Setup
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
After the recurve set phase we move to the setup phase. This stage of the shot is all about opening the bow correctly, and setting the majority of your shoulder alignment. The aim here is to do this in the most efficient, repeatable way. If you do this stage properly, it will be much easier to draw the bow and achieve a consistent expansion and release.
During this stage of the shot it is crucial to maintain the previous work we have done during the Stance & Posture and Set stages. As well as maintaining your core and posture, you must maintain your grip, hook and the connection between your hook, draw elbow and draw shoulder.Â
It is important to reinforce what we have said previously about the stages of the shot. We have split the shot into 6 steps, and there are parts of the recurve shot (such as Set and Set-Up) where motion should slow down. However, there is never any stopping or pausing during the recurve shot. You can read more about this on the Recurve Shot Cycle and Recurve Archery Basics pages.
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KEY POINTS - RECURVE SET-UP
1. Maintain the draw side connection you created during the set phase. Keep the hook, grip and wrist angle.
2. Keep your core, posture and head position.
3. Lead the opening movement from the draw elbow. Keep the string picture far to the right of the bow.
4. Keep your shoulders slightly open to the target when raising the bow, don’t try and align the bow shoulder early.
5. You should raise the bow above the target line, the exact height is personal but should be within World Archery rules.
6. Do most of the opening of the bow and the alignment of the shoulders at the peak bow raise height.
7. The lowering of the bow should be slower than the raising.
8. By setup, you should have completed most of your shoulder alignment. Your bow arm elbow joint should be rotated.
OPENING THE BOW: THE BASICS
Video 1. Video 5 from “Set” section shown again here to illustrate opening the bow
CORE & POSTURE
As we mentioned, you must maintain your core and posture through the setup phase. There are two key points where many people lose connection with their core: when they begin raising the bow and when they perform the main movement to get shoulder alignment. You should take extra care at these points.
CONNECTION & DIRECTION
In the Set phase, you created the connection between your grip, hook, and draw elbow. You must keep this connection when you open the bow. Maintaining your draw hand wrist angle and leading your movement from the draw elbow is key to achieve this. As we showed before, you can see this in Video 1 again. The bottom example in the video shows a much better connection between the hook, draw elbow and back compared to the top example.
When you open the bow, the string should be to the right of the riser throughout the whole set and setup phase. This is when viewed from the archers point of view. You can see this in Fig 1, where the string is to the right from Fig 1a through to Fig 1c.
Although the string is left of the riser in the left hand side of Fig 1a, from the archers viewpoint it will appear to the right of the riser. You can also see in Video 1 that the bottom example has the string to the right of the riser from the archers point of view. Compare this to the upper example and you can see the string is to the left of the riser.
Having the string to the right of the riser will help you to lead your movement from the draw elbow. Also, it helps keep the longrod pointing slightly left of the target until later in the shot. You can also see the opening of the bow and the whole shot in Video 2 below.
Video 2. Recurve Set-Up – Opening The Bow 2
DRAW SHOULDER
It is important to keep the draw shoulder in a neutral position throughout the shot. You must keep the draw shoulder from being high or overly forwards in the socket. This is often caused by having a pre draw which is too short or by placing the draw hand too close to the bow shoulder (Upper example in Video 1 and Fig 2). The draw shoulder blade should be flat against the body and it should feel as if there is space around the shoulder joint, not compression or tightness. Any clicking, clunking or cracking needs to be identified and eliminated.Â
You can see the huge difference in the two methods of opening the bow in Fig 2 below. In the long term, the compressed shoulder joint in the upper example is likely to lead to shoulder injury. In the bottom example, notice how the draw hand is further from the bow shoulder (1). Also, the line of force from the string is closer to the draw elbow rather than the upper arm (2). Lastly, notice how the bow shoulder is in LESS alignment here (3); trying to align the bow shoulder too early is a common mistake and compromises the draw side connection.
GENERAL POINTS
When you open and raise the bow, it should feel as if the majority of your movement is being created by the draw elbow moving out and around your body. Previously, you created the connection between your hook and your draw elbow. During the setup, you must use that connection to raise and open the bow.
Most archers have heard about 50:50 balance, so why should opening the bow feel mostly caused by the draw elbow moving aggressively round? There’s a simple reason for this: most people naturally align and open the bow arm side enough because they can see it. Through your peripheral vision and gaze at the target, you can see exactly what you’re doing on your bow arm side. However, you obviously can not see the movement you are doing on your draw arm side. As a result, most people don’t perform the correct draw side movement or focus too much on the bow side during the shot.
To remedy this, you should feel as if the bulk of your opening movement comes from the draw elbow. You should also make sure you are not aligning your bow shoulder too early as we previously mentioned.
Kim Woo Jin is one of the worlds best archers. You can see below in Video 3 how he opens the bow using the principles we have talked about.
Video 3. Kim Woo Jin opening the bow and shot sequence (09:32-09:45)
OPENING THE BOW: RAISING
STARTING THE MOVEMENT
The first movement to open the bow should be a continuation of the direction you created in the Set (Fig 12b) position. You should use just enough string tension to maintain your grip, hook and draw elbow connection. Then simply raise the bow and keep this connection. It should feel like you are using your draw elbow to move the string out and around your body, not pull the string straight to the face. This is perhaps the most common mistake for recurve archers during the setup.
