nah you don't strive for it, it just happens as a result of the forces you have in the bowshoulder, there is a reaction force forwards and a small moment counterclockwise (seen from above RH archer) because the bowarm is not in the line of the force. The closer the bowarm gets to the line of force (IE the line between pressure point and drawhand) the smaller the moment needs to be.
> when the string is released the bowarm rotates counterclockwise (seen from above RH archer) which results in the bow moving to the left across your view.
> its perfectly normal.
> 
> Shoud you force it? no, but its an indication of balanced form.


:thumbs_up:shade: Exactly !


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## c365 (May 15, 2013)

Perhaps it's more a mental attitude rather than something visible but in my mind, there should be a will or state of mind to drive the bowarm forward towards the target to prevent subconscious collapsing if not anything else.


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## UtahIdahoHunter (Mar 27, 2008)

Tell that to Henry Bass. He ain't bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLlNTDaf6VE

It's even freakier to watch in person.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

An interesting observation I often share with my students is the difference in the direction of the bow arm in elite archers like Brady and Khatuna, vs. even "very good" archers. If both halves expand through the shot, the bow arm should be moving toward a point behind the archer, just as the draw arm is doing. 

Study the bow arm follow through of Brady and Khatuna and then compare that to other archers. If you look closely, you will see a difference.


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## ssxd (Apr 15, 2015)

Thanks a lot for all the great replies. This place is always full of helpful people.



StarDog said:


> I just try not to drop my bow arm after the shot or grab the bow. 'm not entirely sure what the purpose of the bow roll is to be honest. If I do this right, arm up, open and, the lower limb just taps my thigh. (me trying the bow roll is a recipe for disaster).


This is pretty much where I'm at right now. I grab the bow way too often and definitely start to drop my arm as I get tired, so these are things I tend to focus on, along with draw hand follow through (I have a bad tendency to relax not just my fingers but my whole draw arm when the clicker goes off).



limbwalker said:


> An interesting observation I often share with my students is the difference in the direction of the bow arm in elite archers like Brady and Khatuna, vs. even "very good" archers. If both halves expand through the shot, the bow arm should be moving toward a point behind the archer, just as the draw arm is doing.
> 
> Study the bow arm follow through of Brady and Khatuna and then compare that to other archers. If you look closely, you will see a difference.


I found this video of Khatuna Lorig from overhead.
https://instagram.com/p/-evn2CKBTk/
To my novice eyes there is no motion towards the back, but I've certainly seen it in other archers to varying degrees, and the physics of it make sense.



Viper1 said:


> ssxd -
> 
> The bow arm really shouldn't move - at all (as in dead, not rigid). How possible that is, varies from person to person.
> 
> ...


What everyone's responses indicate to me is that, as with many things in this sport, while there may be an ideal way (or ways) to do things, there is a lot of room for individuality.

Thanks everyone.


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## theminoritydude (Feb 11, 2013)

Folkard speaks the truth.


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## Ar-Pe-Lo (Oct 16, 2011)

Viper1 said:


> ssxd -
> 
> The bow arm really shouldn't move - at all (as in dead, not rigid). How possible that is, varies from person to person.
> 
> ...


Well that's greatly depend on type of execution.....and to be honest, there is very few good archers who's bow arm is not moving at all. Most of them using push or push & pull type of execution and there must be bow arm movement by nature of this execution.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

> I found this video of Khatuna Lorig from overhead.
> https://instagram.com/p/-evn2CKBTk/
> To my novice eyes there is no motion towards the back, but I've certainly seen it in other archers to varying degrees, and the physics of it make sense.


Not one of her stronger shots IMO.

Khatuna has always fought a slight collapse - just like most of us do. Brady was trained from scratch to shoot a recurve and never developed this bad habit. He is the best example I know of for an archer who continues to expand through the shot, which is why his bow ends up moving to the Left on release, and his stabilizer swings behind him. When Khatuna is shooting very well, hers does the same.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

Not the best video, but start watching at 1:21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PsBohkqvxQ


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## kshet26 (Dec 20, 2010)

What about Koreans? Most that I've seen have a pretty motionless bow arm after the shot. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnICZaSeHoE

Though I guess I do see a bit of movement with Park (Coach Kim has said she has perfectly balanced execution):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCd7YBiV1U8

Maybe Ki is a puller?


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

That is true. Most Koreans have a straight forward release of the bow arm, much like Khatuna's in the link above. It is a easy way to understand the difference between the linear and angular shot philosophies. 

