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An elite archer spends more than fifteen hours a week training

7 studies · 304 archers measured

ForContextAgainst2022202420262024, context, n = 2002026, context, n = 452024, context, n = 202024, context, n = 152022, for, n = 102025, for, n = 82024, for, n = 6
Each circle is a study: its position gives the year, its row whether it is for, against or context, its size how many participants it measured. Light circles are studies on other populations or without archers.

Weekly training hours, group by group, against the fifteen-hour threshold

Each row is a group: the dot is the mean or the programme figure, the whiskers the standard deviation where the study reports it, that is for Vasilis and for Darvishi. These are hours written into the sample description of studies that were measuring something else, not recorded during the study: for Tan and Esen they are the programme hours, for Vasilis the hours the archers reported in the questionnaire, competition included, and Darvishi does not say how they were collected. Esen gives an average of twelve shooting sessions of 2.5 hours and six strength and conditioning sessions of one hour a week: 30 and 36 are the two totals. Jacquot writes "around 21". Darvishi's study appears in a venue with questionable editorial standards. Two studies that count days rather than hours a week are left out: the 20 traditional archers from Naderza's Polish club train 1.6 ± 0.8 days a week, and Yoshioka's 15 university kyudo archers 5.8 ± 1.9 days, for 3.7 ± 2.4 hours a day. These are different groups, from different countries, measured once: the chart does not say where the line between one level and the next lies. Data from: Esen et al. 2024, Jacquot et al. 2025, Tan and Low 2022, Vasilis et al. 2024 and Darvishi 2026.
The numbers in the figure
Study or groupValue (hours a week)IntervalnStance
Esen 2024, Turkish national team, shooting and gym366for
Esen 2024, Turkish national team, shooting only306for
Jacquot 2025, French elite archers≈ 218for
Tan 2022, Malaysian national sports school1810for
Vasilis 2024, European Youth Championships, with competition14.89± 7.76 (mean ± standard deviation)200context
Darvishi 2026, provincial level, Iran14.3± 3.6 (mean ± standard deviation)45context

The three elite groups described in the registry are all above fifteen hours. Ten archers from a Malaysian national sports school, who compete at national level, have a programme of nine sessions and eighteen hours a week; eight French archers in the top twenty of the national ranking train about twenty-one hours; six world-class recurve archers from the Turkish national team reach thirty hours of shooting plus six in the gym. The largest data set sits right on the threshold: two hundred archers aged 13 to 20 at the European Youth Championships report 14.9 hours a week of training and competition, with a standard deviation of almost eight hours, so many fall below it. Below elite level the picture changes a great deal: in a Polish adult club archers shoot fewer than twice a week. These are still programme or self-reported figures, written into the sample description of studies that were about something else, on small selected groups, and nobody has logged the hours actually done. Nor does the threshold on its own tell the levels apart: a group of Iranian provincial archers already reports fourteen hours.

Also phrased as: "how many hours archers train"; "training volume in archery"; "arrows per week for elite archers"; "training hours of top archers"; "weekly training load for archers"

In practice

It is said that reaching the top takes more than fifteen hours a week between arrows and conditioning, and that below that threshold you stay a good club archer.

Evidence

Status history

  1. 2022 Reported The first description of the load of an elite group: ten archers aged 19.5 from a Malaysian national sports school, who compete at national level, have a programme of nine sessions and eighteen hours a week, with sessions of 129 minutes and physical conditioning on dedicated days. The sessions were filmed, but the hours come from the programme rather than from a count athlete by athlete. A single group, observed over three sessions: reported.
  2. 2024 Reported The picture widens both upwards and downwards. Six world-class recurve archers from the Turkish national team do twelve shooting sessions of two and a half hours and six gym sessions of one hour, thirty-six hours in all. Two hundred archers aged 13 to 20 at the European Youth Championships, by contrast, report 14.9 hours a week including competition, and 163 arrows per session, with the same load for girls and boys: elite youth sit on the threshold, not above it. In a Polish adult club archers shoot fewer than twice a week. More data, but still programme or self-reported figures: reported.
  3. 2025 Reported A third elite group confirms the order of magnitude: eight French archers aged 19, all in the top twenty of the national 70-metre ranking and with an average best score of 654.6 out of 720, train about twenty-one hours a week. Three independent groups above fifteen hours, but the figure is background detail in studies that were measuring something else, on eight, six and ten archers: the status remains reported.

Related

Related articles

Research lines

Studies describe groups of archers, and your own numbers show how far the finding applies to your shooting.

See the programme
Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). An elite archer spends more than fifteen hours a week training (Version 2). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/physical-training/elite-archer-training-hours

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_caricoallenamentoelite,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {An elite archer spends more than fifteen hours a week training},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/physical-training/elite-archer-training-hours},
  note = {Version 2; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

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