10 Most Common Health Benefits Of Archery

Written by Tim Rhodes Last Updated: Mar 12, 2023

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Are you looking for ways to improve your well being both mentally and physically?

I have exactly what you’re looking for.

It’s called archery!

For starters, archery is the sport of shooting arrows.

People have been practicing archery for a long time.

Back then, the purpose of archery mainly revolves around hunting and warfare.

Nowadays, archery has become a kind of sport and has become more and more popular.

Now you might be wondering: why should I choose archery over other kinds of sports?

10 Most Common Health Benefits Of Archery

Stick around with me, and I’m going to talk about the ten of the most common health benefits of archery!

1. Archery Improves Hand-Eye Coordination

What’s Hand-Eye Coordination?

In a nutshell, hand-eye coordination is the coordination between the information obtained by the eyes and the movements of the hands.

Let’s say you want to grab a pen placed on your desk.

In this case, your eyes and brain are responsible for locating the object (pen).

The information received by your eyes is then sent to your brain through the nerves in your body.

After identifying and locating the object (pen), your brain will then send signals to the muscles responsible for the action to take place (for example, your hand).

Receiving the commands from the brain, your hand will then attempt to reach for the pen.

During this process, your eyes will constantly be sending information to your brain, allowing your hand muscles to make adjustments according to the situation.

That’s it!

That’s what hand-eye coordination means!

Why Should I Care?

When practicing archery, archers are required to have a high degree of hand-eye coordination.

In order to shoot successfully, you’ll have to aim at the target with great precision.

When you’re trying to aim at the target, your hands need to make fine and careful adjustments according to the information received by your eyes.

The need for tremendous hand-eye coordination when it comes to archery means that you’ll be able to train and improve your hand-eye coordination through archery.

Now you might be asking: why is hand-eye coordination important to us, and why should I care about it?

Not only is hand-eye coordination essential for sports like archery, but it is also very important when it comes to performing daily tasks!

As simple as writing something or tying your shoelaces, hand-eye coordination plays an essential role in those day-to-day tasks!

In other words, the better your hand-eye coordination is, the better you’ll be when performing daily tasks.

Moreover, a study has shown that people are subject to a decline in hand-eye coordination due to aging.

This is caused by the weakening of neuromuscular communication in the body and/or emerging neurological disorders as we age.

Sports activities such as archery can help improve your hand-eye coordination!

That being said, be sure to practice archery if you want to stay agile!

2. Archery Improves Your Strength

How about my physical strength?

The good news is: archery has got you covered!

Did you know that practicing archery is an effective way of strengthening your upper body?

When drawing a bow, muscles like your core, chest, arm, and back muscles are engaged altogether.

That means every time you practice archery; you’re exercising all those muscles simultaneously!

When you “challenge” your muscles with resistance or weight, you’ll damage the muscles’ fibers.

Don’t worry!

It’s not going to cause permanent damage to your muscles!

Your body will then repair the damaged muscle fibers, making them bigger!

This process is called muscular hypertrophy.

By practicing archery, you’ll be able to put your muscles to work effectively.

For those who want a stronger body, you might want to give archery a try!

3. Archery Improves Heart Health

The heart is a vital organ of your body, so its health shouldn’t be neglected.

Heart diseases like Coronary Artery Disease and heart failure may arise if you don’t take good care of your heart.

Coronary Artery Disease

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common type of heart disease.

According to statistics, coronary artery disease is responsible for 365,914 death cases in the United States in 2017 alone.

Typically, coronary artery disease is caused by cholesterol plaque buildup in the arteries.

Total or partial blockage of arteries caused by cholesterol plaque buildup will lower blood flow to the heart.

Without enough blood flow, the heart won’t function properly, causing the symptoms of coronary artery disease.

These symptoms include angina (chest pain), dizziness, shortness of breath, and so on.

Heart failure

Another common type of heart disease is heart failure.

According to statistics, about 6.5 million American adults have heart failure.

Heart failure is most commonly caused by coronary artery disease.

Other factors that may contribute to heart failure include cardiomyopathy, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.

Heart failure symptoms include excessive fatigue, loss of appetite, persistent coughing, sudden weight gain, and so forth.

There are other heart disease types, but I’m not going to go through all of them.

How Archery Helps Prevent Heart Diseases

That being said, you should do exercises regularly to help prevent heart diseases.

Archery is a great sport if you want to keep your heart in its best condition.

Much like other sports activities like running, archery can help improve your heart health!

Every time you draw a bow, walk back and forth to retrieve your arrows, you’ll get your heart beating at a higher rate to deliver the oxygen required for your physical activities.

