Is this a form flaw (Depositphotos_107864868)?
What do you think?
Most people fixate on the unorthodox string grip, but that is not the essence of the problem. There is such a thing as a “palm out” string grip. The thing is that if you were to use one, you must shoot an opposite-handed bow. This gentleman needs a left-handed bow to shoot right-handed, palm out.
I collect “stock photos” of archers. They indicate to the photographer what archery is and many photographers have no idea what they are shooting. I especially abhor photographic re-enactments of Wilhelm Tell’s shot (apple on boy’s head, etc.) These photos abound on stock photography sites, and it will only take one such to suggest to an impressionable youth that “he could do that” and tragedy is the result (probably for his little brother).
We ran a two-part exploration of the “palm out” string grip in Archery Focus magazine (Issues 10-4, 10-5 by Brian Luke) and every such “innovation” has its pluses and minuses. For one, the palm out string grip does not allow plucking of the string. That’s a plus. But it does attract attention one doesn’t always appreciate (e.g. being mocked by fellow archers). It also may serve as a potential treatment of target panic, being enough of a change as to be considered by your subconscious mind as a new shot, and so old mental baggage may not be attached to it.
The necessity of the opposite-handed bow has to do with the finger string grip loose of the string. On an ordinary setup, the string slides toward the archer, placing an off center force on the nock of the arrow, causing the arrow shaft to flex, first in toward the bow, and then back and forth. Ordinarily when an arrow flexes into the bow, there is the bow to absorb that force (through a cushion plunger or a patch of leather on the bow, etc.). Since the fingers in the palm-out grip are pointed the opposite direction, the flex is in the opposite direction and rather than the bow/plunger being there to absorb the force of the flex, there is only air and the arrow can easily move away from the bow with nothing to stop it. This is why left-handed bows have risers the mirror image of right-handed bows, and why traditional archers using a thumb grip of the string, rest their arrows on the outboard side of their bows, rather than the inboard side.
Damn, we learn something new every day . . . if we are lucky!