# Form photo critique



## Perentie (Jan 8, 2014)

Wow, you look 'tense'.


Both shoulders are very high and scrunched up. Without your bow. Raise your arms so your hands are at shoulder height. Take a picture. This is about what your shoulders should be looking like. Do NOT raise your shoulders when you do this. It should be a relaxed T.

Your stance towards the target is slightly of rotation. Take an arrows lay it at your feet, point it at the target. Line up feet on the arrow, take a half a step back with the bowside foot.

When you do Draw your bow, do NOT move your head (you should be looking and focusing on the target and the point where you want the arrow to go during this process), Draw bow, and bring the bow to the face. It looks like your head is leaning backwards towards the back, leave it straight up.

Also you are leaning back slightly. Place a bit more weight on the front foot. IE shift hips towards the back foot. It is not going to be a lot, but will feel a ton different.

Once these things have been resolved new picture, and then can determine if DL is 'short/long'.


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## Black Bear TX (Oct 13, 2013)

Will do this tonight. Thank you. 

I do look VERY tense. I was set up at 29.5" draw for 5 months but felt so scrunched I couldn't have fun practicing. Moved it up in .5" steps to 31.5 and feel much better but guess I have ingrained the scrunch. I will focus on this and take new pictures tonight.

Thank you,
Jason


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## Perentie (Jan 8, 2014)

Incorrect form will not really allow for proper DL adjustments. Much better to fix the overall form first then adjust the DL.

It will 'feel' wrong/weird at first. Also accuracy at least initially will suffer as you get used to the new 'feel'. However with being newer to shooting, this should be minimized.


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## Black Bear TX (Oct 13, 2013)

*Trying to get this right*

Thanks again.
As instructed - without bow - forming "T" -shoulders relaxed








Also - with bow - opening stance - shoulders relaxed


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## Black Bear TX (Oct 13, 2013)

I'm unable to shoot any due to the tsunami-like rain we are getting in east Texas.


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## Perentie (Jan 8, 2014)

Much better!

See what 'small' changes can do?

How does the new 'relaxed' form 'feel'?

You look much more relaxed, you are not scrunched, head is not leaning back behind you.

It is also much easier now to see some finer points to work on. 

Release hand grip - You are in a fist, very tense. Relax, move release to sit between the second and third knuckle. Make fist look like a claw like your gonna scratch . This will also help with the release forearm alignment. The elbow will drop down, allowing for that arm to be more in line with the arrow. 

Bow arm - Still out of alignment, but think changing the grip will help 'fix' this. See below.

Grip - Thumb side looks good, however need to turn the knuckles closer to 45 degrees. I suspect you also grab the bow at the shot. (I still do it sometimes is a hard 'habit' to break) Rotate bow hand to near 45 degrees, let middle, ring, and pinky fingers naturally curl up towards the palm, not on the riser. Index finger should be the only finger 'lightly' resting on the front of the riser.

This will also have a side effect of realigning the bow arm bones, and also help prevent string slap. Keeping that bow shoulder down is fairly critical. Where you have it pictured now is fairly good. 

Stance - Fairly good, do not go any wider with the feet. Best is to have them in line under the hips and shoulders. Can bring them in together a bit, but if you feel nicely balanced, wouldn't worry too much more about it for now. Tree stand that wide might be an issue.

Continue to keep the DL where it is for now. It is looking to be about right, at most it is 1/2 long. But lets get the rest sorted first. Good thing is you are not leaning backwards.

Remember after these changes, and until you get used to the feel and are consistently doing it, groups will be erratic. Once you get it down and are used to it they will shrink right on up.


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## Black Bear TX (Oct 13, 2013)

Thanks again. Looks like severe rain through this entire week. I hope to get some time this weekend to practice all this. I'm hoping I will have my 4'X4' target finished this weekend. I will be able to blind bale 1000's of rounds and work on form without the worry of aiming/missing. I'll post again when I get all of this built into muscle memory. Otherwise, I feel like I'm just posing for the photo from memory not learning for repeat success.


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## Black Bear TX (Oct 13, 2013)

I was able to shoot about 50 arrows this evening. Still trying to work in all the little things. Noticable less fatigue in both shoulders after only 50 shots. Acuracy was about the same however I was focusing on form more than sight picture. I finished with a 60 yard group of 3 after having given up on anything over 30 yards for the last month. It was not a great group but I knew I would hit the target. Before I was getting a lot more flyers than I did today. 

I noticed with the claw grip on the release, my string just lightly touches my face opposed to being barried. I think this accounted for a lot of my flyers. 

I practiced letting down from full draw several times today and can't tell you how much easier this is when the shoulders is relaxed. I was worried for the last two months that I injured something in my bow shoulder after letting down a few times while very tense. Now I have absolutly no pain.
Anyways I am VERY thankful for the help so far. After setteling in with this new form I will put up some more picture and check draw length and other flaws.


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## Perentie (Jan 8, 2014)

Awesome work!

Very glad to hear that relaxing is helping you. I hope some of the other notables would chime in here as well. They may see some things I may miss. I have only pointed out some of the more obvious things.

Pain is definitely something you do NOT want to have while shooting. Being a bit sore in the beginning after an extended shooting session is fine, we normally do not work archery muscles in quite the same way in our normal day to day lives. However pain in the shoulders is always bad, or anywhere else for that matter. 

You are well on your way to a long archery addiction, with good shooting.

Above all have FUN!


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## Black Bear TX (Oct 13, 2013)

Had a blast shooting this evening. Mosquitos almost flew away with me otherwise I would still be out there. Got rid of the temperary "P" -loop today after getting my shipment of bcy#24 from bradco.com. I feel like I had some issues that the new "d-loop" cleared up. Ie vanes getting trashed on rest. 

