The TRUTH About Stabilizers (You May Be Doing This Wrong)

What's going on, today's video is going to be about

stabilizers

and every once in a while I have

this

thing in my head where it's like I have to explain

this

because I see it on the internet, I hear it, I see comments and stuff and I just have to talk about it and again, as I always say in my videos, this is 100% opinion, but it is an opinion based on um, as I have so far filmed in my life talking to many high-level people about these topics. um understanding it and regurgitating it and filtering it into my own opinion um this is not just nonsense that I'm just sitting in my basement thinking this is the right way, I think the most important thing is to think about

stabilizers

um Should you think of it as a style of tournament rig, so tournament rigs are for all the bowhunters out there that think why would you ever put a 30 inch shaft, a long 12 inch shaft on the back and is it to increase your stability? and your sorry for the shot now what a stabilizer doesn't do is it doesn't fix your form it doesn't fix your overall shot like it doesn't make you shoot better it can hide some boos but it can also improve your form if you already have very good form which they do stabilizers is simply to improve your shooting, so first I'll go over my setup.

What I have. I've always used a 30 inch front bar which is pretty standard for people who shoot in the competition world and then I run 12 inches so what's really popular is a 12 or 15 inch on the back. I've always done a 12 or 15 inch, but it's almost unnecessary because I can put a little extra weight on it and do the same thing that a 15 inch rod would do the things you look for in a good quality stabilizer is that it's really important that it be rigid. The goal of a stabilizer is to like diffuse vibration and stabilize the shot and do the best job.

Stabilizing the shot is having a really stiff rod that is super light, the lighter the better because that allows you to concentrate all the weight on the end instead of having weight all over the body, so you would think that maybe the weight at throughout the whole process it would help reduce vibration, but there's like a fine line, you know, if you had this stacked with a bunch of shock capsules like this or whatever, but it made it heavy at all times, it eliminates kind of like what a stabilizer does that puts the weight as far away from the bow as possible to help stabilize it, plus I have an 8 degree down quick release that like an 8 degree lowering or the shaft sticking out or just personal preference, it has a slightly different feel and I think it makes the center of gravity a little bit lower because this bar is lower than it would be up here, so I don't know, it just feels a little better to me. but that's 100% a matter of personal preference and it's really almost a per bow per person situation so that's my target gear and pretty much my hunting gear is a dumb version of the target setup because obviously you can't have 30 inch rods.

You can't, you know, walk through the woods, climb a tree with it, so what I choose on my hunting stabilizers is 12 inches in the front and depending on what I'm

doing

and shooting, this is either a 9 inch or I'll have 12 inches in the back, I switched them back and forth and what a 12 inch would do is it would allow me to run with less weight to get the same feel, but it's a little longer and gets in the way. a little bit, so I'm going to talk about my hunting gear pretty much the rest of the time because I feel like that's where the most confusion comes from.

I feel like if you're a target archer and you've been around as a good support system of trainers and stuff, you realize what stabilizers are for, but it seems like with the ever-changing market of the hunting space and this type of hunter prosumer level there's a lot of confusion around stabilizers so I guess first I guess I'm going to bust out some ladies and again take this with a grain of salt because everyone is a little different and every feeling is a little different . This is like I said, my opinion based on my experiences. I'm sure you guys have done it.

I've seen it, but there are these machines that you can put the bow on and then you can adjust the stabilizers so that it's perfectly balanced, like a perfectly balanced 100 feather, perfectly balanced now that it can feel really good when you shoot, like it's felt balanced. It feels stable, but what that does is it allows bias from all directions, left bias, right bias, even if you know forward and backward bias, it has no bias, essentially, no you're using no force, you're not using any muscle to support yourself. bow balance is another myth this is kind of a myth let me take a stabilizer if you have a quiver if you have a quiver on the side of the bow now you just added a bunch of weight on the side of the bow luckily with the new The Matthews Low Pro quiver is tighter and you don't experience it as much, but generally when you add a quiver to the side of the bow it adds weight on the right side, so naturally people think let me add this side stabilizer on the opposite side. side to help counter it, yes that's true, that helps counter it, but it still doesn't achieve the ultimate purpose of the side stabilizer, so I'm going to talk about all of this as if the quiver is off because I really don't shoot my quiver at Unless you have to because if you turn this weight on and off all the time your stabilizer settings potentially other things could be different so I guess what I would say is set up your bow how you are going to shoot. and always shoot like this if you're always going to shoot with the quiver on always set always tune with the quiver on if you're going to shoot with the quiver off always tune always shoot with the quiver off it's never like a back and Next thing because it could cause some variation , so the back bar has two purposes, possibly three, but we'll stick with two: it offsets the weight of the front bar by adding weight to the back, it can help balance it and then secondly, it creates a bias creates a bias when pulling the weight to one side, so there is an equation, this is a George Ryles equation, since you have stabilizers or you are thinking about what type of stabilizers to get.

