Two Compound Codgers Talk About Aiming

I got an email from an old friend (emphasis on the old, for both of us) in which we were talking about shooting under the infirmities our advanced ages have provided us with. At one point the conversation turned to vision and peep sights and Tom said this:

Up until recently, I had to shoot with one eye closed, either the left, when shooting right handed or the right when shooting right handed.  Something has changed, because now… I cannot shoot left-handed any other way than with both eyes open. IF I close my right eye, I cannot see anything, period. Can’t find the target, can’t find the peep. I also cannot shoot at all with my glasses on. I must shoot without my glasses … which at first gives me a terrible double image until I get to anchor and look through the peep and scope. Then there are two target images, but I’ve learned to ignore the “dummy” target and focus on the correct one. The tough part is looking down range and seeing double of everything and the double is “moving” from low left to upper right.
I cannot see for beans up close to set my sight, however.
It is nice to be able to shoot with both eyes open. … after nearly 50 years of having to shoot with one eye closed!

Of course, the internet is the modern equivalent of the general store cracker or pickle barrel, so I had to chip in with my two cents on the topic:
As we age a number of things change with our eyes. One I noticed is that our irises slow down. I discover this the hard way; I was out driving at night, and my eye’s irises opened up to let in more light and then I turned a corner and a asshole driver coming the other way had his high beams on and I was blinded. I couldn’t see for a couple of seconds and was driving from memory of the road (I realized this later when I did a mental replay—thank you, archery!). Having a flood of light pouring into my eyes, my irises immediately but slowly started cinching in smaller and smaller … just in time for the return back to low illumination driving and my irises, now too small, slowly opened up again, extending the time period in which I was driving blind. This is a common source of why older people no longer like driving at night—scares the bejebus out of us.

When you swing a peep over your aiming eye, you are blocking part of the light (the reason for the danged peep in the first place), but because our irises change slowly (1-3 seconds?) compared to those in young eyes, this doesn’t happen comfortably in the time you want your shot to go off. By keeping your off eye open, the fraction of total light being blocked by the peep coming through both eyes is smaller, resulting in a smaller iris correction and better vision.

Using a peep with a smaller hole actually improves your vision by reducing the number of aiming eye lens defects the light travels through. but outdoors, in low light … well, there is a reason hunters use peeps with larger holes than do target archers. The smaller hole allows in less light and….

By the way, you can get “shooting glasses” made in which the optical centers are off to the left (for right-handed archers). We think we turn our heads 90° to look over our shoulders, but in reality, we turn our heads just far enough to see past the bridge of our noses. (Turning our heads farther results in an aching neck and headaches!). Ordinary glasses are built assuming you are looking straight outward and do not work anywhere near as well as your eyes move off of that axis.

Note Normal head rotation, according to one study is “Head-neck rotation was symmetric, and associated with concomitant movements in both the sagittal and frontal planes. It was larger in women (162°) than in men (155°), and performed with limited adjunctive thoracic motions.” This is about 77° (for men) in each direction and I think that gets less with age. (It sure feels like it to me.) Being able to turn our heads on our necks less means there is a smaller window to look through, one closer to the bridge of our noses and therefore more “off axis” for our glasses. I think I have benefited quite a bit from getting shooting glasses, which fit closer to the bridge of my nose and have optical centers in that direction.

 

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Recurve Barebow Shots Up- and Downhill (Part 2)

This topic is burgeoning. I got an email from another Barebow Recurve archer on a similar topic while writing the last post and there are quite a few loose ends that still need to be tied up here. Also, since I pointed out that the cut chart I included in the last post was a “simplified one” somebody just had to see one that wasn’t simplified. So, let’s get that out of the way right now.

This chart includes the fact that on downhill shots, gravity is accelerating the arrows making their arcs flatter and on uphill shots gravity is decelerating the arrows making their arcs more pronounced. For example: a 50 m shot at an angle of 35° uphill would be shot as if it were a 42.3 m shot but if that angle were downhill it would shot as if it were 39.8 m. Note A 35 degree shot is quite extreme by American standards but not so much by European standards. (Europeans like shots you have to tie a rope around your waist so you don’t fall off of the cliff as you shoot from it.) The “simplified chart” has this shot at 41 m which would be a 1 m error either way, not a lot to worry about.

