Another important difference is that I can aim with a modern bow rather long if needed. You cant do that with a Longbow, you have to release the arrow fast.
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A few hundred meters is the effective range of a medieval/middle ages military engagement. Muskets have a practical range of 50 meters when aimed at an individual target, and 100 - 150 meters when aimed at a mass (i.e. a building or large group of people) This is quite comparable to the range in which a crossbow can be used for direct fire. Longbows are great for indirect fire, but not so good for direct fire.
Crossbows actually suck for indirect fire, they lose velocity really fast and the bolt just falls from the sky.
A modern body builder is going to absolutely suck as an archer. What you need is a body type much like that of modern day american baseball pitchers. Long arms are good - the longer the better for maximum draw length (power of a bow is determined by draw length and draw weight combined) and lithe springy tendons and ligaments to deal with the 'recoil' (for lack of a better word) so that they can continue to draw and fire over and over again at high speed, with minimal injuries. Training for 'a few months' before going into the field is, again not very useful. Try 5 years, preferably during your prime adolescent years, say age 13 to 18, so that your body will construct itself specifically for the purpose of using a bow. That's how these sorts of pitchers/longbowmen develop their abilities - with long long practice during the years when their bodies are formed. Typically if they haven't started by the age of 15 or so, they will never be really really good at it.
Randy Johnson (tallest guy in this picture would be THE ideal archer recruit.
At 6' 10" tall (2.1 meters) and 225 lbs (100 kg) of weight
and arm/shoulder mobility and flexibility like this:
And sufficient strength to go with it (he's got enough, if you ever saw him play) He could fire the largest/longest longbow that ever existed until you ran out of ammunition for him.
Or this guy - Nolan Ryan - the fastest (or one of the fastest for certain) people ever to throw a ball, at ~ 107 mph (175 kmph velocity)
At 'only' 6' 2" (1.9 meters) and 200 lbs (88 kg) but with perfect form
Throwing out a ceremonial pitch in his late 60's!
Having a 'normal' bodybuilders physique is useless - maybe worth than useless, as you are more likely to hurt your tendons and ligaments than someone who has done no training at all and still has maximum flexability available at the start of their training. Flexability of the chest and back are important too. You would have to 'detrain' and loose most of your muscle mass before you could start retraining for the bow. Incidentally, modern baseball pitchers and ancient archers have the same types of 'strength' and suffer from the same problems too - bone spurs in their shoulders, elbows and wrists, ligament and tendon tears in the elbows and shoulders, etc. It's such a specialized type of body mechanics, that to be really good at it, you have to decide as a human either to focus on doing this one thing extremely well in your life, or do anything else that exists. You can't do both simultaneously. My brother in law is training his son to be a pitcher right now.
I thought that might be the case, but I wasn't sure. I know quite a few bow/crossbow hunters, but obviously they are using direct fire only. Try hitting a deer in the forest with an arcing shot - it doesn't work so well.
...and, in contrast to arrows, the bolts are not heavy enough to do much at terminal velocity.
Little.
Most penetration came from terminal velocity, i.e. the arrows were shot in a parabolic arc and most of the damage came from acceleration by gravity.
If they got you special bows you might be able to get a few meters more out of them... but ultimatly you and your guys probably would not be worth the extra effort
They would need to eat so much more food than normal that you couldn’t keep a sufficient force of them in the field anyway to make them worth having as archers. Now get you and your 10,000 clones and make them a block of pikemen: that’s a force to be reckoned with.
Jesus if you are that strong just grab a balista and fire it from the shoulder.
Archery needs a right muscle set, not just raw strenght, not to mention years of training.
Archery needs a right muscle set, not just raw strenght, not to mention years of training.
Or just let him swing a mace or warhammer. He seems to have the physique to crumble someone's plate armour with it.
Yes thats where raw strenght is helpfull. Kinetic energy transfer and all that.
Yep - I have worked with guys who can swing a sledgehammer so hard they can snap the handles off. Put a few guys like that on horses and in plate mail and poof - everyone nearby disappears. Nobody wants to have their bones transformed into mushy marrow soup in a fraction of a second.
Well since we are comparing X bows and bows it should be worth to note that X Bows can be very effective used for attacking.
You cant aim for long with a bow, especially with a long bow. With a X Bow you can wait for the right moment to fire or walk and shoot.
You can fire it even prone or over the shoulder of someone.
About that volley thing.
Late mediaval X bows been usually deployed in small groups unlike archers. Those groups can fire and withdraw behind other groups. A bit like the arquebus been used. They been also heavily armored and could participate in melee if needed.
This is however also different by culture, in Italy often the nobles used the X bows and had spares, pavise shields, reloaders and henchmen to protect them.
You cant aim for long with a bow, especially with a long bow. With a X Bow you can wait for the right moment to fire or walk and shoot.
You can fire it even prone or over the shoulder of someone.
About that volley thing.
Late mediaval X bows been usually deployed in small groups unlike archers. Those groups can fire and withdraw behind other groups. A bit like the arquebus been used. They been also heavily armored and could participate in melee if needed.
This is however also different by culture, in Italy often the nobles used the X bows and had spares, pavise shields, reloaders and henchmen to protect them.
I suspect you could train your body to use a high poundage bow, at least for a short period of time. However, you would not be able to aim. Longbows are VERY hard to use due to a combination of high poundage, making measured aiming very strenuous and the length of the draw which puts the draw point behind the eye, rather than to the cheek like a modern bow. This makes aim much, much harder as you have to simply 'know' where the arrow will go, a skill that is only really achievable with massive amounts of training.
Well, you seem to be a real life Jesse Ventura. Next you'll be telling us that you ain't got time to bleed.
They were also used for by cavalry, seemingly in much the same way cavalry would later use pistols. (IE: As a one-shot attack-before-charge thing)