Fast

[longbow steve]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=sh ... jlkI&gl=DE

[Stickbow Hunter]

Now that is fast. She certainly had a strange release.

Jeff

[Steven J]

Wow

[bigbob]

Ye Gods! should do a killing on the speed round at a shoot!

[GrahameA]

Hi Steve.

Observing the impact points suggests that group size is not small.

Given that she is using only the muscles in her arms to draw the bow I would suggest the poundage is low.

Looks like a pinch grip on the arrow.

[Guy Layton]

Steve,

Wow...!

This guy goes alright to....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOWeU9R1 ... re=related

[Stickbow Hunter]

Very good Guy!

Jeff

[Gringa Bows]

Man they are fast

[hazard]

Coooooool!!!

[longbow steve]

Steve,

Wow...!

This guy goes alright to....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOWeU9R1 ... re=related

Yeah wow, some interesting tips for speed shooting in that one.

[bigbob]

Imagine how much practise would be needed , not just to get that repetitive and capable but also to be able to follow the correct sequence in selecting arrows in the hand grip.I would love to see an average group they achieve at that speed.Dont inagine it would be all that tight.

[Roadie]

Interesting. Cool. but not with my arthritic hands. Roadie.

[woody]

I would like to see that with broadheads on the arrows......lol

[Dennis La Varenne]

I think I am in love!!!!

[UPTHETOP]

Dennis Im shore she is french as well.

Cheers Wayno

[longbowinfected]

Brightened my day.
Not being overly critical because she has more talent than me......I agree very fast but not always on the money. In the early sections the bottom and sides of that blanket cop a bit of a shower. Would love to have seen a close up of the target at the end of each volley. I also agree that it is probably low poundage. Her anchor point is anywhere from her sternum to her chin. The later volley though is pretty close to the white spot. Glad she shoots with the ladies. She probably has a v notch on the arrow and no nocking point on the string. Quite drammatic. Hate to see her really taking her time, she would embarass most of us.

Dennis, what's not to admire?

Kev

[Stickbow Hunter]

I would like to see that with broadheads on the arrows......lol

Jeff

[GrahameA]

Hi Kevin.

She probably has a v notch on the arrow ....

Nope. How good is your Russian? http://walker30.narod.ru/abakan.htm

[Jeffro]

a new contender for the next hobbit movie perhaps

[longbow steve]

a new contender for the next hobbit movie perhaps

I didn't notice her feet, were they big?

[longbowinfected]

I kept my eyes rivetted to her anchor point.
Feet?????

Anchor point much more interesting.

Kev

[longbowinfected]

Grahame, the images there have a v notch if my Rushing image reception is correct. Yes I do understand the finger pinch concept and what you are alluding to comrade.

What gives with the overhand reversed release hand? Working through it it feels like you do not pull back as far sort of autommatically having a locked in draw check. Looks like what compounders do without the release aid.

I do like two finger draws, one above one below for longbow and Asiatic but never tried the pinch set up like that. Having said that the PNG / Pacific islander bows are a flat end pinched onto a flat "string' and it works pretty well.

Kev

[Nephew]

I must be missing something here. I don't see the point, she has crook form, is using her arm muscles to draw and is spraying them all over the rugs she's shooting at. Might go ok on a Japanese game show or something...

[Jeffro]

great to have her if you were getting attacked by ninja's

[Nephew]

great to have her if you were getting attacked by ninja's

[Dennis La Varenne]

I cannot see the slightest problem with the girl's or the bloke's form. Watch them carefully AGAIN!!!! Their form is EXACTLY the same from shot to shot - that is what makes it good form. There is absolutely NO shot to shot variation. The arrow looses at exactly the same position from alongside her face. There is NEVER any kind of variation. Her bow arm barely moves up or down, only forward and back to shoot.

This video is about trick shooting - in particular, the ability to launch lots of arrows in very short time span which is what the Eastern archer horsemen were famous for even back as far as Roman times. This kind of shooting is part of their heritage.

So what if she is shooting a light poundage bow. Horses for courses. If she wanted to, she could build up strength to a heavier bow just like any of us. Both of them have a superbly consistent draw and loose technique. It is so ingrained that they do not have to pay the slightest attention to it. If western accuracy became an item with them, I do not doubt in the slightest that they could do just that too using the very same technique. It is instinctive shooting par excellence.

Back in my early days when speed shooting was an important part of my practice, I could shoot my 6 arrows from the quiver into something like a bread and butter plate sized group in 30 seconds at 15 metres and I could do it consistently. Jeff could do the same too. We used to practice in his yard. He was a bit better than me though.

I used to practice the same way this young woman does by walking side-to-side in a zig-zag and up to and away from the butt and in one smooth movement, drawing from my Howard Hill style backquiver, nocking my arrow and drawing while I turned to face the butt and shoot 6 to 8 inch groups on the move from different positions in my backyard. These young people are just doing the same thing but much faster than I ever could.

