Archery is a great sport that actually improves the archer in several different ways. Archery can help you cultivate confidence, patience, hand eye coordination and achieve a calm, meditative state. Not only that, but archery can help you to build muscle, burn fat and get in shape.

People often ask: Can archery make you fit? In a word, yes – as long as it’s combined with an all around healthy lifestyle.

Now archery alone isn’t going to give you chiseled abs. If you’re eating fast food, donuts and drinking soda – don’t expect any miracles.

However, if you eat healthy and workout, adding archery into the mix will not only help you tone your muscles but archery also works several muscle groups that few other workouts ever touch.

Regularly practicing archery can make the muscles that already show on your body appear more toned and cut – while also strengthening your back, core and several other muscle groups.

What Muscles Does Archery Workout?

Archery targets many different muscle groups in the body. Shooting archery targets your back, abdominals, shoulders, lower back, deltoids, triceps, biceps and chest among others.

When you draw back your bow, not only do your work several muscle groups at the same time – but you then have to hold this weight for several seconds at a time while you aim. This is great for all of the muscles involved.

Repetition of this draw sequence over the course of a half hour to an hour, a few times a week is great to not only tone the muscles, but also build strength as well.

Simply shooting archery a few times a week will strengthen and tone most of the muscle groups in your upper body.

Many people don’t realize that archery is actually great for working out your abdominal and lower back muscles. In fact, when you draw back your bow, your body will naturally try to stay balanced. Your lower back and abs have to flex and hold the tension while you’re holding the bow string back and aiming.

Also, just like when you’re weight lifting, as you increase the weight you build more muscle. The best way to build muscle is to increase the weight that you’re lifting by a few pounds, and then once you become used to lifting that amount weight, you increase it again.

By simply repeating this again and again over time you can build and tone your muscles tremendously.

In the same way, increasing the draw weight of your bow can build, tone and strengthen most of the muscles in your upper body. You can’t do that if you buy a bow with only one draw weight, but if you get one of these you can easily increase your draw weight over and over – as much as you like.

You Get Lots of Steps Just Walking to Retrieve Your Arrows

Not only do you get all that great exercise and muscle building from shooting your bow, but you get a lot of walking in just by going back and forth to the target.

You may think that you can’t really get that much walking in just by walking to the target, but you’d be wrong. In fact, it’s estimated that just by shooting in a typical archery tournament you’ll walk five miles a day.

Not only that, but you’d burn about one hundred and fifty calories every half an hour.

In the Olympics, it is estimated that male archers burn over 1,000 calories competing. That’s just under 700 calories short of marathon runners. A recent magazine study showed that the calories burned doing 10 minutes of archery was equal to that of other activities like jogging, dancing and swimming.

Also, you’ll be walking a lot if you shoot 3D archery or go bowhunting. Even just some casual stump shooting or backyard archery can get you some steps while you’re shooting.

Exercises to Build Muscles for Archery

One of the best and easiest ways to get archery exercise is with one of these – you can get an archery workout all year long – even indoors. Not only is it designed specifically to exercise the muscles you use everyday in archery, but it also has a video screen with moving targets and several different modes and games. That actually makes exercising fun, rather than it feeling tedious and boring.

Here are a few other archery exercises that can help you to build the muscles you use everyday in archery…

Single Arm Dumbbell Row

The single-arm dumbbell row is a great exercise that works your mid back muscles. It’s easy to do and will help you by strengthening the same muscle groups that you use when you draw back your bow. If you don’t have any dumbbells, these are great dumbbells that are pretty cheap and available in all different weights.

Using a dumbbell and a weight bench or other raised, flat surface put your hand on the bench, keeping your knee bent just a bit. Keeping the back flat, raise the weight all the way to your shoulder and back down again. Be sure that your forearm is not the muscle lifting the weight, the upper arms and shoulders should do the lifting.

Side Plank
Commonly called the core muscles, your abdominal muscles and the muscles in your lower back are very important in almost anything that you do, including archery. In archery, these are the muscles that help to keep you stabilized and balanced when you pull back the bow string.

Put the outside of your forearm on the floor or yoga mat if you have one. Lift the body up sideways, using the outside of your forearm and the outside of the foot on the floor. Hold this position for several seconds.

Dumbbell Lateral Raise

An often overlooked muscle group, not only in general but also when it comes to archery are the deltoids. The deltoids run along the side of your shoulders, and are used to both hold the bow when drawn in your bow arm, but also to draw the bow string with the opposite arm.

This exercise can be done with both arms at the same time if you have two dumbbells, but if you don’t you can just work on one arm at a time. Holding the dumbbells with your arms at your sides, lift your arms out so that the dumbbell is raised up to be in line with your shoulders. Hold this position for a second, then slowly lower the arms back to the starting position. Repeat several times.

Turkish Get Ups

Another great exercise for archery that works not only the abdominal muscles, lower back muscles, but also the arms is the Turkish Get Up. Perform these on both sides, regardless of which of your arms you use to hold the bow. Both sides of your arms, shoulders and your entire midsection will benefit from several reps of these a few times a week.

Is Their A Diet That Helps with Archery?

Yes. With proper diet, a regular workout and archery practice it is possible for one to almost double the gains that they could get from just working out alone. Archery allows you to build, tone and sculpt more muscle when added into a healthy lifestyle.

A proper diet for archery is quite similar to a general good diet that everyone should follow. Generally speaking, you want to eat high protein, low carb. Plenty of lean protein, a healthy amount of nuts and dairy and LOTS of vegetables is the way to go.

Protein will help you to build and maintain muscle, among other things. You should try to get at least 8 ounces of lean protein at every meal (possibly even more if you’re also lifting weights).

And just so that we’re clear, when I say to eat high protein / low carb – that doesn’t mean that you should eat all the greasy, fried food that you want. It’s not a good idea to eat tons of bacon or fatty fried meats.

A few ounces of low fat dairy everyday is great for some extra protein, and also has many benefits of it’s own. A handful of mixed nuts are not only a great snack that will fill you up during the day, they’ll give you great nutrition as well.

Finally, you should be eating lots of veggies everyday. An easy way to get a wide variety of different minerals and nutrients from vegetables is to eat all different colors of vegetables every day. It may sound silly or simple, but it’s true.

Different colored veggies contain different things, all of which are good for your body. So throw together a salad with tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, carrots, bean sprouts and more. Raw veggies give you the most nutrients, followed by steamed veggies and then boiled.

Eating a lot of different vegetables, of all different colors, both raw and cooked is a solid backbone of a proper diet.

So, Can Archery Help You Lose Weight?

Yes, archery can make you fit.  If you eat healthy, workout three or more times per week and practice archery a few times a week – you can lose a lot of weight over time. Not only that, but archery will help you to burn fat, build muscle and sculpt that chiseled, toned look to your entire body.