By increasing the heart rate, you’ll exercise the muscles of your heart, thus strengthening it.

4. Archery burns calories

What Are Calories?

A Calorie is a unit used to measure the amount of energy that a certain food or beverage provides.

All our activities, from walking, running, and even thinking, require calories (or energy).

Calories (energy) are like petrol (fuel) for vehicles; in order to power a vehicle, you’ll need to fill the gas tank with enough petrol.

Unlike vehicles, we humans obtain energy through the consumption of food and beverage, and we calculate the energy consumption in the unit of calories.

Why Do I Need to Burn Calories?

Normally, your daily activities will do the job of burning calories, and there’s not much to be worried about it.

However, if you’re consuming too many calories and/or being inactive, your body will have to store those extra calories in the form of body fat.

And as we all know, that’ll cause health problems like obesity and heart diseases.

Now that we have talked about the dire consequences of having too many calories in our bodies let’s move on to how you can burn calories by practicing archery!

Archery – An Effective Way of Burning Calories

While many may not know it, but archery is a surprisingly effective way of burning calories!

From drawing a bow to walking back and forth to retrieve arrows from the archery target, you’re consuming a lot of energy in the form of calories.

According to Prevention, practicing archery for half an hour burns around 140 calories!

That is essentially as effective as walking at a quick pace of 3.5 mph!

5. Archery Enhances Hand and Finger Flexibility

Do you spend a lot of time scrolling through your phone?

Need to spend hours in front of the computer typing documents?

All those repetitive tasks that we perform daily may cause stiffness and weakness to our hands and fingers.

A great way to prevent your hands from “getting stiff” or getting injured is by increasing your hand and finger flexibility through archery.

As you are aiming at the target, your hands and fingers are fully involved in the process.

This helps exercise your hands and fingers and thus improves flexibility.

6. Archery Boosts Self-Esteem

Now that we’ve gone through the physical health benefits of archery, what about other kinds of health benefits?

Worry not!

Archery has also got you covered!

What is Self-Esteem?

Self-esteem is a self-evaluation of one’s worth.

Self-esteem is subjective and can be affected by different factors such as one’s achievements, others’ opinions about oneself, one’s childhood, etc.

Self-esteem can be viewed as one of the building blocks of your self-identity.

Having low self-esteem will greatly impact your mental health, daily life, and performance.

For example, people with low self-esteem do not trust their own abilities.

This may prevent them from trying out things or accepting challenges in life, hurting their chances in life.

Because of that, it is important to establish a healthy sense of self-esteem.

But how?

How Archery Affects Your Self-Esteem

Have you ever felt as though you don’t have enough confidence?

Do you always feel that you’re inferior to others?

If yes, there’s a great chance that you have low self-esteem.

The good news is: archery can help you gain self-esteem!

When practicing archery, you can set different goals for yourself.

Once you’ve achieved the goals or made improvements, you’ll feel a sense of satisfaction and achievement.

The increase of self-assurance and positivity will boost your self-esteem, helping you be more confident in yourself.

Apart from giving you a sense of satisfaction, archery can improve your self-esteem by helping you make more friends.

When you practice archery, you will be interacting with other archers.

The interactions between you and other people with the same interest will help you make more friends.

For example, when you and other archers are taking a break after practicing archery, you guys can share your thoughts and experiences about archery.

Since you guys share a common ground, you will have many topics to talk about with them.

By sharing experiences, you will be able to know more like-minded people, make more friends, and enlarge your social circle.

When you make more friends, you will have a feeling that others validate you.

Both self-validation and validation of others are critical factors when it comes to boosting your self-esteem.

That said, you might want to pick up archery as your hobby if you want to enhance your self-esteem!

7. Archery gives you better focus

Do you find yourself always being distracted by other people or the surroundings when you’re trying to complete a certain task?

If so, you might have difficulties focusing on one task.

Practicing archery can help you improve your ability to be focused.

When practicing archery, you have to be focused on the target to aim precisely.

You’ll have to tune out all of your surroundings or distractions and focus on your form (posture) and the target.

The huge amount of focus required in archery will help enhance your ability to focus.

After practicing archery, you’ll have better focus when completing daily tasks and be better at handling high-pressure environments.

8. Archery Teaches You Patience

The Importance of Patience

Patience is arguably one of the most important traits of successful people.

You may be asking why.

Many people may overlook the significance and impact of patience in our lives.

Do you find yourself getting mad or irritated with the small things in life?

Have you ever felt angry over things like traffic congestion or slight delays?

Impatient people usually tend to get upset about small issues that we encounter daily.

At first sight, this may not seem like a huge deal.

However, this can greatly impact your everyday life in different ways that you might not have noticed.

