Archery Drills - Increased Draw Weight Drill

Increasing your draw weight can make you shoot much more aggressively temporarily. It can force adaptation to the bow weight, so it can be a very useful training drill. You can use bow training drills such as this one to build up your strength. Use these drills together with the exercises in our dedicated section: Archery Exercises.

Key Points

1. Place a light band over the top limb of your bow. Alternatively you can use a heavier pair of limbs, or turn your limb bolts in temporarily.

2. Shoot as normal, making sure to maintain your normal form with the extra weight.

Notes:

There are endless ways to use this drill in your training. Make sure to add a small amount of weight to start with (+1-2lbs).

Once you are used to the exercise, play around with how you use it in your training. Try shooting alternate ends with the extra poundage at blank boss first. Perhaps you can try doing a type of pyramid exercise: shoot 10 arrows with +0.5lb, 8 arrows with +1lb, 6 arrows with +1.5lb, 4 arrows with +2lb.

When you start with this drill, be very cautious and make sure you maintain technique. You want to make your muscles work harder, but don’t want to compromise your technique or injure yourself. Generally, don’t increase more than 5lbs over your normal draw weight.