Training for heavy bow shooting

[Glennan]

It does make me chuckle, this fetish for drawing the heaviest bow.

  (This is me, chuckling)

Learn to shoot properly first, then the draw weight will come quite naturally.  Power and strength come from good technique, never the other way round.

[Lloyd]

I seems that we all agree that a physically active life style is, in some part, conducive to shooting in the warbow.  But where we seem to differ is to the degreeof this and whether additional training is required in lieu of specialised training from early boyhood, as in medieval times.  If I may paraphrase Jaro’s and some others sentiments, they seemed to feel that activities such as my bow exerciser were ‘artificial’ in some way and unnecessary.  What was important was a rugged life style in order to draw and shoot realistic medieval draw weights.
 
In 1509, Sir Roger Williams wrote his military treatise, ‘Briefe  Discourse of Warre’.  This was at a time when agriculture was still the most significant industry in Britain and manual labour, largely, as arduous as 200 years before.   However, even though the British still lived a very vigorous and physically demanding life this he writes… “Out of 5000 archers not 500 will make any strong shootes”. Only 1 in 10 can shoot well with a warbow.  He bemoans,  “…few or none do anie great hurt 12 or 14 score off.'  Clearly this is not the strong shooting the Anglo-Welsh was once famous for.  Equally clearly is the fact this is down to lack of specialised training and not a sedentary lifestyle.
Jeremy

I think you are have a typo there. Roger Williams was a contemporary of Phillip Sidney so that would put him in the late 16th century, not the early 16th.

I just checked
Sir Roger Williams, A Briefe Discourse of Warre (London, 1590)

[Yeomanbowman]

Yep!  Typo corrected .
Josh, the book is on Amazon.
Cheers,
Jeremy

[sagitarius boemoru]

That is well past decline of military archery.  Consider Flodden last major longbow engagement. There is continental campaign of Henry VIII. which sure included archery contingent, but its more like he liked the idea of indomitable english longbow than anything else (and attempted to hold the tradition alive). Continental battles by 1550 were routinely won with superiority in firearms as (one of) decisive factors.


J.

[Yeomanbowman]

It does make me chuckle, this fetish for drawing the heaviest bow.

  (This is me, chuckling)

Learn to shoot properly first, then the draw weight will come quite naturally.  Power and strength come from good technique, never the other way round.

Glennan,
This is me perplexed at your attitude  ,
Don’t be so dismissive, how do you know how we shoot?  If you don’t agree with anything I say that’s fine and you can choose to say so.  But when you use derogatory language like ‘fetish’ it's too much.  We both know what a realistic medieval draw weight is and what it takes to shift a heavy arrow.  I shot a 65 gram war arrow 273 at Margam the other day and I defy you to do it with any thing under 120Lb, even with a laminate bow.  War arrows are ineffective with sub 100Lb bows; it’s as simple as that.  It’s a case of fitness for purpose not wearing fetish rubber bondage gear . Power is generated by the application of strength, via technique.  Who’s saying technique is not important, certainly not me.  You’re not a small chap and have a natural advantage so be more flexible.
Jeremy   

[Glennan]

Fetish,  noun: An object, principle, activity or similar that receives unreasonably excessive attention or reverence

[Yeomanbowman]

Come on Glennan
See also...
Fetish, noun:Psychology. any object or nongenital part of the body that causes a habitual erotic response or fixation. 

[SimonUK]

Come on lads, this is getting ridiculous. Everyone knows it's an impersonal pronoun.

[Glennan]

Yep, another good definition.

There are some out there whose purpose is purely to draw the heaviest bow they can.  It's not about the archery to them, it's about the machismo (or something)

I don't think that applies to you.  Never did.  Sorry if you misunderstood me, or you find my colourful (though quite correct) use of English offensive.

Not sure that gives you the right to patronise me, though.

[Rod]

I'm reminded of the story about a target archery coach who took it upon himself to show Dick Galloway how to draw up a bow. The man was handed a strong bow and all he could do was strain, grunt and pass it back.
Technique alone will not do it, nor will strength alone, at least not efficiently.
It's commonplace for me doing public access archery to see a big guy struggling with a weight that a slight woman will shoot comfortably, and the difference is in ego and technique.
The big guy will pick it up and try to draw with his hands, the woman will have listened to instruction and draw with comfort, using her back.
I was just looking at Thimosaby's picture over on PA and he has his wrist cocked and his elbow way high, a sure indicator that he has placed too much emphasis on drawing with the hands.
Rod.

[ChrisD]

Alan

I have to say I agree with you that using a heavier bow forces you to do it a different way and thats certainly been my experience.

I think that being built big, you probably do have some innate advantages - bigger joints to spread the load better and big people have more basic leg and lower back strength. Having said that, I suspect that any healthy male can get up to 100lb at 30ins with training these days.