Coach Lee has always emphasized the angular rotation, and Brady is the best example of this, continuing the motion through his follow-through. 

Obviously, it's not the only way to shoot world-class scores, as the Koreans have had a linear follow-through for as long as I can remember. I learned this sport before Lee arrived and my goal was to have a linear follow-through and keep the bow arm moving directly toward the target on release.

A person can make either work, as evidenced by the success of both methods.

As many of us "non-kool-aid" drinkers often point out, there are many successful methods that share some common traits but also have significant differences. Heck, although I've yet to have the pleasure of watching her shoot in person, I hear Fawn Girard (who blew up the women's NFAA traditional record a few weeks ago in Louisville) has a near-static release, akin to the great Howard Hill. Anyone who can shoot a 288 on an NFAA indoor 300 with a traditional bow must be doing a whole lot right. Most recurve archers have never shot a 288.


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## Viper1 (Aug 21, 2003)

John - 

So how do you teach a new student (kid or adult)?
Try to develop a solid shoulder geometry and stationary bow arm and then let them evolve over time or start off with an anything goes tact, because so and so does it that way? I seem to remember one guy in the Olympics who had a pretty bad release, but still qualified mostly because of a solid bow arm. Remember who he was? 

This is where I run into a problem, most people here are relatively new, based on the questions being asked. (That has to do with legit training and not years, btw.) I don't think doing a compare and contrast with celebrity shooters does the newer guys a lot of good. I don't give my (new) shooters a lot of options, until the boiler plate foundation has been established. By that time the evolution has begun, and hopefully steered by an educated eye to avoid bad habits. 

re: bow arm follow-through, if I can train a shooter to keep his bow arm dead (single side expansion), it's one less variable we have to worry about.

BTW - the "great Howard Hill" and a few others have done little more that screw up a whole generation of "traditional" shooters who tried copying them without understanding the whys and hows they were actually doing things. See a similarity?

Again, it's about not using a isolated case to establish a viable training method or theory. 

So, what do you teach a new shooter?

Viper1 out.


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## StarDog (Feb 17, 2007)

limbwalker said:


> That is true. Most Koreans have a straight forward release of the bow arm, much like Khatuna's in the link above. It is a easy way to understand the difference between the linear and angular shot philosophies.
> 
> Coach Lee has always emphasized the angular rotation, and Brady is the best example of this, continuing the motion through his follow-through.
> 
> ...


Funny you should say that. My coach, while she works with Coach Lee, uses the phrase "tension and direction" meaning, the release comes back and around but she stresses bow arm not jumping sideways, just keeping the shoot moving forward. Anything more complicated than that like the "bow roll" and I'm toast. She teaches her younger beginner kids the "sit down dog" but I don't see any of her students with unnecessary movement in the bow arm.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

I think what a lot of people need to remember is that Brady is the finished product of elite coaching and elite training. In other words, in the absence of elite coaches and the ability to train like an elite athlete, there is probably no point in casual recreational archers trying to mimic what he does any more than I should try to dive like the 10 meter Olympic platform divers. I think this is something that is just ignored by so many people. There are good techniques for recreational archers to learn, and they are in many cases not the same as the techniques that elite full-time archers use. 

And as soon as I suggest that (whether or not it's true) I will get flamed by recreational archers who in their mind, believe they can achieve the same results with 1/10th or 1/100th the amount of work that Brady and other elites have put in.

I have never bothered to try and duplicate the bow arm follow through of any other archers, esp. NTS/BEST archers trained by coach Lee because I know darn good and well I'm not going to put in the tens of thousands of arrows required to relearn this technique. For me, the juice isn't worth the squeeze, so to speak. And if it isn't worth it to me - someone who routinely shoots 10K arrows/year just for the "fun of it" - what chance does the typical recreational archer have, who hasn't shot 10K arrows in their entire life?

Anyway, to answer Tony's questions...



> I seem to remember one guy in the Olympics who had a pretty bad release, but still qualified mostly because of a solid bow arm. Remember who he was?


Yea, I seem to remember someone like that.  But truth be told, my release wasn't nearly as bad as many people thought it was. It was my lack of follow-through that made it look bad. At the training camp following the '04 trials, we had some Dartfish slow-motion video taken of each of us. Believe it or not, for the time my arrow was on the string, my release was actually pretty good and I'd suggest it even compared pretty well to Butch's. But my follow-through was flat-out dead (no doubt from my traditional days) and that led everyone to believe my release was bad. It wasn't. You don't shoot 330's in the wind at 70 meters with a bad release. 