Note that the two charts are arranged differently: one has degrees vertically, the other horizontally. If you thought I would remake one of these for consistencies sake a blog that doesn’t make me a dime, you need to think again.

Onward and Upward
Stringwalking in Barebow makes things different, but the physics of gravity isn’t one of the differences. The simplified cut chart gives a reasonable number for the crawl setting for an “angled” shot. Using the example above, a 50 m shot at a 35° angle (uphill or downhill) should be attempted with whatever anchor and crawl you would use for a 41 m shot.

This is a starting point! You really need to check these things out. For one, when you take a crawl, you are detuning your bow substantially. Different crawls represent different tunes, in effect. This is why tuning for Barebow is different from tuning for Olympic recurve. Even using a “three fingers under” string grip requires a different tiller setting than the more typical Mediterranean string grip (one over, two under).

The more extensive chart is not needed unless your groups compare to those of Compound Unlimited archers, but those “cut distances” need to be checked. (Do I need to say it again?) The second reason they need to be checked carefully is anything greater than a very shallow angle for a shot can distort the archer’s form resulting in quite varied results (depending on the amount of distortion).

There are a number of compensations that Barebow Recurve archers make for these shots. One of those is to open their stance greatly for downhill shots and close them greatly for uphill shots. The open/downhill posture makes room for the bottom limb to go between the legs, instead of hitting the forward leg if a square stance were employed. Opening your stance shortens your draw length which actually helps with those downhill shots (shorter draws make arrows fall “short” which is what we want), but they also make shots more variable and, hence, more difficult. The ideal is keeping your upper body geometry consistent from shot to shot, but this is virtually impossible at higher angles of launch. The net effect of this distortion of the full draw position is to shorten the draw. By using a very closed stance on those difficult uphill shots, the closed stance lengthens the draw to compensate for the draw shortening described above, making the archer more consistent. (If you do not understand this effect, take a very light drawing bow and at full draw tilt up- and downhill and see what happens to your draw length. (You may need a helper to watch your arrow point or set up a video camera.) Hold the arrow level, again at full draw, and swing left and right (in effect changing to open and closed stances). (Go as far as you can.) Do these things, see what happens, they are more explicative than any thousand words you could read!

Recurve Barebow Shots Up- and Downhill (Part 1 … )

I got an email from a colleague regarding how to deal with shots that are up- and downhill whilst shooting Recurve Barebow. Here is the question:

“I have a question for you. The standard “cut charts” for distances and shot angles used in field archery are based on the mathematical computation of measuring the hypotenuse of a triangle but shooting a level distance (the long leg of the triangle).
“However, these charts don’t work for me because I shoot a wimpy bow with that produces very slow fps arrows (aka slow). Once I go beyond my POT distance (35m), I am shooting an arc, not a straight line. So I end up ADDING rather than cutting the distances.
“Can you or your stable of experts address this in Archery Focus? Is there a mathematical formula I can use? Trial and error (mostly errors) is costing me a lot of arrows…

And here is my convoluted answer and some of the “back and forth” conversation that followed:

* * *

Note The phrase “Once I go beyond my POT (point-on-target) distance (35m) … I end up adding rather than cutting the distances.” made me suspicious that the archer in question used a gap shooting technique beyond her “point on” which would hopelessly complicate the situation. But being fearless, I just plowed on!

Arrows never fly in a straight line; all arrows travel in an arc (technically it is a “decaying parabola”). Some arcs are just shallower than others in that higher arrow speeds produce flatter arcs. This is simply a manifestation of the fact that when you shoot on the level, gravity is acting only downwards (sideways) on your arrow and this fact forms part of the explanation regarding how to adjust for up- and downhill shots. When you shoot up- and down hill, only part of the force of gravity works as it does on the level, and part of it is applied to make the arrow go faster or slower. Think of arrows going straight up or down, Under those conditions gravity doesn’t bend the trajectory of the arrow into an arc at all. Since only part of the gravitational force is making the arrow bent on an angled shot, you need to plan on a sight setting for part of the distance being shot. Here is a standard “cut chart” used for figuring out the horizontal distances to the target (corresponds to the part that gravity is acting sideways to the trajectory).

