Shooting stance

Brindleleaf

New member
Is there any consensus here about shooting stance for an ELB?

I've read a lot of advice about moving the back foot forward slightly for stability and to (perhaps) help get the body slightly squarer on to put the eye nicely above the arrow. If I try this I can easily cant the bow and put my front foit forward leaning into the bow...seems fine.

But going back to side-on, very upright, feet parallel, head turned full left gives my a nice 'stretched out draw'...

Both seem okay.

Any orthodoxy here?!
 
D

Deleted member 7654

Guest
I sneer at orthodoxy!
IMO you should stand comfortably and balanced, with a target weight bow there's no real need to lean into it, but my preference for field shooting is a slight lean forward and slight lean towards the target. I describe it as a tree hugging stance :)
I'm a great believer in canting the bow too... there is no earthly reason to hold a bow upright unless it has sights or you are jammed into a shooting line.
"eye nicely above the arrow" is good, but is related to anchor point and thus stance. I anchor the V of thumb and edge of hand tucked into the back of my jaw, which means I have to tilt my head to get the eye over the back of the arrow.
This shows how I shoot... ok it's a primitive not an ELB, but I shoot 'em all the same :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEOEcoNsFFs
Del
 

Brindleleaf

New member
Hmmm...nothing too shocking there :)

That looks exactly how I FEEL I'm shooting...but might have to get someone to video me to check that's what I'm actually doing...:)

I've had a long break where I didn't shoot a bow at all and coming back to it, I'm having some trouble (and some fun) fiddling around deciding on an anchor point. When I got my longbow I had only ever used a recurve and the reflex of shooting that caused some kind of interference with how I wanted to anchor. That seems to have disappeared and I basically have a blank slate for me to set my anchor properly and consciously.

I've been shooting a fair few arrows each day recently...about half in this stance and half in the other the more side-on, feet parallel, more upright stance. Some carefully lining up the arrow below my eye and other times not worrying quite so much....

I can only shoot about 15 yards in my garfen, but for the moment I can hardly see any difference in terms of results...THAT's a bit confusing
 
D

Deleted member 7654

Guest
Yeah, I can only shoot at 10 yards into my garage for practice, but it's great to zone in for those close 3D shots in field archery.
I've occasionally tried the more conventional upright stance and draw to the chin/nose/lip. It's good for a few shots but feels stilted, when I was a kid, that's what all the archery books said and it was what I tried to do, but it never felt natural to me.
I can't abide the feet together thing that some people seem to do, and also the holding at full draw for eternity (not good with a wooden bow)
Del
 

Brindleleaf

New member
That will do me fine... 'Natural' seems to be making a comeback in many once formalised fields (like playing guitar or piano, or language learning). And I imagine that really traditional archers did what felt more comfortable...

The problem with my garden is that it slopes...so I can shoot uphill or downhill, but never flat...lol! Not sure what that will do to me longterm ;)
 

Corax67

Well-known member
All of us longbow lads in club tend to shoot a slightly relaxed recurve stance, nothing wildly different to anyone else on the line really.

Having spent a day with Del last year I have definitely benefitted from learning to be prepared to cant the bow if necessary especially on windier days, of which there are many on our field.

I think with longbow the more comfortable you feel in your stance the better you shoot, rather than trying to achieve some prescriptive ideal as instilled in recurve or compound coaching.




Karl
 
D

Deleted member 7654

Guest
That will do me fine... 'Natural' seems to be making a comeback in many once formalised fields (like playing guitar or piano, or language learning). And I imagine that really traditional archers did what felt more comfortable...

The problem with my garden is that it slopes...so I can shoot uphill or downhill, but never flat...lol! Not sure what that will do to me longterm ;)
But in what part of real world archery would you always be shooting on the flat?
Oh... just remembered ... target archery :rolleyes:
Have a go at field...and you can shoot down hill into muddy ponds :)
https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=cloth+of+gold
Del
 

Brindleleaf

New member
Lol! That sounds like a fun outing :)

There really is some deep satisfaction that we get from shooting sticks from another stick using a bit of string that is hard to explain except by reference to problem-solving processes and their neurotransmitter reward system. Just reading about field archery makes it sound so stupid, uncomfortable and boring...and yet....yesterday I had my 14 year old shoit my bow. Way too long, way too powerful (lucky he has short arms, he could reach full draw on my bow whch is 60lbs at 28"...maybe 40lbs for him!?), and ridiculously long arrows.

He LOVED it! And was struggling to describe the pleasure he felt to his mum ;). "ilIt was just satisfying Mum!..." Lol
 

Yew Selfbow

Active member
OK .... this may get a bit techy .....
years ago when I had more time on my hands and the bio-mechanics lab equipment needed calibration I decided to investigate the variations in the dynamics of migration of the centre of mass of the body relative to the base of support .... in other words how much sway does an archer demonstrate during the execution of a shot and does the amount of sway change with the archers position relative to the target.
Long story short ... because the dominant plane of motion of most of the lower limb joints are in the Sagital plane and the orthogonal axis of motion of the lower limb joints is in the coronal plane (like the target face) the further away from both planes being parallel the better. I could go into lots of detail but you'd lose the will to live, so I'll just say, if the plane of your hips is about at 45 degrees to the plane of the target ...you're as stable as your going to be .
 

Yew Selfbow

Active member
OK .... this may get a bit techy .....
years ago when I had more time on my hands and the bio-mechanics lab equipment needed calibration I decided to investigate the variations in the dynamics of migration of the centre of mass of the body relative to the base of support .... in other words how much sway does an archer demonstrate during the execution of a shot and does the amount of sway change with the archers position relative to the target.
Long story short ... because the dominant plane of motion of most of the lower limb joints are in the Sagital plane and the orthogonal axis of motion of the lower limb joints is in the coronal plane (like the target face) the further away from both planes being parallel the better. I could go into lots of detail but you'd lose the will to live, so I'll just say, if the plane of your hips is about at 45 degrees to the plane of the target ...you're as stable as your going to be .
 

Brindleleaf

New member
OK .... this may get a bit techy .....
years ago when I had more time on my hands and the bio-mechanics lab equipment needed calibration I decided to investigate the variations in the dynamics of migration of the centre of mass of the body relative to the base of support .... in other words how much sway does an archer demonstrate during the execution of a shot and does the amount of sway change with the archers position relative to the target.
Long story short ... because the dominant plane of motion of most of the lower limb joints are in the Sagital plane and the orthogonal axis of motion of the lower limb joints is in the coronal plane (like the target face) the further away from both planes being parallel the better. I could go into lots of detail but you'd lose the will to live, so I'll just say, if the plane of your hips is about at 45 degrees to the plane of the target ...you're as stable as your going to be .
That doesn't sound too techy...it just shows how bad language is at describing some things :)

That seems logical in terms of stability, but I'm more worried that bringing the back foot forward and so being (a bit) squarer on to the target changes the way I draw the bow..kind of feels more shoulder and less back (how's THAT for inaccurate language?!)
 

Yew Selfbow

Active member
That doesn't sound too techy...it just shows how bad language is at describing some things :)

That seems logical in terms of stability, but I'm more worried that bringing the back foot forward and so being (a bit) squarer on to the target changes the way I draw the bow..kind of feels more shoulder and less back (how's THAT for inaccurate language?!)
One foot in front of the other won't make any difference because the dominant plane of motion of the lower limb joints remain in the same spatial orientation, although the area of the base of support may have reduced. But, If the plane of the pectoral girdle changes too much relative to the pelvic girdle, then there may be some change in performance
 
Top