# How many hours/wk for pro archers?



## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

I saw a post the other day that had me scratching my head. It was professional archer who was complaining?/commenting that they were putting in 4-5 hours of practice a day, and not getting the results they wanted.

That gave me reason for pause. I can't help but ask, how many hours does the average middle-class worker put in by comparison? Does that middle-class worker wish they could put in 4-5 hours/day? I bet they do.

My question is if a pro archer is putting in 4-5/hours a day, do they have the right to complain about anything at all? I mean, they are shooting archery for a living after all. 

I don't know the insides of other pro sports, but do NFL players put in 4-5 hours/day? NBA ballers?

I know my wife who has a masters degree and teaches arguably the hardest High School courses there are to offer, puts in 60-70 hours/week and makes about $40K/year. 

I guess my reaction to this is, give me a break. Don't the rest of us wish we were so talented as to work 20-25 hour weeks, travel the world and play games for a living.


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## GoldArcher403 (Jun 25, 2014)

Get to spend the entire day doing my favorite thing under 24/7 supervision of the best coaches there is while getting paid, living in free state funded housing, having my meals made for me by OTC chefs daily, and not having to go to school or work and instead traveling the world?

I will gladly take this person's spot. Sounds like they just lost their passion for the sport long ago. Archery is now a chore for them instead of a once enjoyable thing.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

Not sure why you would bring up OTC. It wasn't an OTC archer.


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## chrstphr (Nov 23, 2005)

Im not a pro, Im a working Joe. 

I shoot 4 days a week. 3 to 4 hours per day. So per week i am at 12-15 hours.

This doesnt include setting up and tearing down etc. Just the shooting time. A number of my JOAD kids shoot the same amount. 

I know one archer who shoots 30 hours a week and complains he cant train enough and wants to be an RA so he can train 40 hours per week. My thought was, if you cant do it shooting 30 hours per week, you cant do it at all. 40 hours isnt going to help. 

I think some get caught up in quantity vs the quality of the time spent shooting. I find i dont get much done form wise after about 300 arrows in a day. If i can get 200-250 that are quality, thats a great day. Usually if i cant get it done in 3-4 hours, i need to stop because i am engraining bad stuff vs the good. 


Yes, full time pro archers have an advantage getting to put in an 8 hour day, but its usually not shooting 8 hours. The advantage is in coaching, medical, weight training, food, and all the rest of the care that they get. I would imagine they shoot 4-5 hours a day, 4 days a week with days off for other training. 


Chris


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## yegon (Aug 15, 2017)

Most working people I know are working about 40 hours a week and you can be sure that every second of that time is not filled with hard work - not even close - its just the time they spend at work. Shooting good concentrated shots for 4 hours a day + competing over weekends is definitely harder than the majority of jobs I know of. That said - I do not feel much sympathy for the guy - if he doesnt get results he either needs to work smarter or more or both - complaining will not help.


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## Cbc0018 (Jul 17, 2018)

its their job dont hate because of what they do everyone complains


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## lksseven (Mar 21, 2010)

Cbc0018 is right - some people are gonna complain no matter what. Some Kings have complained, some Queens have complained, some movie stars complain (some of them don't hardly do anything BUT complain). 

But 'normal' people in 'normal' circumstances certainly have license to ridicule the complainers who are in a cush position, relatively speaking, and whine, completely tone deaf to how it looks/sounds.

(In high school one summer, some of us were working construction jobs or painting houses, and at a gathering one evening, one acquaintance who was on the golf team, from a wealthy family, who wasn't working a summer job, started complaining about how early he had to get up to make his tee time at the country club golf course. 45 years later, we're still occasionally shaking our heads over that one. It's the insulated cluelessness that gauls me the most). 

