Wednesday 13th July 2011

@ Easton Newberry

Warm, humid with a rain spell, windy in the afternoon, very sunny

3x 6 arrow ends @ 70m, 122cm unscored

7x 6 arrow ends @ 70m, 122cm scored

1x 6 arrow end @ 70m, 122cm unscored, watched by Coach Turner

5x 6 arrow ends @ 70m, 122cm scored

12x 6 arrow ends @ 70m, 122cm unscored

1x 3 arrow end @ 18m, 60cm unscored

12x 6 arrow ends @ 70m, 122cm unscored.

Total 243

Started shooting as usual today and Coach Turner returned from California where he had been for the JOAD Nationals.  Had a brief talk before he watched me shoot, and mentioned the things to keep strong in mind.  Solid hand position, strong bow arm, good head position, strong finger pressure, and everything else should just happen with those aspects.  He said I had a really solid base, it was just a matter of strength and practice to get those elements right.

He got out the 1000fps highspeed video they had, a much better larger one than my Casio, and took some videos of my shooting to see what I was doing.  First thing of note was my arrows were too weak in spine, they were flexing way too much to get good clean groupings.  Secondly, on my clicker, I sometimes have a slight forward creep before release, meaning I lose my back engagement.  The action is so slight that without the highspeed, it would be pretty much impossible to pick.

After that, he made a new string using 20 strange Majesty, with also longer end servings to slow down my bow so the spine would stiffen up some, which it certainly made a difference to the bow speed.  The brace height also went up to 8 3/4", but with stretch it'll come down about 1/8th supposedly.  My sight marks dropped from 77 to 82 for 70m on the rack.  Unfortunately it was too windy outside to tell if my groups shrunk noticeably and I was tired already from shooting a good number of arrows to execute cleanly.

It was a pretty solid day of training though afterwards, my wrist was aching some and I have somehow strained the tendon in my left wrist.... highly unusual since it isn't really something you normally use in shooting at all.....