# Should the wrist be straight or not?



## aread (Dec 25, 2009)

IMO, you should set your wrist, and other parts of your form, so that you are using the least muscle possible. 

The old rule is that muscle should be fully relaxed or fully engaged. It's nearly impossible to partially engage muscle to the same degree two times in a row, much less a full match. 

Of course the best thing is to test the various ways that you think might work and see what works best for you. 

JMHO,
Allen


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## Warbow (Apr 18, 2006)

Although by all accounts Lee is an insightful and talented coach, some his claims about physiology, neurology and physics can be somewhat suspect. The new book _Archery_, edited by "USA Archery," features a standard Lee claim, that looking too far to the side of your "eye openings" decreases neurological strength. This claim has been "proven" to some coaches at cert classes by using a biased, subjective arm pushing test that gives the answer people expect, or are _led_ to expect.

There seems to be a fundamental contradiction between "puts the muscles of the forearm in a relaxed position" and "the drawing hand thumb needs to be _stretched_ down and back". If you stretch your thumb, you'll have to use muscles to do it. If the thumb needs to be relaxed then I'd think people should _relax_ it, not use muscles to force it into a specific position.

The bent wrist thing is weird, too. Bending your wrist weakens your ability to grab things, including the string. So that means you'll have to use more muscles, not less, for the same hook. However, the bent wrist could lead to a smoother release because the fingers of your bent wrist have less strength. :dontknow:

Could everyone else be wrong and only Coach Lee has it right? Possible, but I think, for the most part, unlikely. Coach Lee's convincing personality, and his following, is such that questioning his teachings can be difficult. Granted, I'm not the 30 year veteran with the medal winning track record, on the other hand I'm also not the one claiming "Many archery texts in the past have _incorrectly_ mandated a flat or straight drawing wrist". I expect Coach Lee is dead on about many, many things in archery but that he may be wrong about a number of others and either doesn't get called on it because of his high position, or because he follows his gut not the scientific process. When I hear that BEST/KSL II/NTS is biomechanically efficient I think "Citation Needed".


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## TheAncientOne (Feb 14, 2007)

Watch Brady and Jake shoot, they are the best of the NTS archers and they keep their wrists straight. 

http://new.livestream.com/lancasterclassic2/recurve

Skip forward to 44:40 to watch their shoot-off.

TAO


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## Reverend (Nov 2, 2004)

I'd like to know more about this as I tend to bend my wrist and have not found any remedies. I suspect that it has to do with my inability to relax my forearm, but I still haven't figured out how to do it.


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