Cross Dominance

by Claire Dougall
(Victoria, Australia)

Hi there,

I'm a novice recurve archer with serious cross-dominance issues.

I'm getting to the stage where I'd like to get more serious with my archery and buy my own gear with the aim of getting into competition. But I'm stuck on what bow to go with: left or right!

Here's my dilemma:
- I'm right-eye dominant and play all sports right handed,
- but I write left-handed, eat left-handed, apply makeup left-handed, and use my left eye on a camera view finder.
- I can't close my left eye independently of my dominant eye (right eye), but can close my right eye independently.

When I hold a bow, I am strangely far more comfortable holding the bow in my right hand and drawing with the left, whilst closing my right (dominant eye). I in fact do extremely well shooting left-handed. (I continuously hit in the gold, and occasionally an 8 in the red, but no lower).

But given my right-eye dominance, I've been trying to shoot right handed of late. Given I can't close my left eye, I've been shooting with both eyes open and taking into account the parallax effect.

But it all feels so unnatural and my shooting has been way off! Like WAY off! (I'm hitting 5s and 6s all the time and in golds!!). I find it so much easier to aim left-handed with just my left eye open...

I'm going to keep trying to train myself to shoot right-handed, but I can't help feeling like I'd do so much better on my left side!

If I'm doing target shooting, am I going to be disadvantaged that significantly in terms of balance if I shoot with my dominant eye closed?

Should I persist with right handed? Or should I stick with my comfortable left handed side?

Will I ultimately disadvantage myself in the long run, and hurt my chances of becoming a competitive archer if I stay left handed?

Help!!!

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