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Training for heavy bow shooting
duffontap:
Have any of you seen 'Alone in the Wilderness?' It's a documentary about a man who moves to a remote area of Alaska, builds a cabin with hand tools and lives there for 35 years by himself. The amazing thing was that this guy could work an ax and misery whip all day long. I have no doubt that he would get into a 120# war bow very quickly.
I sometimes make the mistake of thinking that anybody could get into a 100#+ bow as fast as I did but I have a little history of manual labor that helps. It also helps that I hike into canyons and cut down Yew trees, split them and carry them out. I'm not an uber-bow puller like some of you guys but I would say that my degree of fitness that results from cutting wood and adventuring out-of-doors maintains my ability to draw a 100# bow.
I can only imagine what a plow-pulling, rock carrying, wood chopping peasant would be able to do with training in archery.
J. D. Duff
Yeomanbowman:
--- Quote from: sagitarius boemoru on May 17, 2007, 07:15:31 am ---Jeremy, you seem to forget all that hard labour these people were to do BESIDES the shooting. Oh yes, bischop Latimere writes about his bow growing with him etc. etc....
What I m telling is that they were conditioned enviromentaly to draw heavy bows, we are (mostly) not.
If you do excersise and drop it for 3 months, will you be still able to shoot your bow as of today?
Jaro
--- End quote ---
Hello Jaro,
Yes I quite agree, but that only confirms my first point. Due to our sedentary lifestyle we in the west generally lack the underpinning physical potency of our ancestors. OK, so far we are of the same opinion. Where it seems we disagree is what we do about it, I advocate some form of training to simulate the effect of a lifetime of being laid in the bow and with hard physical labour on top. What are we supposed to do? Submit to the limits of our cosy life style and say 'If I can't live a medieval life style I won't bother at all'. Physiologically we are the same as our ancestors, bar a less robust digestive system, so how we get to be able to shoot in the warbow is irrelevant. Tendon strength tends to remain if acquired slowly but ask yourself 'If a medieval archer suddenly did a 21st C 9 'til 5 office job for 3 months how would they fare?' Who knows?
I have done weight training and martial arts/contact sports for years so I think I could shoot quite a heavy bow after a 3 month lay off, J.D. has an outdoorsy life style that gives him a base-line but really Jaro, every little helps.
Cheers,
Jeremy
sagitarius boemoru:
If a medieval archer suddenly did a 21st C 9 'til 5 office job for 3 months how would they fare?' Who knows?
I bet he would be pissed off beyond all means. ;D
Anyway - such short time wont ruin his fitness certainly. It does not work that way.
Jaro
Yeomanbowman:
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 1590, 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
duffontap:
Is that availible to read? Very interesting.
I hope my last comment wasn't confusing. I was just saying that I thought certain activities like chopping wood worked out the necessary muscles for pulling a bow. I did not mean that special training wasn't necessary for getting into very heavy bows these days. I suppose the best way to get into a very heavy bow would be to start young and work your way up. But, I have no problem hitting the weights to get there in 1/1,000th of the time. ;D
J. D. Duff
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