Hi everybody!
Since the last post, I have spent some time getting the bow set up as well as I am able and some specific excercises to strengthen my arms. The first thing I did was make sure the nocking point is correct and then some walkback tuning to make sure the 2315's are leaving the bow correctly. Once that was done, I made a minor adjustment to the travel and pressure of my trigger and have tried to drum into my form to maintain that pull into the back wall and use that to activate the release and not actively pull the trigger. The excercise part came about because at the end of a nights shooting as things start to degrade, the thing that kills me is my bow arm holding up the physical weight of the bow so I have started doing a simple 10 minute weight routine every evening with some 2kg dumbells. Nothing strenuous, just simple excercises to strengthen my arms and shoulders but I have done this every night where I haven't shot for about the last 3 weeks and I have noticed an improvement - nothing dramatic, but enough to warrant the effort.
I realised I hadn't scored a round since I did all this so tonight I went up the club and shot 1 end of 3 arrows as sighters, and then did a FITA 18 and raised the bar on my pb to 566 (584 if it was on the recurve ten ring!). There was only one arrow outside the gold, a stupid low 8 from dropping my bow arm but other than that I managed to maintain my form throughout and was still shooting strong at the end. I am absolutely chuffed with this score, especially since it is less than 4 months since I started shooting compound! The bow is shooting like a dream and I have a few competitions coming up. I'm shooting the WFAA Welsh Indoor championships this Sunday, the Welsh Senior Indoors on the 22nd and then an open Portsmouth at a local club in February that I shoot every year for fun, so I am looking forward to trying it out under the pressure of timing and scoring.
What I am really looking forward to though is the start of the 2012 field season! I've rejoined the WFAA so there are several shoots within reasonable distance every month and I can get out there and enjoy myself. I reached Bowman level in FITA field with recurve before I went trad a year ago, so I am interested to see how I fare with CUL. Only 2 more months or so and we're off!
Now, stringmaking... Since I moved from a trainer bow to my first real recurve years ago I have always made and shot my own strings for the recurve and my trad bows. I taught myself how to do it from online tutorials and borrow the clubs Arten jig when I need it. In the fullness of time the Guardian will need to be cabled and strung and given the cost of a set of compound strings, is it worth getting a quality jig and materials and making my own? I have sent an email to a local fabricators firm I spoke to about making the modules for a unistrut jig as seen on here such as Bruno's one, to see if they can whip one up for me for less than say an A&F jig and it the price is right I may get it anyway to have it in my toolkit. I enjoy making strings and do it pretty well and have confidence in them, but I cannot decide if it is worth doing or should I just spend the money to have professional quality strings instead when the time comes. Decisions decisions....
Since the last post, I have spent some time getting the bow set up as well as I am able and some specific excercises to strengthen my arms. The first thing I did was make sure the nocking point is correct and then some walkback tuning to make sure the 2315's are leaving the bow correctly. Once that was done, I made a minor adjustment to the travel and pressure of my trigger and have tried to drum into my form to maintain that pull into the back wall and use that to activate the release and not actively pull the trigger. The excercise part came about because at the end of a nights shooting as things start to degrade, the thing that kills me is my bow arm holding up the physical weight of the bow so I have started doing a simple 10 minute weight routine every evening with some 2kg dumbells. Nothing strenuous, just simple excercises to strengthen my arms and shoulders but I have done this every night where I haven't shot for about the last 3 weeks and I have noticed an improvement - nothing dramatic, but enough to warrant the effort.
I realised I hadn't scored a round since I did all this so tonight I went up the club and shot 1 end of 3 arrows as sighters, and then did a FITA 18 and raised the bar on my pb to 566 (584 if it was on the recurve ten ring!). There was only one arrow outside the gold, a stupid low 8 from dropping my bow arm but other than that I managed to maintain my form throughout and was still shooting strong at the end. I am absolutely chuffed with this score, especially since it is less than 4 months since I started shooting compound! The bow is shooting like a dream and I have a few competitions coming up. I'm shooting the WFAA Welsh Indoor championships this Sunday, the Welsh Senior Indoors on the 22nd and then an open Portsmouth at a local club in February that I shoot every year for fun, so I am looking forward to trying it out under the pressure of timing and scoring.
What I am really looking forward to though is the start of the 2012 field season! I've rejoined the WFAA so there are several shoots within reasonable distance every month and I can get out there and enjoy myself. I reached Bowman level in FITA field with recurve before I went trad a year ago, so I am interested to see how I fare with CUL. Only 2 more months or so and we're off!
Now, stringmaking... Since I moved from a trainer bow to my first real recurve years ago I have always made and shot my own strings for the recurve and my trad bows. I taught myself how to do it from online tutorials and borrow the clubs Arten jig when I need it. In the fullness of time the Guardian will need to be cabled and strung and given the cost of a set of compound strings, is it worth getting a quality jig and materials and making my own? I have sent an email to a local fabricators firm I spoke to about making the modules for a unistrut jig as seen on here such as Bruno's one, to see if they can whip one up for me for less than say an A&F jig and it the price is right I may get it anyway to have it in my toolkit. I enjoy making strings and do it pretty well and have confidence in them, but I cannot decide if it is worth doing or should I just spend the money to have professional quality strings instead when the time comes. Decisions decisions....