 Hey, Joe McClain here from CatholicHack.com with another traditional recurve archery shooting tip. Today we're going to talk about how to eliminate that string slap from your shot cycle. You know when I started a few years ago, my bow arm for arm was just one big nasty bruise and it was painful most of the time. But I would grit my teeth and sort of work my way through the pain just to keep shooting. I didn't really understand what caused string slap or really truly how to avoid it. I just kind of thought you'd get yourself an arm guard and you would just deal with it, right? And so that's what I did. But I didn't realize that the string slap was an indicator that there was something not right or possibly some things, not right about my shot cycle, my sequence or my frame. You know, so I needed to make some adjustments which would ultimately mean that not only would I avoid some string slap pain, but I would also get far more consistency and accuracy in my shooting groups as well. So it is very important that as traditional archers we pay attention to this red flag of the string slap because that's trying to tell us something, right? So there are several things that could affect string slap where it's, you know, slapping into your elbow, onto your forearm which is the most common or even into your wrist. Now let's do the wrist one first. Generally, if you're hitting into your wrist right here, it's probably because your brace height is too low. So for that, I really recommend that you find out what is the appropriate brace height, the distance between this part of your bow and the grip and your string. Adjust it to the correct brace height. That will help you to avoid slapping into your wrist. Now you can either just twist your string tighter or let this twist out in order to adjust your brace height. Now some guys would prefer a lower brace height in order to get a bigger power stroke, you know, more poundage, more speed onto the arrow, but that is going to slap into that wrist a lot easier. Again, adjust your brace height and you'll probably avoid slapping into your wrist. Now the slapping into the forearm, which is the most common form of string slap and the one I suffered the most from, that can be created by several different key aspects of your shooting cycle that we should talk about. Number one, let's talk about the bow hand grip. Here is a bow hand grip that is far more common and probably will not irritate so many traditional archers as much and probably will help you to avoid some string slap. What you want to do is you want to get the grip of the bow to rest solidly right along this fold in your hand, right there. So you can get a good nice grip just like that and then give yourself an okay, a light okay, not death grip. That's going to throw your arrows off, but a nice little okay. That's going to hold the bow right where it needs to be. Here's the cool part too. Now you're aligning your bow and your string with the skeletal structure of your arm. And when you've got good frame, it's going to be your skeletal structure that holds the draw as more than it's going to be your muscles. And that's going to be another key point that we want to talk about. You may be drawing too heavy of a bow. Your bow may be too much poundage for you at this point. You may need to start with a lighter bow, build up your upper body strength, build up your consistency, and then progress to a heavier bow because what you'll see a lot oftentimes is when people are shooting bows that are too heavy, they're leaning back. Their whole body is to sort of bent and contorted out of shape. That's a key indicator that that bow is just too much for you. You need to start with something lighter and then work up to something heavier because your frame should be such that your shoulder, your chest is out and your shoulders are back. It should be your back tension and your skeletal structure that holds that draw. And so you should be able to have a nice proper straight up frame. If you don't have that, I highly recommend you start with something lighter and build your upper body strength until you can get to a heavier poundage bow. So that's another indicator of what might cause a string slap is your frame. So that bow-in grip is going to help to situate your bow and your string so that it aligns properly with your skeletal structure and it'll improve the string slap issue for you. One of the other things is going to be your elbow and the rotation of your elbow. The tendency is to have a locked-in elbow so you can see the crease of my elbow pointing like sort of in this direction. Really what you wanted to do is point in this direction. So you want to be able to rotate. You want to rotate that elbow without rotating the shoulder or the wrist. If you can rotate that elbow without rotating the shoulder or the wrist, that is ideal. It's going to help again with that skeletal frame so that it's nice and straight. It's going to help to align the bow-in grip all the way through the body to the anchor point on your face. You're going to pull that elbow back and it's going to make sure that your back tension is where it needs to be and then as you release, it's just going to get a nice straight path all the way to your intended impact point. That's going to help ensure that there's space between your arm and the string. Let's talk about another point that you may not have considered and that is the release. The clean release and I've linked the video below on a clean release and I highly recommend you check that out. But a clean release is truly important for overall accuracy and overall consistency. But it also can affect string slab and that if you are plucking the string, you are going to oscillate the string and that string is going to be more likely to slab onto your forearm. So you really want to make sure you've got a nice clean release off the string. And again, I also did a video on back tension which also helps to create a clean release late below. Nice clean release with proper back tension is going to make sure your arrow has the straightest possible flight all the way to your intended target. So those are the things. Let's recap real quick on the things that can affect string slab that you should be paying attention to. Bowhand grip, brace height, frame, rotation of the elbow, clean release, do those things and you will see an incredible improvement in your shot cycle and a reduction in your string slab. But just be safe and go on and get yourself a nice good arm guard. Through Resertory has a lot to offer and I highly recommend them. No, I do not get paid from them but I do recommend them because they are a great company and they are doing some wonderful thanks for traditional archery and you should check them out through your Resertory.com. Let me show you one of the older arm guards that I've had. I got from three of Resertory about a year and a half ago or so. I love this arm guard. I love the quality of it. I love the design of it. But you can see how the string kept catching that corner and just ripping it up. And that was an indicator that I should have been doing something different with my shot cycle and even just because I have one of these doesn't mean that I'm going to automatically shoot better just because I don't feel the pain as much. We should be paying attention to these indicators and making adjustments in order to improve not only the pain threshold of that string slapping into our arm but to also improve the accuracy and consistency of our shot cycle. So leave a comment below about what you do to avoid string slab and how painful it's been for you or not. I would love to know that. And do me a favor, like this video and share it helps me to reach other people for the joy of traditional artry. It's been a lot since I've put out some videos but you know I've been really super busy with work and family and trying to hunt when I can and pray for me because it's been more scouting and silent retreat in the woods than it has been actually hunting but I'm still praying for a good harvest. But you know I make videos of all kinds. I'm a Catholic evangelist full time so I make videos on the faith but I also love traditional artry. So I am a Catholic living loving and sharing my faith through everything I do including traditional artry. So if you love traditional artry videos I would encourage you to subscribe to my channel and that way you'll be notified when the next video comes out. You'll see it in your subscription list but praise be to Jesus Christ I'm praying for you that you shoot straight and I hope you'll pray for me that I shoot straight and until the next video may God richly bless you.