There comes a time in every novice archer’s practice when their bodies start to change. But rather than grow elf ears and a disdain for grumpy dwarves, as one would expect, the changes are kept to beefing up the bow-hand shoulder and the draw-hand back muscles. For a glimpse of what these changes look like after thousands of draws and releases, may we present to you YouTuber and evident beard and archery aficionado Gary Chynne’s naked upper body.

The toso-rific clip, which comes via Boing Boing, features Chynne in his medieval closet(?) discussing how his body has changed due to practicing archery. It’s hard to say exactly what Chynne’s credentials are as a bowman self-analyst, as his YouTube channel doesn’t have any description and doesn’t link to any social media accounts, but it’s obvious from the enormous amount of archery videos he’s made (plus that beard) that he definitely knows what he’s talking about — how ripped he’s gotten in a few specific places over time from drawing a bow over and over.

Luckily for us, Chynne “has nothing to hide about his body,” so we’re able to get an intimate look at how his muscles have morphed over time to aid his bow-firing abilities. He notes that his left shoulder is significantly larger than his right, and that it also has more “lines,” or what are officially known as striations. He also notes how the right side of his back has larger muscles with more striations due to drawing the bow string.

Chynne says these transformations can be so pronounced in archers that medieval bowman were sometimes called hunch backs. A cursory search through the web turns up no corroborating evidence of this, but again, is this the kind of guy who looks like he doesn’t know his archery facts like the back of his striated shoulder blade?

What do you think about these archery-induced physiological changes? Fire your thoughts into the comments section below!

Images: Gary Chynne

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