The Ten Basic Steps in Archery Shooting

You begin with the stance. Place the tips of your toes against an imagined straight line that is towards the center of the target. Place your feet on both sides of the imaginary line. Next, place your feet about shoulder's width apart. Next, get yourself as relaxed as possible.

Next is finger placement. You want to place your fingers such that you are holding the string with your index finger above the nock with your ring and middle fingers beneath the nock. Next, you hook the string between your fingers' first and second joints. Make sure you have the strings hooked deeply. The next component of your basic steps in archery is hand placement. You want to distribute the pressure of the bow along your hand's pressure line. Keep your fingers relaxed, and make sure that the back of your hand is making an angle of 45 degrees. The tips of you index finger and thumb can touch each other as long as it is in a relaxed way.

The next basic archery step is the extending of your bow arm. You bring your bow arm up to should height. You need to keep your bow arm's elbow turned away from the string of the bow.

After you have extended your bow arm, you will draw the bow. Along your bowarm, draw the string back in a straight horizontal line to your anchor point. You want to draw with your back muscles, so that your shoulder blades move toward each other, while keep both of our shoulder as low as possible. Stay relaxed and make sure you are standing with a straight spine. Once you are at this stage, you need to anchor. The string needs to be touching the middle of your chin., with your index finger placed just beneath your chin. Make sure that your mouth is closed and your teeth are held together.

At this point in your basic archery shot you want to "hold". Keeping your back muscles tensed, make sure that your bow hand, elbow, and draw hand are forming a straight line with respect to each other. Still make sure that your shoulders are as low as possible.

At this point, you will take aim. You do your aiming with your dominant eye and close your other eye. Keep the string a little left of the target while keeping your sight on the target (if you are using a sight). Now you will release the arrow. To do this you keep on pulling your shoulder blades towards each other as you relax the fingers on your draw hand. If your hand is sufficiently relaxed, it will automatically move backwards. Now, relax your bow hand entirely and let the bow drop.

And finally, you will follow through. After the arrow is flying, your draw hand should remain relaxed and be up near your ear. Keep aiming just as you were before until the arrow hits the target. Focusing on a proper follow through means that you are aiming and releasing properly.