Hitching a ride

Patrick Huston explains 'the thumb'.

Patrick Huston is using his thumb

If you are reading this magazine you likely know who Brady Ellison is. But did you know that he uses a very specific technique used by Darrell Pace, a man who held a world record for a WA1440 of 1342 with aluminium arrows? Brady Ellison is a 'thumber' too. As now am I, Tom Hall, Sarah Bettles and Michele Frangilli among many others.

Let me explain. 'Thumbing' is the general name of the technique element of using your thumb to anchor on the neck. The most likely archer for you to have seen using this action may be Viktor Ruban of the Ukraine, who won the 2008 Beijing Olympics. However he takes it to the extreme, using his thumb around the whole of his neck, which is very difficult to achieve for most. The majority of archers ‘thumbing’ use the sternocleidomastoid muscle of the neck (referred to as the SCM for the rest of this article) with their thumb angled down and behind it. The SCM is the muscle which pops out of your neck when you turn your head to the side.

Let me give you a little background. Three time Olympian and two-time Olympic bronze medalist Richard Priestman returned to Britain in 2015 as head coach after many years coaching internationally. He is a fantastic technical coach, in my opinion the best in the world. He teaches more based around principles and style rather than specific defined points. He has been an archer for over 50 years and knows this stuff inside out and backwards. Richard shoots as a ‘full-thumber’ meaning his thumb is entirely round his neck. His logic when he developed this technique was to clamp the draw hand firmly around his neck to create a fixed back sight and then do all the movement off the front end. In his eyes, this would make for a more accurate shot.

During his tenure as a competitive archer, mostly through the 80s and 90s, a lot of archers used the ‘thumbing’ technique. Given its predominance in his era some now think of it as an 'old-fashioned technique'– that may be true however it contains some very useful and functional elements to add into your shooting. The main reason it left popular usage was the emergence of Korea as a powerhouse of archery. They never really adopted thumbing into their technique which, given their prolonged success, has had a distinct effect on general technique throughout the world.

There is a lot of archery philosophy surrounding this technique which is worth explaining. One of the worst phrases in archery is ‘draw the string back to your face/chin’, usually taught right at the start of the beginners course. This instantly creates an inward angle in the forearm which prevents correct activation

of the back muscles and all the subsequent discussion and focus on ‘back tension’. If you have your elbow behind you and then add load into the hand the back muscles will activate, there is no reason whatsoever to intentionally squeeze your scapulae together, in fact it can actually cause injury in the shoulder joint as the arm and back fight each other as opposing muscle groups. If we said to beginners: ‘bring your hand to your neck’ almost straight away the elbow moves behind them. Then we use the chin and face for referencing the back sight. Imagine the principal of opening the bow, and then lining up the sights. Thumbing is a method to create a transfer into correctly loading the back without unnecessary effort.

There are a wide variety of ways to ‘thumb’, and it is worth experimenting. Some people can just drop straight into it: lucky you if you can. Just dropping the thumb downwards can let it slip behind the SCM easily, depending on the size of your hands and your facial geometry. Some others will have to come outside of the line of force slightly to find it, whilst others like myself will have to lose some draw length off the front shoulder, move into the position around the SCM and then reset into your full position. Secondly a lot of people trying this will come through the clicker too early; this is perfectly normal and will settle down quickly. Moving your head forwards to find the position can help with this, which you can then move to 'not moving' it. Your draw length may increase for a period but is likely to return to its old position. And thirdly it can be painful if you attempt it with too much tension in your draw hand. These may all seem like major sticking points, though I still recommend sticking with it and persevering to make it work!

To actually achieve the position of thumbing effectively just requires you to drop your thumb downwards and out slightly from you hand. If you turn your head to the side the SCM will stand out from you neck, very handily the angle of your thumb matches this angle pretty much perfectly. Then as you draw your thumb in goes behind the SCM while anchoring and then remains there at full draw. We then want to try

and fill the gap between the web of our hand and the neck, creating a transfer movement of the elbow. Dropping the thumb downwards is the crucial element of this, and for pretty much everyone is a beneficial thing to do given the effect inside the wrist. Many people use the thumb flat along the top of the hand under the chin, however using the thumb as a reference on the neck and experimenting with tabs gives you as good if not a better position.

So we have the thumb dropped and angled out from the hand as the hook the string. Bring your draw hand down towards the clavicle of the neck where the SCM inserts. Pick up the SCM here with the thumb and then move upwards into you anchor position, from the elbow not the hand. Hopefully this should work. At this point it is likely for your wrist to roll outwards, this is perfectly normal. You may benefit from checking the clicker as you go through the final portion of your draw to help you keep to the correct draw length. Once we reach anchor we then transfer the elbow up and backwards slightly to ‘fill the gap’ between the hand and the neck. Once in this position we should have a solid reference on the chin, a hooked thumb around the SCM muscle, the rear wrist/forearm rolled over slightly, the elbow slightly further up and back and the gap between the web of your thumb and forefinger and the neck closed down. This is the thumbing position. Exactly how you get to this position can vary a lot, just watch the GBR men’s team vs Malaysia in Antalya 2018 to see the three different ways that Tom Hall, Alex Wise and I get into roughly the same position!

Getting into position while drawing is a little weird for some when thumbing given the extra length it can create. For a period I moved my head to get into position but have developed more stability of the torso and neck column to allow more movement from the shoulder. I feel this should be more accurate. Some others draw more outside the line of the shoulders and angle themselves back in towards anchoring at the end of their draw. Look at Brady Ellison or, Mckenzie Brown; both wide draws which pivot round the front shoulder at the end of the draw cycle allowing the thumb to slide behind the SCM.

Depending on the ratio of your face, neck and hands you may need to do something like this, but bear in mind if you start thumbing with a method like this you may not need to continue with it once accustomed. And then there are the lucky ones who can just draw regularly and then slide it into place at the very last minute.

Hopefully this explanation will allow you to have a good go at this technique. As I’ve said it is much easier for some people and much harder for others, but Richard has yet to find someone he can’t actually ‘thumb’. Bear in mind I tried it about once every six weeks for a year and a half before I could actually do it. And even then it has taken me about a year to really settle into it. I strongly recommend the use of a low poundage bow for your first attempts, but really it just takes an amount of experimentation until you find your way of doing it. Feel free to send me videos. And let me know how you get on! Good luck!