One of the reasons why some people are hesitant to get into sports is because of
injury. A lot of sports, contact and non-contact, do carry a risk of injury,
and that's part of sports. Training and recovery involves a lot of management to
ensure that the athlete's body is in good condition and that they can perform
and minimize the risk of injury.
Archery is appealing because it's not one of the sports that get you injured.
It carries a label as being one of the safer sports, and in a supervised environment
there's practically no risk to anybody else. At worst, your injuries may include a string
slap or sore fingers. Yes, there's the occasional photo of someone piercing their
hand with an arrow, but those are very rare, and they can be easily avoided.
What I'm going to focus on in this video is probably the most common injury that
an archer may experience, especially if you're new. This is still a very uncommon
injury, especially if you've been trained, but it can happen if you're doing something wrong.
This injury happens in the shoulders, especially the rotator cuff. Some people
report pains in the drawing shoulder, while it can happen in the bow shoulder as well
depending what the cause is.
You can recognize symptoms of shoulder injury by persistent obvious pain.
I'm not talking about feeling sore from doing a shooting session. That's quite
normal, especially if you haven't worked out your archery muscles. I'm talking
about a consistent pain that can be felt throughout the day and night.
Given the limited motion involved in archery, this is pretty much the only injury that
really happens, and with proper training it practically never happens.
Instead this is more likely if you're shooting with incorrect form.
I want to demonstrate the drawing technique without looking too indecent. There are some
variations of drawing technique depending on how you train, but all of them engage the same
specific muscle groups. Basically, what you're doing is squeezing your shoulder
blades together,
and that engages the back muscles. You really feel that pressure on your
rhomboids which are around here. So when you set the scapula correctly, you feel
that back muscle engage. This particular muscle group is what you're feeling
most of the weight on. The other thing to keep in mind is that you want to keep
the push-pull forces equals. So, you don't want to push too hard with one arm
or draw too hard with one arm. You want to keep it equal during the shot sequence. First I'll
do a front demonstration. What I'm looking for in a draw from this angle is this movement.
I start with my arm slightly raised. The elbow high, and i'm going to rotate my
drawing shoulder. So, I'm going to come in like this. I'm going to set my scapula
around here. See that that movement? The scapular is set..there, and then I lock my
anchor in and transfer the weight onto my rhomboids. So, it's not a straight motion
where I go from here to here then let go, but rather I'm coming in, I'm setting
my shoulder in like this, and then I'm setting the holding weight on my rhomboids.
So I can feel it without holding the bow. I can feel that my back is
engaged around here. So, let's do it with the bow. This is my usual 40 pound bow,
I'm going to do exactly what I just said with the bow.
I raise the bow, starting high, nose high. I come in, set, and then holding position.
OK! Next we'll go to the back view. Again, watch the placement of the scapula and
the pressure on the rhomboids. I'm using the bow. I'm going to shoot [away from camera]
so you can see a good view of my drawing shoulder. I raise the bow and do the the shot.
I'll do it again.
Set postion.
and again...
If you do this correctly, you feel the tension in your back. You start feeling a
little sore around... here during the shooting session, and that's fine.
That's normal.
That's the good sort of pain. Keep on doing that, and you'll be working up your
archery muscles.
However, if you feel the pain somewhere else then you may be doing something wrong.
If you're feeling pain in your front shoulder,
this may be due to too much push. This may be due to forcing your shoulder or
arm too far forward trying to get the bow to full draw. So, instead of doing the correct
draw where everything is balanced, you may be drawing and then pushing too far forward.
Now, you feel that tension if you do this the incorrect way. If you put too much
tension in your arm, you feel it in a lot of places. You feel it in your shoulder, you
feel it in your hand especially, and you may feel it in your elbow joint. It's also a
problem when you're using a clicker because some people may need to get through the
extra centimeter on the clicker. So they might try to squeeze through by pushing
just...that bit further to get that last centimeter. Another cause is improper
alignment. You may find that your shoulder is turned too far around your
body. You're popping out like this. So rather than having that bone-on-bone
straightness, you're having your shoulder popped out, and it's putting extra
tension on the shoulder muscles like this. This can also happen if you
have a habit of leaning backwards. So, again, instead of having that bone-on-bone
alignment through your arm, through your shoulder, through your back,
you're putting tension on the wrong muscles. So, your shoulder's popping out,
and that extra tension is placed...there. If we take a look at the drawing shoulder,
you may feel pain around here. Now this often isn't a good sign either. I find this
is often caused by the archer not stretching out enough or otherwise not
having the correct back muscle engagement. So rather than setting your scapula correctly and
setting the weight on the back muscle here, the archer is still
essentially pulling. This is a common form fault. You have to transfer from the
draw to the holding position, and some people, especially when they first learn, they skip that.
