Bow arm steadiness

[bowhuntercook]

Hello, all hope all is well. I have been shooting my recurve which is 49# @28 my draw length is 29. I've been following rick Welchs program to a degree and find I like his program or should I say his way of teaching. My question is that I'm right handed and in his teach you are taught to try to hold the string for a minimum of two seconds. This I can do fine but when I do this I notice my bow hand gets shakey and at times my shots are not as accurate. I know this is a form problem that needs to be resolved. The bow weight isn't a problem for I can draw consistently 67# longbow to my anchor without a hitch. I also shoot split fingers. I figured it was a alignment issue any help is appreciated-Bowhuntercook

[moebow]

OK, I'll weigh in on this again.  Again, without seeing you shoot (video?) I can only be general in suggestions.

What you describe sounds like you are just muscling the bow back and that you are not getting any bone structure involved.  Many self taught archers do this and then don't understand why they start to quickly shake.  Muscles are really meant to move your bones, not to "pull a bow."

So IF you learn to move your bones into alignment to aide holding the bow open, you will find that "holding" is a non factor.  In fact using bone alignment, totally negates the often cited test to see if you are over bowed.

There are several techniques that lead to bone alignment (not sure what Welch teaches) but two are the linear draw and the other (my favorite) the rotational draw.  There are several videos available that describe both systems.  But to get the idea of bone alignment through graphic presentation, I'd recommend a video on You Tube by Archery Winchester named "The wedge." This video won't help with a drawing technique too much but is really good about explaining alignment.

Arne

[McDave]

While I am in agreement with Arne, I don’t believe that bone on bone alignment is all there is.  Do work on bone on bone alignment until you feel you have gotten all the help from bones that you’re going to get.  However, it is impossible to achieve a physical alignment where your bones are totally supporting the weight of the bow, because of the angle between the arrow and your bow arm at full draw.  In order to have complete bone on bone alignment, that angle would have to be reduced to zero.

So that leaves us with strength.  Strength is also important in achieving accuracy in archery.  I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Rick, and can tell you that he spent a lot of time in the gym in his prime, and his arms would have been the envy of many Olympic weightlifters.  His way of teaching good alignment is very similar to Terry’s form clock, which you might like to review.

I also use the 2 second hold, and was not as steady as I needed to be at first.  Most important in solving this problem is developing good bone on bone alignment.  Second most important is just shooting a lot and not cheating on the 2 second hold, even if you think you are more accurate with a shorter hold.  Usually when we change anything, we will be worse for a while until we become comfortable with whatever it is we have changed.  Third, build up your strength.  I’m not crazy about spending a lot of time in the gym (it gets annoying after a while fighting off all the girls who want to admire my body) so I practice holding for extended periods of time every day.  My routine is to hold for 20 seconds, 5 reps.  I built up to this over about 6 weeks before I could comfortably do this with my regular bow.  If you don’t have any lighter weight bows to start with, use exercise bands, etc.