bending at waist

[Terry Green]

[nhbuck1]

ok so bend at the waist before the draw starts as it shows in terrys video

[McDave]

As a training technique in proper alignment, it is useful to draw in an upright posture, as if you were shooting at a target at shoulder level.  This trains you to keep the magic T.  From that position at full draw, you can bend and twist to suit the shot, always keeping your shoulders aligned.  Terry illustrates this in the Tradgang video.  You wouldn't want to do this when hunting, to minimize movement, but you have to learn to walk before you learn to run.

[Terry Green]

I usually 'pre lean' before I draw the bow....I'm sort of 'in position' as I start to draw.  But, this does work if you use the swing draw on a quick opportunity.  Movement at the right time goes totally undetected. Gotten away with it more times than I can remember.

[Terry Green]

Originally posted by nhbuck1:
so in order to get my cant should i draw the bow vertical first?

No not necessarily

[nhbuck1]

so why do i have to bend towards forward ( towards my belt buckle at waist) to shoot canted? i see other people shooting upright with the bow canted and sa they dont need to bend, how much do you have to bend ?

[McDave]

Bending at the waist is simply a means of maintaining the magic T shape of your arms, shoulders and torso.  Stand straight up and draw your bow to hit a target at chest level.  You will notice that your arms, shoulders, and torso form a T shape.  The goal is to keep that same T shape whether you are shooting at a target above or below you, or want to cant the bow for whatever reason you want to cant it.  Bend as necessary to maintain the T shape.  If you don't need to bend to maintain the T shape, then don't bend.

People shoot from all different postures.  If you find some posture that works better for you than standard form, feel free to use it.  It's just that on this forum, we teach standard form.  No doubt standard form will continue to evolve, and will probably be different in some respects in 10 years than it is now.  And, people will come along, like Rick Welch, who are successful shooting and teaching styles that vary in some respects from standard form.