Sports (Athletes)

This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Competitive Archery, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create an extraordinarily accurate archery technique.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)

For an archer to find the most effortless and powerful way to stand with bow, his posture should start in neutral. Neutral is an actor’s term for an actor’s ability to create a character from a whole body neutral posture that isn’t conveying any particular character. Another way to say this is that you start from a whole body posture that is fully upright, fully open, and fully aligned.
As an Alexander Technique teacher, when I apply this to an archer, I am asking that the archer to be able to stand with such effortless balance, with arms supporting the bow, and legs in release, that there is no part of his body that isn’t in dynamic effortless flow.

In this section on posture, I want to look at the principles of whole body standing posture and wait to look more specifically at the arms in the section Hands, Arms, and Shoulders. I’d like you to stand for three hours with your arms at your sides and not move. What was your response to this? Did you panic? It is very possible to do this, and I believe it is something every archer should be able to do without hurting in her torso and legs. In the section on arms, we’ll address the same issue with the arms. (Don’t panic yet.)

For you to stand upright for three hours and not hurt, you’d have to find a way to stand using the least amount of muscle. This only happens, if your body is in its optimal alignment. I’m going to describe what this whole body alignment looks like and feels like. Lock every single muscle in your body, from head to toe. You have just done the ultimate wrong thing you can do, if you don’t want to have control of your body, have elegant upright posture, and move in a coordinated balanced way.

We’re now going to find a way for you to do the least amount of muscular work and for you to move with high dynamic. High dynamic is my description of doing what it takes to be a powerfully accurate archer without confusing intensity and high energy for excess muscular tension, which would cause you to hunker down.

Lock your knees and ankles. Now unlock your thighs without bending your knees. You cannot unlock knees, but you can unlock the thigh muscles, quadriceps, which is unlocking the knees. When you release the thigh muscles without bending the knees, then you are allowing the bones in the legs to balance on top of each other. Now unlock your ankles, and you will discover that you will not fall over.

What you will discover with unlocked thighs and ankles is that you will feel very wobbly in your body. Allow yourself to experience this and within a short period of time, days, it will not feel unstable, if you allow yourself to direct. To direct as I described in the opening section is to release your neck and let your head lead you into full upright posture. This means as your knees and ankles are not held, and that as your head leads you upright, directing will create even more space between the leg bones and vertebrae.