I am sure we all agree that Archery is more than just a sport, and it takes a lot more than a bow and arrow to become an archer.
A lot of precision, confidence, dedication, commitment, and much more is needed.
Now the question is, is practicing archery really worth it?
With what it takes to be an archer, archery must have a lot of benefits for people to be flocking to it the way they do.
Well, you’re right, Archery has a lot of benefits.
Since getting into archery, I’ve noticed several excellent benefits that have made me a better archer and improved my life outside of archery as well.
However, we are only going to be looking at the top 10 benefits of archery. Are you still doubting your decision to get into archery? If yes, then here are my top 10 benefits of archery that will make you decide ASAP, and how long it takes for these benefits to start manifesting.
| Archery Benefits | Time Frame |
|---|---|
| Hand Eye Coordination Improves | 2 Months |
| Improved Patience | Varies |
| Improved Focus | 1 Month |
| Relaxing And Enjoyable | Immediate |
| Builds Confidence | 3-4 Weeks |
| Builds Strength | 2 Weeks |
| Social Skills Improve | 1 Month |
| Teaches Safety Skills | Immediate |
| Mostly Inexpensive | Immediate |
| Great Form Of Exercise | Immediate |
Kindly note that these benefits might not manifest to every archer within the same time frame. Of course, every human is different from the others. However, all archers will definitely see these top 10 benefits at one point when practicing archery.
In a 2017 study carried out to determine the benefits of archery, it was discovered that archery promotes healthy aging among the elderly. There are many reasons these benefits make such a big impact, and knowing what those are could help you enjoy archery even more.
Let’s look at the top 10 benefits below
Archery Improves Your Hand-Eye Coordination
Firstly, being good at archery requires good hand-eye coordination. When you shoot an arrow, you need to use your eyes to aim and your reflexes to release it at the right moment. The more you practice, the better your shots will become, and your hand-eye coordination will also get better. This skill can help in other parts of your life where your eyes and muscles need to work together for different tasks.
Many new archers will most likely start seeing changes in their accuracy and hand-eye coordination within 2 months, however, some improve a lot sooner than that.
Regular practice helps you hit your target better and your aim becomes more accurate over time.
Archery Increases Your Patience
Learning archery has a lot more to do with patience, precision, and accuracy than it is about speed. This is not to say that fast shooters don’t have an advantage, there are often competitions in the archery world on the fastest shoot, However, this shouldn’t be your concern as a beginner.
The important thing for you is your precision, accuracy, and the patience it takes to achieve these results. It’s fun but can be a bit frustrating. Being patient during practice is key for long-term success in this part of the world. If you’re determined and keep practicing regularly, you’ll become a better archer and, as a result, a better person!
Being impatient can lead to stress, and ongoing stress can harm your physical health. When you practice archery, you become more patient, which will improve your physical and mental well-being. Patient people tend to experience fewer negative emotions.
Patience helps you handle challenging and stressful situations in life, contributing to better mental health overall. Learning patience varies from person to person, for some people it could take months while for others it’s something they start seeing improvement in from day one.
Archery Improves Focus
Archery practice can also be categorized as some sort of mental fitness, where the practitioner develops his or her focus, flexibility, and attention skills. In archery you become more mental than physical, you think and calculate a lot in your head before releasing that arrow.
From looking at your target to your bow and playing around trying to get an accurate shot. This process improves your focus. It is obvious that you can’t achieve all this without first blocking out distractions and focusing all your attention on your goal, which is to hit the target. No wonder Many archers reportedly feel more focused after every round of target training.
It can take up to a month before you see some noticeable changes in your focus when you start practicing archery, However, it only gets better from there on.
Focus allows you to completely concentrate on one thing and not get distracted by other thoughts or activities around you, so all your mental energy is directed toward the one single task at hand.
Lastly, it is no big news that your archery skills will improve due to your increased focus, but do you know that you will also be able to focus better on other aspects of your life?
