Archery is not an endurance sport, but a competition day costs more than it looks. Drawing the bow uses little energy: in a Japanese study an arrow shot without moving from the line cost between 0.27 and 0.73 kilocalories, depending on the archer and the draw weight. Across the whole day, which means resting metabolism, the hours on the field and the kilometres walked between the shooting line and the target, the estimates for elite archers run from about 2,000 to 4,100 kilocalories, depending on how many arrows are shot and who is shooting them. On water, the only experiment with readable figures found that arriving dehydrated at a hot competition does not lower the score, but it does mean starting with more thirst, more fatigue, less perceived concentration and a faster heart rate.
The studies are few and small, and the people measured are very different from one another: on one side the Turkish national team, with meals planned by a nutritionist, on the other Indonesian university archers or young Malaysian archers. That is why, in every section, I keep what has been measured apart from the practical advice that can be drawn from it, and for each point I link to the registry entry that gives its status.
What a competition day costs
The shooting is the lightest part. Two Japanese studies on university archers, in 1981 and 1984, measured what shooting costs. In the second, an arrow shot without moving cost between 0.47 and 0.73 kilocalories in men and between 0.27 and 0.40 in women, more with a heavier draw weight, and the authors described the intensity of shooting as relatively low: much of the cost came from going to collect the arrows. The registry records as reported that the energy cost of shooting is low, and what there is grows with the archer's body size, and the second half is the weaker one: the gap between men and women remains even when scaled to body mass, a sign that draw weight and sex also play a part.
The whole day is a different matter. One research group followed the Turkish national team at two tournaments in 2023 and estimated expenditure with equations that start from resting metabolism and add the competition load, because the rules did not allow measuring equipment during competition. Six recurve archers at a European Grand Prix ranged from 2,527 kilocalories on the lightest day, 38 arrows in 27 minutes, to 4,067 on the busiest, with 180 arrows, more than five and a half hours on the field and 4,200 metres walked between line and target. At a World Cup stage, with four men and four women, expenditure fell from the first day to the last along with the number of arrows, from 3,406 to 2,493 kilocalories in the men and from 2,856 to 2,031 in the women. Taken together, they give the range the registry uses for an elite archer's tournament day, between 2,000 and 4,100 calories: an estimated figure rather than a measured one, in athletes whose diet was managed by a nutritionist.
Figures like these suggest that a competition day loads an archer more than a training day, but the comparison has never been made. On the first day of that World Cup stage the archers shot 178 arrows in about two hours and walked more than five kilometres, and nobody measured a training day of the same archers. The only study that looks at the same archers in both settings, sixteen Ukrainians with lactate measured in their urine, states in its results that competition values exceed the upper reference limit and in its discussion that they stay within the reference range, and the two settings are never compared with a statistical test. That is why, in the registry, the claim that a competition day loads the archer more than a training day is not studied.
Eating to match the day's load
At both Turkish national team tournaments, food followed the load. On the 180-arrow day the archers took in 3,985 kilocalories and 7.1 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body mass, on the 38-arrow day 2,564 kilocalories and 4.0 grams, and on average intake covered the estimated expenditure day by day. At the World Cup stage energy intake tracked the day's expenditure with a correlation of 0.77, and while shooting, carbohydrate rose from about 20 grams an hour on the short days to about 43 on the long ones, with a refuelling station on the field. The registry records as reported that in competition, archers match energy and carbohydrate intake to the day's load, with the limit the entry makes plain: it was the team nutritionist who planned the meals, and nobody knows whether an archer without that guidance would do the same, or whether matching intake to the load helps the score. Protein, at the Grand Prix, stood between 2.2 and 3.6 grams per kilogram a day, above the range recommended for athletes.
Not every archer has that kind of set-up. In a 2026 questionnaire of fifty-one elite archers from twenty-two countries, 47% said they had access to a sports nutritionist, and in 73% of cases the federation took no part in their nutrition: in the registry the claim that most elite archers have no professional nutrition support is reported, with the limit that everything is self-reported by those who chose to answer.
As for blood glucose, the idea that it stays stable during a competition is contested in the registry. In six Korean boys over a session at 30 metres and in two sixteen-year-old Brazilians over 72 arrows at 70 metres it held steady; in eight Brazilian national team archers shooting a simulated 144-arrow round, however, it moved away from the values of a rest day after the morning block, that is after 72 arrows at 90 and 70 metres, without ever reaching hypoglycaemia. In the same thesis, eight national team archers, after five nutrition education sessions and an individual consultation with a nutritionist, had higher blood glucose at every point measured in a half round, so it is reported that a few nutrition education sessions change how an archer eats and raise blood glucose in competition. Score was not among the outcomes, though, and nobody recorded precisely what the archers had eaten and when: whether steadier blood glucose brings more points has not been measured in archers.
