Who needs Gym Membership .. or Therapy?

While standing in a puddle recently, 2 of our more .. dedicated .. archers, while suffering wet feet, soggy clothing, the cold, the tent almost blowing away and less than stellar form, pondered the question “What has archery ever done for us?”
So, with a nod to Monty Pythons Life of Brian, here are a few things archery does for you…

1. Getting Exercise: Archery is a great way to exercise. During the 2012 Olympic Games in London, it was estimated that during their event archers burned in excess of 1,000 calories. At least the same as that burned by 100 meters’ sprinters. At tournaments, archers walk around eight kilometers (five miles) each day of competition and can burn as much as 100 to 150 active calories every 30 minutes. That’s getting your step count without even trying!
2. Gaining Strength: Drawing a bow requires the chest, hands, arms, upper back muscles as well as non-core areas of your bod like the rotator cuffs in your shoulders. The continuous repetition of your shooting motion strengthens these areas. Shooting 100 arrows drawing 35lbs = 1.5 tonnes. At the same time your stance on the line improves your posture fixing those hunched over the keyboard issues.
3. Maintaining Control: Archers have to maintain focus on their shot cycle, avoiding distractions like wind, rain, noise as well as other archers (no matter how whyngy) to deliver the perfect arrow. That level of control can be beneficial in other areas of your life – like not throttling the life out of the judge who just turned down yet another line cutter in the round!
4. Keeping Coordination: To create a good shot, you need to connect a combination of moves that needs to be ingrained into muscle memory and the sub-conscious. The coordination of all these movements becomes instinctive and develops your mental thought process allowing you to completing tasks without even thinking about them.
5. Developing Patience: As many of you will already have found out, archery is easy to learn, but difficult to perfect. To git gud you have to develop determination to precisely repeat your shot cycle over and over. Don’t think all that practice is building character? Next time you are stuck in traffic yet don’t get worked up … spare a thought for your archery!
6. Calm & Relaxed: When the pressure is on for that critical one arrow shoot off, staying calm and composed are must have abilities. Got to manage that breathing, the concentration and especially the nerves. When you’re shooting well, hours can pass by in a blink of an eye. Here archery is providing a process of active meditation, which can improve your mood, ease anxiety and reduce depression (unless you are shooting badly when it will get so much worse! ;o).
7. Building Self-confidence: Even when in competition, an archer’s greatest opponent is themselves. Overcome yourself and what other challenges are there?
8. Socializing: With all that time in between ends or when walking to or from the target, its a great way to meet new people, make friends and to get your banter on.

There you go … archery doing a body some serious good. And you thought it was just a sneaky way to get out of the house and eat sausages on a Sunday morning! So this new year, if someone suggests you take out an expensive gym membership, feel free to quote a little more Python and say in an outrageous french accent .. “Ah already got one. Its very nice!”