Just returned from Rick Welch shooting school.

[GUT_TRAIL]

Well folks, I just got home this afternoon from Rick's Shooting School and I can honestly say the money I spent to drive 3.5 hrs to Conway Arkansas, Renting a hotel room for 2 nights and paying Rick for the Course has been the best money I have ever spent on anything archery related and I have been at it for over 20 yrs.
As some of you know I made the switch to Traditional archery 2 years ago and I have been shooting almost daily trying everything I could to get better and more consistent. I had started watching many of ricks student videos on you-tube and tried to adapt his method and that did improve my shooting quite a bit. I went to the Chester 3D shoot and shot a 298 score on 40 targets which I was pretty happy with but knew I could do better. I'm not a 3D shooter and do not plan to try and make all the shoots etc because I work weekends and I'm more into the hunting aspect. Anyway, on to the good stuff!
So Rick picks me up at the hotel and we head out to the bow shop/range that he teaches his classes at. It was a nice bow shop with a good indoor 18-20 yrd range and 20 outdoor 3D range. I breakout my new Bob Lee Ultimate recurve 55# @ 26.5" and my arrows.
Rick says start shooting & get warmed up. So I do, Rick decided the arrows I brought are to stiff for my setup so we fix up two new shafts that would work better. "I was using a .350 spine with 290 grains up front, we moved to a 400 spine with around 205g up front" then he says now pick a spot and shoot at it. So I focused on a small felt cap that was stuck in the targets at the end of the range. I shoot at this cap 2-3 times and hit high so rick starts adjusting the shelf padding until he finds the one that starts getting the arrow to hit the right elevation then we work on the side plating until it gets just right on the Left and right hits.
We work on my form and fletch my shafts with 4" shield cut feathers so the fit right against my nose when I have the bow drawn to the correct position etc. I would say within 2 hrs Rick had me shooting better than I probably ever have with trad gear. He shot a round with me and then we went for lunch afterwards had me shoot another 20 target round while he video taped me. We went back inside and watched the film When I made a poor shot it was easy to see what I did wrong on the shot. "Mostly I was raising my head at the moment of release or plucking the string". But overall I shot really well.
After watching the film and shooting a few more times in the indoor range ahhh A/C!!! Me and Rick headed out to shoot another round. Get this guys on this last round It was like I could not miss, I was in the zone like never before! I shot a score of 194 on 20 targets. Heck after we finished the 20 round we started shooting at the 3D targets at 40-50 yds and I was dropping them right in the kill zone with Rick It was one after another at long range. It was a great day..
The second day we worked more on form, how to shoot from a tree stand etc. Let me tell you shooting the 150-200 shots yesterday had me worn down bad. Keeping my form was getting hard. I shoot two more 20 target rounds and score a 174 & 175 It was obvious that I was worn out, so we head in and take notes on everything from how to set up the bow, to what causes different misses. Overall it was a great trip and If I ever start going back and not having solid form and shooting like I know I can, I would not hesitate to go visit Rick again.
I know reading online about guys that have taken the course had me wondering if it could be as good as they claim but After giving it a try i'm sold, 110%. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask, I agree with others when they say go with an open mind. I got a little gut check when he informed me my arrows would not work, I had just bought 2 dozen so that hurt but he was able to swap some of them out.

Sorry so long, Peace out.

[Chew]

Great write up! The part about the arrow tuning is really interesting. I wonder how many of us are shooting arrows that are wrong or could tweak our setups to greatly improve. I just don't know enough about it to tweak my stuff. It sounds like you had a great trip.

[Loreva13]

Nice write up! Sounds like it was well worth it. I too as Chew stated find the part about arrow tuning really interesting.

[Oneway]

Congrats on getting to invest in your future with Archery.......Thank you for the detailed write up and it looks like you had a blast.

[Ron]

That sounds like an awesome experience. Congratulations on your new knowledge and shooting ability.

[GUT_TRAIL]

About the tuning. Would you believe something as simple as changing nocks changes where the arrow hits even at 15 yds. I mean changing from one Easton G nock to a shorter pronged Easton G knock that fits the string just a little tighter. It changed the impact point quite a bit. The help that Rick gave me getting the arrow hitting where I was looking was something that I don't think I would have ever figured out. And he did it so easily knowing exactly what to change to get the correct impact point. He said "so many guys buy bow after bow after bow trying to find the perfect bow for them when all they need to do is get the one they have set up correctly". That is if your form is solid.

[GUT_TRAIL]

I will add this before I have to head away from the computer for the day. If you are like I have been in the past and bought a new longbow/recurve whatever. And then got arrows setup that you hope or expect to work from that bow and just start shooting. Their is probably a 99% chance your not ever going to shoot as well as you could be. I kept telling Rick, " I can't believe a change that small would make that much difference" Like the nocks or the padding on the shelf etc. But when the change was made it was clear as day and that was at 15 yds at 30 the difference would have been doubled. I don't know how he figured out all this stuff but he has it down now.

[AJ the TP Guru]

Not many guys on here seem to be nearly so serious about how well they shoot as you. I commend you highly.

[Bowtech Lefty]

That is great to hear. I would really like to attend a class like this, hopefully one of these days.

[n8vtxn1]

Thanks for sharing. I have had some health issues in the past year that caused strength issues. That turned into mental issues. Target panic. I've considered going to ricks school to see if he could help me get back to shoot the way I used to. May have to go try. Thanks again for the great write up.

[chester12]

I went a looked,but his website was not responding correctly so I could not find the total cost, can you PM that if you are not willing to put it up here, I need to get better.

[caughtandhobble]

Wow, sounds like money well spent. Thanks for the detailed review. It seems that your review is consistent with all of his students, he must be doing something right

[GUT_TRAIL]

The cost is $600.00 for two days. I agree caughtandhobble I was worried that this was going to be less than I had hoped for after seeing all the online stuff, but like I said for me It was worth probably twice what I paid. Now I could not afford that much lol but I know I would have spend lots of time and $ trying to get to where he had me in less than a day. I will say if you want to do this I suggest trying to get your form as close to what you can gather online from others before going. I had very few changes to make to my overall form which really helped Rick to speed up the process. I had switched to 3 under and was anchoring close to where I needed to be. "Corner of the mouth" is where i was at but that was not far enough back.

[Chew]

The cost is $600.00 for two days. I agree caughtandhobble I was worried that this was going to be less than I had hoped for after seeing all the online stuff, but like I said for me It was worth probably twice what I paid. Now I could not afford that much lol but I know I would have spend lots of time and $ trying to get to where he had me in less than a day. I will say if you want to do this I suggest trying to get your form as close to what you can gather online from others before going. I had very few changes to make to my overall form which really helped Rick to speed up the process. I had switched to 3 under and was anchoring close to where I needed to be. "Corner of the mouth" is where i was at but that was not far enough back.

Are you anchoring with top finger? Middle finger? Does the string ever slap or grab your lip? If I get my feather to touch the tip of my nose, sometimes it slaps my fat lip and hurts like hell.

[GUT_TRAIL]

I am anchoring more or less with my thumb knuckle at the base of my ear. Its not pushed in hard more like just laying against the skin. If you do this correctly your fingers probably wont reach the corner of your mouth. Before I went I had my index finger at the corner of my mouth but learned fast that I was drawing short and not getting the back tension needed. Then the back curve of the shield cut feather fits right around the tip of my nose. I slapped my forarm a few times and the string hit my nose once or twice out of probably 200+ shots so not really a problem. hope this helps