Buddy:
- Tell him to imagine there is a line drawn between his two shoulder blades, and that line will determine the direction of where the arrow is going to go. He HAS to get the shoulders aligned with the target to allow his bones to do what his muscles cannot.
- For the same reasons, he needs to straighten the arm. Not "locked" like he is trying to hyperextend, but not bent to the point where he has to use a lot of muscles to hold it there. Lean up against a wall and experiment with the angle of the elbow and feel how hard your muscles are working. Near full extension, you will feel a point where you have to do very little work to keep off the wall.
- Also, get him to align his elbow vertically, so that the bicep is NOT working to hold the arm up. Deltoids (over the top of the shoulder) hold up bows, nothing else.
- Find an anchor. An anchor is critical for aiming and repeatability, and your friend doesnt even look like he has heard of the word. Dont assume the peep is right for both him and you, who ever's bow this is, set it up for them and let the other save up the pennies to buy their own. It is so unbelievably rare the a bow will fit and work perfectly for two people.
- DONT think about the lean. Try this: when your buddy draws, tell him to push the bow to the target as he does the first part of the draw. He has to push the bow away as much as he actually draws his hand back. This isnt actually true, but it will get him into the mindset that a lean at full draw is only related to how he holds the bow relative to his body. It has NOTHING AT ALL to do with draw length, and anyone that says so isnt worth listening to.
- DONT CHANGE DRAW LENGTH. You are both a long way away from making informed changes to fit, you both need to get your front arm and a repeatable anchor before you can really make decisions on DL. Dont change it now because youll have no idea which way to go and whether itll help or hurt your shooting. Ill put it this way - looking at your pics, at this point of your shooting, i cannot say which way to adjust, and im a fully accredited and practicing coach. Dont touch it yet, be patient.
You:
- You share most of your bud's problems, but in varying ways. Most notably, youve already self-centred your leaning, whereas he has not. This is good, but its quite unlikely youll be able to hold onto that torso posture during any changes.
- The person that suggested that you shorten the release was speaking good adivce. It puts the trigger in a place where its so much harder to punch it. Remember to squeeze a trigger. Punching bags are for punching, not triggers.
- The thumb against the back of your neck is a good idea but a bad practice. The joint in the thumb has so much movement that the creeping that you are trying to avoid is still going to happen. A solid anchor will go a longer way to fixing this. An anchor, on a compound bow, is only really responsible for aligning the string and aiming points together with the bow. Creep in a bow is controlled by the use of your rhomboids (look them up, something every archer should know of) and by bow and cam design. A valley and a good solid wall, which your elite has in spades, prevents you from shooting the bow from anywhere but the correct place. Trust your bow to do it's job, you do yours and learn how to aim it properly - get a good anchor.
- When you are aiming up or down hill, you should tilt your upper body up or down, not just your arms. It upsets your aiming platform and makes shooting up or down hills even more frustrating than normal shooting. And last time i checked, just about all the hunting ive ever heard of takes place on hills of some sort!
- Neither of you have a relaxed draw arm. You are using lateral muscles to hold that arm in that low position, as well as biceps and triceps to hold the alignment. This will get better as everything else gets into line.
). What funny is we have the same wingspan, but that DL looks much shorter on him than it does on me.
