Specific strength for archers: 8 exercises and why they matter

The question I hear most often is simple: what should I do in the gym to shoot better? The short answer is to strengthen the back of the shoulder and the muscles that control the shoulder blade, the rotator cuff, the bow arm and the trunk, in three short sessions a week, without giving up maximal strength and without forgetting the legs. Studies in archers show that a strength programme away from the range raises measured strength and the time an archer can hold the bow at full draw; the evidence that it also adds points on the target leans the same way, but the studies are small and their designs still weak.

The full answer depends on age, technical level, bow draw weight, any injuries you carry and the time you have. Here are eight exercises, with the reasoning behind each one, the numbers from measurements taken in archers, and progressions. I chose them myself as the ones I consider most useful for aiming stability, shot consistency and fatigue resistance: they are not a complete list of possible exercises, and no study has ever compared them with one another. First, though, it helps to see which muscles actually work during the shot, because that is where the choice comes from.

Which muscles work during the shot

Archers have been measured with electromyography quite often, and the measurements point to the back of the shoulder. In 24 Malaysian compound archers, the posterior deltoid and middle trapezius on the drawing side were the muscles in which most archers sustained a contraction during the shot, 74.6% and 68.6% of them respectively, and in 20 Polish traditional archers measured while aiming, the posterior deltoid gave the largest signal. Neither sample shot recurve, so what can be said is that the posterior deltoid and middle trapezius are among the hardest-working shoulder muscles, not that they do most of the work on their own. Working harder does not mean shooting better, either: in eight elite French recurve archers, those two muscles were more active on the poorer arrows, not less.

Comparisons between skill levels show where the work shifts. In three samples from different laboratories, elite archers aiming use the muscles of the fingers, forearm and arm less, and part of the trapezius that controls the shoulder blade more: in 30 Japanese archers, the lower trapezius of the drawing arm worked at 54% of maximal contraction in the elite group, against 39% and 34% in the two weaker groups. The picture is not uniform, because the posterior deltoid comes out more active in elite archers in one study and less active in another, so the idea that elite archers activate their muscles less remains contested; the reading that holds up best is that they move the work from the arms to the shoulder blades. That is why half the exercises below are about the shoulder blade.

There is also a common belief that the most loaded muscle in the shot is the triceps of the drawing arm, and the studies do not agree. In ten archers from the Brazilian national team it was the most active of twelve muscles around the clicker, at 73.5% of maximal contraction, but with a spread wider than the mean itself; in thirty Japanese archers it did not exceed 10 to 20% in any group, and in fourteen Taiwanese university archers it sat between 26% and 34%, while the upper trapezius and posterior deltoid worked at between 77% and 95%. The difference seems to come from method, that is, the time window measured and the way each muscle is scaled to its own maximum. For gym work the practical consequence is that there is no basis for building the programme around the triceps.

On how the load is shared within the shoulder, in archers there is only a model, built on the movement of one adult archer shooting a 48 lb bow. During the draw the load is shared between the rotator cuff and the deltoid: the infraspinatus reaches about 15% of maximal contraction, the deltoid about 13%, the teres minor and supraspinatus between 8% and 6%, the rhomboids under 3%, and no muscle goes above a fifth of its maximum. These are calculated figures, not measured ones, from a single archer and a single bow, and electromyography gives much higher values for some muscles. They do show one thing: the cuff carries a share of the load comparable to the deltoid's, and it deserves an exercise of its own.

That leaves the two sides of the body. Whether the drawing side works harder than the bow side is contested: in five elite Russian recurve archers, with 18 muscles measured on each side, the drawing side dominated in most muscles, above all in the forearm, but the bow side worked harder in the serratus anterior, pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi; in nine recreational archers using a bow with a draw weight of just 0.45 kg, far below competition weights, the two sides were activated to a similar degree, by different muscles. Only one finding recurs in every study: the bow arm is not passive. In three elite French recurve archers, its middle deltoid worked at between 46% and 66% of maximal contraction while aiming.