The thing is that it is not in the least necessary to shoot in some kind of classic western archery technique to hit what you aim for. Your technique, whatever it is, is the thing which must be consistent.

Speed like these two young people demonstrate is simply a matter of practice:
Accuracy is simply a matter of practice, and
Shooting heavy bows is simply a matter of practice.

These two young people are quite capable of shooting any and all of the above if they so decided just like any of us are.

I wish I had thought of the overhand nock this young woman uses. It is completely obvious to me now I have seen it used how much it would have allowed me to shoot much more quickly. This is because our western technique requires us to take out hands off the arrow once nocked to place it on the outside of the string into a western string drawing position. She nocks her arrow exactly the same way I did, but instead of changing hand positions like I did in the western fashion, she leaves hers on the same side and just draws the string with her middle, ring and small fingers ABOVE the arrow, probably with the arrow ABOVE the nock point.

Nor does she drop the bow to nock like we do. How clever and simple. You only need a bow which is tillered for this kind of draw. Not a big issue.

I also strongly dispute that she is using only her arms. Just go and try drawing an arrow on a bow using her overhand loose.

You simply cannot use your arms to draw this way. You MUST draw with your back muscles. There is no other way to do it. She always brings her elbow well behind and above her shoulder and on the same line. It is a classic back muscle movement. This overhand loose prevents the use of the biceps which is the common fault with western technique when it is done wrong. When the elbow is below the line of the shoulder, people end up using their biceps to draw their bows. Most of the load goes onto the biceps and very little work is done by the back muscles.

Their technique is ballet in archery. The pure economy of movement is just beautiful to watch, not like our staccato western technique.

Wayno, she is Russian, not French. There is something on the site somewhere saying it is videoed in Murmansk which is way up north of St Petersburg.

Here she is again -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdes3XCk ... re=related

[Bill]

I would like to see that with broadheads on the arrows

"ouch"

[Nephew]

See? I said I must be missing something!

[longbowinfected]

Dennis, my old computer is pretty slow. In the first clip it does show that a few times she releases down lower, with the thumb on her chest rather than under her chin, in fact it freezes at those points on my computer a couple of times but not on many....only way I would have seen that.

When she groups early on it is dinner plate sized with three or four sprays side and bottom but later on I reckon they are within a matchbox grouping.

She really keeps her head very still even when moving. I tried that overhand draw and you could only get everything lined up straight at full draw and it really locks in.

I think she is pretty talented and could do anything she wanted to do in archery if she set her mind to it.

Kev

[Dennis La Varenne]

Kevin,

There is no doubt that she does spray some arrows, but there are quite a few which group very well indeed as you noted. I still cannot see where she drops her bowarm to a low ‘anchor’. Actually, she hasn’t got an anchor at all.

I studied both videos again several times and she constantly draws her elbow in an up-back and over movement to a point where her upper arm is in a straight line across her shoulders – never lower. Here loose is very loose indeed. It is so loose that her drawing hand almost drops in relief at the loose.

The point at which she looses is consistently in a vertical line with her right cheek, so her ‘anchor’ is the level of tension in her back muscles, not where she places her drawing hand.

I was looking at the entire picture of her shooting style, sort of like those old frame-repeat films which used to be called 'loops' where you see the same action repeated infinitum. Her style has that kind of consistency.

In the link I posted, you can see her short-draw on the very last shot where she deliberately pauses in mid-sentence while she is distracted by others speaking to her, but immediately preceding this and up to the last two or three shots, she shoots in her usual graceful economical and very casual form.

Woody wrote:

I would like to see that with broadheads on the arrows......lol

That would be interesting. I don't think there would be any problem with shooting broadheads using this style though. She lays the arrow on the same side of the bow as we do by heavily canting it over to her right in a deliberate move to allow clear passage onto her bowhand/arrow shelf more easily. She then rotates the bow to a more upright shooting position without any interruption of her form. It should not present any problems I would think.

Did anybody notice that the young bloke in the foreground at the start of my posted link was using rubber blunts? I couldn't make out if she was using them also. She probably was because the view of her shooting into the butt showed arrows bouncing off the butt rather than piercing it. The imprint of the arrow strikes showed however that she was grouping mostly at the aimpoint.

In the end of course, as old Roger Ascham once wrote at the start of Book II of Toxophilus in 1540 that the principal point in shooting was to hit the mark.

Even though she demonstrates a gorgeously fluid style, the whole thing comes to nothing if she cannot hit what she aims at.

In watching these two videos, I do not doubt that she can. First you master a form, THEN you master marksmanship in that order. In instinctive shooting, the arrow goes where the eye looks just like in good shotgunning. Conscious aiming does not come into that sport either.