"Should I go running to shoot better?" is one of the questions I hear most often at the range, and the answer usually comes out of habit: yes, because aerobic work lowers your heart rate while you aim, helps you last through long competition days and so brings points. The reasoning hangs together, but it rests on three steps, and studies on archers have measured each of them: how much shooting asks of the body, whether archers with better aerobic fitness also score more, and whether a lower heart rate turns into better arrows.
In the registry the three answers do not stand at the same level. That shooting is a light physical activity is reported, from small samples. That better aerobic capacity goes with higher scores is contested, because two studies find it and two do not. That a lower heart rate brings points is contested too, and here it is the experiments themselves that fail to find it. The firmest result answers a different question: circuit conditioning improves an archer's physical condition, while how much of that condition reaches the score is less clear.
How hard the body works while shooting
To know whether you need aerobic fitness you have to start from how much of it shooting demands. The first metabolic measurements on archers come from two Japanese studies of university students, and the second separated the two things that get mixed together at the range: twenty-four arrows shot in a row without moving come to between 1.6 and 2.2 on the relative metabolic rate, while six arrows with a run out and back to collect them reach between 2.3 and 2.9. In the first of the two studies, according to the tables the authors used, running at that pace was worth 5.0 on its own. The shot itself costs little, then, and the heaviest part of a session is walking to the target and back.
More recent measurements reach the same point by another route. In a simulated competition of seventy-two arrows, blood lactate stayed between 1.6 and 2.0 millimoles per litre in the elite archer and reached 2.9 in the beginner; in eight archers of the Brazilian national squad, in a simulated competition of a hundred and forty-four arrows at the four distances, it rose compared with a rest day but stayed below 3. These are values for light effort, which is why the claim that archery practice is a light-intensity physical activity is reported. The heart, though, tells a partly different story: in nine young archers measured in training the pulse sat between 140 and 160 beats a minute. The figure is weak, because it was counted over one minute and taken as a secondary variable in another comparison, but it does not sit well with light intensity. So far, lactate and heart rate come from different samples and say different things.
Over a whole competition the numbers point the same way, with one qualification. The Brazilian national squad archers rated the competition day as tiring as a rest day and lost no grip strength, while the beginner in the simulated competition lost almost 11% of grip strength in the dominant hand. The same Brazilian study also found cortisol rising after each distance, from the effort or from the tension of being assessed, with no way of telling them apart, and for that reason the claim that shooting a full competition puts little physical strain on a trained archer is contested. The cost seems to depend more on the archer's level than on the competition format.
Then there is a result that concerns running directly. In a study of thirty archers from an Indonesian club, half added six weeks of interval running three times a week and half carried on with shooting practice alone. In the 12-minute run the runners went from 1.88 to 2.32 kilometres, those who only shot from 1.89 to 1.90. Shooting does not train the aerobic engine, while in that group six weeks of running did; the score, in that study, was not measured.
The studies that set aerobic fitness beside the score
Four studies on archers have set aerobic capacity beside the score, and they split down the middle. In favour are twelve young Malaysian recurve archers, sixteen years old on average: split into two groups by score, the better ones had an estimated VO2max of 45.9 millilitres per kilo per minute against 42.9, and the correlation with the score was 0.68. And there are twenty-three university club archers in Jakarta, with an estimated VO2max of 46.5, in whom aerobic capacity was the measure that weighed most on the score at 18 metres, 27% of the variance, more than core endurance or arm length.
Against are two younger groups. In eighteen Indonesian recurve archers aged 13 to 14, measured over seventy-two arrows at 70 metres, estimated VO2max averaged 27.4 and was not related to the score (rho = 0.28); in twenty under-13 standard-bow archers the beep test did not predict the score in a regression with four other fitness tests, and none of the five tests predicted it.
Two studies in favour and two against: that is why in the registry the claim that better aerobic capacity goes with higher scores is contested. Seen in the figure, the split also has a shape: the groups in favour sat around 46, while those against were younger and, where the figure exists, had far less aerobic fitness. Whether that is what separates them has not been put to the test.
All four studies also share two limits. VO2max is always estimated from a field test, the 20-metre shuttle run or the beep test, and never measured in the laboratory; and none allows for age, height and experience, which go with both fitness and score. In the twelve Malaysian youngsters, for example, height, arm span and grip strength also separated the two groups, so those who shot better differed from the others in more than one way. An association of this kind says that the two things go together in that group, not that one produces the other.
A note on the lungs, which often end up in the same conversation. In forty-two archers aged 9 to 12, forced vital capacity is weakly related to the score, and the claim that in archers a larger lung capacity goes with higher scores is reported; but lung volume grows with height and is not aerobic capacity, so that result says nothing about running.
How much aerobic fitness top archers have is shown by two measurements on the Turkish national squad: six world-class recurve archers had a VO2max of 45.0, and in eight archers from the same squad maximal oxygen uptake was 47.9 in the men and 40.9 in the women. These are values for trained sportspeople, not endurance athletes, and they suggest that the claim that archers often have poor general physical condition, reported for youth and club groups, does not hold at the top, at least in these two measurements. The descriptive profile of young archers at rest, with values within the normal range but a long way from those of an endurance athlete, points the same way.
Training aerobic fitness and counting the arrows
The studies so far are snapshots, because they measure fitness and score at the same moment. To know whether training one moves the other you need an intervention, and in archers there is only one that has trained aerobic capacity and counted the arrows. Eleven archers aged 10 to 13 did about eight weeks of aerobic circuit training: estimated VO2max rose from 26.7 to 30.3 and the score over thirty-six arrows at 30 metres from 287.5 to 309.9, in all eleven. The study had no control group, though, the youngsters kept training at shooting and kept growing in the meantime, and the journal has questionable editorial standards. One detail carries weight too: in one boy aerobic capacity fell, from 31.4 to 26.8, while his score improved.
