Strength endurance in archers: Radičević 2024

This is a professional article in Serbian rather than a study: two coaches from the Serbian federation and a strength and conditioning specialist set out what they have gathered over years of seminars, coaching books and field work on strength endurance, meaning the capacity to hold a position or repeat a movement for a long time without losing efficiency.

The most concrete part is the arrow volumes suggested according to the draw weight of the bow, per week: 400 to 600 arrows below 24 pounds, 600 to 800 up to 30, 800 to 1,000 up to 36, over 1,000 up to 40, and 1,800 to 3,000 or more above 40 pounds. The figure given as a minimum is 150 arrows a day, around 1,000 a week, with no loss of form at all and no first signs of tremor. Citing Kaminski, they suggest starting a cycle at 180 arrows a day and rising to 300, 400 and at most 500, with a ceiling of 100 arrows a day for children up to thirteen.

To judge whether an archer controls their own draw weight they report three tests taken from Lee and from Kim: a long hold at full draw of 30 seconds to one minute repeated ten times, with a rest twice the length of the hold, in three to five sets, where holding correct position beyond 45 seconds indicates that two or three pounds can be added; a short hold of 3 to 5 seconds at full draw with a return to the pre-draw position, 5 to 12 repetitions over 3 to 5 sets; and Kim's test, which asks for 7 seconds at anchor with no loss of form, 2 seconds back at set-up and eight or nine repetitions.

The authors' own proposal is a new way of doing the second test: with an arrow on the bow, at full draw, the point held 1 to 2 millimetres from the edge of the clicker (around 5 for beginners) for at least 7 seconds, then back to set-up for 2 seconds, eight or nine times over three sets with 3 to 5 minutes of rest, with the gap at the clicker neither shrinking nor growing and no tremor. It is done one or two metres from the target for safety. In their view it measures back tension and the precision of the draw directly. None of these tests has been put to the test: the authors say so, and leave it to a future study.

The authors call their method "bibliographic and speculative" and state that no observational studies were available to build on. The sources are declared: five seminars and training camps run by the coach Peter Suk for the Serbian federation between 2015 and 2016, the books of Kisik Lee (Total Archery, 2005, and Inside the Archer, 2009) and his website, Hyung Tak Kim's Archery of 2009, Kaminski's Training for Archery manual of 2017, and the federation courses attended by one of the three authors between 2011 and 2021. To this is added the three authors' own work with Serbian archers: Čolović is a level three federation coach, Radičević a level two, and Milosavljević a strength and conditioning coach.

The weekly arrow volumes by draw weight band are attributed to a video channel, Rogue Archery TV, in 2023. The historical material quoted in the introduction (the bows from the Mary Rose wreck estimated at 150 to 160 pounds at a 30-inch draw, the 140 to 155 pounds of the Agincourt bows, the twelve arrows a minute) comes from Wikipedia entries, from Robert Hardy's estimate and from a historical novel by Bernard Cornwell. For general conditioning the authors give a table of thirteen exercises (4-kilogram dumbbells in five positions, 8 repetitions for 3 sets with a 3-second hold, plank, pull-ups, back extensions, grip, 100 push-ups, burpees, a 2 to 4 kilometre run) and the loading rules that go with it: resistances no higher than 50% of maximal force, 19 to 25 repetitions with a small resistance, 6 to 10 sets, three sessions a week in the preparatory period and one or two in season. Two sequences of exercises with the bow follow, taken from videos, with isometric holds of 15 to 35 seconds and slow repetitions, timed exercise by exercise.

There are no participants, no measurements, no comparison groups and no data. The authors indicate how progress ought to be tracked (recording fitness at the start and after 60 days, logging sessions, following results in training and competition), but none of that recording was done or reported here.

Nothing that is proposed here has been measured. The authors state it plainly: the training plans have not been confirmed by experimental measurement in Serbia, and the test they propose rests, in their own words, on intuition and experience. There is therefore no figure linking these arrow volumes, these holds or these thresholds to accuracy, to score, or to injury risk.

The provenance of the most quotable numbers is uneven. The weekly volumes by draw weight come from a video channel, and what observations they rest on is unknown. The tests and thresholds, including the two or three pounds to be added after a 45-second hold, are conventions from coaching books and seminars: repeated for years by successful coaches, but not measured for that reason. The historical references are second-hand too, and one of them is a novel: they do not touch the training material, but it is worth knowing how the introduction is built.

The absence of data makes it impossible to know whether the proposed volumes are prudent or excessive, and for whom. The ceiling of 100 arrows a day below the age of thirteen and the minimum of 150 a day for an adult sit in the same text with no indication of how one gets from the first to the second. The authors also acknowledge the limits of the setting they work in: in their experience almost all Serbian archers have bows too heavy for their current condition, the average archer's technique is not consistent, and the handful of clubs scattered across several cities makes it hard to assemble the five groups a study of at least three months would need.

Formally, the journal classifies the article as a professional rather than a scientific paper. The issue is dated 2024, but the text was received on 4 December 2024, revised three times in 2025 and accepted on 7 July 2025. It is written in Serbian with an English abstract.

For an archer the value of this article is documentary: it puts in writing, with numbers, what one school of coaching treats as normal. Anyone who has heard of a thousand arrows a week, of 45-second holds, or of adding one pound at a time will find here where those figures come from and who said them, and will discover that the chain ends in seminars, manuals and videos, not in a study.

That changes how such a number should be read. A volume of 1,800 to 3,000 arrows a week above 40 pounds is not a tested dose: it is a convention from settings where people shoot five or six hours a day, referring to a selected group, with nothing to say what happens to someone who follows it from a different starting point. The same goes for the rule that holding beyond 45 seconds means pounds can be added, which is a convention that helps a coach reach a decision rather than a measurement of control over the bow.

The authors' own proposal, the hold with the arrow point a millimetre or two from the clicker, is the most interesting part because it tries to turn a sensation into something observable: if the gap at the clicker moves or a tremor appears, the attempt is over. It remains an idea to be verified, and the authors present it that way. Anyone trying it should keep in mind that it is done a metre or two from the target, because the arrow is on the bow at full draw.

The number of archers measured in this article is zero: in the registry it counts as expert opinion and as the source of the figures in circulation, not as evidence on how much shooting is advisable.