Grip and Front Arm
This is the basic grip that I see on all pro shooters and the grip that I feel is the best way to attach yourself to the bow:
To begin we are going to discuss what touches the bow and what does not touch the bow, your thumb muscle and your thumb and your index finger are the only three things allowed to touch the bow. You are going to put your knuckles at a 45 degree angle and this will move the palm and love lines out of the way. Then you index finger should be touching the front of the riser, the other three fingers are curled up and very lightly touching the palm. They should not be stretched out or stiff and by curling them and lightly touching the palm they will be nice and relaxed.
This is the neutral front arm position that will really give you a solid feel when at anchor and allow you to produce some wicked good float:
Reach out in front of yourself and put your knuckles at a 45 degree angle, now try and point your elbow down towards the floor and keep the knuckles at the 45 degree angle. This will make your arm very stiff and it will move your arm into the strings path which are two bad things, now still keeping the knuckles at the 45 degree angle turn your elbow straight out to the side and again it will feel horrible but now the arm will look really bent and your shoulder will try to stick out to the side and the deltoids try and raise up. Again all of this is really bad. Now put your elbow in between at the 45 degree angle position and again put the knuckles at the 45 degree position and now things should feel nice, this combination of the knuckles and elbow does many things. It allows your arm to be straight but moves your arm away from the string, it keeps your arm straight but gives the perception of it being bent, it lets your arm stay nice and low.
Now that we have your arm and grip at the right angles you are ready to feel the something new, we are going to treat our front arm as a broom stick and when we come to full draw we are going to allow the broom stick to push back into the front shoulder socket. This is a feeling that most people don't ever feel because they are pushing forward into the grip lengthening their system which our human body has the ability to do and this is bad, you want the bow to push your arm back into the shoulder socket and this is where the really strong float starts happening.
The last thing I want to cover in this article is the pressure you feel in your grip, put your arm out in front of you and get the hand cocked back and in the grip position and then follow your arm bone forward into your hand and look at where it hits the thumb muscle. It comes through on the lower half of the thumb muscle towards the bottom about a half inch up nowhere near the thumb joints. This is where you want most of the bow pressure to be, you do not want to have the pressure going into the top half of the thumb muscle. where the skin goes across to the index knuckle. In the past I was warned about healing the bow and I have always stayed away from pressure on the lower half of my grip but that was back when people had their entire palm on the bow, now that we have only our thumb muscle on the bow it is a non issue. I personally like to have a relatively neutral amount of pressure on my entire thumb muscle with a little extra on the lower half, as long as I am not pushing the top half into the grip of the bow I am happy.
Socket Man
