back elbow

[halfphaze]

IMHO,

pHz, there's nothing wrong with your form. from the first pic, the background shows that you're in a confined space, most probably your backyard. So i presume u are aiming low. Aiming low would affect the alignment of the shoulders and thus the back elbow. picture your two shoulders as a see-saw, the front shoulder going down to aim low and the back shoulder/elbow going up. There's the logic behind it, when u aim really low, your back elbow will go up of course.

And from the second pic, with u aiming at a distance. I see that your form is very very solid. the shoulders are down, (the elbow ain't that high too). your form is perfectly fine.

One thing though, i wouldn't recommend shooting and aiming low often, it'll affect your shoulder alignment in the long run and u may have deviants to your form and it will affect you when it comes to shooting long distances.

I find your form perfectly all right. Rmb. archery is a sport of consistency. repeating shots after shot. As long as your form doesn't injure you. it's alright.

cheers. all the best shooting.

[ASW1973]

only erika and murray has touched upon the real issues here.
In all the pictures:
the allignment is poor so the front shoulder climbs
the lack of shoulder alignment means no stability so back elbow is being forced upward to give some form or appearance of stability.
The bend in the wrist is due to lack of shoulder stability and caused by the archer coming in to their anchor point with a forced elbow position.
due to all of the above the drawlength is wrong

[pHz]

Originally Posted by ASW1973

only erika and murray has touched upon the real issues here.
In all the pictures:
the allignment is poor so the front shoulder climbs
the lack of shoulder alignment means no stability so back elbow is being forced upward to give some form or appearance of stability.
The bend in the wrist is due to lack of shoulder stability and caused by the archer coming in to their anchor point with a forced elbow position.
due to all of the above the drawlength is wrong

thanks for the clarity alastair - as i said having 'played' with my back arm / shoulders / back with a clubmate observing yesterday i think im heading in the right direction now (but arent going to play around too much more until i get to the GNAS performance weekend im booked into in march and someone hopefully qualified and fairly experienced can have a look at my form in action as it were)

i think im a good example of how some archers come to grief - did my beginners course and made good progress fairly quickly after that which led to being left alone (rightly or wrongly - wont say here but i guess the answers obvious ? ) by the few coaches our club has - which in turn meant bad habits / poor form went uncorrected or unnoticed and its not really until a year or so later when im starting to have a bit more experience and have gathered a little more theory that im realising what i need to work on

oh well - its all a journey isnt it ?

slainte : rob

[Des]

rob,

I'm currently working on getting my elbow lower, it's way higher than yours.

I would also say your draw elbow is fine height-wise. I'd be interested to see what it's like from the rear, to see if you're in line. The rest is hard to tell from a static image, but that's just from what i've learnt by also trying to coach myself, the other guys know far more about it all than i.
I've been reading this thread with interest as there's lots that's relevant to me also. I've shot for a few years now and believe a high elbow isn't giving me a consistent release due to twisting/bending my wrist and not having correct back tension (i think). Using my blog to record my progress, hopefully the work will pay off!

[easy]

my elbow/wrist looks very much like yours pHz, from the same side view anyway.

I find it very hard to get the back of my hand flat. All the images of the international archers shows a very similar arm/wrist alignment.

Could touching my neck with my little finger help to get my wrist into this position??

[pHz]

next update (i guess i should blog all this but since there are a few of us trying to do the same thing ill add it here for now)

first off - for whatever reason the increase in draw length isnt as dramatic as i thought - no idea what was going on sunday but having shot wednesday night and tonight my draw length is actually only 3mm or 4mm longer

what ive found over the course of this week is that although i was drawing with the arm much more horizontal and the wrist straighter and getting a more relaxed release i was struggling to get the weight on my back any more

over the course of tonights session i think ive sussed an obvious solution ? - starting the draw with my elbow highish helps me get the feeling on my back but whereas before my elbow was staying high and the wrist bent i ended tonights session starting high as before - using that to get the weight on my back during the draw and dropping the elbow into a more horizontal alignment as i come to reference allowing the wrist to straighten and relax - drawing the elbow round in a down and left (as seen from behind) diagonal arc rather than a totally horizontal one

seems to work so far ...

slainte : rob

[acehero]

Keep the updates coming Rob, I find them very useful. I've lately been shooting with a slightly high elbow but that in itself hasnt had me too worried. My loose is something that I think has been causing me problems as it occurred to me the other day that my index finger wasnt doing its share of the work on the string. I worked a bit on finger placement and then realised I'd been shooting with too much tension in my hand and arm.

Last night I tried drawing up (in the comfort of our conservatory ) and focused more on pulling my right shoulder blade into my spine. I thought I'd been doing this before, but perhaps not quite like this. I found that I could relax my draw hand more and keep it in contact with my neck naturally like this. The loose felt a lot smoother, the follow through more natural and from the reflection in the window it appeared my draw elbow was a little lower. Weather permitting I'll be off to the field today to put this technique into practice and see if its any good.