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Hi All, I’ve got good news! So many archers have emailed me saying they really enjoyed my weekly ‘tips’ emails last year and have been missing them, so I wanted to re-start them, with just 3 quick tips each week. As always, please do forward this message to any of your archery friends who might find it helpful.

🛠️ Equipment recommendation

Many archers struggle with their centre serving coming loose, or unravelling. And of course this always tends to happen at the worst moment during a competition. I have a simple recommendation for this. Always use Angel serving material for your centre servings. Because of it’s braided profile it grips the string extremely well and doesn’t flatten and slip around like other brands (I’m talking about you, BCY Halo 👀). You’ll find Angel ASB gives you a much more durable and secure serving with a smoother release. And in case I haven’t spelled it out clearly enough, I recommend not using BCY Halo for your centre serving. It’s ok for your end servings though as it’s a bit softer and can make your string impact on the limb slightly quieter.

🏹 Technique tip

I got a great question this week from one of my OAA Members asking about the bow shoulder. They said: “I’ve recently started to try to position the bow side scapula with the sensation that it’s pressing into the body. When I do this my bow elbow naturally has a slight bend so its not locked out, is that ok?” The key concept here is that of the bow side direction. In this description, it sounds like there isn’t much forward direction of the pressure point and bow shoulder side into the target, but we definitely do need forward direction. At the Set Position you want to feel like your hand is solid in the grip and you’re directing the bow towards the target. As you raise, you need to continue feeling like you’re pushing the bow towards the target and as a result your bow shoulder scapula blade will slide forwards away from the spine. You must continue this forward direction as you draw the bow, come to anchor, expand and until after the arrow has hit the target. In the image below, you can see the red arrow showing the feeling of forward direction towards the target, and the red curved line shows how the front scapula has substantially moved away from the spine (noted by the green line). This gives a strong position for your bow shoulder. It also crucially gives you space to squeeze the draw scapula around the body and towards the spine (noted by the purple arrow). image This forward direction is crucial because it creates ‘balance’ in your shot and prevents your bow shoulder feeling like it’s compressing back towards you (which is what was mentioned in the question above). Unless you are hyper-flexible, most archers will find that a straight arm with no elbow bend makes this forward direction much easier to create consistently, and bending the elbow makes it more likely you’ll allow the bow shoulder to compress to the spine. If you want extra detail you can watch a full video explaining this in greater depth, with examples and demonstrations in my OAA Members Telegram group (you can join at the bottom of the page).

💪 Try this in training

The bow shoulder technique I explained above is difficult to learn at first, and almost impossible if you try and do it straight away with your normal weight bow. Try using a light bow (a 16-20lb beginner bow is perfect) to do some draw ups using a video delay camera. Place the camera to see your shoulders like in the image above, and focus on feeling your bow shoulder blade naturally slide forwards as you raise the bow. Check how you’re doing with the delayed feedback and once you’ve got the hang of it try doing some draw ups with your bow too. Switching between a light bow and normal weight bow like this is a great way to learn new technique or fix old habits. That’s it for today, have a wonderful weekend! Happy shooting, Ashe

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