I have been going through a dip in form with my archery recently. I went home from my clubs indoor session early on Wednesday as I was so frustrated and I was beginning to lose my temper with myself.

On Thursday afternoon I went to the range and decided to see what I could do to improve. I decided to try different sets of arrows to see what happened.

The first couple of sets of arrows were ones I made in the last year or so. They are as well made as I can manage to make them. They made no difference whatsoever.

The only real pattern with my misses was they were hitting low. There was a hell of a lot of randomness though.

Out of desperation I tried the first ever set of arrows I ever made. Cheap shafts, terrible fletching, misaligned feathers and blobs of glue everywhere. Most importantly they are shorter shafts with lighter piles / points.

Guess what... suddenly my arrows were going where I wanted them too. I only had 6 arrows in the set. I had 5 more but they were missing piles thanks to straw bosses. I fixed up the missing piles yesterday and went to the range this afternoon.

For the last year I have been strapping the wrist on my bow hand up. Last summer shooting my bow was giving me a lot of pain in my wrist and the strapping let me keep shooting. I use a weightlifting wrist wrap and it worked well.

I kept hearing a click or snap when I loosed an arrow. It was the string hitting my bracer. Of course if the string hit the bracer the arrow flew like a wounded duck and went wide of the target. I could crank my wrist but then I found it harder to shoot straight.

My wrist hasn't hurt at all when shooting since before Xmas so this afternoon I left the wrist wrap off.

Its the best I have shot in months. I was hitting the paper plate I pin to the boss for a target at least 50% of the time if not better. I was confident that I could hit it too. Of course some arrows went a bit random but generally speaking they were all hitting the plate or very close to it.

Fingers crossed I have cracked it.

#archery #TraditionalArchery #Longbow #arrows

A typical day in Nagoya:
Traveling on a train with a group of students carrying japanese longbows (大弓, daikyū, lit. large bow), meeting various warriors (incl. their female fans) and working with 800°C aluminium live at a museum.

Nothing special, nothing to see. Just a normal day!

#nagoya #japan #daikyu #longbow #museum #nagoyacastle