Finger Tab Size
Before we look at technique we need to look at how your tab fits your hand. In most cases what we see is that finger tabs have too much material left on them. Excess material can cause problems such as contacting the arrow and the normal culprit is the top finger. With too much material hanging over it, it drags the tab face down on to the shaft. Thankfully it's an easy fix by just trimming the tab length and height, then checking to see if the rest of the tab needs trimming down, but do so in very small stages as you can't put it back on.
Finger Spacer
The finger spacer is very important if you are shooting the mediterranean style ( one finger above and two below). The idea behind it is to stop your fingers contacting and pinching the arrow, don't just assume because you have a finger spacer that it is working for you, after all we all have different size hands and fingers. Get someone to check how your fingers look at full draw, it's important we check it at this stage because at full draw the angle of the string will force your fingers together. If they are contacting, you will need to build the space up accordingly using tape, leather, sugru putty and various other materials.
Finger shooting finger contact
In this part of the article we want to talk about how our fingers influence the string and what that does to the flight of the arrow.
What we are looking for is equal pressure on the top, middle and bottom fingers showing a nice straight line down the tab face, this allows the string to leave the tab cleanly without any interference resulting in a clean forgiving shot.
What we see a lot of, whether it is in new archers, or archers who have been shooting for years, is finger contact of some kind. A good indication of this is if you look at your tab and there is a line going at an angle. This means that you are either not putting enough pressure on your middle, bottom or both fingers or putting too much on just one.
As can be seen from the picture above there is a clear angled line, this is a very common occurrence caused by not enough, if any pressure on the third finger. A problem caused by this is that the hand wants to rotate as the string is let loose, causing you to dog leg the string resulting in the top finger contacting the arrow giving very poor arrow flight.
However there are a few things you can do to solve this problem, the first is getting more pressure on your third finger by curling in your pinky finger as both the third finger and pinky share the same flexor tendons. The next thing we want to do is when you are at anchor, rotate your wrist so that your pinky finger touches your neck, you should feel the muscles in your forearm engage and this will stop the wrist from rotating during the release.
If you have any questions at all please leave us a comment below and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