They go straight from here to here, and they're still pulling. I'll show you using the
stretching band. The motion I see that indicates form fault is this:
You pull and then basically they keep on pulling. There's no back tension.
They are continuing the draw.
Now, this is a huge problem because, again, you lose that bone-on-bone connection.
So rather than have everything perfectly aligned, you have this arm sticking out, and it's
still there. So if I turn around for the back view, you can see that as I'n shooting from a
compressed position, rather than engaging my back muscles,
I'm doing this. I'm going eeaaah, and we see here I'm still pulling with this arm.
So all the pressure is here and here. Basically your body isn't working
efficiently. It's fighting against the bow. It's fighting against itself.
You especially feel it when you try to expand, and instead of the shoulder
blades coming together like it should be, your drawing motion becomes unbalanced on one side.
These are generally seen as form faults, and with the correct training
and practice you can fix these faults. It's normal to feel sore, even in
the shoulders if you had a bad day, and you're not shooting with the perfect correct form.
That's normal. That's the way your body gives you feedback.
There's the right sort of pain which is mostly focused on the upper back and the
rhomboids, and then there's the sharper pain which you might feel in your shoulders,
and that's an indication that you may be doing something wrong.
Now, this sort of thing usually wont cause injury unless it's a chronic problem,
and you've been doing it for a long time.
However, there is something that really makes it an immediate problem:
Draw weight.
Now, I admit I'm a little strict on people who start on a higher draw weight. I'm talking about over 40 pounds.
For a first bow, especially, and the reason is because the higher amount
of stress involved on your body. If you're not shooting with correct form, and
you're making mistakes in your shot process like the ones I mentioned before, you're
far more likely to cause damage to your shoulders. Even compound shooters face the
same problem. Even though you might have a higher let-off, you are still
pulling 50-60 pounds, and it's the same motion. So if you're a small person,
especially, and I'm a small guy, but if you're smaller than me and not well-built,
keep in mind that drawing a 60-pound bow is going to take a lot out of you.
Combine that with the wrong technique and you may seriously cause muscle damage
that can put you out of archery. I really want to reinforce the notion of
picking a reasonable draw weight. From a coaching point of view, it's really hard
to teach someone to break habits and use good technique if they can't control their bow,
if they can't control their draw weight. If the draw weight is too high, this what we call
"over bowing"
There's never a situation, in my opinion, where you should get a high-powered bow to *learn* with.
This is why we suggest people start low. It's easier to correct
form faults, and it's easier on the body, and over time the archer will develop
the strength and technique so that they can progress to a heavier bow.
This also means that you may be buying multiple bows! You may have to get
different limbs or a different bow entirely. This is normal. This is the way archers
progress through their equipment. Try to get out of your mind that you're buying
one bow for life. That one single definitive purchase. No. If you want to
take archery seriously, and you want to grow from being this weak, noodle-armed stick figure
to having the right muscles for
archery, you will have to buy different equipment as you progress. If you just go
"oh I want to go hunting, I need a 50-pound bow!" and you buy that straightaway with
no training and no strength and no stamina and no technique, then you are going to
risk serious injury!
It's just like lifting weights. You can't start too high too soon or you will hurt
yourself. A lot of people (I notice field archers tend to do this) will push
that you go for the higher poundage and that you can "get used to it" within
a few months,. Yes, you can, but on the other side of the spectrum I'm erring on
the side of caution because I know from experience most adults can't handle
that high weight. I'd much rather see someone start low and learn to shoot safely and
enjoy the experience, than to see someone fight against their own bow and risk injury.
It's fairly common to see someone with a 55-pound bow, recurve or compound,
doing this. They're trying SO hard to pull the bow back and they can't.
Even the recurve hunters....
That's as far as they can go. They'll tell that person to stop shooting immediately!
Because it's going to cause injury. They'll tell you to drop the bow and pick up
a lighter 18-20 pound club bow, and, look, it doesn't
matter if it hurts your ego. We're not going to let someone tear their own
muscles shooting an overpowered bow for absolutely no reason.
To sum up, there are a couple of things you need to do to avoid shoulder injuries:
Firstly, make sure you are using a draw weight you can reasonably handle.
Secondly, make sure your form is correct. Too much tension on the shoulder or the wrong
alignment can lead to having too much stress on the wrong muscle groups and
causing muscle tears. If you do feel chronic pain, consult your physio/doctor.
It's not a normal part of archery. It's NOT a normal part of archery.
You may have an injury. It's much better to do it right and avoid hurting yourself than
going down the long road of rehabilitation.
Anyway, this is NUSensei. I hope you found this helpful.
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.