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Archery Release Thoughts

Some thoughts on the release after watching video of Jake Kaminski’s technique.

I continue to keep up with archery practice. The more I do it, the more I enjoy it. I’m beginning to gain the semblance of a repeatable technique, and my shooting reflects that. One aspect I’m trying to figure out is the release.

Here’s a great video of Olympian Jake Kaminski practicing:

I’ve been watching his release, and technique in general, across a number of videos on the web and it’s very consistent through all those videos.

I’m wondering how his release hand ends up almost behind his head.

From what I’ve been able to research, the gist of the release is to increase back tension while relaxing the fingers in the string hand. At some point, the string will “pop” through the fingers and go. Now, in order to make sure the arrow flies straight, it stands to reason the only direction an archer should be pulling the string is straight back. But if the archer pulls straight back, I don’t see how a relaxed release hand can end up behind the head like his does.

There are a few possibilities to explain this. One is that Jake Kaminski has muscle memory for that follow through which he simply taught himself because he was told “that’s how a release should look.” But this kind of implies that he’s doing something wrong and I’m not about, after less than a month of toying with it, to say an Olympian is doing something wrong. While it’s not outside the realm of possibility, I won’t start there.

The other, more likely, scenario is that there are other technical factors at play that cause the hand to end up there after releasing. Certainly, the initial motion of his hand appears to be straight back as expected. After that, his hand seems to kind of drift back there. Considering that the string is well away at that point, perhaps it doesn’t matter where his hand finally comes to rest and it’s just those initial few moments immediately after the string is released that count.

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