My shoulders are thanking this thread more and more. I instantly know when my bow shoulder is high. I get a sore feeling that I know now is NOT normal. With my shoulders relaxed I feel nothing. And who knew that my sight pin could hold so still on a spot. I can tell when everything is aligned properly when my float shinks down to almost nothing.

I shot about a dozen arrows today before I remembered to make the claw for the release. I almost adjusted my sight because I was constantly off to the left. Then I used the claw grip on the release and I was dead on my spot. 

Thanks again and hope you will help out when I get all this put into muscle memory. I will post another picture to see where I'm at with draw-length and any other flaws.


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## Perentie (Jan 8, 2014)

Awesome!

You are definitely a candidate for a good student for a coach. A lot can be done via forums/pictures, but will never compare to having someone there with you to instruct and coach you. 

If you really want to improve, you may want to seriously consider getting some coaching 1 on 1 with a good coach. It is well worth the money and time invested.

With the pain showing up when your form is not on, I suspect you do have some medical issues that may need to be looked at though. It probably is nothing major, but I would recommend at least having your shoulders looked at. Not knowing your history, both for sports, work, etc... there could be some minor damage that is there. I would not like to have it get worse and creep into hurting for you while shooting while in good form, and possibly preventing you down the road from shooting at all. 

If any pain starts to happen in the joints, immediately go to a doctor. For practice and such you can easily lower the draw weight of the bow. Even at 60# you will have enough Kinetic Energy/Momentum to kill any North American game animals. It will also allow you to shoot more arrows without fatigue, which can break your form down as it sets in.

So for practice, lower the Draw Weight, then when it gets closer to Hunting season, crank it back up and re-sight in, and get a nice deer for the freezer!


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## Black Bear TX (Oct 13, 2013)

Funny you mention looking into instructors. I actually just looked up instructors again earlier this morning, but no luck locally. I searched and emailed all coaches in my area several months ago. Out of the ones I could find, two are coaches at schools only, and one is a pediatrician without time to spare. The only local shop has been no help. In fact I have learned to do all my own work because the times I have gone to my local shop they have had no bow technician working there. It took 3 hours for the guy working the feed store next door to setup 2 bows for me to try out. Anyways, the local archery support is horrible here.

As far as pain while shooting, I think I over exaggerated this. I only had pain while letting down and very tense. This pain leads to soreness after letting down and once caused me to take 2 days off of practicing. Otherwise just the occational soreness. I'm sure I have some very slight shoulder issues, but that came from rugby. Plenty of issues after 4 years of rugby.

I work in radiology and routinely do arthrograms (xrays done with contrast to look for tears in the shoulder/hip joint). If it persist, or gets worse, I will get this seen about. I shot over 50 arrows this morning and no pain or soreness at all. I have considered lowing my poundage nearer 60ish just haven't done it yet. I'm 6'5" and 260lbs and seem to have no trouble drawing 70#. However, I see absolutley no need for that much draw weight for east texas whitetails. 70# may come in handy for hogs, but I don't eat them so unless someone asks me to kill or trap them I don't mess with the stupid things.

Anways, I will lower my poundage a few turns and go from there. I'm much happier shooting and actually shot a great 40 yard group this morning. At 20 yards I'm still working on keeping each shot on a spot the size of a quarter. I was shooting 4 arrows at a time at 4 spots the size or a quarter this morning and was able to get all four on the spot at 20 yards several times. At 40 yards my average group was about 2-2.5 inches from the two furthest arrows. I'm confortable with this right now but want to get rid of my occational flyers. I think blind bales will help. Most flyers seem to be from punching my thumb release a little. When I have a clean suprise release I know that one will not be off target. 

Thanks again for the help. I know this is a very long post but I'm kinda using this as a journal synopsis. I can come back later and remeber what to work on and what may not be working right.


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## Perentie (Jan 8, 2014)

Perfect! You are in the medical field so know when you should get things looked at. Yes rugby is a rough sport!

That is some very very very good shooting! 

Glad to hear you are already considering dropping the DW down some. Shows you have a bit of maturity. If you read any threads on here about folks shooting high DW it becomes a very nasty thread. You will notice though that the more 'experienced' (older) archers for the most part say they wished they had shot with a lower DW for years, due to damage to their shoulder joints. I do think there is a time and a place for it. However for extended practice and normal target shooting, to get the most out of shooting, at least in my opinion it is better overall to use a lower DW. But use the Higher DW if you are comfortable doing it for short periods of time if needed. Since I do plan on shooting for a loooong time, I am keeping my DW reasonable, as I want to be able to continue shooting without having to have surgery, I hate needles, and have watched many a surgery and it is brutal, not for me thanks!


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## Black Bear TX (Oct 13, 2013)

I find it hard to judge what a good group size should be. I have never actually seen anyone shoot a bow other than the pros on youtube. My brother being the exception, but he is not a great shot at all. He only picks up his bow a few weeks before bow season. I don't put too much into the pictures of groups posted on here. I'm sure they are just a photo of their best groups. Who really post photos of average groups? Also, I'm still considering myself new with much room to improve. I hope to be confident in a 60 yard group hitting the vitals of a deer, so I can ethically take out a deer at 30 yards. Most all my shots should be at +/- 20 yards. Right now I still have too many "flyers" even at 20 yards. Flyers being those that even before seeing impact I know it is high low left or right. Sometimes even at 20 yards I'm off by 2+ inches with the flyers. This is too much for my liking right now, but I have plenty of time to improve.


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