1. Shooting Sequence Steps
Four (4) Phases:
Movement Preparation
Period for the Production of Forces
Critical Instance
Continuity of the bow arm & hand
We will consider in this presentation the bow arm as part of the phase Continuity.
This set of slides details the part on the bow arm follow-up from the set of slides on Continuity #6
This presentation is also called ENG-08-Bow arm. It is available in English, French and Spanish.
The colored bars above the slides indicate the following code:
Blue for level 1
Red for level 2
Yellow for level 3
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

2. The free movement of the bow
Continuity
The free movement of the bow
The bow must on release:
moves straight forward in the shooting plane/axis,
rotates a little due to the torque effect (translation as well as rotation).
That means among others that the bow is not fixed in the bow hand.
Any force applied on the bow grip by the bow hand has to be repeated, furthermore such a force could be applied in a direction that could be different – hence interfers with the moving direction of the bow. This is why a relaxed bow hand should be taught.
To avoid the bow from jumping out of the hand and falling down on the ground, which causes damage, the archer uses a bow or finger sling.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

3. Exercises with relaxed
Continuity
Physical follow-up
Bow hand
Exercises with relaxed
bow-hand
and with Help
Exercises to teach a relaxed bow hand:
simple mimics on the left column
On the middle column:
Top picture, is when the rubber band is stretched up
Bottom picture when the rubber band is relaxed down
On the right column (pictures to be remade, since the assistant should be on the other side of the bow arm):
Top picture: the assistant oscillates and pushes the riser on the archer’s hand
Bottom picture: suddenly the assistant remove the bow away
In any of the above situation, the coach must check the relaxation state of the bow hand at the conclusion of the exercise.
If the bow hand is not relaxed, the bow will be pushed up, which is not optimal for the shot.
alone
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

4. Mano de arco Otra simulación Continuidad
Pascal Colmaire – Director de Entrenamiento y Desarrollo de WA

5. Or the bow can be suspended
Continuity
Bow Hand
Discovering the natural movement of the Bow Hand.
How?
Why?
Left picture: To assist the archer to discover a natural follow-through, a surprise release should be generated. Simply the coach pull the string back WHILE HOLDING THE ARCHER (see the coach’ s left hand on the archer’s bow shoulder) and release. It is recommended to provide a visual feedback to the archer while doing this – just use a mirror, a video, ask the archer to observe his/her bow hand, bow arm… Whoever releases the string (coach or archer), the same follow-though should be achieved.
The bow arm has to prevent the bow from moving towards the archer during the draw. It is more stopping the bow than pushing it. The archer should maintain an upright position during this proces.
If the coach draws the bow, the archer can discover the way to stop the bow. If the bow is suspended, the archer can train to relax the bow hand after release.
Right picture: Shooting without a sling. The assistan catches the bow.
For any of these exercise:
* the archer MUST watch the bow hand only (not the target, arrow flight…)
* the distance to the target should be short, 3 meters is fine.
Or the bow can be suspended
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

6. Verify the relaxation of the bow with an assistant
Continuity
Bow Hand
Verify the relaxation of the bow with an assistant
or suspended bow or…
Left picture: shooting with a suspended bow
Right picture: Holding a nail, or more harmless a match, forces the archer to shoot with relaxed bow fingers
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

7. Until you have good regular execution
Continuity
Bow Hand
Work with a reduced draw, observing and progressively increasing the draw.
self awareness
Until you have good regular execution
Self explanatory slide
Self awareness is most important as long as the routine is not yet automized into a regular execution.
Note for all archers: exercizing during practice sessions is a permanent concern. Low level archers often think that shooting is only hitting a target face as much as possible.
Pascal Colmaire – Training and Develpoment Coaching Director of WA

8. Train to reach a good execution regularity
Continuity
Physical follow-up
Train to reach a good execution regularity
The art of repetition is a good execution regularity. A perfect technique causes an easy execution of the shot.
Note the totally relaxation of the bow hand after release (but not the thumb!). See the picture on the right.
Change the pictures since they are blurred, the bow sling is too long, thumb is not relaxed.
Always looking for the perfect technique
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

9. How? Why? Discovering the natural movement of the bow arm. Continuity
This exercise can again be used to discover the bow arm follow-up (like we did for the bow hand)
Through the exercise illustrated above, we can observe that the bow arm naturally (on a surprise/uncontrolled release), moves toward the backside of the archer (left for a R/H archer), a little forward (target direction), then drops a bit (particularly when the bow drops down). Of course this bowarm “drift” only starts after the end of the release , as we can easily observe on a high speed video. This drift is due to the follow-through activity of the muscles located in the archer’s back and back of the bow shoulder
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

10. Arms rotation Continuity
Due to the fixation of the bow arm with the muscles of the back during the draw, including the critical instant, the bow arm will move slightly backward after release. In the picture, seen from above, this is a movement in the horizontal plane. Not every archer has a perfect technique, but in any case the movement of the bow arm should not be forward if seen in the horizontal plane from above.
Hint: Let the audience show the correct and the wrong movement of the bow arm.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

11. Arms rotation Continuity
In this picture by the photographer Dean Alberga the dynamics of the arms rotation is expressed very nice.
Peter Elzinga shot a World Record in compound men category (358 points at 50 m, 36 arrows)
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

12. Bow Arm With help and observation Continuity
On the left hand picture, the coach assists manually the archer’s physical follow-through
Putting the bow arm in the correct position is a task for the coach. The archer can observe themself in a practice session wether the bow arm is low or not.
Then – on the right hand side picture, the archer strives to get a similar bow arm “reaction”. He again can observe his bow arm.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

