The surprise of a lifetime.

By Alexandr Kalinichenko

The release of the bowstring has always been considered as the most important element of an archer’s technique as it predetermines athlete’s performance. It is the cornerstone of archery technique as well as its most complicated element.

Biomechanical analysis shows that the release can be executed in a few fundamentally different ways:

• with strain in the extensor muscles to the fingers

• by relaxation of the finger flexors

• strain of the extensors with simultaneous relaxation of flexors

By the end of the 1960s, in the circle of coaches from different countries, there were a few fundamentally different views both on the best ways to release the bowstring and the movement of the hand with the bow after the shot. A lot of reputable coaches asserted that in the moment of release the hand should remain as still as possible.

The champion of the world, a Czechoslovakian archer and coach, Frantishek Hadash, and his colleague Jiri Viskochil recommended releasing a bowstring by quick opening of fingers and imagining as if you have burnt your fingers. His colleague, Polish coach and famous archery theorist Marian Twardowski suggested relaxing the fingers as fast as possible. These ideas had their followers, and the argument did not have a winner, since the techniques of quick opening and quick relaxing of fingers were both proved to be inefficient.

Moreover, setting up to perform both actions (quick strain and relaxation) provokes the emergence of unwanted violations of the shooters’ motor skill coordination to the same extent. The optimal style of the production of the string developed elsewhere, as coaches from the city of Lviv, Mykola Kalinichenko and Mikhail Khuskivadze, began to promote a new style of shooting in Europe. (For reference: Lviv is located in the western part of modern Ukraine and is known as a city where the first archery world championship was held. FITA was founded there in 1931.)

They concentrated on the development of techniques aimed at solving the problems of “target panic”. That technique of release was called the release of a string ’by a ’slip’. This new style totally contradicted the advice of the archery gatekeepers of the times. According to them, the release of the string was done by the gradual relaxation of deep finger extensors to the critical moment - ’slip’ of the string. They also recommended that archer’s arms naturally retreat in the direction of "last effort" after the shot. The archer in this case should not concentrate on holding arms after the release in the maximum still condition, and the fingers should be neither relaxed nor tense.