This is a simplified chart that ignores the arrow slowing and speeding up effects of gravity. Angles are down the left side, distances across the top. A 50 m shot at 35 degrees is basically only a 41 m shot according to this chart.

If you were shooting with a sight, a program like Archer’s Advantage can calculate all of your sight marks for whatever angle you shoot. Since you aren’t using a sight, this gets complicated.

Have you ever seen a “sight tape”? Just in case, I attached a photo. The strips at the bottom of the printout are cut out and attached to the sight bar. You can see from the markings that the spacings get wider as you go to longer and longer distances. Look at the difference between 60 and 70 yards as compare to between 20 and 30 yards.

When one graphs out crawls, though, one gets a straight line relationship between distance and length of crawl. In other words, the difference between any two identical distances is the same amount of crawl.

Now, given that there is that built in distance, you are going to have to do a little gymnastics here.

Once you get to your POT distance, do you shoot off the shelf, aim high, or lower your anchor? (From your question I suspect that you just aim high for distances beyond your POT, a form of gap shooting. This makes things incredibly difficult, though. For the approach I am thinking of, it is better to go to a lower anchor.

The ideal situation (if using multiple anchors) is to have a low anchor (for long distances) and a high anchor (for shorter distances) and a set of crawls for each (actually the crawls for both anchors will be very similar in that the crawl for 5 m/yd less than POT will be roughly the same for both anchors). When you start to shoot up- and down hills, you would use the anchor for the target distance, but you would take a slightly greater crawl (taking a crawl for a closer target). What your cuts will be are roughly the distance calculated as the cosine of the angle of the shot. (This is straight physics and geometry.)

And, as you know, your bow isn’t gonna be anywhere near ideal for all of the assumptions made. So, you are going to have to do some experimentation. (Do you have an angle finder?)

* * *

To which the questioner responded:

“Wow, my head is spinning.

“Yes, I had already figured out through experience that there is a direct relationship between distance and length of crawl.
“This year, once I get to POT, I start using the plunger and rest plate for sighting points.  Last year I did different combinations of face walking and string walking and it was too much for me to remember on the FITA Barebow courses, which don’t allow written memoranda.  I also had a lot of trouble getting a replicable anchor once I dropped below my upper teeth, because how much tension I had in my lower jaw varied all over the place.
“The other thing I am wondering about is the arrow trajectory and its impact on crawls past POT or at least the zenith of the shot.  I don’t think my arrows travel in a nice curve, instead they go upwards most of the way and then drop steeply at the end.  I am planning to play around with walk-back shooting to see if I can figure this out, and whether or not it matters.
“What does the last column of your attachment mean? For less than 10m, because I don’t want to crawl anymore, I just aim off a little.

* * *

That’s for people with sights.

When you say “I am wondering about the arrow trajectory and its impact on crawls past POT” you are making me wonder because to go past your POT, there is no crawl. You either aim off (gap shoot) or switch to a lower anchor and crawl down from your new POT.

The system I recommend now is to use the most comfortable anchor you have (this is usually the finger in the corner of the mouth version of a “high anchor”) and figure out your POT(High Anchor) distance and then all of your crawls down (inward) from there. Then, to deal with distances past your POT(High Anchor), you adopt a different, lower anchor (usually the Olympic-style anchor) and find your new POT, the POT (Low Anchor), then you figure out your crawls down from there. If … if … those two series overlap, you are generally good to go.

This has the “feature” that the crawls for the two anchors are generally very close, so five yards inside both the POT(High Anchor) and the POT(Low Anchor) are about the same crawl (why I do not know), so this reduces the amount of memorization.

If there is a gap between the two sets of crawls, we try to bridge that by aiming high off of the POT(High Anchor). All this requires you to know, if there is say a five yard gap between the two series, is what a shot lands at five yard past your POT distance with a zero crawl. If your arrow lands five rings low under those circumstances, then you need to aim one ring high for every yard you are past your POT. (I picked those numbers for simplicity, of course, your situation will be much more complicated (much). ;o)

Every anchor has its own POT distance. And there are all kinds of anchors to chose (you have tried face walking you tell me). The FITA Field experts work like crazy to get a POT of 50 m which is their longest shot (for the unmarked). So they have one set of crawls for the entire course. So, your trepidation was certainly shared by others!

