A Review of "Become the Arrow"

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MaylandL
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A Review of "Become the Arrow"

#1 Post by MaylandL » Sat Mar 19, 2005 10:00 am

This book describes a system of barebow shooting that is used by the author - Byron Ferguson. Byron Ferguson uses a longbow for hunting as well as archery demonstrations in various countries. He has a website with a more information about his history and activities ( http://www.byronferguson.com/ ). He uses a right handed longbow which he draws back witha western draw (index on top of the arrow and middle and ring finger below the arrow.

Now a little more about the book. Byron goes on to describe and explain his system of barebow shooting (he calls this "become the arrow", hence the title) covering stance, body position, breath control, bow and hand arm position, shoulder position, anchor point and head angle. Other aspects of his shooting system he uses include focus and concentration (what he calls "picking the spot") and visualising the arrow in flight. The last part of his shooting system is the setting the cant of the bow. His system is based in part from his experiences as well as Howard Hill's split visiion style of shooting.

I tried some of the suggestions on the range and they do work. For me they made a lot of sense and it does help me focus on aspects of my shooting form to get some consistency. Just in terms of how I stand and how I hold the bow, where I am anchoring, where the position of my head is in relation to the arrow and the position of the shoulders, hands and arms. He goes into some detail about the biomechanics of the shot. One of things I connected with was the breath control and breathing. He doesn't hold his breath at the end of the draw, he continues to inhale and he times his shooting to his breathing. Having done martials arts (MA) for over 17 years, this makes perfect sense. The other thing that also made sense was the release. He doesnt call it a release but he terms it as relaxing and letting the bowstring push the fingers out of the way. When you relax the finger the movement of the fingers back towards the shoulder becomes natural - the body finds its own equilibrium. Again from my MA experience, it makes sense to me.

From the shooting form perspective, there is a lot a good information here for someone who might be looking for another way of shooting or are looking for advice about improving their shooting form. However, if you are already getting great consistency and accuracy, this book may not be for you other than, perhaps, an interesting read.

There is also a description of training exercises to practice his system of shooting and shooting form. These exercises requre you to shoot an arrow into a target with your eyes closes at a range of about 1 meter. The purpose is to feel the the shooting form and not have to worry about hitting the centre of the target. The shooting form practice is ultimately about building muscle memory. There are also other exercises that he suggests to improve your focus and concentration that don't require you to have a bow in your hand. So you can do them any time of the day. When he practices, he doesn't shoot for long periods and he only shoots 3 arrows at a time. His practice may be less than an hour. Given that you arte trying to get muscle memory, the effects of fatigue will be giving all the wrong signals about shooting form, hence that's why he doesn;t shoot many arrows when he's practising.

The other major section of the books is how to tune your bow and arrows. This section covers the brace height of the bow, the bow string, nock point, use of string silencers, adjusting the foward of centre and bare shaft shooting. Interestingly, he uses aluminium arrows because the aluminium arrows have a more consistent spine than wooden ones. Again for me its was very useful information but may be of limited value to the more experienced people.

Overall a really good book for someone who is looking for a structured and systematic way of learning how to shoot barebow traditional bows. If you are already getting great consistency and accuracy then you may find very little value in paying about $30 for the book. For me it has help enormously and given me a structure way to practice on the range instead of shooting arrows. What in MA is called mindful and purposeful training, that is being aware of what you are doing and practicing

Happy shooting everyone :)

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erron
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#2 Post by erron » Mon Mar 21, 2005 11:51 am

Thanks ML, I moved it here because reviews really deserve their own forum!

:)

Erron

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