The three principles of specific physical preparation

Three principles follow from these measurements. They guide the choice of exercises, and in my view they should underpin any physical preparation for an archer. They are easy to state; the hard part, usually, is sticking to them.

1. Specificity, without discarding general strength

   An exercise pays off more when it resembles the shooting position, which is why the eight exercises work with the arms at shoulder height and the shoulder blade involved. General strength should not be discarded, though: in the only study that compared the options, in sixty Indian national-level archers, twelve weeks of gym work raised scores more than bow-specific work alone, and those who did both reached an average of 590.7 points over 72 arrows, against 569.1 for gym work alone and 557.4 for specific work alone. The result points towards combining the two, but the groups were not randomised and the combined group trained more times a week than the others.

2. Holding endurance and strength

   An archer holds the bow at full draw for several seconds, arrow after arrow, so holding endurance needs training: holding the shooting position until they gave out, seven university archers lasted 52 seconds on average, at an effort the authors put at 40 to 50% of maximal force. Concluding that isometric endurance matters more than strength is another matter: the two studies in archers that come closest to the question point the other way, and in thirty-one young Malaysian archers maximal draw strength tracked score even more closely than endurance did. Both count.

3. Controlled asymmetry

   The shot loads the two sides differently, so both are trained, with extra attention to the muscles each arm uses. Whether shooting creates an asymmetric body is contested: in the arms and hands a strength difference between sides shows up, in the trunk and spine it does not. Archers who shoot from both sides do not show the shoulder asymmetries of those who shoot from one, but that comparison was made at a single point in time, and no one has tested whether compensatory gym exercises reduce them.

The 8 exercises for archers

For each one you will find what it works, the recommended volume and what the measurements say. The right way to proceed is to introduce two or three at a time, work on them for four weeks and only then add the next ones: jumping into all eight at once produces overload and gives the body no time to adapt to one stimulus at a time.

• Exercise 01

  Band face pull

  With the band anchored at face height, pull towards the sides of the temples with the elbows high, finishing with the hands rotating back. It works the posterior deltoid, middle trapezius and rhomboids, and in the final part the external rotators of the cuff.

  It is the exercise closest to the muscles that measurements place among the most active while aiming, the posterior deltoid and middle trapezius on the drawing side, and it should be done with both arms.

  Volume

  3×15 · 3x/week

  Effect

  Scapular stabilisation

• Exercise 02

  Isometric Y-T-W on the floor

  Lying face down, raise the arms to form a Y, then a T, then a W with the elbows bent, holding each position for 20 seconds with the shoulder blades down and the upper trapezius as relaxed as possible.

  It trains the lower and middle trapezius with the upper trapezius at rest, which is the shift measurements see in elite archers. In 14 university archers, twelve weeks centred on the lower trapezius took that muscle's strength from 8 to 9 kgf and halved the ratio between upper and lower trapezius on the drawing side, from 2.2 to 1.1; the trained group's score rose, but did not clearly pull away from that of the group that did not train.

  Volume

  3×20 seconds

  Effect

  Posterior synergies

• Exercise 03

  Plank shoulder tap

  From a standard plank, touch the opposite shoulder with one hand, alternating sides. The torso must not rotate during the movement, because the benefit lies precisely in keeping it still.

  It combines anti-rotation core work with control of the shoulder blade, which is what the trunk has to provide while the arms work through the draw.

  Volume

  3×40 seconds

  Effect

  Anti-rotation core

• Exercise 04

  External rotation with band

  With the elbow at the side and the forearm horizontal, rotate the arm outwards against the band, a movement that works the infraspinatus and teres minor of the rotator cuff.

  In the model of the draw, the infraspinatus is the shoulder muscle with the highest estimated load. The shoulder is also the most common site of overuse injury in archers, and cuff strengthening is the prevention usually recommended; how far it reduces injuries in archers, however, no one has measured.

  Volume

  3×12 per side · 4x/week

  Effect

  Rotator cuff

• Exercise 05

  Contralateral dead bug

  Lying on your back with arms and knees at right angles, slowly extend the right arm and left leg together, then swap, keeping the lower back pressed into the floor throughout.

