Quote Originally Posted by Spiryt View Post
Steady base, as of point to push/pull off, while drawing really heavy bow, shifting your weight to be able to pull the bow...

English archers were even often depicted barefoot for maximum adhesion, AFAIR.

Here's fun little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyEIk...layer_embedded

Upright posture is pretty obviously universally required for human to perform "maximum strength" lifting, pushing, throwing, hacking and whatever, bows are not different.
Huh, interesting video. It's from the English Warbow Society so presumably it's a legitimate historical technique.

From the society entry requirements, that selfbow has a minimum draw of 70lbs at 32" full draw (my arms won't even reach that far ). I will question what sort of accuracy that technique has though, but if you're just firing into formations, I guess it doesn't matter that much.

That said, the Mongols are renowned for their horse archery and what research I can find suggests their bows had a similarly heavy draw weights, so I presume it's still possible to not need your legs to draw powerful bows (with some technique modification).

Some additional research suggests that English bows were also used mounted, although with some issues as the mounted archer could only really fire sideways effectively - firing forwards as horse archers often did usually resulted in the bow poking the horse, which affected your accuracy and reload times.

My turn for interesting videos: Battlefield kyudo.
While he's using a yumi (Japanese bow) which is designed to be off centre, he doesn't appear to have any trouble drawing or hitting his targets while kneeling.
I can't find any reference to the draw weight of his bow, although war yumi were recorded to have a draw weight of 90lb (I doubt that this bow is that heavy though).