In practice, the lesson is simple: eat more on days with more arrows, spread food across the day instead of concentrating it in the break, and take onto the field foods you have already tried in training. The examples below are indicative rather than a plan, because quantities depend on body mass, on the day's load and on what each archer digests well.
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Breakfast, a few hours before shooting
A meal you know and digest well, with carbohydrate and some protein: for example porridge with fresh fruit and a few nuts, with tea or coffee as usual.
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During qualification
Small, frequent snacks kept in your bag: a banana, a few crispbreads with honey, a bar you have already tried in training. On long days the Turkish national team took in about twice as much carbohydrate an hour while shooting as on short ones.
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Lunch break
Light and already tried in training, so that the food you mean to spread across the day does not all land in the break: a small sandwich, a piece of fruit and water.
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After the competition
A complete meal, with grains, protein such as fish, poultry or pulses, vegetables and fruit, especially when there is more shooting the next day.
How much to drink
There is a single measurement of how much an archer drinks while shooting, on the Turkish national team at a 2023 World Cup stage, with an average of 23.7 degrees and water and sports drinks freely available: 0.66 litres an hour, with no difference between men and women, within the 0.4 to 0.8 litres an hour that general guidance gives for athletes. Drinking that much, the archers lost 0.58% of their body mass during competition and kept their urine specific gravity below 1.020 throughout, the threshold above which dehydration is usually said to begin. The registry records as reported that in competition, archers stay hydrated on less than a litre an hour, with the limits of those measurements: few archers, the same team, a nutritionist on hand and mild weather.
How much each archer needs, though, varies a great deal. In eleven archers from a Jakarta university club, weighed before and after an outdoor qualification round, body mass fell by between 200 and 700 grams, three and a half times as much for the archer who lost most as for the one who lost least. The simplest way to find out what you lose is the one they used: weigh yourself before and after a long session, note how much you drank in between, and repeat the test on days with different temperatures.
In the measurements on the Turkish team the driest moment of the day was waking, not the end of competition: in the morning urine specific gravity was higher than before and after shooting, and at one of the two tournaments it went just over the threshold. Among ordinary archers the picture can be different. In twenty university archers in Surabaya, Indonesia, the median specific gravity before the session was 1.025, already in the dehydration range, their fluid intake over a day was about 1.9 litres against the 2.35 to 2.5 recommended in that country, and after drinking just over a litre across an hour and a half of shooting the median fell to 1.020 without getting back under the threshold. In the registry the claim that many archers arrive at training already dehydrated and drink less than they need is therefore contested: studies on archers point in opposite directions, and the two populations, Indonesian students in the tropics and a national team guided by a nutritionist, are very different.
What changes when you are dehydrated
The practical question is whether arriving dehydrated costs points. The cleanest experiment on it comes from Cyprus: ten national-level archers shot the same 72-arrow round at 70 metres twice, a week apart, at 36 or 37 degrees and over 80% humidity, once after twenty-four hours on three litres of fluid and once after twenty-four hours on 1.25 litres. No drinking or eating was allowed during the round. With the restriction all ten went past the dehydration threshold the study used, a urine specific gravity of 1.025, and from their urine values the authors estimate that they had lost more than 2% of body mass, the threshold usually quoted for sports performance.
| Measure | Hydrated | Dehydrated | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urine specific gravity on arrival | 1.015 | 1.032 | Yes: all above the 1.025 threshold |
| Score over 72 arrows | 550 | 562 | Not significant |
| Resting heart rate, beats a minute | 78 | 85 | Yes, and again in the second half of the round |
| Thirst and fatigue at the start | Lower | Higher | Yes |
| Perceived concentration | Starts higher and falls | Starts lower and holds steady | Only at the start; level by the end |
| Perceived alertness | Unchanged | Unchanged | None |
The score did not drop: 550 points hydrated and 562 dehydrated, a difference the statistics cannot separate from chance, and the archers who arrived most dehydrated were not the ones who lost most points. The registry records as reported that arriving dehydrated at a hot competition does not lower the score, in the form "one study found", because there is one experiment, on ten people over a single morning, and it says nothing about more severe dehydration or a tournament over several days. The authors themselves wonder whether, over an official competition twice as long, the higher heart rate would end up affecting the aim. A second experiment, on twenty Indonesian archers given 30% less water, reports a change in accuracy but publishes neither its size nor its direction, so it cannot be read.
What changed was how the archer felt: when dehydrated the archers started the round with more thirst and more fatigue, and their heart rate was higher already at rest. That is why the 2% threshold should not be read as a point beyond which the score falls, at least in a round lasting a morning: in that experiment it made the round harder work, not less accurate.
