Archery - Shooting Technique and Form

Shooting Technique and Form

The standard convention on teaching archery, is to hold the bow depending upon eye dominance. Therefore, if you were right eye dominant, you would hold the bow in the left hand, and draw the string with the right hand. Not everybody agrees with this line of thought, though. A smoother, and more fluid release of the string produces the finest and most consistently repeatable shots, and therefore determines the accuracy of the arrow flight. There are some who believe that the hand with the greatest dexterity, should be the hand that draws and releases the string. Either eye can be used for aiming, and even the less dominant eye can be trained over time to effectively become the more dominant. This can be achieved by retraining with the use of an eye-patch over the dominant eye as a temporary measure.

The hand that holds the bow is referred to as the bow hand and its arm the bow arm. The opposite hand is called the drawing hand or string hand. Terms such as bow shoulder or string elbow follow the same convention.

If shooting according to eye dominance, then right-eye-dominant archers, shooting in a conventional way, will hold the bow with their left hand.

If shooting according to hand dexterity, then the string will be drawn with whichever hand possesses the greatest dexterity, regardless of eye dominance.