Hey Redspaw,
If you can get one of those archery trainer things that may be the go. They look about as functionally perfect as you can get.
If you’re like me and don’t have one, I’d be attacking the problem in three ways.
The first is that while you’re in the progressing stage, I’d keep shooting the bow you’re comfortable with now once or twice a week. That helps you have a regular reference (“this is how it should feel”) with your form as you’re shooting the heavier bow.
The second is to shoot your heavier bow. Day on, day off perhaps, but not day after day. One of the things I love about trad archery is that it is physically arduous, especially with heavier pound bows. The worst thing you could do is give yourself an injury preventing you from shooting anything.
With all that in mind I’d treat it like any other strength training. Warm up first! Then perform the exercise (shooting an arrow) until you can no longer maintain perfect form. Rest for 3 minutes. Repeat for a total of 3-5 sets. You may only get away 1-3 decent shots before you rest and that’s fine. If you can’t get one, that’s fine. You won’t know if you don’t try. If you can get access to an intermediate weight bow from a friend or club or something great, if not, that’s where the third approach will pay dividends.
The third is to cross train. Shooting any trad bow is an athletic activity. Any athletic activity is going to benefit from crosstraining, especially when you’re trying to break a barrier like functioning a heavier weight. So again, perhaps day on day off, or 3 times a week, whatever is going to work for you, I’d train a few different exercises. You don’t need a gym or anything. Do pushups, inverted rows, planks, side planks and superman. If you need help figuring out exactly how many to do or how to approach them pm me, we can figure out a specific program or something.
If you have access to a barbell and weights, hanging power cleans and close grip upright rows are good exercises for bow strength. Don’t feel like you need them though, you can guarantee Robin Hood never saw the inside of a gym.
So that’s what I’d be doing. It’s worked for me. Actually, that may be jumping the gun. I’m going to be shooting a 70# longbow at a club shoot next week for the first time… we’ll see how I stack up 😯 But I feel like it’s worked ok 😀
My approach has really been from a general athletic kind, I daresay you might get some good advice from the many excellent and experienced archers that lurk around tradbow as well 😉
Jim
PS
Here are some links to examples of those exercises I talked about:
Inverted Row:
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/BackGeneral/BWSupineRow.html
Plank:
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/RectusAbdominis/BWFrontPlank.html
SidePlank:
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Obliques/BWSidePlank.html
Superman:
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/ErectorSpinae/Superman.html