The interval running study, the only one with a control group, measured fitness and not the score. Taken together, the two say that archers' aerobic capacity can be trained in a few weeks, while whether this moves the arrows has not been tested against a control group shooting the same number of arrows.
Heart rate while aiming
The reason most often given for running is heart rate: a trained heart beats more slowly, and a slower heart rate while aiming, so the argument goes, helps hold the bow still. Several observations find that archers who shoot with a lower heart rate, or whose heart rate slows in the last moments before the release, score higher, from four elite archers measured in 1990 to arrows recorded in competition in 2025. When heart rate has been shifted on purpose, however, the score has not followed it.
The experiment closest to our question used running itself. Thirteen elite archers of international level ran back and forth over twenty metres for three minutes and then shot three arrows at 18 metres, arriving at the shot with a heart rate of around 166 to 168 beats a minute, against 112 to 119 for the shots taken at rest: the score did not change. In the opposite direction, lowering heart rate with a beta-blocker in a double-blind trial added no points. That is why the claim that a lower heart rate at the moment of the shot improves the score is contested, and the most cautious reading is that the slowing accompanies a good shot without causing it.
The chain that leads from running to points is therefore weakest at the very link that should carry it. Even if aerobic training lowered heart rate while aiming, which nobody has measured in archers, in the experiments a lower heart rate has not brought better arrows, and a very high one, at 18 metres, took none away.
Weight and body fat
Many archers also run to lose weight, on the idea that a leaner body holds the position better. Here too the registry is divided. In the only large study, of 188 recurve archers of mixed level in the United States, a rounder build estimated from the somatotype went with lower scores (r = -0.31 in 127 archers), while the body fat percentage measured from skinfolds in the same archers was not related to the score (r = -0.06). The later studies are small: in the twelve Malaysian youngsters the better group had a median body fat of 18.6% against 24.3%, with no significant difference, and in seventeen Turkish beginners body mass index had no relation to the score. The claim that more body fat goes with lower scores is therefore contested: today one cannot say that fat costs points, nor rule it out.
Circuit conditioning
If aerobic fitness on its own has no clear link with the score, general physical condition has a firmer result, even if it concerns the body more than the target. Every study that has put archers through a circuit and measured them again finds them in better shape at the end: in twenty beginners aged 10 to 12 the score on the fitness test went from about 12 to about 19, and the share in the good or excellent bands from none to 70%; in thirty youngsters aged 10 to 13 a game-based circuit lengthened the one-leg hold. Nearly all of them, though, without a group that skipped the circuit, and in growing youngsters a gain of that kind cannot be separated from growth.
The first study with random allocation dates from 2026. Thirty-eight Indonesian competitive archers aged 18 to 25 were split by lot: nineteen did twelve weeks of circuit training, three one-hour sessions a week, and nineteen carried on with their usual training.
In the circuit group grip strength went from 35.2 to 40.7 kilos and the bench press and row maximum from 55.3 to 63.1; plank and push-ups rose even more in proportion, from 78.5 to 102.3 seconds and from 22.4 to 28.7. In the control group the same measures moved by between 0.6 and 1.6%, with no significant changes. It is the firmest result on this question, but it is a single study, and so the claim that circuit conditioning improves an archer's physical condition remains reported. Nobody, moreover, has checked whether the gain lasts once the programme ends.
The step from condition to score is less clear-cut. In the same study the circuit group's score per arrow rose from 7.1 to 8.6, but the circuit included game stations where the archers also shot, so that group shot more arrows than the other, and the direct comparison between the two groups, announced in the methods, does not appear in the results. In another circuit, on thirty youngsters, balance, concentration and holding at full draw improved by between 7 and 17% while the score rose by 2.5%; in the twenty beginners the boys' score kept rising when their fitness had already levelled off. The claim that physical conditioning improves shooting accuracy is reported: the direction is almost unanimous, but the designs are weak and the score does not follow the physical qualities in proportion.
What I take from it for the shooting line
On the question we started from, the answer the studies allow is narrower than the one you hear at the range. No study has shown that running makes you shoot better, and what exists is not enough either to say so or to rule it out: two studies for and two against on the association, a single intervention with no control, and one link, heart rate, that does not hold up in the experiments. For that reason I would not put running at the centre of an archer's preparation on the idea that it brings points.
That does not mean aerobic fitness counts for nothing. The physically heaviest part of a session is walking back and forth to the target, and in the measurements we have the beginner pays more than the expert for the same number of arrows, even if that comparison comes from two people. A youngster with aerobic capacity like that of the Indonesian groups, around 27, has more room to improve it than a national squad archer, although what that is worth in points nobody has measured. And there are reasons to run that have nothing to do with the score, and that this registry does not measure.
If I had to choose where to put the time away from the range, I would start with a circuit that works on strength, holding and muscular endurance, because that is the work with the firmest evidence on condition, and I would include an aerobic part without making it the main piece. I have written about the strength side in a separate article, on specific strength for archers. What I would keep an eye on is the score: if after a few months the condition has improved a great deal and the arrows only a little, that is what happened in several of the studies above too, and the answer has to be looked for in the shot.
Where the studies stop
Every measurement of aerobic capacity set beside archers' scores is an estimate from a field test, in youth or club groups, and none allows for age, height and experience. Nobody has tested the question with oxygen uptake measured in the laboratory in adult archers of known level, nor with aerobic training compared against a group shooting the same number of arrows, and nobody has measured whether an archer who runs then has a lower heart rate while aiming. As things stand, one can say that shooting asks for little aerobic fitness, that in one club group six weeks of running improved it, and that the link between fitness and arrows, in studies on archers, runs both ways.