Alignment:
Good solid form can be a huge advantage to a shooter. How can you practice good form? Better yet, how do we establish solid form? When you go to practice, after your stretching exercises, what do you do? As a coach what do you have the shooters do? Like most shooters you probably step up to the shooting line and start shooting arrows.
How about going to a closer butt, getting into a stance addressing the target, extending the bow arm to shoulder height. This will vary slightly with compound shooters, but not much. And no matter what the distance being shot this “T” shape does not change. The bow hand must remain at approximate shoulder height.
Then with your eyes closed, draw the string along the bow arm in a straight horizontal line to the anchor point. Draw with your back muscles, moving the shoulder blades towards each other, feel the scapula move down over the rib cage. Stand straight up and relaxed. Keep both shoulders as low as possible. Anchor comfortably, then open your eyes, take a couple of seconds to aim, the string should touch the middle of the chin, the index finger is placed under the chin, ( this does vary as chin shape will affect the anchor) keep your teeth together, touch your nose to the string. Do not allow the string to cut into your face, this will be obvious with a deformation of the string.
When considering the release hand it is valuable to remember that your wrist should be flat, not curled, with your elbow extending directly behind the wrist. Why is this important? When we think of trying not to affect arrow flight we should consider the arrow coming out of the bow with as little interference as possible, whatever influence there is should be directly behind the knock. Interference can come from the way we release the string. If a compound shooter twists the release upon squeezing the trigger they will affect the string and in turn the string affects the arrow. The same for a Recurve shooter. If a Recurve shooter pulls their elbow down trying to release the string, their middle finger will negatively affect the arrows path out of the bow. So we need to think of the activity directly behind the nock.
Keep the back muscles engaged and gently pulling the shoulder blades towards each other, NOT to much but like you are trying to hold an orange, while relaxing the fingers of the draw hand, squeeze the shoulder blades and reach into the handle. Bow hand, draw hand and elbow should form a straight line. When you stand behind your athlete you should see the elbow behind the ear, if you see it angled out from the shoulder over 5 to 7 degrees you may have to make some correction
The draw hand should be relaxed. Keep aiming until after the arrow hits the target, with your eyes on the point that you have been aiming at.
This is important for Recurve as well as Compound shooters. Alignment is one of the major stumbling blocks most shooters today face. Keep in mind that not everyone will fall into this type of alignment for physical or medical reasons. But the argument for good form and alignment cannot be visited enough.
Sometimes what we may see is a Recurve shooter trying to pull through the clicker with their arm and not their back. This can be seen where the release hand moves across the chin and the bow arm twists slightly (sometimes seen at the elbow) turning the palm of the hand into the bow. We might also see the release elbow angle up or down, in order to drag the arrow through the clicker. For compound shooters the process is slightly different, but the concept and follow through is the same.
Another issue that we see over and over again is head movement. That ultimately crippling move that makes it so we can not move through the clicker. It may take one of two forms. We may see the head move towards the string as the shooter begins to draw back, with the string and the anchor point meeting somewhere in the middle. Or we could see the head move away from the center of balance, as shown below. Also the release elbow does not fully extend around behind the head behind the ear
  
As you can see in photo on the left, the head is straight up, elbow behind the ear, in the center photo we can see that she is leaning into the bow handle and is off center of balance, in the photo on the left we see head reaching for the string, and she has rotated to far.
How do we see it? As a coach the movement is easy to spot. For the Archer very often we do not believe it until we see it. I have to tell you that the first time you see yourself making that move you still don’t believe it. A large mirror is good. Standing in front of it so that you can see the whole body works really well. Some one standing with their fingers or hand lightly set on your forehead quite often is enough to let you get a sense of the move. The best however is short video clips of several shots to compare and to see the movement. Get a look at the amount that the head, lips and release arm travel off center. This leads to the beginning of the cure. Once the shooters knows that they are moving and ACCEPTS that they do move, it will correct itself without a great deal of effort. A cue word placed in the sequence of shooting very often helps re-enforce a posture that resists making the move to the string. Close monitoring by the coach for several weeks with some tuning or positive feedback ensures that these moves do not reoccur when the shooter gets tired.
Resource: FCA National Coaching Manual level 3 NCCP
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