It’s a question that many ask, and just as many take for granted that all that’s needed is to stand on the shooting line and shoot a few arrows. Because it’s pretty easy, right? No, it’s not, and it’s not so easy to answer the question simply either. Of course, it depends on whether you are a competitive archer or a recreational archer.

To begin with, the weight you pull when training is quite substantial. It does depend a little on whether you shoot indoors or outdoors, sometimes, depending on the bow strength. Often, archers reason that indoors you don’t need as heavy a bow. But quite a few who compete at an elite level also often use the same bow year-round to maintain the feel. Since the world’s top archers do things differently, we’ll leave it up to you to decide whether that’s right or wrong. The main thing is that you can complete a full competition or training session without compromising your technique.

But how fit do you need to be? As a recreational archer, it’s entirely up to you, but as a competitive archer, you still need to be in decent shape. You don’t necessarily need to run a marathon, but you should be able to handle long competition sessions and maintain focus and technique from start to finish. For example, a qualification round at major outdoor competitions is nearly 3.5 hours long. In a so-called 1440 round, you shoot 144 arrows. And this is where your bow strength starts to matter. If you look at the world elite in Recurve, the men’s bows are typically around 50#, while the women’s bows are around 45#. Multiply that by 144 arrows. As an archer, you’ve then drawn up to 3200 kg in total. Recurve archers also shoot at the longest distance, and then they’ve also gone to retrieve their arrows 24 times. That’s 48 times 70 meters (back and forth), which is 3360 meters. In short: You need to be in shape and have eaten and drunk well both on the competition day and the day before.

So, with 3.5 hours of active shooting, long walking distances, and enormous weights, you can probably understand that a lot of energy is used. But it takes more than you think. You might wonder:

– But isn’t it true that all other sports at major sporting events burn much more energy than archers? They just stand there, right?

No, actually not at all. In a study by Arizona State University in collaboration with The Economist, it was found that archers who win medals are the athletes at the Olympics who burn the second most energy of all sports. Only surpassed by marathon runners. In the table below, you can see what they concluded. (The graphics are made in Swedish. I originally wrote the article in Swedish)