13. until you have good regular execution
Continuity
Bow Arm
to feel
until you have good regular execution
Left picture: Shooting eyes closed also helps to feel the bow arm behaviour.
Putting the bow arm in the correct place is a muscle action. The archer should feel this activity. Too little action on the bow arm by the archer results in ‘shrowing the bow inwards’ after release.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

14. Standard Learning Process
Continuity
Standard Learning Process
For the majority of skills needed:
Comprehension.
Demonstrations, explanations &/or special exercises help the athlete to understand what they need to do.
From this slide until the end of this set, it is a description of a teaching system that works in archery for most of the skills. This is the reason of its name “Standard Teaching Process” (for the coach) or “Standard Learning Proocess” (for the archer)
The coach particularly uses this process at the level 1. Nevertheless this process can be used with archers of any level.
This first slide is self explanatory.
Comprehension is one of the tools for learning a skill. As an example you can explain to an archer what to do if the arrows hit say to the right. Moving the sight to the right forces you to move the bow to the left, so the arrows will hit closer to the centre of the target. By comprehension the archer can understand and consequently remember. Just saying ‘move the sight in the direction of the hit’ is more difficult to remember.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

15. Standard Learning Process
Continuity
Standard Learning Process
2. Self Observation.
Directly, using a mirror, or video …
This 2nd slide of the Standard Teaching/Learning Process (let’s call it STP) is also self explanatory: allow the archer to see how he/she is doing
Observations can convince the archer what is wrong and what has to be done. Usually the coach observes the mistake, whereas the archer has no idea why the arrows hit say high. The coach may have observed that there is no solid contact between the drawing hand and the archers jaw. Easy to explain that lowering the arrow nock causes high hits.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

16. Standard Learning Process
Continuity
Standard Learning Process
3. Self awareness or feeling identification
Eyes Closed.
This 3rd slide of the STP is also self explanatory. After the archer saw him/herself doing well (see previous slide), the archer must know feel the good execution. Eyes closed is probably the best shooting situation for such a feeling discovery.
The ideal way to feel self awareness is shooting, on short distance, with the eyes closed. This is a method of feeling the execution. The feel back is immediately after the execution, no need for a target face.
In search of good execution
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

17. Always looking for good execution
Continuity
Standard Learning Process
4. Introduce a growing visual activity
Most of the skills are easily well implemented during the shots made under self-observation (mirror for instance) and/or eyes closed, because the focus of the archer is almost entirely on the task at hand. The same skill is often not so well implemented while the archer has to shoot at a target face, because now the mind has to face an additional task: aiming! The STP includes a progressive adaptation made through a set of decreasing sizes of “target” .
1st - left picture – just watch at something, for instance the top of the riser. Here the mind has to assist the good execution of the skill AND just to look at someting; hence there is no aiming yet.
2nd – top right picture - just watch at the entire target butt, from a short distance. The shooting distance could be increased before the introduction of any target face. Here the mind has to assist the good execution of the skill AND give a direction of the shot toward the target mat; hence there is no real aiming yet.
3rd – bottom right picture – Introduce a large and easy to hit target face. For instance a regular target face cut-out from the Black (as on the picture). Here the mind has to assist the good execution of the skill AND give a little refined direction of the shot toward this large target face; hence there is an easy/rough aiming task
With little visual activity, say shooting on a bare butt, one can execute the shot pretty relaxed. The smaller the target, the more aiming ability and the more concentration is required.
Always looking for good execution
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

18. Standard Learning Process
Continuity
Standard Learning Process
… demanding more aiming ability
4th – top right picture – Introduce a less large and easy to hit target face. For instance a regular target face cut-out from the Blue (as on the picture). Here the mind has to assist the good execution of the skill AND give a accurate direction of the shot toward this goal; hence there is now an aiming task that is not yet very challenging.
5th – Bottom right picture – Introduce a little more challenging target face. For instance a regular target face cut-out from the red (as on the picture). Here the mind has to assist the good execution of the skill AND give a more accurate direction of the shot toward this goal; hence there is now an aiming task of an average challenge.
With the yellow and the red cut out of the target face an archer does not want to shame by missing the designated target area. Automatically the execution will get the required attention.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

19. Standard Learning Process
Continuity
Standard Learning Process
… until you can shoot at a complete target face
And so on until shooting at a regular target face
The STP has an easy implementation at the level 2 or 3 when the training sessions are Indoor, since it is easy to place several sizes of the target faces on the same target butt.
IMPORTANT: When an archer implements well the skill until one step, for instance the 8 cut-out target face (bottom face of the first column), but not so well on the next cut-out target face (top of 2nd column). Ask the archer to shoot alternately 1 arrow on each of these 2 cut-out target faces until the same quality of skill implementation on both faces. Only then you can aloow the archer to progress to another (more challenging target face).
Simular effects can be observed in playing recreational games such as shooting balloons.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

20. Standard Learning Process
Continuity
Standard Learning Process
Always looking for a perfect technique execution
and to obtain the same result in form during competition
The coach must assist the archer to remain concentrated on the skill under development. The (probably) new situation of shooting eyes closed should not deviate the archer’s mind from the task at hand
It is important, even for experienced archers, to see a competition as a learning process. You cannot loose this learning.
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA

21. Thank you… Ready to answer your questions!
Pascal COLMAIRE – WA Development & Education Director

22. Watching the bow hand - with the coach’s help
Continuity
Physical follow-up
Bow hand continuity
Suspended bow
Watching bow hand
Watching the bow hand - with the coach’s help
3 exercises on the bow hand with bow and arrows:
Left illustration: see slide #3
Intermediate picture: self explanatory
Right picture: the archer practices by himself
For any of these exercise:
* the archer MUST watch the bow hand
* the distance to the target should be short
Pascal Colmaire – Development & Education Director of WA