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| Picking the right things to train is important. This page introduces the main systems to work on. | |||||||||
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| Cardiovascular system - basic fitness | |||||||||
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Basic fitness starts with cardio fitness. The cardiovascular system is the circulatory system; heart, lungs and blood vessels. As far as sports go, this is the fuel supply system for muscles; it takes in oxygen, transports it to the muscles together with the glucose you actually 'burn', and shifts the waste products - lactic acid, or lactate, and carbon dioxide - away. For archery, you need adequate oxygen and energy supply, and effective waste product removal - particularly lactate removal. Low heart rate is a plus. Cardiovascular training is basically whole-body exercise, typically for
a minimum of 20 minutes - aerobic conditioning. There's an outline
of the basics here |
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| Muscles - strength and shooting endurance | |||||||||
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Muscles are what makes your bones move. Specific muscles do specific
jobs in any sport, and archery is no exception. More, specific use means
specific training (see Training for muscles involves overloading the right muscles in the right way. Strength development needs heavy loads for a short time; endurance for muscles means light loads for many repetitions. Recommended training for archery is typically general 'toning', involving modest loads for 10-20 repetitions. Some useful exercises that work for archery are described . |
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| Muscle and joint flexibility | |||||||||
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Flexibility is important for range of movement and injury prevention in most sports. In archery, flexibility demands are modest but real; you need to get into the best mechanical position to control the bow, and that needs to be comfortable. Another issue is warm-up; it does help to get mobile and stay mobile before and during a shoot, and light stretching is needed to do that. Finally, if you're training muscles for strength or endurance, you should be warming up and stretching first. Recommended flexibility exercises for archery are modest, and unsurprisingly
geared towards upper body mobility. There's a A recent caveat; stretching, particularly static stretching, may not
be the best thing for warming up; see |
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