Fivics Technical Guides

There’s no substitute for shooting your bow as archery is all about muscle memory and being “archery fit”. There is also no substitute for coaching from a knowledgeable coach or even from experienced archers who can see your problems.

However, coaching books have a place as a sort of self help resource if no coach is currently available. Professionally and some amateur made video guides to technique can be even better. Better because you can see in real time what you are actually supposed to be doing rather than interpreting text and still photos. So we owe some thanks to Korean archery company FIVICS. They decided to be helpful in this respect by producing 16 technical guides for World Archery in all aspects of making a good shot.

These technical guides cover a pretty impressive range of the elements of shooting. Starting with Stance and developing through the various shot steps. The first 11 videos in the play list on YouTube follows the logical flow of a shot. These videos are bite sized demonstrations of single elements of the shot in isolation. Once the shot has been completely covered, the guides move on to important but more “peripheral to the shot” activities like stretching or making arrows. There’s also a rather good explanation of how to tie a nocking point. Yes, there are other ways to do a nock point than brass nocking points! :o)

While not a complete solution to bad form, because you never really know you have bad form till someone tells you. These are pretty helpful if you want to look at a single element of your shooting. Go through your shot cycle in your mind. Do it in front of the bathroom mirror. Then compare what you are trying to do with the videos. It might just solve that dodgy bit of your shot or give you a better understanding of the mechanics involved.

ps: FIVICS also do pretty nice kit.

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Playlist of FIVICS Technical Guides on YouTube
FIVICS website