> I don't think doing a compare and contrast with celebrity shooters does the newer guys a lot of good.


I completely agree, which is why I said what I said above. 

To answer your question about "what do you teach?" I teach beginners and recreational archers parallel lines and linear draw, period. I am more than happy to teach NTS and angular rotation IF AND ONLY IF the student has demonstrated to me they will put the time in to learn it the right way. So far, I've not had a single student finish the training I started with them using NTS. Plenty have started, but not one has finished, unless you count Forest Blakley who I handed off to coach Lee in 2007 when he became an RA. He finished, but not under my instruction.

So, parallel lines and linear draw with a bow arm going straight to the target work best for recreational archers.

I have one student who for years ate up everything I said and wanted to learn the "elite" methods of shooting recurve. He worked hard and I thought he might be someone who could complete the NTS training. So I started him on the angular draw and full rotation, including the bowarm. We studied videos of Brady and Khatuna (when she was shooting strong shots with a full rotational follow-through) and he worked on this for months. He got pretty good at it too, and was making progress. But the scores didn't quite catch up by the time his life got real busy (college, work, etc.) and eventually we both agreed that him going back to more of a linear shot with the bowarm moving to the target was the best compromise for him considering his level of training. And it's worked fine for him. He has been able to take long periods off, and return to good scores - even really good scores - by keeping things really simple. 

This is why I teach parallel lines and linear draw. Because the KISS method ALWAYS works best for recreational archers. Period. If someone wants to prove me wrong, fine but in my experience, most all recreational archers just cannot put in enough arrows in front of coaches that are well qualified in NTS to make it work as it's intended. 

What happens, and why some have been able to make it work, is they go from being a recreational archer to basically a full-time archer (who maybe does work or school on the side, and maybe not), usually training at the OTC, in front of coaches that truly understand it. Then, they can usually make it work. 

What I never want to see is a bow that is moving in front of the archer on release. That is a collapse and it will never work. This is why I hate the "drop and toss" that I see so many recreational archers do, to keep the bow moving out in front of them so the lower limb doesn't hit them. So many recreational archers have trained themselves to collapse just enough with their bowarm that the lower limb or stabilizer doesn't hit them on the follow through. And it's amazing how many coaches don't see this either. I sometimes call it "casting" the bow out in front. 

If you watch early video of me shooting OR, you will see the bow moving directly toward the target on release, and the lower limb of the bow coming within a fraction of an inch of my face on the follow through. I was completely unaware how close the lower limb was to my face until I saw it on the Dartfish video. Every now and then, if I wore a cap, the lower limb would hit the bill of my cap - that's how close it was. But I was so focused on the target that I had zero awareness of where the lower limb was. 

Jenny Nichols' famous "front leg" follow through is the result of her driving the bow toward the target and the entire bow staying so well on line that the lower limb would hit her front thigh every single shot. Some of my archers do the same thing, and I use Jenny as a good example for them. 

Anyway, it's an interesting subject - and one that I believe many coaches need to study quite a bit more than they do. For some strange reason, it seems 90% of the focus is on half of the shot (release). And this isn't unique to Olympic archers. Traditional archers obsess over the release as well, and completely ignore what the bowarm is doing, usually to their frustration.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

Sorry for the "book." Blame my 9th grade typing teacher.


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## Viper1 (Aug 21, 2003)

John -

Thanks, that's kinda what I thought, just wasn't seeing it. The issue I had was that the points you just brought up (about some elite shooters) weren't mentioned and as you said, often forgotten. We all see too many people "doing nts" without a clue, or time or proper coaching, just because they want to be bffs with "brady". 

We talked about the lee thing when it first started, and I still remember what you told me. Glad you stuck to your guns.
Too much name dropping and not enough practical, IMHO of course. I could care less what "brady or "khatuna" are doing this week, because, I'm not them. 

Still my personal take on nts, is that it's a long way around (with more pit falls) to get to the same place as more kiss related methods. And after a certain point, the shooter tells the coach what's needed, they just don't realize they (the shooter) is doing it. (Deliberately vague, I know.)

I remember some of your Oly footage, your solid bow arm saved a couple of shots .

No problem with the book, really good post!

Viper1 out.


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## toj (Aug 22, 2012)

We have a few archers who mimic the Brady style of shooting.

The upshot is we have a few archers you can't shoot next to without getting clouted in the follow though.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

toj said:


> We have a few archers who mimic the Brady style of shooting.
> 
> The upshot is we have a few archers you can't shoot next to without getting clouted in the follow though.


:wink:


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