Archery is an art, practice, or sport involving the skill of shooting arrows with a bow. It requires a range of skills from a steady hand, flexible muscles, strong shoulders, a snappy disposition, and a sharp eye. Its equipment has improved significantly over the last several millennia, with the best bow release added on the list of essential gear, but the sport remained the same.
Archery as a fitness activity can be beneficial in terms of your physical and mental development. Here are some skills you can gain from archery:
- Physical Strength
As a sport that requires a little burst of energy from core muscles, drawing a bow puts pressure in the chest, hands, arms and back muscles. Making your body parts cooperate and perform the right position is one important thing, but having the power to hold the bow steady while aiming a shot is another.
It may seem that it only uses the arms, but when carried out properly, it mainly is about the back muscles that do the job. Core muscles play a big role and an archer should use it as how the sport demands. The right execution and repetition of these movements strengthen the muscles.
- Coordination and Balance
The steps in archery aim to bring out a great shot. Your arms and hands must work in unity while your shoulders, neck, and head must be aligned in an appropriate way. Your legs and feet must create tough support while keeping your weight balanced.
This routine needs to be essential into the archer’s muscles and mind. There’s so much happening at the same time and combining all the movements and positions can be a lot to manage simultaneously.
But as you compose yourself in developing the right form, your body will learn what to do and coordination of all the movements will later become spontaneous.
- Intense Focus and Patience
Archers do not only need physical strength to perform the activity but also mental strength. Practicing archery can help archers develop strong focus and long patience.
Patience is a virtue and in archery, one should be patient in waiting for the right time to release the bow. Archery is easy to learn, but hard to perform flawlessly. The sport creates a lot of fun but it can be frustrating at the same time.
Patience is needed to engage longer in the sport. However, being determined to repeat a technique strictly will make you a better archer.
A simple goal of hitting a target is something perceptible to focus on. Focusing on shooting a bow to send the arrow where you want it to take off reflects your level of focus in the process.
Not being able to focus may lead your arrow to land in a different direction. But the more arrows you shoot the more you can practice yourself to focus on aiming your target and it will make you comfortable and develop an incredible focus on hitting the mark you choose.
- Stress Coping Mechanism
Research has shown that playing archery can be a positive way of coping with stress. As a sport that gets you outdoors and keeps you moving, one of archery’s benefits is its stress-relieving potential.
Not just it helps you in focusing and slowing down your breathing, it also helps you to focus on one thing at a time. Archery is a fun hobby to enjoy and it develops your stress coping mechanisms.
Trying to engage yourself in this sport will not only improve your shooting skills but also allows you to have time in a stress-free environment.
- Safety and Responsibility
Archery will teach you that safety is important. It does have risks but these can be managed. Archers who learn about safety makes them responsible for their own actions and behaviors.
When doing a shot, they can also learn to consider to be aware of the people around them. This behavior encourages the archer’s community to think not only about themselves but also about other people.
- Social Skills
Archery is also a social sport. By going out for competition, friendly games or the club you are in will also get you a lot of new friends. There are archers in all ages and you can simply hang out with them. This will help you develop your social skills.
Also, talking and socializing to other archers will help you learn a lot of new things, not just about archery but also about life.
- Motivation and Determination
Setting a goal can be connected to archery. Archery is a sport that normally lets you set yourself a goal to achieve since you are well-motivated and determined. It offers a great goal-setting environment.
The goal you set in archery is simply your target. This can also relate to how you work for the short and long term goals you set in your life and how you deal with it in achieving them.
Conclusion
Archery clearly is an excellent sport because of the benefits that it can give in a person’s physical and mental development. Skills on how to play archery are not very much needed when you start playing. All you need are the proper bow, arrow, gears (ArcheryEdge has some good suggestions) and a whole lot of determination to learn. You would eventually become a good archer when you continue to practice it and make it your passion.
In fact, as you continue to engage yourself in archery, you will gain key skills that can greatly contribute to your life when you apply it. The strength, focus, coordination, balance, safety, responsibility and other skills that it can teach you can help you develop your well-being.
Archery is not just a simple sport to enjoy, it is also another way to improve your behavior and attitude towards life.