First of all, if you easily get irritated over insignificant things in life, your mental wellbeing will be affected.

Always feeling bummed about little things like a long queue or the noise of a baby crying will lower your overall happiness and thus have a toll on your mental health.

Moreover, you will be more likely to be pessimistic or give up easily when you encounter setbacks in life.

Life always presents us with different challenges, such as work difficulties and relationship issues.

If you’re unable to remain patient in these situations, you’ll most likely end up failing to solve the issues.

On the contrary, people with great patience will be able to handle such issues with ease.

No matter how many hurdles they need to overcome, they will remain calm and patient.

This gives them the ability to think of solutions, see the bigger picture, or adopt a positive mindset instead of dwelling on the problems.

As you can see, patience is important in our daily lives and is one of the keys to success and achievement.

Now that you know the importance of patience.

So what can you do to improve your patience?

Building Patience Through Archery

Before you grasp the technique of archery, you’ll have to go through a lot of trial and error.

Every successful archery needs to undergo an extensive training period before they become better and better at it.

In other words, you’ll have to be very patient when it comes to practicing archery.

Through archery, you’ll learn to endure and deal with setbacks or failure.

Every time you miss the target or fail to achieve an ideal posture, your patience will be put to the test.

Your patience will thus enhance overtime (given that you have never given up during the process).

9. Archery Helps You Relax and Regulate Your Mood

Do you want to uplift your mood or relax?

By practicing in an archery court or range, you’ll be able to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city.

As archery requires you to concentrate on the form and to aim, you’ll be able to lose yourself in the process, temporarily forget about your frustration and issues.

Practicing archery is a great way for you to relieve a whole week of stress from work (or school), allowing you to regulate your mood.

Reducing stress and elevating your mood can lower to risk of developing health problems like depression, high blood pressure, and anxiety.

Moreover, participating in sports activities like archery will prompt your body to release a hormone called endorphin.

Endorphins and Their Effect on Your Body

The pituitary gland produces endorphins.

Endorphins act as pain relievers and are primarily released to ease the feeling of pain and stress.

Stress, pain, and activities like exercising will trigger your body to release endorphins.

Do you notice that you feel happier every time after swimming in the pool or hitting the gym?

That’s because your body releases endorphins during sports activities.

The increase of endorphin levels in your body is linked with several benefits brought to your mental health.

(Though more researches are needed to further prove the relationship between endorphins and the expected effects)

First and foremost, an increase of endorphins in your body can help you cope with depression.

As endorphins can create a feeling of positivity, they can help relieve symptoms of depression.

What’s more, endorphins can help reduce stress and anxiety, promoting your mental wellness, and keeping you in a stable and healthy food.

It is reported that even small amounts of exercise can increase one’s happiness.

That said, if you are striving for a happier life and/or better mental health, be sure to try practicing archery!

10. Archery Promotes Social Interactions

Last but certainly not least, your social life significantly impacts your wellbeing, and archery can help you achieve a better social life!

The Need to Socialize

We, humans, are born to be social.

From a revolutionary standpoint, humans needed to stick together to increase their survival chances and protect themselves from danger.

Historically, humans lived together in villages to look after each other.

With the evolution of society, the need for being connected to survive has diminished.

However, the need and desire for socializing have already been hardwired in our brains.

It is shown that socializing plays a role in maintaining our mental wellbeing.

People who socialize are reported to be happier and have a better sense of self-worth.

Maintaining healthy and meaningful social relationships can also provide people with mental support.

For example, you can seek emotional support from others when dealing with stress or difficult situations, increasing your ability to deal with such situations.

Archery Opens Up New Social Opportunities

By taking part in group activities like archery competitions, you’re open to many chances of social interactions.

For example, when participating in archery team competitions, you’ll need to interact and coordinate with your teammates to have a strong and coordinated team.

Apart from that, you can also socialize when practicing archery.

You and other archers can share your experiences and passion in archery as you guys share the same interest.

Through social interactions in archery, you will meet more friends and improve your social skills.

Final Thoughts

And that’s it; those are the ten most common health benefits of archery!

After going through the health benefits of archery, I hope you’ve learned more about this interesting sport!

Not only is archery beneficial for your physical health, but it also helps you achieve better health mentally.

It may be overwhelming for beginners because there are quite a lot of skills and knowledge to pick up when it comes to archery.

Don’t worry!

If you want more information on how you can start practicing archery, you can check out archery guides like this to get yourself started.

If you’re interested in archery and want to elevate your life, be sure to give it a try!

I hope that you’ll enjoy your time taking part in sports activities like archery!

Thank you so much for reading through our list of the ten most common health benefits of archery