It's a simple equation so you can figure out what. weight to start, obviously there is some customization in that, so to calculate the correct weight for your stabilizers so they can balance each other, it is the length of your front bar multiplied by the weight on that front bar divided by the length of the back bar gives you the total amount of weight to put on the back bar so for example if we have a 12 inch front bar and let's use my example I have two ounces on the front so that gives us 24 divided by the length of the back bar, I have nine right now nine inches, divided by nine, so that says I should only need 2.6 ounces for the bow to be balanced.

Now if you mix that up, let's say we have a 12 inch front bar with six ounces in the front and then we only have a seven inch rear bar, divided by seven, so you would need 10 ounces in the back, so That's all, it's just math. Now let's talk about a target setup, so let's say we have a 30-inch bar in the front and we only have six ounces on that front bar, so that gives us 180 divided by, let's say we have a 12-inch rear bar, so you need a good 15 ounces in the rear to balance out just six ounces in the front, since all of this is just a starting point. and personal preference will play a part at some point, but this gives you a good starting point on how your weights should roughly be oriented, so speaking of back bar bias, bbb back bar bias is how it sticks out on the weighted side and pretty.

What that does is it forces you to apply some muscle to use some of your arm muscles, yes, so that the bow stays balanced and this is where your second axis is super important because if the bubble of your second axis It's off, none of this. This even works, but that creates biases and essentially eliminates 50 of your problems because if you're always applying pressure from the left, say to make sure your bubble is aligned, you're not as vulnerable to experiencing orientation and balance to the left and to the right. problems if your bow is in neutral it's at the balance point so this is a big reason why we really developed in the real b grip this high rack because in the Matthews Advantage grip it just doesn't allow you to really grip the finger and Being able to use this bias without having some inconsistencies, so if you follow me and see me shoot, my finger is always up there, which makes me balance my bow, creates that bias and helps me be less vulnerable to the left or to the right, so this I'm talking about some teachings from George Ryle and he actually put together a really good video on all of this and especially more on the objective side of things, so I'll put it here for you to watch now.

It's also really interesting. It's important that you don't get too caught up in these things. I feel like people really get caught up in the stabilizers and the weight settings and it's all like you set it up right the first time and then there's never really any major changes, like maybe an ounce adjustment here and there, a couple of ounces, especially in a hunting setup, you just set it and forget it. I literally always add four and two, so according to the formula, it's an ounce and a half more than it's supposed to. but it feels good and maybe it's just because my gaze is a little further away, I don't know, it's all about sensation, but the important part is understanding what the stabilizers do.

Stabilizers do not solve shape problems, they only make them worse, so for the best. what you should do is, if you ever change shape, if you are trying a new version, if you are trying a new bow, any major formulation, use your stabilizers as light as possible or remove all the weight from your stabilizers, there is no need worry about the weight and balance of the stabilizer. When you realize those things, every time I take a break from archery or something and go back to shooting my tournament bow, I always almost take all the weight off because I just need some time to really focus on my form. and not having to worry about weight fatigue or arch 100 balance.

I can only worry about my form. Another little myth that I think I should talk about is like the post-shot. What the bow does in the after shot. I've seen people worried about how the bow kicks like this. The boat kicks like that. Well, the bow shouldn't be

doing

any of those things if you set it up correctly in the first place. Um and there are, like I said, more major form issues if those things happen that you can't fix with weight, like you can pick up a bow bare, like you can take the stabilizers off right now and still shoot great as stabilizers.

They don't fix anything, they just improve the shape they have, so thank you all for watching today's video about stabilizers, their methodology and how to use them correctly. I guess if you're interested in the stabilizers that I use these are the shrewd vantage series be real you can get them at b-roll merch.com the hunting series stabilizers um but yeah thank you all so much for watching and I'll see you at the next.