According to the Korean Archery Association, most elite Korean archers start in the sport at around the age of nine or 10 as part of after-school classes.
They train from Monday to Friday for three to four hours per day, from the end of the school day – until the end of the working day. The archery club is, in the simplest of terms, daycare.
The difference, perhaps, to European practises (for example) is that after-school clubs would be more diverse, with participants trying many sports rather than focusing – at such a young age – on one.
Young archers in Korea spend three to four hours per day on this single sport, in which repetition is fundamental, compared to perhaps a couple of hours a couple of times a week is enormous.
If Je Deok shot an average of 375 arrows a day, five and a half days per week, for the nine years before winning two Olympic golds, he’d already shot, in total, a million arrows.
Though clearly talented, his results didn’t arrive by magic, simply through quantity of time, the quantity of arrows, and quantity of energy invested in becoming a champion.
