3 Beginner Compound Archery Mistakes and How To Fix Them…with World Champion Archer Kevin Wilkey

All right, as a new shooter myself, Kevin, one thing I've noticed is a lot of archers, their grip position, a lot of them look very different. So can you kind of explain what's an ideal grip and what we see a lot when beginners are shooting and maybe why they would be doing that grip? What I see people doing is they typically grip the bow like that. That's your natural way or you just want to grab a hold of it and that creates a lot of tension in your arm and it makes it really hard to aim steady when you're gripping hold of that tightly. And like it also puts the bowstring right into your arm and so they bend their elbow to keep the string from hitting their arm, which creates a whole other set of problems. And then once they, maybe somebody has taught them along the way that you're not supposed to grip your bow. So they go to the extreme and then they hold their hand out tense and tight. That is also flexing a lot of muscle and creating a lot of tension. And you'll notice you'll sight your bow in one day and then you'll put it down for a day and you'll pick it up again and your sights are way off. The bow didn't change, it's your grip position. So how I solve for that is I create the letter L or make a gun with my hand, tuck these three fingers and that'll force your hand into the perfect spot every time. So when you are holding the grip properly, you might feel like you're going to drop your bow and you've got the perfect solution there. You've got this wrist sling it goes on right where your stabilizer goes and that will allow you peace of mind to relax your hand and then that will catch your bow as you shoot. As you shoot your bow kind of moves forward, keep your hand relaxed, that'll keep you from dropping your bow. Especially if you're shooting field archery, like pointing downhill. Oh okay. Having a wrist sling is a fantastic idea. Great, great for beginners, wrist sling. Another thing that I've noticed at the range when I, now that have my compound bow is when you pull back, what kind of tension do you want in your fingers? Are you looking for the stiff hand? Are you looking for nice and relaxed? Tell us a little bit about that. I like them relaxed and here's the reason why. The problem with you see people pointing them out straight and they're tense is all your fingers are connected. Try moving your pinky. I'm moving my pinky right now and it moves all my other fingers. When you're trying to activate your trigger, whether it's your thumb or your index finger, your tendons are all kind of connected so if you've got all these three tight, guess what's going to be tight as well? Your index finger. Okay. So and if you want to be able to squeeze through the shot and build up some tension, keep these three fingers relaxed and that way you'll be able to have better dexterity and coordination as far as squeezing through the shot. If you keep them out tense, it's going to make it a lot more difficult to activate that trigger finger. And the last thing I noticed at the archery range, especially for a lot of beginner shooters, is as soon as they are going to release the shot, I see a lot of this happening. So is that what we want? Are we looking for a little bit more smooth? What are we looking for? Yeah, definitely you want more smooth. I think in a lot of those cases, they're kind of doing a drive-by shooting with their sight pin. Like their sight's a little wiggly. Their aim's not as steady and so soon as their sight lines up to where what they think will score a good arrow, they'll slap the trigger. They'll drop the hammer on it. They'll kind of panic punch the release to get that arrow out of the bow as quick as they can. Because they think they're on and they're ready to get that bullseye. Yeah, exactly. And the way to overcome that is, I think, first of all, it's hard to learn the right way while you're aiming at a target. So I take the aiming part of the equation out and you can do that by shooting at a close target. Maybe no target at all. Just make sure you're shooting into a safe backstop. Yeah, a blank bale. And learn the routine of drawing back and putting your finger on the trigger and either squeezing through it or through a push-pull method or whatever method is going to work the best for you. Just where you're more smooth, steady, and relaxed of a cleaner way of breaking that shot. Learn the routine or learn that process off the target and then slowly reintroduce the target. Okay. Start out up close on a larger target that's easy to aim at and that'll help you bridge the gap to start working back to a further distance where you'll shoot the same style of execution regardless of the target or the size of the distance.