About 8 years ago, I fell in love with the sport of archery. When I got my intermediate bow, I named her Snowflake. Since the first time that I shot a bow, I felt peaceful and a sense of belonging. Here are 7 reasons why I believe you should try archery, if you haven’t already.
1. Practise Consistency
While archery might look easy – you just pick up a bow and shoot – the sport focuses on consistency. Your body posture should be strong and planted in the ground, and your anchor should be the same every time. If all of your arrows are grouping in one spot, it’s easier to just adjust your sight for your arrows to fall exactly where you want them to. When you learn to become one with the bow and develop muscle memory, your form becomes more consistent, along with your shots.
2. Strengthen Your Mind
What I love about archery is that it’s between you and your bow. You and the bow are one. Everything else ceases to exist. Your mind only registers your breath, the force from the pull and block out everything else. You are in control. You are responsible for how you shoot and so, you can get to know yourself a bit better.
3. Build physical strength
Shooting seems easy, right? But it can take a toll on the body. In order to be consistent, you have to exercise and build tolerance and muscles to pull and hold the weight of the recurve bow. For instance, I took part in a FITA competition once where I had to shoot 144 arrows. It would have exhausting if I hadn’t trained my body to acclimatize to the heat and gain the strength to lift and hold the 32-pound bow.
4. It’s Fun & Cathartic
Shooting can be a form of relief! When you’re stressed out, shooting a couple of ends (rounds) gives your mind something else to focus on. Hearing the sound of the arrow hit the target brings a level of satisfaction that peels away the frustration. It’s a great distraction and you’ll be burning a few calories and gaining muscle strength too! When you enjoy what you do and have fun, you become a calmer, happier person.
5. It’s Badass!
From Robin Hood to Katniss to Merida, archery is gaining rapport in the sports world. Archers are portrayed as strong, independent, deadly warriors. Becoming an archer will let you showcase your fighter spirit!
6. Gain Trust in Your Teammates
During team shoots, trust is very important. You need to know yourself and your teammates to know who shoots when. Together you need to have a plan and execute it in a timely manner to achieve your goal. Understanding the pressure put on your teammates, allows you to cheer, support and guide them. As my home country motto goes, ‘Together we aspire, together we achieve.”
7. You’ll Feel Connected to The Universe
In both life and archery, we have goals. We must keep our aim on our target and focus on doing what we know we need to – our form – to get there. We train, work and read up assiduously to make ourselves strong and knowledgeable so we know what we have to do to reach our objective. If we focus on process, the score sorts itself out and before we know it, we’ve attained our goal!
When an arrow is shot, it cannot return. It has slipped through our fingers and is screaming through the sky to whatever direction our aim sent it. It may waiver with the wind, or drop with rainy days. But once it is shot, it is gone, and the only thing we can focus on thereafter is moving on to shoot our next arrow, and learning from our mistakes and our successes.
Archery is a fun sport that helps you to grow and develop as a person. I hope you try it and fall in love with it as I did!