And we have yet to get to the crux of the aiming up and down hills issue.

PS When you shoot with a sight, there is a point in space where the arrow rises up from its position below the line of sight to the line of sight. Typically for me that was around 11 or 12 yards out. (If you check one of those sight tapes I sent you, the tape stops at that point as there are no more markings that mean anything.) When targets are inside of that distance, you have to set your sight for an even higher distance to work. For example, I often set my sight for 52 yards for a 4-yard shot. The arrow is still rising to the line of sight the aperture is in, so the aperture has to be set much higher to get the bow low enough to hit anything. That is what those boldface numbers are on the right side of the AA printout, shooting targets inside your crossover distance.

There is so much more to this discussion, I will follow-up with another post.

 

 

 

 

 

When to Aim?

Whenever one of you signs up for this blog, I hie myself over for a look at yours (if you have one) to see what you are interested. I get a number of topics upon which to write for this blog in this manner. One such topic is “when to aim?” which, as it turns out is a topic of one of the chapters of my latest book (Still More on Coaching Archery, Watching Arrows Fly, 2014). Here is an excerpt from that book on this topic.

* * *

The Overaiming Meme

Olympic Recurve coaches have a meme that is considered a cardinal sin if you break it: “do not overaim.” This admonition permeates the writing of recurve coaches at all levels. The USA Archery Level 2 coach training manual, for example, includes a shot sequence with one of the early steps labeled “not yet aiming.” I think this warrants a closer examination.

Aiming
So what constitutes aiming? Is it just the act of aligning a sight aperture with a point of aim? Clearly this is not the case. Aiming starts from the very beginning of the shot cycle when the archer takes a stance. A condition for accuracy is that the arrow must be in a vertical plane going through the target center for it to hit the center (absent wind effects, etc.). When an archer steps onto a shooting line and effects a square stance, you can see that a vertical plane going through the arrow also goes right across the archer’s shoe tips. This is why we recommend a square stance to beginners, it is a natural aiming stance in that by aligning one’s shoe tips up with the target center, one is also aligning the arrow up with target center. If you take a square stance and get into reasonable T-Form at full draw, you will be aiming right down the middle. So, aiming begins with the stance.

Later in the cycle the bow gets raised, but how far does it get raised? What I teach my students is that it needs to be raised to a height such that when the draw is made and the anchor position is found, the sight aperture is naturally centered on the gold (or wherever the archer is aiming). Higher than that or lower than that results in the archer having to move the bow a substantial amount at full draw, a clear waste of time and possibly a use of the wrong muscles. So, raising the bow is an aspect of aiming. (It has been referred to as “pre-aiming” in the past.)

So, is this too much or too soon? Is this overaiming?

No. Here’s why.

What’s Special About Aiming
As an archer moves through her shot sequence, her attention focuses on just one thing, one thing after another, but just one thing at a time. When taking a stance she focuses on just that. When nocking an arrow she focuses on just that. Beginners have to focus more in that they do more consciously, they have to check the index vane, they have to check that the arrow is nocked snuggly under the top nock locator, they have to be sure the arrow is on the rest and under their clicker (if used). This is all done in a trice and without conscious thought by the expert archer, but it is done and all are attended to.

So, all through the shot sequence the archer’s attention is focused on one and only one thing . . . except during the “aiming” phase. During the aiming phase, the archer must divide her attention between two things: the visual matching of the aperture with target center (or point of aim) and some aspect of her form involved in completing the shot (the draw elbow, tension in the back muscles, etc.).

This is the only time during the shot sequence that the archer’s attention gets divided: during the “aiming” step. The admonition to not overaim is not helpful as it violates the coaching dictum of “tell them how to do it right, don’t describe how they are doing it wrong.” It also is vague and hard to understand. Just what are the characteristics of “overaiming?”

Instead . . .
Instead of this admonition, archers need to learn how to divide their attention during that step.