At some age, for some length of time, I would have loved to have been able to make a living from my hobby/passion. But, frankly, now I wouldn't want to do that ... I'd have to find something else to do on a rare day off! :mg::darkbeer:

ps - Just as a conversation meander, I would not be skeptical of the statement "I'm spending 4 or 5 hours a day at the range". But I would be skeptical of the statement "I'm training 4 to 5 hours a day shooting.", as a general statement of that archer's normal daily structure. Maybe it's just a definition distinction - for me, 'training ' is the time you are actually doing your activity, as opposed to the overall time you're at the location where you 'do' your activity. I've seen Erika Jones spend a couple of 4-5 hour days where she was busy for 4-5 hours per day setting up/testing two new bows. But after that, her actual 'shooting time', while focused and intense, was never more than 2 hours a day.


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## Viper1 (Aug 21, 2003)

John - 

Not really sure what a "pro archer" is.

Kinda makes you want to know what those people are doing for that amount of time, doesn't it. 
You can only work on something physically until fatigue (mental or physical) sets in.

Most I ever shot was 4 - 5 times a week, about 3 hours at a clip. 
But to be honest, a lot of that time wasn't "work", I just liked shooting.

Viper1 out.


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## 1/2 Bubble Off (Dec 29, 2016)

chrstphr said:


> Im not a pro, Im a working Joe.
> 
> I shoot 4 days a week. 3 to 4 hours per day. So per week i am at 12-15 hours.
> 
> ...


I've only shot 100+ arrows in a day once in my life. (100 target 3D course in a single day) I usually get 1 night of practice (50-60 arrows) and then 30 target 3D League match on Sunday morning. If I'm really lucky, I'll get a second practice round in of 50-60 arrows.

How do you find time to do anything else besides work and shoot??? Between work (50ish hours per week), my daughter's softball schedule and my equally strong addiction to fishing, the only way I could shoot more is if I slept less....


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## Stash (Jun 1, 2002)

If a "Pro" archer (or any other athlete at any other sport, for that matter) is really putting an honest 4-5 hours a day of actual training and is not improving, two possibilities come to mind:

1- He is training incorrectly and needs to re-evaluate his program. 

2- He just plain sucks at archery and should find another profession.


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## Rick McKinney (Mar 4, 2008)

There are a few things that come to mind on the original statement. 
1.	Most elite/professional archers don’t take into account of their time setting up new bows, testing different types of accessories to get optimum performance, cardio, mental, weight training, etc. 
2.	Most elite/professional archers have a completely different perspective of actual training, where 4-5 hours is to most common people more like 8-9 hours. 
3.	Most elite/professional archers have one focus in mind and that is to get better, improving their consistency and achieving higher scores. I know, that is what everyone thinks that is what they are doing, but it is more a recreational approach for the common archer and a very serious one for the elite/professional.
Stan, as normal, you and I are in agreement. If the elite/professional archer is not getting better, they either a) give it more time: patience or b) their training approach is all wrong for them and they need to change their training strategy. The article below is a very nice read for those who want to either improve their training or coaching. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-uncomfortable-practice-habits-of-a-champion-1532689201


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## GoldArcher403 (Jun 25, 2014)

limbwalker said:


> Not sure why you would bring up OTC. It wasn't an OTC archer.


Mostly an assumption, but OTC archers is what comes to mind to most of us when referring to "pros". I dont know of anyone who's not at the OTC and shooting for a living. Top archers who aren't RA's usually have to get jobs because they can't make a living out of shooting. Sorry if I misunderstood.


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## Stash (Jun 1, 2002)

Just to cut off a diversion from the topic, limbwalker just said "archer" and didn't say anything about "Olympic" style. I thought he was referring to a compound shooter.


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## PregnantGuppy (Jan 15, 2011)

I'll provide a different perspective. On the Olympic recurve side, the only people that I think I can describe as truly "professional" shooters are the archers in Korea. Whether its the government, large companies, or other sources, they are explicitly employed to shoot. And the few that I know do it as a full time job. They are at the range 9AM-12PM and 2PM-6PM, with a few 15 min breaks throughout the day. So that's effectively 7 hours a day shooting every weekday, and then they also usually shoot Saturday from 9AM to 12PM. So that's around 35 hours per week (one could argue for a few hours less due to breaks, but every job has a break of some form, so I guess that's debatable).

