Measuring what a competition day costs

Two ways of counting

When a study says what a competition day costs, it measures one of two things: the work the archer does, meaning arrows, minutes on the field and metres between the shooting line and the target, or the body's response to that work, meaning lactate, cortisol, grip strength and the effort the archer reports on a scale. In training language these are external and internal load, and archery studies seldom collect the two together.

Arrows, minutes and metres

External load is counted by hand. At the European Grand Prix and the World Cup stage followed by the Turkish group, the researchers recorded arrows, duration and metres walked for each archer: at 70 m every end means about 140 m there and back. The days range from 38 arrows in 27 minutes to 180 arrows in 335 minutes with 4,200 m on foot. Duration runs from the official start time, waiting included, so it measures the day rather than the time spent shooting. Shooting pace comes from studies designed for other purposes: an end of six arrows at 30 m took 110 to 140 seconds, and in a Japanese university club a distance of 36 arrows took about 40 minutes.

The Turkish authors add that the competition rules did not allow electronic monitoring devices: no chest strap or accelerometer while the arrows were being shot, and the sleep actigraph only in the evening. This is why the richest measurements come from simulated competitions.

From arrows to calories

The figures between 2,000 and 4,100 calories in the claim on the cost of a tournament day are calculated, not measured. The authors estimate resting metabolism with an equation, Harris-Benedict in 2024 and one based on body mass in 2025, and combine it with the cost of the activity taken from tables of metabolic equivalents, so even the starting equation changes between the two studies.

The cost of shooting measured from expired air goes back to the early 1980s. In 1981 six Japanese university archers spent an average of 11.07 calories on a set of three arrows at 30 m, with a relative metabolic rate of 2.2, but the set included running to collect the arrows, which in the tables the authors used scores 5.0 on its own. Three years later the same group separated the two: in the men, twenty-four arrows shot in a row without moving came out between 1.6 and 2.2, six arrows with running retrieval between 2.3 and 2.9, and a single arrow cost from 0.47 calories at 32 lb to 0.73 at 51. What a day costs therefore depends on walking as well as shooting. The claim on light intensity starts from these measurements.

What the archer eats needs an instrument too. At the Turkish tournaments there were food diaries checked against photographs of the meals, and in 2025 food and drink at the venue were weighed before and after; intake followed estimated expenditure, with a correlation of 0.77, but the diet was led by the team nutritionist and both figures followed the same schedule of arrows. A survey of 115 Turkish national athletes from five sports relied on a single 24-hour recall on a training day, without separating the archers, and found 30.59 calories per kilo: a different instrument on a different day, so the numbers do not compare.

Blood, urine and saliva

Lactate is usually read from a drop of blood from the earlobe. In a simulated 72-arrow round at 70 m it stayed between 1.6 and 1.9 millimoles per litre in an elite archer and reached 2.9 in a novice, two sixteen-year-olds only; in eight archers of the Brazilian national team, over 144 arrows, it rose after every distance while staying around 3 millimoles, with values readable only from the graphs. The claim on the physical load of a full competition rests on these two simulated rounds. In the Brazilian study salivary cortisol also rose after every distance, with no way of separating effort from the stress of being assessed. Meal times matter as well, because the 2020 simulated round started after lunch, and the claim on blood glucose during competition takes this into account.

The Lviv group used urinary lactate, with a colour reaction from 1941, before and after the load, in training and at an official competition. It is an indirect measure, affected by hydration and by when the samples are collected. In 2024 lactate did not rise after training; in 2025, in sixteen archers with the same profile, it rose by 14.4%, and the same article says in its results that competition values exceed the reference limit and in its discussion that they stay within it. This is why the claim asking whether a competition day loads the archer more than training remains "not studied".

Reported effort and grip strength

Perceived effort is rated on the 0 to 10 CR-10 scale, and when the question is asked changes the answer. In the study on the Brazilian national team the archers rated it after every set and then, thirty minutes after the end, for the whole session: the competition day came out as tiring as a rest day, while each individual set felt harder than the matching moment of the rest day. In ten Brazilian archers fatigue on a visual scale rose from 2.3 to 5.8 across 60 indoor arrows while the two halves gave close average scores, with no test between them; in the Cypriot study at 36 to 37 degrees the same scale was asked only at the start and at the end. The claim on fatigue late in a round rests on that gap.

In the 2020 novice grip strength fell by 10.8%, but from a single trial every two ends, and without repeated trials fatigue cannot be told apart from the dynamometer's trial-to-trial variation; the 2021 Brazilian study kept the best of three attempts and found no decline. Electromyography also depends on the moment: in 2020 it was recorded during a maximal grip between ends, in the 2022 Malaysian case during the shot itself, across draw, aim and release, on a single archer. These instruments are covered on the pages on fitness tests and electromyography.

Wearing the sensor

In simulated competitions heart rate is recorded with a chest strap: in the Cypriot study a Polar H7 was read at the start, at half-time and at the end of every end. Whether wearing it changes the shot is addressed by a single small study from Hong Kong, in which nineteen experienced archers wearing a heart rate monitor and an EEG headband all answered that the measurements had not affected them. It was a single arrow at 18 m, though, in a journal with questionable editorial standards, and nobody has compared scores with and without sensors: the claim on sensors while shooting stays at "reported". Heart rate instruments and indices are on the page on heart rate and HRV.

What to check

• whether the competition is official or simulated, and whether a rest or training day for the same archers serves as comparison;
• whether energy expenditure is measured or calculated, and with which equation;
• whether metres walked are counted alongside arrows;
• when effort and fatigue were asked: after each set, at the end, half an hour later;
• whether the diet was free or supervised, and when meals were eaten relative to sampling;
• how many archers: studies that measure a competition range from one to nineteen.

How design and sample are weighed is explained in How we read a study; what to eat and drink at a competition, in the article on hydration and nutrition on competition day.

@misc{campagna2026_enresearchmethodsmeasuringcompetitionloa,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Measuring what a competition day costs},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Research, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/research/methods/measuring-competition-load},
  note = {accessed 2026-10-16}
}