So, more fun with archery. Yesterday I was back on the range bright and early in the morning. It was more of a work out than anything. Felt pretty good going to work afterwards. As of today though, my drawing arm and elbow has a slight pain. I'm starting to use muscles I don't normally use in the shoulders and forearms.

There was a few men shooting alongside with me. They gave me a few pointers to help out with the draw which proved to be very useful. Typically when you think of a person drawing the string back on a bow you imagine a person holding the bow with one hand extended in front of them and pulling the string back with the other hand until it reaches your face. When you're using a traditional bow with a heavy drawing weight the pull can make you very tired within a short amount of time. I'm a left handed shooter. My left side hurts right now and I shot for maybe an hour at most. (1 shot every 15-30 seconds).

The problem with what I was doing was the fact that I was working only one of my arms. I was showed a technique that splits the weight between both arms. Rather than extending your bow hand all the way out, I was showed to have it closer to my body. From there I would push the bow away from me and pull the string back at the same time. This works both arms but does the same amount of work. In the end, it's less stress on the individual arm.

Another thing to note was the fact that once you do that quick pull back, you can't hold it there for more than a few seconds. If you do, you get tired, start shaking, and mess up your shot. It should be a quick pull, aim, release. When you use a compact bow, you can hold the string back all you want. There's a much less resistance once you pull the string on a compact bow past a certain point. The traditional re-curve tests your endurance and if you don't have it, you will fail miserably at trying to hold the string drawn back for more than two seconds.

I told the two that were showing me this technique that I wouldn't have enough time to aim if I released it right when I pulled it back. But I gave it a shot. I drew the string back with the push/pull method and as soon as I saw my arrow line up with the target I released it. Boom. Head shot. Popped a balloon that was pinned to the bullseye of a target about 30 yards out. I just started laughing.

Wish I could do that every time but I'm still trying to build up my strength. And get my form/technique the way it should be. Practice makes perfect. Developing muscle memory is the key. After doing it so many times, I should naturally get better. Hopefully.

Anyway, for those who didn't read my blog post last week about investing in myself, I'm taking archery lessons and trying to get an idea of how it really feels to be an archer. With my experiences in archery lessons and hunting I feel I'll be able to better understand the archery class in games and develop more realistic features in the future.

tl;dr:

racecar.