  It trains the trunk to stay still while the limbs work asymmetrically, as they do in the shot. The evidence that core work raises scores leans that way, but the chain from exercise to arrow rests on a few weak studies.

  Volume

  3×10 per side

  Effect

  Core stability

• Exercise 06

  Horizontal row

  A one-arm dumbbell row, or a TRX row, with the elbow rising towards shoulder height and the shoulder blade moving first. The movement is short and controlled, with the attention on the shoulder blade rather than the load.

  It builds pulling strength in a position close to the one you hold with the bow. Every study in archers finds that a strength programme raises measured strength, small as those studies are; whether it makes the aim steadier, on the other hand, has not been measured in archers, and the only experiment involved students who had never shot.

  Volume

  3×8 reps

  Effect

  Draw strength

• Exercise 07

  Isometric hold with weight

  With the bow arm raised to shoulder height, as when aiming, hold a light weight (1 to 3 kg); the variation closest to the shot is pushing forwards against a band anchored in front of you. Start at 20 seconds and build up over time towards 45 to 60.

  The bow arm works, as we have seen, and fatigue reaches the bow: in twelve Italian archers, a fatigue protocol increased lateral bow sway in all twelve, by 20% on average. The aim of the exercise is to bring a less tired shoulder to the last arrows of an end and the closing stages of a long competition.

  Volume

  3×30 seconds

  Effect

  Isometric endurance

• Exercise 08

  Daily thoracic mobility

  Rotate the thorax on a foam roller, or on all fours with one hand behind the head, for five minutes a day, every day: it is the minimum investment, and in my view a non-negotiable one.

  A stiff thoracic spine limits trunk rotation during the draw, and in my experience it is a frequent and little-recognised technical block in intermediate archers; in archers, however, no study has measured it.

  Volume

  5 min · daily

  Effect

  Trunk rotation

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Which equipment: free weights, machines, bands, bodyweight

The eight exercises need only dumbbells, bands and bodyweight, but the question of which equipment works best comes up often. There are three head-to-head comparisons in archers, all small, and none of them yields a rule.

The first compares free weights and machines: twenty boys aged 12 to 15, eighteen circuit sessions over six weeks, one group with dumbbells and the other with cables and machines. On the bow-holding test the first group went from 15.3 to 17.7 seconds and the second from 15.1 to 16.4, a difference of 1.1 seconds between the gains; all ten improved with free weights, while three out of ten stayed where they were with machines. The paper does not say whether loads and volumes were matched and does not measure score, so the advantage of free weights is small and concerns a single outcome.

The second compares push-ups and pull-ups in twenty Indonesian archers aged 16 to 18, split into four groups of five. Overall, push-ups did more, and among those who started with good arm endurance they took strength measured with the bow from 18.0 to 24.6 kg, against a rise from 17.0 to 19.9 with pull-ups; among those who started with poor endurance, the two exercises gave the same gain. The result therefore runs in two directions, and the text of the paper also reports means that differ from those in its own table.

Bands are the most studied equipment, and the picture on score is contested. The two randomised trials disagree: in 2008, in 45 Indian national-level archers, those who added band work and respiratory muscle training shot better than the others, but the effect of the bands cannot be separated from that of the breathing work; in 2026, in the first trial to isolate them, eight weeks of band exercises added to shooting in twenty-four traditional archers raised grip, thumb pinch and back-and-leg strength more than in the control group, while scores improved equally in both groups. The studies published in between report gains of eight to twenty-five points, but without randomisation, or with bands as part of a wider programme.

What you can take from this, when choosing, is that measured strength rises with every type of equipment tested, and the same goes for holding time. Using the equipment regularly and with clean technique matters more: dumbbells and bands are enough for all eight exercises.

Five common mistakes in physical preparation for archers

Even with the right exercises, a mistake in execution or planning is enough to turn a good protocol into a useless one, or worse. Five mistakes come up again and again among archers who go to the gym without specific guidance.

