Advice on how to slow down?

[Et tu brute]

Hi everyone,

I've been shooting for about 4 months now, and over the time I've improved alot, mainly through the beginners course I took at my club, which I've now joined. I shoot a traditional Hungarian recurve, 40# @ 28" (now one for the modern stuff ) at the moment, though I'll probably be getting a longbow later.

The main problem I have at the minute is that I shoot too fast! It's not that the bow is too heavy or anything like that, I can hold at full draw no problem, but I seem to naturally release after about a second. This doesn't seem to drastically affect my accuracy, but I'm sure it could be improved if I slowed down a bit. So, any tips on how to achieve that?

Cheers,
Dave

[N.Vodden]

if you have a nice consistent draw i wonder if you coudl work some kind of internal timing to it

like a mantra in your head as you shoot, sort of like...

1 and 2 and 3 and 4

draw and anchor, aim and loose


if that makes any sense

[mixi]

Afaik Trad bows are not meant to be *held* at full draw like modern target bows are.

[Ifor_Bentun]

A couple of Temazepam usually does it for me.

[geoffretired]

Sometimes, it is ok to shoot fairly quickly.If you feel you are shooting TOO quickly, and you are losing points through feeling rushed, then perhaps you do need to slow down.
I used to shoot vey quickly, compound and six arrows in 45 seconds.I wanted to slow down and found the best way( for me) was to do everything slowly.
Raise the bow slowly, draw slowly, get on aim slowly and release. I found it was not very successful to try to slow down just the last part of the shot.

[bimble]

One of the members of my old club used to shoot very fast, what I had them do was to first draw the bow first, to full draw, but purposly not loose. Then let it down, and then draw and shoot. The idea was to let them get used to holding the bow at full draw and not imediately loosing.

[Et tu brute]

Thanks for all the advice guys, I really just want to increase the time I hold at full draw to about 2-3 seconds, as I'm sure this will really help me. I'll try out some of the techniques mentioned later today, if the weather holds out!

[Jerry Tee]

Originally Posted by mixi

Afaik Trad bows are not meant to be *held* at full draw like modern target bows are.

I have often wondered about that. They are after all war bows, and as such there were times when a formation of archers were called upon to fire a volley of arrows on command . say for instance when an enemy got to a certain range, How was this done if not by holding at full draw at least for s small amount of time?

[mixi]

Originally Posted by Jerry Tee

I have often wondered about that. They are after all war bows, and as such there were times when a formation of archers were called upon to fire a volley of arrows on command . say for instance when an enemy got to a certain range, How was this done if not by holding at full draw at least for s small amount of time?

I don't know anything about that. Maybe when their boss said shoot, they all drew and then fired at the same time with no holding? Or maybe some holding is ok. Isn't there any knowledgeable trad bow people around to help here?

[grimsby archer]

Originally Posted by mixi

I don't know anything about that. Maybe when their boss said shoot, they all drew and then fired at the same time with no holding? Or maybe some holding is ok. Isn't there any knowledgeable trad bow people around to help here?

The other side of this coin is the consideration that war bows, as you say, delivered a volley of arrows, with very little accurate (sniper) aiming and shooting involved. This is as opposed to todays target archer who requires quite a high degree of accuracy, achieved through the aiming process, to hit the target