Cant the bow without torquing the string?

[trad_in_cali]

Hello,
I am pleased with my form. The one thing I'm struggling with, is this. If I keep the bow straight, the string blir covers the target, so I can't see it. So I know the string is aligned with my eye correctly. So I've been trying to force the bow's arm to twist and cant the bow just enough to see my target. But I know it puts stress on torquing the string, since my string arm won't twist that way, but the other way, if any. So I'm wondering if that is affecting my release.

I hear people say bend the body with the cant, to clear the sight of the target, but what does that mean, exactly?

Any other advice to not torque?

Thanks!
Marco

[McDave]

Ideally, if your string arm is relaxed, and if you are pulling with your back muscles, your string hand should follow the angle of the string and not torque.  You should be able to cant the bow, with or without bending your body with the cant, and your string hand should follow whatever cant your bow hand puts on the bow.

That is what you should work on doing, but it is not an easy thing to do.  You can also shoot fairly well if you do it backwards.  In other words, set your string hand at a certain cant and relax your bow hand enough that you can see where the bow wants to go.

I also like to shoot with the string blur just visible on the outside of my eye, and accomplish that without torqueing the bow by alternatively relaxing my bow hand and rotating my string hand until everything is in balance and the string is where I want it.  This is not as desirable as if I could just totally relax my string hand so it would follow the angle set by my bow hand, but I have a hard time doing that.

In answer to your other question, I think that if you truly bent your body to the same angle as the cant, you would never solve your first problem, which is getting the string blur out of the center of your eye.  I think that once you establish a good shooting position with the string blur to the side of your eye, it would probably be a good idea to maintain that allignment by bending your body with your cant so the string blur always appears in the same position.  As a practical matter, I find that I'm only using extreme cants at short ranges, so as long as I use good form the arrow seems to go pretty much where I'm looking.

[njloco]

If you cant the bow, you don't have to cant your whole body unless it is at a significant angle, but just your head, so If you can't slightly to the right, just tilt your head slightly to the cant.

As I understand it, the string blur or string, should be just off to the right side of your iris (colored part), not down the middle of the pupil (black part).

Hopefully I got the parts of the eye named correctly.

[trad_in_cali]

Thanks. I think I may be coming at a crosspoint with adopting the Rick Welch's style and how I shoot. He advocates shooting with the string in the middle of the first fingerpad (not in the first finger groove, where the fingers bend), but that tenses the hand significantly (in my case). If I then cant the bow, it plucks the string.
Have some trying to do at the range today, thanks McDave and jloco!

[mark land]

If you cant your bow then your head, string and hand should all be at the same angle or else you will torque the string, Also gives more consistency to your anchor and contact points as well.

[McDave]

I also went to Rick's class, and shot for some time afterwards with the string forward of the first joint on my finger pads.  At some point I switched back to shooting with the string in the first joint, as I believe it gives me more control over the shot, and makes it easier for me to relax my forearm.

If you look back at archery books written 50-150 years ago, you find that people were being advised to shoot with the string on the finger pads.  They probably knew as much about shooting trad bows then as we do now, since our western archery tradition has been developing for more than a thousand years, and reached a heyday in the 13th and 14th centuries.  The point being that different styles work better for different people, and the best thing we can do is to try different things and see what works best for us.