Yes. Many archers couldn’t help but notice that their focus on other non-archery tasks seemed enhanced after each shooting Practice.
Archery Promotes Relaxation and helps De-stress
Sometimes the best you can do for yourself is to relax. Our body need rest, and at every point of stress, if there’s no adequate rest, it can lead to physical or mental health problems.
Stress isn’t all bad! A certain amount of stress is necessary to deal with difficult situations in our everyday lives. Physical changes in our bodies occur enabling us to take action, which fades quickly once the problem encountered has gone. However, if we stay in a state of high stress for too long, it can be damaging to our health.
Stress isn’t entirely bad! A bit of stress is needed to handle tough situations in our daily lives.
However, if we are stressed continuously for some time, we will definitely develop health issues. At first glance, looking at archery, many people might see it as a stressful sport, but it’s not. Archery, in fact, does the opposite.
One of my favorite things to do on a day off is to go out in the backyard with my family and lose some arrows. We always have a good time and everyone is left feeling relaxed and accomplished.
Archery leaves you feeling relaxed and accomplished after every practice. This benefit is the kind that manifests immediately. You start feeling relieved and relaxed right from your very first practice. Not to mention the cheers and laughter if you’re out shooting with a group of friends.
Archery Helps You Build Confidence
Confidence is believing in yourself in different parts of life, like your looks, skills, or accomplishments. It’s a strong belief in yourself that goes beyond what you do.
Archery helps you build confidence as you progress and become better at the sport. Children and teens are more likely to benefit more from this than regular individuals because confidence is important for the healthy development of every child. A confident child will be more likely to try things they may have been scared of. Archery practice should be recommended to children.
Note that in archery your confidence level improves every time you improve your archery skills. This will typically take 3-4 weeks but can vary per individual.
This is where it gets harder with kids, you might not be able to get them to stick to the practice long enough to start seeing these benefits.
This hasn’t really been an issue for us because so far, they love to go out and shoot the bow, whether they hit the target or not.
Archery Strengthens Muscles
It’s not news that archery requires putting your strength and muscles into use, when you draw a bow, you draw energy from your chest, hands, arms, and upper back muscles. This puts tension on your rotator cuffs, which support your shoulders. Drawing an archery bow is like a brief moment of holding tension, similar to weightlifting.
The human Muscle plays a very big role in a healthy life, and archery helps exercise your muscles. From learning how to hold your body in the right position to take an accurate shot, to finding the right tension for every kind of shot you want to take.
Short-range target tension is not the same for a long-range shot. When practicing archery, you will start seeing changes in a few weeks, the more consistent you practice the stronger you become every week. Archery is another form of strength training, and it’s an interesting and relaxing one.
Archery Helps Improve Your Social Skills
One of the core human interactive skills is communication, and you can’t fully have this skill without social skills.
Social skill helps you communicate well, build an effective relationship, and maintain a healthy one.
Getting better at social skills is important for your social health and overall well-being. People with good social connections tend to have lower levels of anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, more empathy and are generally more cooperative.
This is also a skill that benefits children and teens alike. This helps to improve their communication level and teaches them the power of interaction and how to always wait for their turn. This is also a great benefit for adults as well. Call up some friends and invite them out to shoot with you. It’s always a fun time and no one ever leaves disappointed.
We noticed it took about a month and the kids started asking if they could bring their friends over to practice archery with them. This puts them in a teaching position, imagine how you feel as a parent seeing your teen explaining the rules of archery to his/her friends, helping them get into position, or cheering them up when they are disappointed with the shot they took.
It sounds great, right?
That’s how I feel every time my kids bring their friends over to practice with us. It is a good way for them to work on their social skills and have a blast in the process.
Builds Safety Awareness
The importance of Safety cannot be underestimated in our lives as human beings. It’s something every human cannot afford to live without, both young and old.