My own experience was based on an old 60lb victorian bow, an ash bow I made and an italian yew bow which was originally 90lb at 30 ins - but is a little less now. I started off with constant discomfort - nothing bad, just a niggle really - in the mobile wad of my right forearm (thats barchioradialis, and extensor carpi radialis longus and brevis). When that settled - which it did in spite of continuing to train - I then got about 6 months worth of discomfort higher up the line in the Acromio-clavicular joint. Again, in spite of continuing to train, its now settling and I'm assuming its due to the soft parts of the joint moulding to accomodate a specific type of new activity. I'm 6ft tall in my socks and 167lb with a long reach and small joints - so I guess my destiny is not to use a 130lb bow - or at least not without considerably more effort than you discuss.

Have you had any similar experiences at all - or has anybody else? At the moment, things are moving slowly and steadily forward and I'm getting to grips with a big swiss yew bow of 100lb at 30 ins and making progress.

I'm pretty sure you'd have trouble using that bow of yours in the situation I'm suggesting. What I mean is marching 270 miles in  17 days with only one days rest. No shelter to speak of and rations consisting of a few nuts a day and some mouldy meat which makes you sick(or vegan equivalent - but it has to be poisonous yeah?) . On one day, you get a bellyful of half fermented wine and some bread which does more harm than good. It rains the whole time so you're always wet and you don't get much sleep. By the last few days, you have diarrhoea and/or bronchitis and are forced to fight bare arsed in order to have hope of a clean pair of trousers to go home in, if you survive. In fact, anybody trying that would have a fair chance of dying and would be doing well to stand unaided by the end of it, let alone use a 130lb bow.

There is another big problem with trying to extrapolate that abilities of one or a few people to those of thousands. When dealing with large numbers of people, you get ranges of abilities. The bigger the numbers, the bigger the range. Now, if you calculated the average strength of men in an army and made a bow based on that, then half the army would be unable to use the bow. What you need to do is calculate the percentage of people you want to be able to use the bow (I'd say 95% or roughly 2 standard deviations either side of the mean) and set the bow weight at the lowest end ie average strength minus the two standard deviations. As somebody said in a previous post - its about minimums. That way, you can engineer a situation where everybody can use the bow - and you'd need to take into account the effects of privation on campaign by the way.

C

[alanesq]

Hello again ChrisD :-)

I have not suffered any pain myself (well apart from slight ache from over used muscles) but I am VERY careful not to over do it and as soon as I feel I might be I go back to my 100lb bow or stop.

I am determined to string the bow without a stringer as I can't imagine big butch medieval archers getting their stringer out (it would be a matcho thing) - I think I have hurt myself more doing this than shooting the bow
I suspect I will eventually admit defeat on this one but I have to give it a try ;-)


I could be wrong, but I imagined that the archers going to war would be specially selected for their archery skills/prowess and so the bows wouldn't need to be usable by any solder, just the cream of British archers ?
There are people around these days who can pull 180lbs and I am sure they would consider a 130lb bow a light bow
Imagine giving someone like Simon Stanley a 90lb bow to take into battle, I don't think he would be impressed ;-)

I am pretty new to warbows and now going from my 100lb bow to the new 130lb bow I think I have developed a good technique for pulling heavy bows and this one is as heavy as I can manage at the moment - it will be interesting now to see if this is my natural ability or if in a few months I am considering this a light bow ?
If I do carry on up the weights without much effort then this would to me imply that medieval archers who were shooting bows from a young age would be well in advance of myself (I started aged 40!)
If I am still finding this a very heavy bow in 6 months time then maybe each person has a natural draw weight they can pull once the technique is learned and they can't easily pass this point?

BTW - Whilst I say I don't do a lot of training it is not uncommon for me to shoot for 4 or 5 hours solid at my target club on a Sunday and this would be something like 250 arrows so maybe I have built my muscles up on lighter bows over the last year more than I realised ?

[ChrisD]

Alan

well, good luck to you in your ventures. I'm sure we'll meet at some stage on the circuit. I really think its a pity the BLBS hasn't been abit more long sighted and encouraged heavy bow use.

What you say about muscle ache gives me an idea. Infra red cameras detect heat and therefore can by inference be used to identify where blood flow occurs in muscles. I reckon that heavy bow use is much more of a whole body exercise than traditional - IR cameras would be a good way to compare. I find the muscle ache is in the lower back - right side mostly, buttock, again right side mostly and right lateral thigh.

I do in fact think that there were many bowmen of old who could have used heavier bows than what I believe the MR bows were. I just also happen to think that numbers of bows in action was more important than higher weights for the reasons I've outlined. You know this debate will go on an on. In the end of the day, JB is right - it is about enjoying oneself. Lets face it, we're grown ups who enjoy playing at bows and arrows - how seriously should we be taking it? (Ok Ok, I know some of us get really het up on the history - but so what - it should only be talked about with beer on hand really)

C

[alanesq]

I couldn't agree more - it's all just a bit of fun at the end of the day :-)

My interest in figuring out what the draw weight of the bows would have been is simply because my ultimate goal has always been to learn to shoot a longbow like would have been used at Agincourt etc. etc.
Problem with this is I had not realised how little is know about such things and so no one really knows what this bow is !

At the moment I am working on the theory that the Mary Rose bows were around 140lb, but when I finally get to 140lb I bet someone convinces me they were 150 ;-)

Cheers
Alan