Garrett,
Both the suggestions by Brent and Jamie are excellent and may very well cure your problem. Failing to reach full draw is a lot like flinching when shooting a rifle. Your anticipation of the shot causes you to rush it before everything is right. Those two exercises are similar to putting fired cartridges into a rifle and having someone fire it normally. Many people will jerk the trigger and flinch even when there is no discharge of the gun. Dry firing a rifle is some of the best target practice you can have because you acquire muscle memory that produces shots that do not try to take into account recoil. Firing arrows into a large target with your eyes closed or drawing the bow, holding it, and then letting off without shooting the arrow are as close to dry firing as you can get without ruining a bow and scaring yourself to death. Once you have been able to attain the muscle memory of drawing and anchoring over and over again without thinking about where your shot will go, that sequence will feel natural to you, and you will pull to full draw and a solid anchor automatically.
I need to do more of those exercises myself at times. Don't worry, we all start losing form and have to go back to work correcting it. The same thing applies to guys who do other instinctive sports too, like Tiger Woods. He is always practicing his form and regularly gets out of form -- just not as often as the rest of the PGA competitors. As a golf pro, Limbow (Kevin Osworth), who is a TG member, can tell you all about exercises that improve form other than just hitting balls or shooting arrows. As in golf or most other sports, a good coach can help you in many ways. Even a fellow trad archer who is fairly knowledgeable can point out obvious flaws and help you discipline yourself to overcome them. The best self coaching comes from a video camera. Let the camera roll while you are shooting. First, it will discipline you to try your utmost to look good for yourself when you review the video. Second, you will probably be able to spot most of the problems you are having all on your own. A really good instructor with a video camera is best of all, because he/she can point out your problem areas on the video and then work with you while you are shooting to help you correct the problems. That is also the way the best golf swing instruction is done in my limited golfing experience. Kevin can tell us all about it if he reads this thread.
There are many really good archery instructors who are part of the Gang, so if I said something wrong here, I hope they will jump all over me and correct it.
Allan
Topic: Not Getting To Full Draw (Read 553 times)