One simple drill is to have them hold their bow up in an American-style “Raise” position. I ask them to focus on the aperture on the target and then switch to focusing on their bow hand, then their bow arm, then their shoulders, etc. all the time keeping their aperture on the target. (You must include rests because the arms get tired holding the bow up.) Just ask them to move their attention and focus around. After just a few minutes of practice, they get pretty good at it. Then ask them to focus on their aperture and without losing that focus, include their bow hand, or their bow arm, or their shoulders, etc. Then ask them to practice doing this (which they can do at home) with the key being able to focus their divided attention on aperture and their back muscles (some coaches substitute a focus on the draw elbow for the back). Note My piano teacher taught me this. You can’t play different notes with both hands until each hand has learned to play it’s notes by itself.

Another activity/drill that will enhance an archer’s ability to divide their attention is “slow shooting.” This is just working through a shot but at a substantially slower pace than normal. Instead of a shot requiring 6-7 seconds, it takes 30-40 seconds done this way. The archer must also focus on what they are supposed to be focusing on. Mindless drills may tone the body but do not sharpen the mind. You must caution them to avoid flitting back and forth between the two task (maintain sight picture, finish shot, maintain sight picture, finish shot, . . .).

Another drill might be to ask them to focus only on their aperture position while shooting an end. On the next end they are to only focus only on completing their shot and not at all on their aperture. A third end they need to divide their attention between their aperture position and finishing their shot. This drill is based on the Goldilocks’ Principle: the first end is too much aperture focus, the second end is too much body focus, and the third end is “just right” or at least close to it. Often the third end shows a much better group than either of the other two (as it should).

A Fine Point
When writers do address this topic (almost never directly) they tend to mention visual focus on the aperture, which is correct, and a visualization involving the draw elbow or scapulas a means of making sure execution of the shot is continuing, which is incorrect. The power of visualizations is that they involve the brain triggering the same muscles that will be used during the activity visualized, so they are great for rehearsals. But the visual cortex is being asked to do two visual tasks in this approach, which has to lead to some confusion. Instead the visual focus on the aperture’s position needs to be combined with the tactile sensations in the back or draw arm that can be associated with correct execution.

But . . . Isn’t this a Form of “Multi-Tasking?
Recently psychologists have studied “multi-tasking,” that is doing two tasks at once, and have argued that this is often not what people think. Instead of two tasks being done simultaneously, the minds of the people doing these tasks were switching back and forth between the two and each task thus suffered in quality. The simultaneity was an illusion. Examples are given such as trying to do math problems while listening to a Presidential speech and extracting salient information. I believe they had brain scans to back up their claim. But it is not the case that if this is true some of the time, it is true all of the time.

Arguments by example, how scientists explain complex things to ordinary people like you and me, can be opposed by counter examples, so let me offer a few. About in third grade most American kids are presented with the task of “rubbing their stomach and patting their head” (or is it the reverse?) from a “friend.” At first none can do this as it seems impossible. But after a short period of practice, many can do these two different tasks simultaneously (maybe not so well, but practice usual stops when the feat is achieved). Some of these kids may grow up to play the piano during which each of their hands is doing something different and simultaneous, or maybe a virtuoso rock ’n’ roll drummer who can play complex rhythms, sometimes with different meters, simultaneously with both hands and a foot.

To end this argument with a sports metaphor, consider a baseball batter. He might have to track the curved path of a ball thrown from a variety of “release points” at near 100 mph close enough to the batter cause significant bodily harm were he hit by the pitch while swinging a baseball bat to intercept that ball to hit it the opposite direction. If they can do those tasks simultaneously, I think we can do our task simultaneously, our target is not even moving! All it takes is practice.

Please note, I am not refuting or rejecting the psychologist’s research. I believe they are absolutely correct when it comes to two simultaneous and complex conscious tasks, but the subconscious mind seems capable of attending to a great many tasks simultaneously.

Conclusion
Perhaps it is time to bury the “overaiming” meme. It was never particularly helpful. It is not an instruction of “what to do” but rather “what not to do.” And I don’t think it accurately described the issue at hand.