You can see in the right hand side of Fig. 3 that you are not actually opening the bow very much yet; watch the draw elbow and you can see the drawing movement is fairly small. The key part of the whole recurve setup is the connection between the draw hand and the draw elbow. This should remain solidly connected at all times. It is crucial to maintain your hook and wrist position correctly here, without change.
SHOULDER ALIGNMENT
This raising part is simply about lifting the bow and maintaining the parts of your shot you worked hard for already, especially the draw side connection. You should allow your shoulders and upper torso to remain slightly open to the target when you raise the bow as demonstrated in Fig 3. Keeping the shoulders slightly open here will allow you to use your whole body to perform most of your alignment near the peak of the bow lift.Â
The bow shoulder will naturally come slightly more into alignment as you move around with the draw elbow. You can see this clearly in the right hand side of Fig. 3.Â
OPENING THE BOW: ALIGNING
PEAK HEIGHT: WHY ALIGN HERE?
As you reach the peak height of your bow lift, you should perform the largest part of opening the bow so far. This is because the position of the bow and hands allows you to use the force of the bow to help push your bow shoulder down. This is demonstrated in the right image in Fig 5. This image is taken at the peak bow height and you can see the draw force, represented by the blue arrow, is angled down. This means that the force of the bow is helping to keep your bow shoulder down.
Compare this to the left image in Fig 5 which is taken earlier in the shot and you can see the draw force of the bow is actually pointing slightly upwards (blue arrow). This would push your bow shoulder up and make aligning your shoulders much harder if you tried to do it in this position. As an exercise, try drawing a light bow whilst raising up from the set position rather than doing the correct raising and lowering: it’s obvious this is very hard, inefficient and increases injury risk.
At the peak bow height, gravity is helping you keep both your shoulder blades low as you open the bow. The lowering motion of the bow gives a more efficient movement for the shoulder blades too, particularly the draw shoulder. This is why it is necessary to lift the bow slightly above the target line rather than just to the level of the target.
PEAK HEIGHT: THE POSITIONING
Firstly, the peak height of the bow lift is personal and varies even amongst top archers. Lifting higher can help you align the shoulders more as you have more help from gravity. However, lifting higher makes it harder to maintain your core and posture, so there is a fine balance to find.
At the peak bow height there are a few main points. For most people, the top of the draw hand should be somewhere near eye level (see Fig 5). The draw elbow should be roughly in line with the arrow; below the line of the arrow is good, but if the elbow is far above the arrow line it can cause the draw shoulder to be too high and place the joint under lots of load.
Under World Archery Rules, you must make sure that your specific draw does not cause safety issues. WA Rule 12.9 states an archer should not use “any technique which, in the opinion of the Judges, could allow the arrow, if accidentally released, to fly beyond a safety zone”.
ALIGNING THE SHOULDERS: THE PROCESS
Just before you reach the peak height of your lift, you need to aggressively move your draw elbow around your body. This feels as if you are moving your arm in a large “out and around” movement. Crucially, you need to lead this from the elbow. As you do this, you should also rotate your core around, which further helps you to open the bow and achieve alignment (see Fig. 4 overhead). This is why it is important to keep the shoulders open to the target when you raise the bow.
You should have a feeling of “opening” the centre of the body and chest, but NOT lifting the chest at all. Don’t feel like you are drawing the string towards the body here. You need to feel as if you are drawing away from and around the body.
During the shoulder alignment, you should rotate the bow arm elbow joint and increase the forward direction through your grip pressure point and bow hand thumb. The bow arm elbow joint should be vertical by the time you come to set-up. You can start this elbow rotation before the peak, at the peak or just after the peak of your bow lift. The key here is to make sure your elbow rotation is complete and maintained when you reach set-up.
OPENING THE BOW: LOWERING
REACHING SETUP
As you lower the bow you should continue your body rotation and alignment without stopping. The movement of your draw elbow should continue without pausing and you must maintain your bow arm elbow rotation. You can see how the movement continues and final alignment is created in Fig 6. Notice also how the string remains to the right of the riser throughout.
When you lower the bow, you should bring both hands down together. Normally, you should lower the bow more slowly than the raising motion to allow more fine control of what you are doing. Taking a little bit more time here will allow you to reach your setup position more consistently.
Finally, as with the whole setup, you need to maintain your core, posture and head position as you lower both hands. You can see the whole movement in Video 4 at the bottom of the page.
THE SET-UP POSITION
The exact position of your setup will be personal, every recurve archer varies slightly. It should allow you to get good shoulder positioning and leave you with only a small amount to draw the bow to full draw.
Once you reach your setup, the main part of your shoulder alignment should be done and most of your recurve shot is now ready. You should feel the connection between your grip, draw hand and draw elbow now starting to connect to the back more fully. This is because once you have reached setup, you have aligned more of the force of the bow through your bone structure that you created through shoulder alignment. It feels as if you have opened the bow and then brought it in to your body.
In Fig 7 and Video 4, you can notice some key points about the setup. Most of the shoulder alignment is done, and the draw hand is closer to the face now. However, the string is still to the right of the riser and the longrod is still pointing slightly left as a result. The bow arm elbow rotation is also done. You can clearly see there is a straight line between the draw elbow, draw hand and the arrow. Finally, both shoulders are in a neutral position, with the upper traps not overly active and a “V” shape notch in the bow shoulder.
