Matteo Campagna
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Years of practice alone do not tell an archer's level

8 studies · 278 archers measured

ForContextAgainst201820202022202420262018, for, n = 622022, against, n = 612024, context, n = 402023, context, n = 322018, against, n = 302024, context, n = 282024, for, n = 152018, context, n = 10
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.

When studies compare archers of different levels, the stronger ones nearly always have a few more years of practice, but the difference is sometimes clear and sometimes disappears into the variability. Against the claim stand a Japanese study of thirty archers split into three levels, where years rise with score significantly, and the Chinese national team, where international-level athletes have ten to thirteen years of practice and first-class athletes six to eight. In its favour stand the 62 archers from a German championship and a European one, 11.8 against 15.7 years with p = 0.061 and standard deviations of more than seven years, and a group of university kyudo archers in which those with national placings have not been shooting any longer than the others. The descriptions of single groups say the same thing from another angle: in the Chinese squad preparing for Tokyo the international masters had been shooting for 4.9 years, Indonesian sub-elite archers already had more than nine at seventeen and a half, and in the Brazilian national team the range ran from one and a half to 21. In all of these comparisons years and age rise together, and none of them counts the arrows inside those years.

Also phrased as: "years of experience and level"; "how many years it takes to get good"; "experience in archery"; "how long have you been shooting"

In practice

People say that archery takes ten years to reach the top, and at the same time that some archers overtake people who have been shooting for twenty years within three, because what counts is how you train, not for how long.

Evidence

  • 2018
    Against Archers Published later

    30 male Japanese high-school and university archers, split into three groups of 10 by score over 72 arrows at 70 metres (633, 593 and 557.5 points out of 720): age and years of practice differ significantly between the groups (ANOVA, p < 0.05), while height, weight and draw weight do not. The mean years are in a table the available text does not include.

    Analysis of Muscular Activity in Archery: A Comparison of Skill Level · Hiroshi Shinohara, Yukio Urabe

  • 2018
    For Archers Published later

    62 high-level archers, 40 at the 2012 German indoor championship and 22 at the European outdoor championship: 11.8 ± 7.3 years of training in the first against 15.7 ± 7.5 in the second, p = 0.061. The authors read it as a trend; with standard deviations of more than seven years the two distributions overlap almost entirely.

    Acute and Overuse Injuries in Elite Archers · Claudia K. Niestroj, Volker Schöffl, Thomas Küpper

  • 2018
    Context Archers Published later

    10 archers from the Brazilian national team, 4 men and 6 women, all above 1,000 FITA points: 7.45 ± 5.13 years of practice, from a minimum of one and a half to a maximum of 21, at an age of 21.6 ± 5.1 years. There is no comparison between levels, but within the same squad experience varies by almost twenty years.

    Temporal pattern in the muscles of the upper limbs and the trunk in the archery · Nadjila Tejo Machado

  • 2022
    Against Archers Published later

    61 athletes from the Chinese national team across the three official technical grades: among the men 10.67 ± 1.86 years of training for the 6 at international level, 8.88 ± 3.02 for the 17 national-level athletes and 5.75 ± 2.06 for the 4 first-class athletes; among the women 13.33 ± 0.52, 8.54 ± 2.47 and 7.73 ± 2.34. These are descriptive means, with no statistical test, but the order is the same in both sexes.

    Effect of Cognitive Reappraisal on Archery Performance of Elite Athletes: The Mediating Effects of Sport-Confidence and Attention · Dongling Wang, Ti Hu, Rui Luo, Qiqi Shen, Yuan Wang, Xiujuan Li, et al.

  • 2023
    Context Archers Published later

    32 junior recurve archers from a Malaysian sports school split by best competition score: the 16 higher-level archers have a median of 6.0 years of experience, the 16 lower-level ones 5.0, with best scores of 350.5 against 333.1. A one-year difference, untested, in a journal with questionable editorial standards.

