[Nathan F]

i will just add the little knowledge i have. i started at twelve with a 25 poundish bow. then a few years later i moved up to 60 pounds. this is where i think any archer will see why training took so long. in that difference even with regular training it take a huge amount of getting used to. especially on accuracy. plus its expensive to move up a bow size you need all new arrows and also its not just the body that needs work. its your accuracy and your fingers i shoot with bare fingers and if i stop for a few weeks i get very bad bruising as a result. so for me to move up to my higher weight of around 100 i will need to train hard again for a long time. thats just what iv noticed in my years with the bow. also moving and shooting at a person who different ball game to a target face

[Bill Tsafa]

I posted a new video on strength training for heavy bows. The exercise I described in my earlier post is kind of hard to understand unless you see it. Even more difficult is explaining how to use standard gym equipment to simulate a bow pull in the final few inches of the draw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xExN7q_Kyh0

It turned out dark because the mats on the floor and the weights are black, plus it is night outside, but I think the basic idea comes across of how to do the exercise.

[Glennan Carnie]

This is a useful supplementary aid, but not required for shooting a reasonable weight bow. For one thing, all the body alignments are wrong for shooting a heavy bow. Basically, you can end up relying on brute strength alone; and that is wrong.

Very few people I know who shoot heavy bows use a gym or weights.

On the other hand, quite a few of the people I know who strength train have real problems shooting a heavy bow.

Out of interest Vassilis, what weight bow are you now shooting? If I remember correctly, you were working up to a 100lb bow.

[Bill Tsafa]

I shoot a 65 lbs bow for accuracy in under 40 yards. With my current strength, I can control and aim a 100 lb bow well and I get increased accuracy at a 100 yards with a 100 lb vs a 65 lb. This is due to not needing to adjust the pitch as much (how high over the target I must aim). If archery competitions used longer distances in target shooting, as was the norm in period, you would see archers starting to favor heavier bows.

I do not own a 100 lb bow, I occasionally am able to borrow one from a friend. The exercise I do makes it possible for me to be able to operate that bow whenever I do get my hands on it. I have not committed to getting a heavy bow because I am hoping to run into someone with a 110 or 120 lb bow and see if those are within my capability. With the 100 lb bow I make a point of drawing back using medieval technique, but I don't have to. I can just draw straight back too. A 110 or 120 might require me to make more use of the medieval draw technique because I would not be able to drew it otherwise. All in all, its an experiment to see what is possible for me.

Here I am demonstrating of the Medieval draw method. It makes use of the powerful Latissimus Dorsi Muscles to draw the bow. These are the same muscles used when doing pullups.

http://mysite.verizon.net/tsafa1/longbow/bow10.MPG

http://mysite.verizon.net/tsafa1/longbow/bow11.MPG

The standard method for drawing in modern achery is the Victorian method where you pull straight back. That uses the rear deltoids primarily. The rear deltoids are very small muscles. They are also used to a large degree in the Medieval Method when you are in the aiming position. This is the position my exercise focuses on strengthening. The rest of it the back muscles used in drawing Medieval style can best be developed with rows and pullups.

[James R.Fox]

Sirs-When I was much younger I did both Judo and longbow, and both drilled into me that there is NO substitute for EXACT form. You waste your strength fighting yourself, or the bow.In the otherhand, exact form IS necessary because it substitutes for strength by achieving maximum leverage. You must also remember the average archer was a pesant, a 2 pound a year man, only required to have a bow arrows and heavy fighting knife. He farmed by hand and grew up working the fields by hand, meaning he was pretty tough to begin. The relavent statutes are for Edward III, and quoted in professor Johnathan Sumption's "The Hundred Years War, Trial by Battle", pretty much the standard work these days, I understand.Boys were encouraged to start shooting as soon as possible, and after 18 were fined 2 pounds (one years income) for every time they shot at a mark less than 220 yards. They were required to practice in front of the Sheriff or one of his baliffs at regular intervals.This is why the old archery records aren't matched today, no practice time. In the 1300's young pesant boys grew up expecting to be archers in the army, and so practiced regularly, did the odd bit of poaching when food was short, practiced for the sheriff and so on.

[Bill Tsafa]