Precision Archery

Bys: Ruis, Steve and Stevenson, Claudia

Book Overview

Attention, serious archers: If you're looking for the advanced techniques and strategies to help you refine your skills and thoroughly prepare for competition, Precision Archery can help you achieve... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0736046348
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Human Kinetics
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.5" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Archery Book

An excellent book for the beginner all the way up. Easy to read instructions and plenty of tips to ease the learning curve for someone getting into archery.

Advice you can take tothe bank

I found this book excellent and one of the few target archer resources that provides pointed guidance that you can "take to the bank". Steve Ruis even answered some tuning questions directly. This book also has pieces from other archers that are poignant and enjoyable reading. I took the Larry Wise Core Archery class and found the section in this book written by Larry to be an excellent review of class material. Learning to shoot using Back Tension is not an overnight endeavor, however this book can get you there sooner than a trial-and-error effort.

Book Review: Precision Archery

Book Review: Precision Archery202 Pages, Edited and Written bySteve Ruis and Claudia StevensonRetail Price $19.95 (US dollars)Precision Archery is a new book brought to you by the folks who publish this magazine. The book is a collection of articles written by some of the foremost experts in archery today: Rick McKinney, Don Rabska, Larry Wise, M.J. Rogers, and several others. It is geared toward recurve and compound target archers who wish to raise their shooting abilities and increase their general archery knowledge. You will find chapters dealing with shot execution, physical conditioning, and advanced form for recurve and compound archery, as well as an inspirational chapter entitled "Embracing the Spirit of Archery."When I first saw the cover an immediate alarm bell rang. It appeared to be yet one more book that was trying to be "everything to everybody." The phrases "target shooting, field competition, and bow hunting" seemed to imply that this book may be taking on too much. Anybody who claims be an expert on all these areas is probably a master of none. When I saw that it was, in fact, a collection of works by multiple authors it made more sense; each writer stays within his or her range of expertise.Rick McKinney, one of the world's greatest Olympic-style archers, contributes a fine chapter called "Exploring Competition." In it, he lays out why competition may be good for you (if you're not doing it) and (if you are) how to better prepare for it. Don Rabska, one of the top technical gurus, writes on "Advanced Form for Recurve Archers." While I don't shoot recurve, I still found this to be one of the best chapters in the book. He starts with proper stance, and moves on to each component of an archer's form: bow hand, shoulder placement, and form execution. His final section is called "Connecting with the Target" and explains something I have personally found very mysterious. Why are my shots smooth and effortless close to the target but not further away? I found Rabska's answer to this phenomenon most enlightening.Compound archers have their technical guru, too; namely Larry Wise. Larry details the steps in shot execution with many photographs. I found it curious that there was no photo showing the release hand anchoring on the jaw, given the importance of this. While there is no doubt that Larry's explanations are technically accurate, I didn't always find the information useful. For example, Larry defines back tension as ". . . the contraction of the dominant or drawing side rhomboid muscles, aided by the levator scapula muscle, which causes a micro sliding rotation of the scapula toward the spine." Right. I'll keep that in mind next time I'm at full draw. (I think not!)Tuning recurve and compound bows are covered by Rabska and Ruis. If you have been around archery for long, this material may not be new for you, but it's still worthwhile to have for a reference. The chapter "Perfecting Practice" does cover some new ground. Relatively l