    Anxiety status of junior archers in COVID-19 during training isolation period towards the shooting performance Questionable venue · Wan Nurlisa Wan Ahmad, Mohd Azrul Hisham Mohd Adib, Irdayanti Mat Nashir, Mon Redee Sut Txi, Fatin Nurfatehah Mat Salleh, Jing Rui Tang

  • 2024
    Context Archers Published later

    The Chinese national squad preparing for Tokyo 2020 and provincial squads: years of practice 4.9 ± 2.0 in the international masters (age 19.6), 3.5 ± 1.9 in the first grade (17.4) and 2.2 ± 0.8 in the second (16.0). Within the study, years and age rise with level, but in absolute terms those in the Olympic squad had been shooting for less than five years. Descriptive, untested, in a journal with questionable editorial standards.

    A Comparative Study on the Joint Coordination of Archery Athletes of Different Skill Levels: Based on Functional Data Analysis Questionable venue · Baifa Zhang, Zhi-Cheng Lin

  • 2024
    Context Archers Published later

    40 sub-elite archers from a provincial training centre in East Java, 20 men and 20 women: at a mean age of 17.4 to 17.7 years they have 9.3 to 9.6 years of practice and 7.4 to 7.8 of competition, across the study's four groups. A sub-elite level reached with almost ten years of archery, twice as many as the Chinese international masters.

    The Impact of Training Distances (20 m, 50 m, and 70 m) on Concentration and Anaerobic Endurance in Archery Sub-Elite Athletes · Lilies Handayani, Nurhasan, Hari Setijono, Oce Wiriawan, Dwi Cahyo Kartiko, Mochamad Purnomo, et al.

  • 2024
    For Kyudo archers Published later

    15 university kyudo archers, 7 with national placings and 8 without: 77.3 ± 24.9 months of practice against 62.0 ± 26.2, P = 0.27. Those with national placings have more relative muscle mass (6.7 against 6.0 kg/m², P = 0.04), but they are not taller, heavier or more experienced.

    Relationship between mood and sleep status with performance accuracy in university kyudo athletes · Masaki Yoshioka, Misato Takada, Makinori Matsuo, Seiji Maeda, Keisei Kosaki

Status history

  1. 2018 Contested The first data arrive in the same year, and they point in opposite directions. In thirty Japanese archers split into three levels by score, the stronger groups are also those with more years of practice, and the difference is significant; age rises too in the same comparison, though, while height, weight and draw weight stay the same, so years cannot be separated from age. Among the 62 archers of a German championship and a European one, by contrast, the difference in experience, 11.8 against 15.7 years, does not reach significance (p = 0.061), and standard deviations of more than seven years make almost everything overlap. In the Brazilian national team, among archers all above a thousand points, years of practice run from one and a half to 21, although there is no comparison between levels there. The German study supports the claim and the Japanese one goes against it: contested.
  2. 2022 Contested In the Chinese national team, 61 athletes split into the three official technical grades, years rise with level: ten to thirteen in the international-level athletes, six to eight in the first-class ones, in the same order among men and women. These are means without a statistical test, but they point the same way as the Japanese study: two studies against and one in favour, and the status stays contested.
  3. 2024 Contested Among university kyudo archers, those with national placings do not have more months of practice than the others, 77 against 62 with P = 0.27. Two descriptions from the same year show how much the number of years depends on the system an archer grows up in: in the Chinese squad preparing for Tokyo the international masters had been shooting for 4.9 years, while Indonesian sub-elite archers already had more than nine at seventeen and a half. Two studies in favour and two against: contested. When there is a comparison within the same group, the stronger archers nearly always have a few more years, but the distributions overlap a good deal.

Related

Related articles

Research lines

Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). Years of practice alone do not tell an archer's level (Version 3). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/physical-training/years-of-practice-and-level

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_annipraticalivello,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Years of practice alone do not tell an archer's level},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/physical-training/years-of-practice-and-level},
  note = {Version 3; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

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