Hey Folks,

Below is a message which was posted to my Youtube profile, so I
thought I would post the question and my answer here. I hope everyone
is doing well.

See below...

Brest Regards,

-DP
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Dear Mr. Perez,

I joined your yahoo forum some time ago.
I enjoyed reading the earlier threads.
I found it to be informative.
However, I noticed inactivity by the moderator lately,so I decided to
send you a message here instead.
I downloaded the back tension exercise.
Can you please explain what you mean by "continuous draw drill - focus
on clicker, headless draw drill and double draw drill?"

I sent an IM to your Yahoo.
I hope that's all right with you too.

Yours truly,
Emily Mae Yap

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Emily,

I hope this message finds you in good spirits. I don't often check my
Youtube account for emails so I apologize for my delayed response.

The inactivity on the Yahoo group can be explained in two reasons, 1)I
have recently relocated to Southern California and have been very busy
with all that comes with relocation and settling in with a new job. 2)
My intention with the group when I created it was to be a resource for
people who need tips now and then, but not something that would
replace a coach. It is not uncommon for there to be long periods of
time without activity, and I've tried to spark a little bit of an
interest by attaching several files and things that I have used at one
time or another.

Anyhow, enough of that!

To answer your questions about the different drills outlined in one of
my practice spreadsheets (which is available as an attachment in the
group files section), I would simply refer you to a couple of
documents that are also available on the group website. One is a short
little paper, titled, "Clicker Set Up & Lesson" which is located under
the Training Documents folder in our Yahoo group files location. In
that document I talk about focusing on the clicker during the early
stages of learning the clicker. So where my practice session suggests
a continuous draw drill, with a focus on the clicker, that means the
archer should focus on the clicker during the continuous draw drill
(as described in the above mentioned paper).

As for the other drills, check out the document titled, "training
techniques training aids," also located under the Training Documents
folder. This document was written by Don Rabska, a respected authority
on archery and an internationally recognized technical expert. In that
document, Rabska describes the headless draw and double draw
techniques. These have been adopted and modified by several coaches,
so chances are you may have done one of these drills before.

On thing I thought I would mention since many of the documents that I
have posted discuss archery through the view of the pre-Kisik Lee era,
where the standard consensus used to be one of a push-pull nature. Now
that way of thinking is being transformed under the National Coach
Kisik Lee, and although there are many people who feel that his
stubborn approach to coaching archery is out of place in the U.S., I
am not one of them. I think Coach Lee has a proven record and he will
transform archery in the U.S. I'm sure the women's program will
improve most impressively, and it's great for the sport. From a few
videos I have seen of our lady archers training at the USOTC, I can
say they have greatly benefited from Coach Lee.

With all that said, I have not had the opportunity to study Coach
Lee's system. I hope to be able to familiarize myself with his system
sometime before this time next year. I don't think this will be hard
for me to do since I pretty much have studied Korean techniques on my
own for over 10 years.

I just wanted to let readers know that the materials are dated, in so
far as the philosophy has changed. However, I think there is a
philosophical rigidity existent in American coaching when it comes to
archery that is just not present in most other sports. If you take the
top 20 basketball players in the world or the top 20 baseball players
in the world, you will note how different each player is when compared
to one another. Lebron James's jump shot doesn't come close to Ray
Allen's, yet he is successful. The swings of different baseball
players are as varied as the players themselves. Yet in archery, we
expect to fall within the model archer, and archers are always quick
to ask, "What am I doing wrong?" rather than "how can I improve?"
Coaches are often too quick to force archers into some imaginary mold.
Yet, at the highest levels, if one watches and studies archery videos,
they would observe that there are as many different styles of archery
as there are elite archers, which is consistent with most other sports
(with the exception of the Korean women, who are actually not human
beings; they are machines! Just kidding)…

The point is, that I think there are many ways (from a form and
technique point of view) to reach an elite level in archery, which for
the most part is influenced by a balance of the coaches' "ideal
technique," and the adaptation and incorporation of this model by the
archer into the physical and mental attributes that are more are less
permanent features of each individual, hence Reggie Miller shot left
handed, and had a widely touted unorthodox shot, where his elbows
would come up high and lead into the shot, but he was one of the best
three point shooters of all time in the NBA. The challenge in archery
(as it is with most sports) is to develop a balance between the model
technique and acknowledging the physiological, mental, and skill level
constraints presented by each archer, and recognizing which
constraints are permanent, which can be worked around, and which cannot.

Enough said for now. Let me know if my information regarding the
archery drills was sufficient, or if you will need further explanation.

Best Regards,

-Coach