The anchor point gets explained on day one and then never mentioned again — which is odd, because a wandering anchor is one of the most common reasons a self-taught archer's shots refuse to repeat. Not consistently high, not consistently left. Just… scattered, with nothing obviously changing.
Here's the mental model that makes the anchor make sense: your face is the rear sight of the entire system. The bow points the front of the arrow; the anchor fixes where the back of it launches from, relative to your eye. Move the rear sight a few millimeters between shots and the arrow's whole geometry shifts — without a single thing feeling different.
Why anchors wander
Anchors rarely wander because the archer forgot where the spot is. They wander for mechanical reasons that live upstream of the touch itself.
The biggest one: the head goes to the string instead of the string coming to the head. If your head dips or tips forward to meet the hand, the "same" anchor lands on a face that's in a different position every shot. The touch feels identical; the geometry isn't. The rule that fixes it is worth engraving somewhere: the string comes to your face — your face never travels to the string.
The second: the anchor is defined too vaguely. "Hand somewhere under my jaw" is a region, not a point. A repeatable anchor has multiple specific contacts — for many recurve archers, the string touching the same place on the face while the hand locks against the jawline; barebow and traditional archers often anchor lower or higher on the face than Olympic-style shooters, and that's perfectly fine. The style matters less than the specificity: two or three exact contact points you could describe to someone over the phone.
The third: rushing. If your shot cycle is draw-touch-gone, the anchor never gets its settle — the moment where the contacts confirm themselves before the shot proceeds. An anchor you only visit for a tenth of a second is an anchor you're approximating.
Building the anchor that repeats
Write your contacts down — literally. "String to the corner of my mouth, thumb knuckle under the back of my jaw," whatever yours are. A shot with named contacts can be checked; a shot with a vibe can't. Then give the anchor one settled second on every shot for those contacts to confirm before anything else happens.
The drill — Mirror Anchor Checks
The anchor's worst enemy is a traveling head, and the mirror catches it faster than the range does. Draw a stretch band facing a mirror and watch only your head: it should stay tall and planted while your hand makes the whole journey to your face. Ten draws, eyes on the head only, daily. The first time you see your head dip to meet the hand, the fault stops being abstract — and a seen fault is half fixed.
Then take it to the range and let video close the loop. Phone on a tripod at the front-side angle, behind the shooting line, whole body in frame, one arrow per clip. CoachVision compares your draw-and-hold frames and measures how still your head really stayed — the best camera-visible proxy there is for a settled anchor — and can often see roughly where your anchor sits, the way a coach watching video would. It can't see your target, and it won't pretend to. It doesn't need to: build a rear sight that lands in the same place every shot, and the target starts taking care of itself.