Archery inspires you to get involved, intrigues people of all ages, and offers many benefits to everyone that participates in it whether competing, hunting or recreationally.
Accessibility
Archery is open to nearly everyone, both able-bodied and physically challenged including visually impaired people using advanced technology equipment. One example is Canadian professional archer Kevin Evans who is an amazing archer who shoots will only one arm.
It is open to all ages from 5 -100. My youngest brother started shooting at home when he was 5 years old and I have many friends who are shooting in their 60’s and 70’s. It is a sport you can start any time, and continue to do it for the rest of your life.
Archery is relatively inexpensive for recreation purposes and is typically far less expensive than many other sports. Most camps and beginner level coaching sessions provide the basic equipment to get started. Once you become involved regularly with the sport intermediate equipment is available and cost effective. Archery equipment is also modular and typically, parts of your equipment can be “upgraded” without replacing everything. As you develop as a competitive archer you may want to upgrade to top-level equipment however, this is not necessary immediately.
Archery is a complete all year sport with competitions for both indoor and outdoor. Most archery clubs have both an indoor range for winter months and a outdoor range for summer months. There is every level of competition from recreational to world competitions held for both indoor and outdoor archery.
Physical and Mental Fitness
Archery is a sport of endurance, is physically demanding and helps to develop upper body strength, improve coordination, and stability.
With the constant pulling of the bow, you will develop muscle through repetition. Maintaining stillness while shooting requires the development of your core muscles and improves your coordination and stability. Therefore as you start to master the current level of archery to will want to increase your limbs weight to reach further distances and progress to the next level.
Since archery is as much mental as physical, it helps develop your mental fitness and focus. Archery helps improve concentration, boosts confidence, and self-image. Development in these areas will spill over to areas of your life enabling you to do better in school, workplace and generally in your life. Although a strong self-image is important for everyone, it is especially important for young women.
Morally Virtuous
The Japanese consider archery to embody truth, beauty, and grace and the Japanese word Kyudo is means “the way of the bow”. Archery is a pure enjoyment sport and should not be about winning or losing. The ultimate goal of an archer is to enjoy playing the game for what it is, not just for winning. The archer should focus more on improving himself than trying to beat other people. Once you realize this, then, archery becomes a lot more fun. Similar to Golf, you compete with yourself, you aim a projectile (golf ball or arrow), at a small target in the distance (cup or target) without anyone prohibiting you from performing the very best you can.
Archery teaches the archer proper attitude and behaviour and how to maintain your composure and grace even during times of stress. Archery helps us understand the value of patience and need for safety.
Social
Moreover, because of all the benefits listed, archery is a very courteous and social sport. People of all ages, skill level, occupations and life styles participate in archery and are ready to welcome all who want to get involved in the sport.
Jordan Sequillion 
Hi Jordan, are you aware of any academic or scholarly studies that back your claim of the benefits you wrote about? I am writing a thesis on this topic and cannot find anything to directly support these types of benefits. I know it is true through my own experience but that is not acceptable in the eyes of the university. I’m simply trying to find sources to confirm this claim.
Thank you!
Hi Mark,
I too tried to do a paper related to archery during my undergraduate studies. Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot of scientific articles specific to archery (particularly that are accessible to students). However, my recommendation to you is to broaden your search. For example, archery has a lot of comparable skills to that of target shooting (which there is a fair number of articles for), you can even broaden it to snipers for example or you can search the meditation have to maybe the circulatory systems related to yoga. Although there may not be a numerous amount of articles related to the benefits of archery there are still other resources that you can look for such as books. One that I would recommend is called the Zen of archery, which I personally did a report on in high school. I hope that this is helpful to you, best of luck.