The first step to becoming safety aware is making sure everyone acknowledges safety as a need. Just having rules in place is not enough; we must bear the concept of safety at heart while doing anything from working to eating, driving, swimming, or doing anything you could think of.
In my family, when we go for archery practice, safety measures come first before anything. Being aware of the area, what’s in front of you or what’s behind your target, and where your bow is facing are all important safety rules we implement. It helps give you a sense of safety first which can be carried over into other aspects of life.
Archery can be a very dangerous sport if there’s no safety system set in place. There’s a lot to learn with this, you learn:
- To respect your equipment
- To be responsible and take responsibility for people around you.
I have compiled a list of all the Archery Safety Rules you must follow to ensure you are well-protected. It is a safety sheet you can print out at any time. We hang it near our range for everyone to easily see.
It’s an Inexpensive Sport
We know what it costs to engage in some sports, from purchasing equipment, and tools to every little thing needed, Archery can be a pretty inexpensive sport to get into, even for the whole family.
When I wanted to go into archery at first, I some cheap bows and equipment online and in our local sports stores, they were relatively cheap and didn’t need me to break the bank for them. Depending on your area and proximity, you can get archery equipment on rent at most archery ranges for a small fee.
We’ve spent a lot of time and money finding excellent gear at a good price, check out our favorite Archery Gear to see what good equipment looks like, and what you can expect to pay.
Let me be clear though, if you want to practice archery professionally it can go from being cheap to expensive in a flash. What I’m talking about here is just some backyard or range shooting to have a good time. You don’t need all the fancy expensive equipment if your goal is just to have fun, relax, and enjoy the benefits of archery with family and friends
Great Workout Exercise
Archery is a cool way to move your body, improve how your eyes and hands work together, boost your concentration, and have fun all at once.
As an excellent form of exercise, archery not only for the strength building mentioned above. You dispel energy by shooting arrows, walking down to your target to collect your arrows, and back to shoot them again.
If you ask many archers what they think about archery as an exercise they would agree that archery is a physically demanding sport and also a great form of workout.
Competition-level archers will sometimes walk far distances while carrying a lot of weight. This helps burn a lot of calories and puts them in better shape, which in turn keeps them healthy and fit.
In conclusion, archery is a great exercise for:
Physical Activity: When you shoot arrows, you use your muscles, especially those in your arms, shoulders, and back. It’s like giving them a good workout.
Coordination: You have to aim at the target and shoot precisely. This helps improve your hand-eye coordination, which means your eyes and hands get better at working together.
Concentration: To hit the target, you need to concentrate and focus. This is like exercising your mind, making it better at paying attention to details.
Fun Exercise: Unlike some exercises that might feel like a chore, archery is enjoyable. You get to shoot arrows, which can be a lot of fun, and you won’t even realize you’re exercising at the same time.
Here’s a video showing some exercises that will help with archery. The girl in this video is training to increase the amount of draw weight she can handle. But these exercises will also help your form, your draw, and how long you can hold your anchor point.
Other Benefits of Archery
You can see how great archery can be for yourself and your family. There are many other benefits that didn’t make it to my top 10 list, like:
- It helps improve Hand Flexibility
- Anyone can practice archery.
- It Can Be Practice In your Backyard
- Fun And Addicting
- The Archery Community Is known for its Friendly atmosphere.
After seeing firsthand all these great benefits for me and my family, it makes me wish I got into archery a lot sooner
The Downsides of Archery
Archery is an excellent sport to get involved with, but there are some downsides I want to mention.
If you don’t have a backyard that is big enough to practice archery, it’s definitely going to be difficult to practice. However, you can always find a local range to practice every time.
Note: The archery range might be limited depending on your area and environment.
While archery is generally safe, there’s a risk of injury if safety precautions are not followed. Injuries can occur if the archer is not careful with handling equipment or if there are accidents on the archery range.
If you can work around all this, then I suggest you give archery a shot. You will be amazed.