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learnt some archery yesterday.
the instructor apparently is qualified enough to teach Olympic grade archery.
but he can't hit bulls eyes anymore.
he likes to say how he will laugh if we hurt themselves, because these bows and arrows can be dangerous.
he gave a lovely description of how standing in front of the target when people pull out their arrows can result in an arrow going through your eye, with the 'pop' sound and the optical nerve trailing when you pull it out.
and i'll always remember this thing he said, "put your knock under and your cock out".
lol
the knock is the tip of the arrow that fits under the brass point on the string of the bow.
the cock is the odd colored feather on the arrow. named so because they used to get cockerel feathers for it.
the index finger goes above the knock point, the middle and ring fingers go under, and the string is held against the first segment joint of the fingers.
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| bows n arrows |
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| nearby targets |
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| nice stance |
anyway, i pretty much suck at archery. lots of my arrows went into the ground.
but then i learnt to properly hold the bow by sticking my arm out straight first before pulling the string to the corner of my mouth.
that kinda helped my stance, but my pull was weak, my fingers hurt and i couldn't figure out how to aim. instructor said to close the left eye and aim the tip at the base of the third leg. hmm.
but i managed to hit one bulls eye, totally by accident.
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| my arrow in the center |
that's a picture of it.
my arm totally hyper-extended and the string hit my arm, but luckily i had the arm guard on. by the time i looked up, the others were exclaiming that the arrow went into the center.
archery is more tiring than i thought. similar to bowling in that respect.
you need to engage the core muscles to have a good stance.
and pulling the string made my arms and fingers hurt.
but it was fun.