There was a time in the late 60’s, early 70’s when the clicker was being adopted that a number of archers were using it as a draw check only and would hold for several seconds after the clicker “clicked.” Many of these archers were taking too much time at full draw and could be described as over aiming, but no one is doing that now.

Coaches inherit too much stuff that has outlived its usefulness and I think this is one of those.

Barebow: How to Aim?

I got an email from Mr Benedick Visser (from Africa?), to wit:

“Thank you for sending me information on Archery. It is so helpful. I used to shoot Compound bows, but I love shooting bare bow. More challenging and fun. But I struggle to aim correctly. Please can you help me with it?”

***

Hooboy! A controversial question! (I am trying to be funny.) There are some strong feelings about how to aim without using a bow sight in the U.S. Some archers are very traditional and insist that aiming be only done “instinctively.” Others are thoroughly modern and use every part of the bow itself to aim with. I assume you just want to get started.

When I teach beginners, the first question they ask is: “How do I aim?” Our response is “Just look at and focus on the spot you want to hit.” This is a form of “instinctive” aiming. The word “instinctive,” though is a misnomer. We are not talking about an instinct for aiming. This is a thoroughly learned process, learned through the process called “trial and error” or “trial and test.” It is fascinating to those beginners that the desire they have to hit the center of the target will result in them hitting the center of the target if … and it is a big IF … if they are willing to follow instructions and not try to aim. Trying to aim is taking over a process which is subconscious and replacing it with one that is conscious, one you really have no idea how to do, consciously that is. (Almost all beginners try looking down the shaft of the arrow, a technique that works out to maybe five meters or so, but then is defeated by gravity.)

Just wanting your arrows to hit what you are looking at does work, although it takes a great deal of practice over a long period of time. It has the advantage that you can change arrows and even bows and still shoot well. It has the disadvantage of not being the most precise way to shoot a great many arrows from the same position. Anyway, this is Option #1.

If you want to have a system for aiming, most people progress to “shooting off of the point.” The problem of archery is to execute shots consistently with the bow held in a position such that when arrows are loosed, they hit the desired target. Bows need to be held higher for farther targets and lower for near ones. Bows need to be held “off line” to adjust for wind and other factors. The question of aiming is “where do I hold the bow?” The answer (at least in the Western Tradition) was found by a British gentleman of the name Horace Ford in the mid 1800’s. His scores immediately rocketed past anyone else’s and, I am sure, he was accused by some of cheating. He solved the task of where to put the bow in space by lining up a part of the bow (he was shooting English longbows) with some fixed part of the background. It turned out to be very effective to use the arrow point for this purpose (there not being as many parts as our modern bows). So, an archer would watch his arrow point and when a shot hit the gold, he would note where his arrow point was vis-à-vis the background. On his next shot, he would again place his arrow point on that “point of aim” to ensure consistency and success. (Another name for this approach is “Point of Aim” archery.) There are many variations and extensions of this approach but this is the starting point.

Longbow archers were used to looking at their arrow points as a gauge of whether they had fully drawn their bows (the arrow point sitting on the top of the bow hand made a particular shape when drawn “full compass”), so this was not at all a huge departure for some. And, immediately people devised ways to make this more productive. They introduced artificial points of aim. When their POA was not on the target face, they placed an object on the ground to aim with. If their POA was on the target face, they invented the target clock to identify POAs (e.g. 10 O’clock in the Blue).

This technique has been used by target archers from then until now. If you want to know more about the extensions of this technique, key terms for an Internet search are “string walking” and “face walking.”

To get started, shoot comfortably at a large target face up quite close to you (8-10 meters). When you are hitting the center comfortably, notice where your arrow point is with relation to the background (by starting up close, we are trying to make sure it is on the target face). On subsequent shots, line up your arrow point with the point you identified and shoot several arrows. Did your group get smaller (indicating you were more consistent)? Also, if your arrows are still not where you want them (and your POA is on the target), you need only move your POA the same direction and distance you want your arrows to be. So, if your arrows are four cm too far to the right, move your POA four cm to the left and your arrows will also move four cm to the left. This should get you started and learning.

PS You can shoot compound bows Barebow, I still compete this way.