Alertness, concentration and Ramadan
On the mental side the same experiment gives a less straightforward picture. The alertness the archers reported on a 0 to 10 scale did not change between the two conditions or over the round, which is why the registry records that dehydration does not change how alert an archer feels in competition: it is a null finding in ten people on a subjective scale, which does not rule out a small effect and says nothing about attention measured with a test. Perceived concentration behaved differently: when dehydrated it started lower and held steady, when hydrated it started higher and fell, so that by the end of the round the two conditions were level.
The other setting studied in which archers shoot on little fluid is the Ramadan fast, when nothing is eaten or drunk from dawn to sunset. Eleven Malaysian national team archers, interviewed two or three weeks after the end of the month, described the first two weeks and the last two separately. Eight out of eleven mentioned tiredness, and only for the first half, so the registry records as reported that during Ramadan an archer's fatigue is concentrated in the first two weeks. In the second half, by contrast, 73% described distraction, lethargy and low motivation, and six out of eleven named distraction as the main problem: the claim that in the second half of Ramadan, fasting archers find it harder to concentrate is reported too. In both cases these are recollections gathered afterwards, from eleven people, and the percentages say how many raised a theme, not how much it weighed. A second Malaysian group, thirteen state-level boys, filled in a mood questionnaire before Ramadan and during the fast: confusion and fatigue did not change significantly, and the score over 36 arrows at 70 metres stayed the same, 281.3 points before and 285.9 during.
Read side by side, these studies say more about the circumstances of the shooting than about the water itself. How the archers felt changed with the whole situation: the heat and the twenty-four hours on little fluid in Cyprus, the point in the month of fasting in Malaysia, with tiredness at the start and distraction at the end. The score, in the measurements available, did not move. These are small studies, and different from one another, so this is a reading rather than a result, but it is the reason why, in competition, it makes sense to look at how you arrive at the day as a whole rather than at the single glass.
Water or an isotonic drink
There is a single experiment on the choice of drink, on the same twenty university archers in Surabaya, half shooting recurve and half standard bow. They shot 72 arrows at 30 metres on two consecutive days, drinking 1,050 millilitres in each session, 150 every ten minutes, once an isotonic drink and once mineral water, served in dark cups. The median score was 560.5 with the isotonic drink and 551.5 with water, a difference that is not significant, and the registry records that over a shooting session, an isotonic drink instead of water did not change scores. Urine specific gravity fell significantly only with the isotonic drink, but the direct comparison between the two drinks did not hold up. There is one study, in a regional journal, with the order of the drinks not decided at random, at thirty metres and over ninety minutes: the setting in which a difference is hardest to see.
As for salts, the only measurement on archers again comes from the Turkish national team: the men sweated more than the women, while sodium in sweat was similar, about 45 millimoles per litre on average. An archer who sweats heavily therefore loses more sodium on long, hot days than one who sweats little, and whether to use a product, and which one, is a choice to make with a sports nutritionist, who can fit it to the person and the conditions they compete in.
Caffeine and anything new on competition day
There are two studies of caffeine on archers and they disagree, so in the registry the claim that caffeine improves accuracy in archery is contested. In six Korean boys after a sleepless night, with a placebo given blind, it did not change the score; in twelve Turkish university recurve archers, without a placebo and with caffeine always in the second session, the score per arrow rose sharply, but from a starting level so low that a simple practice effect remains an open explanation. In clay shooting, under double-blind conditions, seven elite shooters did not improve their scores and reported headaches, anxiety and tremor, effects that matter in a sport built on holding steady. I go into this at more length in the article on caffeine and alcohol.
The rule that applies to caffeine applies to everything else: on competition day you try nothing you have not already tried in training, whether food, drink or supplements. A stomach upset or an effect you do not know is one more problem at the moment you can least afford it, which is why competition nutrition rewards a well-tested routine more than the search for the perfect combination: a few foods and drinks you digest well, tried again and again in training and then repeated unchanged at the competition.
In practice
Put together, the practical points these studies support are few. Drink regularly from the morning, because in the measurements the driest moment of the day was on waking, and then through the competition, between ends; how much to drink is better told by the scales, before and after long training sessions, than by any general rule. Eat more on days with more arrows, spreading food across the day. As for how you feel, in the measurements available feeling more tired or less focused than usual did not move the score.
Two situations call for more care. The first is heat: the dehydration experiment was run at 36 to 37 degrees, while the measurements on the Turkish national team come from days between 14.5 and 23.7 degrees, so with high temperature and humidity a plan built with a sports nutritionist is worth more than general guidance. The second is competitions over several days, where recovery from one day to the next also depends on the night: I cover sleep in the article on sleep and recovery, and in the two measurements available little sleep the night before did not worsen accuracy.