String Hand Alignment

By Philip Cox

I don't know if this will help others like it has helped me but it never hurts to try something different when working to improve your shooting accuracy.

I have always had trouble shooting left and right of the intended spot. Everything I read in the past says the back of the drawing hand needs to be kept flat and relaxed and let your hand act like a hook. I had a bad habit of cupping my hand, therefore throwing my shots off, and it was difficult to have any kind of consistency.

I use a tab and shoot split-fingered, but I am sure this will work with a glove equally well. When placing my drawing hand on the string, I simply place all three of my fingers around the string below the arrow nock so as to line the hand straight up and down on the string.

Just as I am putting tension on the string, I simply remove the pinky finger from the string and tuck it back to the closed position with the thumb tip touching the pinky tip. This gives me perfect string hand alignment and lets the shoulder pull straight through with back tension. This allows the arrow to fall right in under my eye and everything just looks and feels great.

I am far from being an excellent shot, but this little exercise I do at the beginning of each shot has helped me tremendously.