• Mistake 01

  Training only the upper body

  This is the most widespread mistake, and here there is a figure for it: among 200 archers aged 13 to 20 at the European Youth Championships, 84.5% did upper-body strengthening, but only 49% trained the lower limbs and 49.5% did aerobic work. In 18 young Indonesian recurve archers, judging by their fitness tests, only 3 had a balanced profile between the muscles that hold posture and those that hold the bow: the legs are neglected.

  Yet in 188 American recurve archers, relative quadriceps strength was the strength measure most closely linked to score (r = 0.48), although this is an association and no one has trained a group of archers' legs to see whether scores rise. That is why squats, lunges and deadlifts have their place in general strength sessions, alongside the eight specific exercises.

• Mistake 02

  Training like a bodybuilder

  Bringing bodybuilding logic into an archer's preparation, with set after set to failure on the same muscles in pursuit of size, easily leaves soreness that lasts a couple of days and comes with you to the shooting line, as described further down.

  Strength, on the other hand, is needed: the few studies in archers find it at least as important as endurance. It should be trained with challenging loads, but in the service of the shot, with attention to quality before load.

• Mistake 03

  No structured progression

  Repeating the same exercises at the same volumes for months on end soon stops producing adaptation, because the body gets used to a stimulus that never changes.

  Progression comes through volume (more repetitions), holding time (more seconds) or complexity (variations on the base exercise).

• Mistake 04

  Skipping the small muscles

  The rotator cuff muscles produce no strength you can see, but in the model of the draw they carry a share of the load comparable to the deltoid's, and together with control of the shoulder blade they are where any reasoning about protecting the shoulder begins, the shoulder being the most common site of overuse injury.

  Skipping external rotation and shoulder blade work to fit in more rows is a shortcut that, in my view, can prove expensive over years of intensive training.

• Mistake 05

  Cramming everything into one session

  In my experience, doing all eight exercises in a single weekly session does less than spreading them across three or four short sessions.

  At the end of a long session the control exercises are done tired, and done worse, and a single session leaves six days without any stimulus.

How to fit gym work and shooting into the same week

When you fit gym work and shooting together, the constraint to watch is the two days after a session, not just the hours. The only study that has measured it in archers had twenty boys aged 12 to 16 do one session of lat pulldown, bench press and shoulder press, three sets of twelve: at 48 hours none of them was pain-free, half rated their soreness at the top of a 0 to 10 scale, and only two out of twenty reported mild pain. It is a single measurement, reported by the boys themselves after a session they may not have been used to, and no one looked at their arrows in the days that followed; so it does not show that regular gym work does the same. It is enough for one rule, though: a new session, or one heavier than usual, does not belong in the two days before a competition or a technical session that matters.

In my experience shooting is not at its best in the hours straight after the gym either, and arrows shot then risk reinforcing an altered movement. So when gym work and shooting fall on the same day, shoot first and go to the gym afterwards.

A sample week for an intermediate competitive archer, with the three sessions of the full protocol, might look like this: Monday, quality technical shooting followed by the gym; Tuesday, moderate-volume shooting; Wednesday, quality shooting followed by the gym; Thursday, moderate-volume shooting; Friday, the gym, as the lightest session and with no new exercises; Saturday, shooting with competition simulation; Sunday, rest or a walk. External rotation, the only exercise done four times a week, is added at home with a band on Sunday. Thoracic mobility is done every morning, whatever else is happening. In competition weeks, the session that falls in the two days beforehand is lightened or dropped.

A 12-week progression: where to start

Someone who has never done specific preparation should not begin with all eight exercises, but build up a little at a time, giving the body time to adapt to one new stimulus before adding another. It is also the simplest way to limit soreness in the first few weeks.

The first four weeks introduce three foundation exercises: band face pull, plank shoulder tap and daily thoracic mobility. Volume is cut by 50% compared with the full working dose (two sets instead of three, with durations halved), because the aim is to learn the movement, not yet to produce substantial adaptation. Frequency is two sessions a week, with a full rest day between them.

From weeks five to eight, the Y-T-W, external rotation and dead bug are added. Volume rises gradually to 75% of the working dose, and frequency becomes three sessions a week, each lasting 20 to 25 minutes.

