I will try and describe how I came to shoot a compound bow in March 1996 and what I found useful while learning. After I returned the bow to the shop I rented it from, I noticed I was also better in shooting my recurve bow. Because that effect was so unexpected I want to explore it more detail.
In December 1995 we got word of the First World University Archery Championships being held in France. A detailed account of our
experience with the preparations and participation in this event is already available, so I won't go into much detail here.
In Februari, we had to shoot our qualification round to determine which of the nine candidates could go as a men-recurve archer.
Unfortunately I had a very bad day with exams coming up shortly (actually most of us were in that awkward position) and just the
week before I had fallen from my bicycle on a very icy road, I broke the fall using a very strange move of my right arm (my drawing
arm) and I injured my right shoulder in the process.
Anyway, I didn't qualify and so didn't Dave Munneke (although he finished higher than me). A while later, Dave told us he'd called around a bit and said he'd found a shop willing to rent compound on a per month basis. Actually I'd become quite fired up with all the preparations, so I decided (even though I had earlier decided not to join Dave) to give that shop a call and, lo and behold, they had one for me as well.
So on the first day in March, Dave and I went in his car, through Germany (the first of many trips through Germany that month...). I won't go into the detail of getting the bows and trying them out, but in the end, Dave had an Excalibur "something" with a peak weight of about 37 lbs and I had a PSE LC-2000 set to about 40 lbs peak weight. We also got ourselves a release aid (I'll have to look up which kind...) and a better wrist strap to go with it. When we were there, we shot a few arrows to get the bows set up for ourselves and the people there said I had a "natural" look to my technique...
After getting lost on the way home in Germany, we finally came home with our rented compounds and we were very eager to try them out.
From this point on I will only speak for myself, as learning to shoot a bow (any bow) is always a personal experience.
Immediately the next Saturday, we went to try out our new toys.
Before I go on, I think I'd better talk about the attitude I had when learning to shoot in this new way. Although I already had 5.5 years of experience with shooting a recurve, I knew nothing about the whole concept of shooting a compound bow. Therefor I approached this new thing as a novice, but appearently one with a "natural" instinct (from shooting recurve?).
Naturaly I began comparing my recurve experience to what I was experiencing with the compound and a few major differences were
quickly very noticeable. Because of the drawing curve of a compound bow, the whole drawing action is almost the opposite of what I
was used to with my recuve, first a heavy bit and then holding almost no weight (the PSE had a let-off of 65%!) while aiming. Another
effect of the let-off is that instead of holding the bow up by using the force of the draw-weight to keep your arm locked in your
shoulder (with the recurve), you have to suddenly hold (most of) the weight of the bow (the actual metal/stabs/etc.) up using the
muscles of the bow-shoulder!
After pulling up to the draw-length, you're practically static (drawing-wise) and all attention can shift to holding the bow steady and
aiming. Aiming, now that is something different, with a scope sight, peep-sight and a spirit-level, all those things move like mad while
you're trying to keep the point steady on the yellow with un untrained bow-shoulder suddenly holding the entire bow up.
Finally you decide to pull the trigger of the release (which is also a completely new experience) and the arrow is away, hopefully
somewhere on the target...
The only things not different from shooting with a recurve were the general stance (straight), the muscle groups (back muscles) used to pull the string (although at a different moment in the shot) and the need to keep "aiming" after the shot. Especially the last point proved to be even more important with the compound, as every slight move in the bowhand can kick the arrow right out of the yellow!
Now began the process of learning to adapt to the new demands made on my body to complete the shot. The major obstacles were (in order of importance)
In the first week, besides shooting every day, I had posted a request in the newsgroups for people to help me with learning this new experience. As a result I got a few very good tips, which helped a lot in understanding shooting with the compound bow. I would especially like to thank Richard White (editor of The Bow) who helped me with the specifics of the compound-technique.
As we don't have a compound archer at Sagittarius, we asked Bert Blankenau from AIM, a club from Hengelo (O), to help us with
"tuning" our compound bows. His advice and aid were very useful.
With the aid of Marcelo and his everlasting supply of bow-stuff I was able to get a bit of balance in the bow, although I wasn't able to
solve the problem with the arrow-rest which hit my hand when the bow jumped forward in my bowhand. (Come to think of it, that was
not the way to solve it. In the first moment after release, the bow only comes forward and doesn't tip over much, so adding more
weight doesn't help.)
On Wednesday we went to a club in Enschede to get some competition training, but that was a bit hard as the atmosphere was very friendly and the pressure was completely absent.
Almost immediately after starting to shoot the bow I felt my shoulder-muscles continuously. I wasn't used to holding a bow up using my arms and for so long. Aiming was very difficult with only a small (1 mm) spot which constantly dropped below the yellow. This started to get so annoying that I started to adjust my sight to be right when the spot was halfway on the low-red. At this time I wasn't even paying attention to the spirit-level, it was hard enough to keep the bow up, let alone straight!
On monday we had our monthly Paraplu shoot and afterwards, Bert Blankenau helped adjust my draw-length which was a bit too short for me.
Because of an article posted by Perry Rattcliff (also a newsgroup regular) and a comment from Richard White, I started fiddling with my tiller adjusters to get at least 2 mm of tiller differential and I also tried to get the bow not to pull me down so much on the draw. I don't know if it got any better, but it didn't get any worse either. While I was at it, I also increased the draw-weight to 45 lbs peak weight to try to get a little more pressure on my shoulder while aiming.
hmm, several years later, nothing yet, so I guess this doesn't interest me anymore...