4 Important Details in Aiming a Recurve Bow | How to Shoot better in the wind | Form Series Ep. 11

It was nice to be reminded of this. I had an awful shoot yesterday and it felt like every part of my process broke down. But I remembered the subconscious aim and the focus on the middle of the target and the arrows consistent went there even with everything else feeling like crap. The brain knows.

Wow, I found by kind of accident that pushing the bow slightly I'm getting accurate shots. I thought this was just me, i already know the shoulder position while holding the bow, you explained that perfectly. But pushing the bow that for me was more a mental thing, kind saying in my head " you're going there" and throwing it with my bow aswell as letting go of string with a smooth pull threw. Wow thanks Jake, really didn't know this was actually a thing.😂

Thx for the advices Jake. I am learning a lot with your videos. Keep the good job.

Jake, a tip I was given when aiming off was to imagine a green dot on the target face where I want to aim. That dot is bright green (in my imagination) because it contrasts so well with all target faces. The size of the dot may be the size of the gold or the ten ring. When I set up to aim off, the imagined green dot emphasizes that I am aiming off. I added to this practice a mantra-like positioning process because as you point out the position of that dot varies with the wind, so in the background I repeat the dot's position as "9 o'clock red" languidly so as to not create anxiety, but that keeps the dot where I decided to put it. Also another point regarding looking at the target rather than the aperture is that the target is stationary, if you look at the aperture, its movement alone will cause anxiety. Looking at a stationary point of aim is calming and then also sets up the aiming off technique described above, which I cannot do if I look at the aperture as the frame of reference is no longer still.

In pistol shooting you want to be "surprised" by the shot and I've found it's the same with recurve aiming and executing the shot. Basically what you "see" is history. By the time your eyes have translated the light entering the eye into nerve signals and those nerve signals are processed by the brain and converted to all the signals to release your string you are easily a tenth of a second further with the bow having moved away from what you registered. But the bow/pistol is moving between the extremes of your aiming pattern so on average it's in the middle the most. So a "random" release has a better chance of being in the middle than you seeing that you are in the middle. The challenge of course is to make the aiming pattern as small as possible but this form series does a good job explaining how to achieve that goal. :D

About tip #3, aiming off. One useful exercise for this is playing archery Black Jack. Get some friends and try to see who can score a 21 first. Or some other score of your choosing. This will teach you to aim at other points on the target face other than the X.

Thank you for the clear and concise videos, they are a huge help to progress my archery.

Thank you Jake! Excellent explanation about differences indoor vs outdoor shooting!!

focus on the subconscious... very useful tips . Thank you Jake!

I like the last part, indoor aiming vs outdoor aiming. This answers a lot of my problems.

Invaluable information.

Hello big friend! I have learn so much from you and your book's that is Gold for me so helpful!👍🏻👍🏼 Thank you so much friend and may God bless you all 🙏🏼

Hi jake! Thank you indeed for this video, will try to apply your advise in my tomorrow practice sessions👌

Great video! Love that you used more metrics! :D Greetings from Germany.

Thanks for sharing... one of the most important and interesting things I picked up from that was “close distance shooting can distract you from your form” . Would have been good to also touch on aiming with dominant eye and aiming with one eye open or both. 👌

Great video man. This video answers a lot of questions!

Hi, thank you for conforting me, i was thinking the same thing, im french, but you are not so hard to under stand. Thank you

Really super super super video!! Wow!

This is gold.

Great lesson, very enlightening. I learn a lot. Tks!