Archery is one of the oldest sports and activities known, and it goes back to per-historic times when hunters used bows and arrows around the world to hunt wild game. Today, hunting for food has largely been replaced by recreational use of modern bow models, such as target practice and hunting as a sport rather than a way of life (and hunters should certainly always hunt legally, using tags and never poaching). Today, bow trainers can get into this time-honored sport and have a great time learning a new, fun skill while burning some calories and working out muscles all the while. What is more, those in archery training can make use of an archery app to help augment their training and keep track of their progress and figure out how they can improve. An archery training bow may help novices get into the sport, and archery training aids like targets and an archery app can make the learning process faster and easier. Who uses bows and arrows today, and how can an archery app help with this?
Who Fires a Bow?
Many people around the world use bows and arrows not for sustenance hunting, but for sport and recreation, and some statistics and trends have been noted about worldwide bow use. As of 2016, for example, the total number of archery participants aged six and up came to around 7.9 million, and more and more women are taking up this sport alongside their male peers. U.S. Census Bureau statistics, for one, have shown that many more women have gotten into hunting, which includes bow hunting, and as of now, women make up 11% of all American hunters. Similarly, the Archery Trade Association has compiled data showing that four million women are taking part in archery, either for target archery or hunting. And there are even archers present in the Olympics, there are world-class archers, and these archers may burn around 1,084 calories during a performance. In fact, target practice in general may burn some active calories, seeing how archers will walk from one target to another, use great strength to draw bowstrings back, and simply standing the entire time.
Learning to Shoot
Someone new to archery will be given basic training for archer technique, as well as safety for using bows and shooting arrows. “Dry firing,” for example, is the highly discouraged act of drawing back the string and releasing with without an arrow. In this case, the immense energy intended to propel the arrow is instead released throughout the bow, and this can badly damage it. Apprentice archers will also learn basic course safety, such as not firing an arrow when a person or animal is within their firing arc. Often, archers at a target shooting event will collectively stop firing (a cease fire) and collect their spent arrows together, during which time no one will fire any arrows.
And as with any other sport, archery will involve keeping track of personal progress and determining what should be improved upon or learned next, and apprentice archers can make use of an archery app for this. How can this sort of archery app be helpful? A bowman can use it to log their scores and accuracy while shooting, and in the long term, this will give them general trends about their accuracy and whether they are firing too high or low to to one side, and they can make adjustments as needed. The app can also be used to log how much time is spent on archery and possibly an estimate on calories burned, and a trainee can use this app to make a schedule for their weekly or daily shooting practice. The trainee archer may also use such an app to track how much draw weight they can handle (the string’s resistance when drawn) to determine when they are ready to dry new bows with greater weight. Finally, such an app may also have basic exercises listed that the trainee can try so that they work out their archery muscles and endure long periods of standing better, and the app could keep track of that exercise and its results as well.