This is just to provide a direct answer to the OP question, under one particular interpretation. The situation is very different in the Americas, since the same concept of pro shooter does not exist. So it's hard to answer the same question, but I would agree that the people at the OTC are probably the closest (in that they are also provided a living in exchange for shooting).


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## Vittorio (Jul 17, 2003)

PregnantGuppy said:


> I'll provide a different perspective. On the Olympic recurve side, the only people that I think I can describe as truly "professional" shooters are the archers in Korea...........


There are hundreds of truly professionals archers in the world at present. They get paid by their national Military forces, Olympic Committees, Governaments even by Olympic solidarity for those in Lausannne, and what they do is to train based on objectives. Difference to Korea is that they have 1500 professionals, while the number in the rest of the world is smaller in total. 

Training just for traning is what amateur archers do. 
A professional has to train based on objectives, that can be of many kind, but all related to keeping their job. So it is simply ridiculous to imagine that there is someone in the world that starts shooting 8:00 AM and stops shooting 6 PM every day, 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year. 
This is contrary to any logic and any theory about periodization of the sport training, does not take in account time dedicated to materials, tuning, family and public engagements, travel, winter season differen rithm, gymn, frequency of compettions to face and priorities in results to get. 

Training programs and how to tailor them to a specific athlet are one of the key subject in any course to get qualified as a true coach. And a constant number of arrows/day inside them can't exist, by definition. 
"How many arrows/day" is question by and for amateurs, professionals will only answer politely to it.


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## PregnantGuppy (Jan 15, 2011)

Vittorio said:


> There are hundreds of truly professionals archers in the world at present. They get paid by their national Military forces, Olympic Committees, Governaments even by Olympic solidarity for those in Lausannne, and what they do is to train based on objectives. Difference to Korea is that they have 1500 professionals, while the number in the rest of the world is smaller in total.
> 
> Training just for traning is what amateur archers do.
> A professional has to train based on objectives, that can be of many kind, but all related to keeping their job. So it is simply ridiculous to imagine that there is someone in the world that starts shooting 8:00 AM and stops shooting 6 PM every day, 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year.
> ...


Indeed, there are many professionals around the world. But I can't describe them as such, because I haven't experienced what their system is like. I can only speak for the North American system and the Korean system. My wording does seem to ignore other possibilities, so my apologies on that.

On the other point, however, I am not sure what to tell you. You say it is ridiculous, but I am literally going to the range to shoot with people that shoot 9-6 every weekday. Yes, there's modifications due to holidays, special events, tournaments, and so forth. But in a regular week, as odd as it may seem, they're there shooting every day. I have been with them for about 5 months now and that's just been the way they do things. I'll try to ask them more about their training schedule, but it's a bit hard right now because the language is still difficult for me. I've been curious about it anyways.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

yegon said:


> Most working people I know are working about 40 hours a week and you can be sure that every second of that time is not filled with hard work - not even close - its just the time they spend at work. Shooting good concentrated shots for 4 hours a day + competing over weekends is definitely harder than the majority of jobs I know of.


I don't even know where to begin with this part of this statement... The rest of it, I agree with.


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## lees (Feb 10, 2017)

limbwalker said:


> I don't even know where to begin with this part of this statement... The rest of it, I agree with.


One thing to keep in mind, tho: the idea of working one's self into the hospital, divorce and/or blood pressure medication with an open-ended schedule of more than 40 hours a week with no upper limit is a distinctly American idea. It's in our DNA as a country and part of our history. In fact, the burgeoning ideas of "burnout" and "work-life balance" are popular primarily only among US workers. US business ownership/upper management, as a class, hasn't gotten the memo and I can say with confidence that they never will. They still wonder on a daily basis why their employees aren't at work when they're not at work, no matter how many hours they did work before going home. Out Of Sight; Out Of Mind, even if the 40 hour work week is doubled.....

That's the reason half of the stuff on your computer and cell phone doesn't work right, for example, as I'm sure you've noticed: the more hours everyone is forced to work at Dell, Apple and Microsoft and whatever other dodge-box 3 Stooges Silicon Valley startup wrote the software on your machines, the more busted, slow and dodgy the products become. There is a relationship there. 

