OMG! OMG! SQUEEEE!!!
Got a new guy at Archery today, Mike. Mike's recently returned going to uni in Japan, where he learned Kyūdō, Japanese 'way of the bow'.
It's a
big frikkin bow. He shoots a traditional
lacquered bamboo yumi, which he let some of us attempt to learn how to shoot.
Japanese archery is kinda like shooting Mongolian style, where the arrow is on the side of the bow -away- from you, not next to your arm. And like the Mongolian, you wrap your thumb around the string when you draw back instead of your first two fingers.
But instead of using a thumb ring, he uses a
mitsugake, or three fingered glove. The thumb region is completely solid, unmovable, which takes some getting used to. It's like having a large part of your hand go numb.
The grip on the yumi is strange as well, you can't grasp it tight. The reason why the yumi is raised above the head and brought down is to give the archer a chance to adjust their grip, the bow actually twists slightly in your hand as you draw. When the arrow (
ya, which is looooooong) is released, the bow actually flips around, so the string is facing forward instead towards the archer.
The grip on the string and the arrow is interesting as well because the knock actually digs against the glove where the thumb meets the rest of the hand. The first two fingers actually apply pressure to the string to keep the arrow knocked, and pull back on the bow.
Mike was saying that they practise just drawing the bow for the first 2-3 weeks before trying it with a non-fletched arrow. Unlike a standard recurve, this is seriously several months of training to learn how to use it. There's tricks with the stance as well, wide legged and leaning forward.
Anyway, just some random squees learning new things. #^^#
ficcage:
Ben 10: Alien Force - Invader (crack warning)
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