From weeks nine to twelve, the protocol is completed with the horizontal row and isometric hold, and volume reaches 100% across all exercises. The three weekly sessions last 30 to 35 minutes and become a stable pillar of the week. From then on, progression comes through quality of execution and small increases in volume or holding time.

To know whether the work is paying off you need a measurement, and the simplest is holding time at full draw: come to full draw and time how long you can hold it. It is also the outcome that studies in archers measure most often, and five studies, all Indonesian and all small, find it longer after six to eight weeks of extra work, for example from 21.9 to 27.9 seconds in 12 club archers using dumbbells and bands. None of those studies had a group that only shot, and none links the seconds gained to points, so the test should be read as a measure of holding endurance, not of score. Because values vary widely from one study to another, the useful comparison is with yourself: same bow, same warm-up, same rule for stopping the clock, at the start and every four weeks.

It remains to say what happens when you stop. The only experiment followed sedentary young men who learnt to shoot for the study: twelve weeks of barebow, three sessions a week, then twelve weeks off. After the break, elbow flexor strength had fallen from 49.1 to 41.7 pounds-force, still above the starting value of 33.6, and almost every muscle measured had lost between 15% and 20%. How much a trained archer loses over an end-of-season break no one has measured, but strength is partly lost, which is why it is worth keeping at least two or three of the exercises going in the weeks without shooting.

The shoulder and injuries

In archery the shoulder is the most common site of overuse injury: six independent samples put it first, often on the drawing side and during the draw, and in kyudo practitioners as in the young archers at the European Youth Championships the lower back comes next. And the pain lasts: among the 200 archers at the European Youth Championships, half reported training-related pain lasting more than three months, with an average duration of 3.9 months.

The reasoning behind the shoulder exercises runs like this: a stronger rotator cuff helps keep the head of the humerus centred, control of the shoulder blade leaves room for the tendons under the acromion, and a mobile thorax avoids looking for rotation where it should not come from. It is plausible reasoning, but no one has counted injuries in archers after a strengthening programme. The closest evidence is a randomised trial in 31 elite Korean archers with shoulder pain, in which eight weeks of lower trapezius strengthening reduced it; that concerns the trapezius rather than the cuff, though, and pain that was already there rather than prevention.

On shooting load the studies disagree: archers who train more days a week do not consistently report more injuries. Physical preparation kept up over time remains, to my mind, the most reasonable defence, and the little over two hours a week of the full protocol (three sessions of 30 to 35 minutes plus daily mobility) are a small price set against pain that can last for months; a week of exercises every now and then is not enough in any case.

Individual differences: age, sex, draw weight

What I have described is a general starting point: in practice, the best physical preparation changes with a few personal variables.

Age shifts the priorities, and here I am speaking from my own practice rather than from studies: under 30 the focus can be on building strength and holding endurance, between 30 and 50 it moves towards maintaining thoracic mobility and shoulder blade stability, as the first stiffness starts to make itself felt, and after 50 the rotator cuff becomes the priority, with lower loads and a high frequency of stabilisation work.

Sex changes the starting points, and the gap is not uniform: in 45 Turkish traditional archers, back strength was 150 kg in the men against 73 in the women, and grip 39 against 31, while the women were more flexible and quicker on dexterity tests. It is a single sample for the whole picture, but it argues for calibrating the programme to the starting profile, so that you do not keep working on areas that are already strong while neglecting the weak ones.

Draw weight also changes things, because a 50 lb compound with 75% let-off asks for a very different holding effort while aiming from a 40 lb Olympic recurve. Preparation should be sized to the load you actually hold in training, not to an average meant for everyone.

That is why an initial assessment with a trainer who knows precision sports is often worth more than months of generic exercises: two or three sessions are enough to find that archer's weak points and tune the protocol to where there is most room for improvement.

@misc{campagna2026_forzaspecificaarcieri,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Specific strength for archers: 8 exercises and why they matter},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/articoli/specific-strength-for-archers},
  note = {accessed 2026-10-16}
}