Don't ask me why I know all that in such intimate, excruciating detail.

So, tho I'm not familiar with professional archery and the type of work schedule that's required there to succeed, I'm tempted to accept Vittorio's analysis of the situation. In fact, productivity is well on the decline side of the bell curve on *any *activity when it's done 8am-6pm, 6 days a week at a nose-to-grindstone density of 97% or higher. So it's natural to think the same decline happens in archery too once the work-hours peak is passed. 

I'd bet the folks who do succeed have a smart work schedule that may or may not be a work-fingers-to-the-bone US ideal. If it's your bread and butter, I would imagine the motivation to work smart is pretty high.....

lee.


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## bahboric (Aug 22, 2013)

When I was younger I used to train a lot for sports other than archery, and more than one person told me that professional athletes didn't train longer than amateurs, they trained smarter.


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## limbwalker (Sep 26, 2003)

Let me be clear, there are lots of ways a pro archer can "train" 8 hours/day without spending all that time shooting. I can only hope this particular archer meant SHOOTING 4-5 hours/day, on top of the other things they do to prepare, like fitness training, mental training, spending time on their diet and training schedule, scheduling in coaching, taking care of travel arrangements and registrations, traveling to and from venues, etc. 

I know this particular archer, and I'm pretty sure that's what they meant. At least, I hope so. 

The tone of the post sounded a lot like the kind of frustration associated with burnout - which is certainly something I can relate to, and precisely why I never made archery my career. It is far too one-dimensional to hold a person's interest as long as other activities/jobs can.


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## lightning25 (Jul 18, 2017)

I'm in IT and after about 9 hours in a day (of which you are really only are working hard about 4) and you start to get into the 10 hour range Your quality of work and proficiency go right down the toilet, sometimes to the point of you having to go back the next day and fix what you screwed up the night before. But companies push people to work the long hours even if the stuff those people are putting out is crap. Then there’s the persons that relish telling the other persons in the office that they worked 65 hours (they didn’t do anything for a lot of that time) and your right in that the persons working in other countries are working 35 to 37 hours and the productivity is as high as ours and the quality is higher.


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## chrstphr (Nov 23, 2005)

in this video, Ki Bobae ( through a translator) says she usually trains 4-5 hours per day. on rare occasions she will train for 10 hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqe-yivAGTE

she says it at 2:24 ish

While she doesnt say she shoots the entire time, i would assume she shoots 4-5 hours shooting and on the longer days, that also includes mental, weights, and other training exercises. 

Chris


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## TER (Jul 5, 2003)

Archers asked: How many arrows a week do you shoot? The lowest claim was 1000 a week, the highest was 5000 a week. All righty then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2Sr9wXh5Ek


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## Vittorio (Jul 17, 2003)

TER said:


> Archers asked: How many arrows a week do you shoot? The lowest claim was 1000 a week, the highest was 5000 a week. All righty then.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2Sr9wXh5Ek


Quoting myself : 

"How many arrows/day" is question by and for amateurs, professionals will only answer politely to it.

As video clearly shows, they have to think a bit to give back a number, and of course the number has to be the one the person asking is expecting to get. 

In any case, x day does not means x 7 days /week and x 365 days/year


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## redleg1013 (Jan 1, 2018)

As Lanny Basham pointed out in his book (and poorly paraphrased here) Mark, Luke, and John are on the swim team, when they go to practice Mark will lounge about, work on his tan, talk to the ladies. Luke, will eventually get in the pool, and splash about for a bit, and maybe crank out some laps. John, spends his time doing laps, working splits and stroke drills. All three will say they were at swim practice. During my time on various swim teams I saw all three personas, and at times, been each of the three. 

When I take my daughter for archery training we train to standard, not to time. Her coach lays out a framework and she really likes training that way, instead of shooting a certain volume of arrows (unless it's a simulated match). I have my guidelines to follow too, things to look for and make note of, but not to be some drill sergeant or helicopter parent. We go out four times a week, and throw in other, non shooting training activities, which may or may not involve getting ice cream afterwards.


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