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Need advice on increasing draw strength

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Badger:
   I started excercising with a slight heavier bow today trying to increase my strength. I noticed the only muscles getting pumped up are the ones on the top of my shoulders and neck and not my back muscles. I feel like my alignment must be off and not incorporating those muscles. I did notice I was shrugging my shoulders as I drew. Any advice on how to attain proper alignment so my back muscles play a larger roll in the draw. 65# is the absolute most I can draw to 28" right now and I really need to get to 80#. I have one year.

wood_bandit99:
I would work on pulling it to the pec height then raising to ear or face or wherever u anchor. I only pull 55# maybe more if I was going for weight. Not bad for a 14 year old :) that is how I exercise them

WillS:
A year is a good amount of time to work out a program for yourself.  A lot of the heavy-weight warbow guys use trainers they make themselves, from bungee cords or springs.

Working up through the weights using actual bows is fine, but at some point you need to keep getting your hands on bigger bows which can often be tricky.  I would recommend making yourself a bow trainer, with a load of bungee cords tied to a wooden grip which is held in the bow hand.  Use a tiller to work out and adjust the cords until they're at neat increments, for example 50#, 60#, 70# and 80#.  Warm up going through the weights gradually, holding the grip in the left hand and "drawing" the bungee cord with the right, and make sure that you're feeling the muscles work where you want - lower shoulders, bow arm tricep etc.  Once you reach the 80# bungee, you should be nicely warmed up and be able to do at least a couple of repetitions, really feeling the muscles working and being confident that you're not straining or working the wrong parts of your body.

With a year in which to achieve it, you can go real slow, taking care of your body and not going up until you feel it getting easy at one weight.  And although it sounds obvious and cliché, doing press ups and most importantly pull ups/chin ups is a fantastic way of increasing the right muscle areas without needing equipment.  Study videos and images of guys using heavier bows as it's a very different technique to target shooting or hunting. 

Hope this helps a little bit!

Badger:
  I haven't pulled 80# for many years, at 55 yrs old I could still pull 70#, 65 now and noticeabley have lost some strength. The main thing I am concerned with is that I don't feel like I am using the back muscles and for some reason I can't seem to find the right angle to involve them. I am assuming I would feel soreness in them if I was using them. I always thought pulling with my elbow level to my shoulder would automaticaly involve the back muscles but I feel nothing in them after a hard bow workout.

adb:
Hey, Steve
I'm 50 and still shooting warbows. I don't work out, I'm not all muscley. I have been shooting bows all my life, however. My point is, if I can do it, so can you!

Because a picture speaks a thousand words, I'm going to post a sequence of pics of me drawing my 100# warbow to full draw (in this case 31").

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