Almost every substance rests on one study and on small groups. Caffeine is the only one with two studies in archers, and the two reach opposite results; alcohol, beta-blockers and nicotine have one test each, and in the case of alcohol not even on archers actually shooting. The table sets out what has been measured and on whom; the sections that follow go into the figures, one substance at a time.
| Substance | What was measured | On whom |
|---|---|---|
| Caffeine | Score, pre-competition anxiety, heart rate | 6 boys and 12 university recurve archers; 7 elite double-trap shooters |
| Alcohol | Steadiness of the outstretched arm, reaction time, strength | 9 men in a laboratory, reported by a review |
| Beta-blockers | Score, aiming movement, heart rate | 15 Turkish national-team archers |
| Nicotine | Score, attention, fine dexterity | 11 national-level recurve archers |
| L-theanine | Anxiety and stress markers before the start | 18 women university archers |
Caffeine and score
Caffeine is the only substance for which two studies in archers can be compared, and the comparison does not settle the question. In the first, from 2017, six Korean middle-school boys shot at 30 metres after a sleepless night, once with 2.5 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body mass and once with a placebo given blind: 339 points against 335, a difference the analysis cannot tell apart from chance. In the second, from 2026, twelve university recurve archers shot 30 arrows at 18 metres in a session without caffeine and in one with 200 milligrams: 6.61 points per arrow in the first, 8.33 in the second, or 199 against 250 out of 300.
The second result looks clear-cut, but it has the weaker design of the two: no placebo, no randomisation, and the caffeine session always second. With a starting score of a little over six and a half per arrow at 18 metres, low for archers with six and a half years of shooting behind them, familiarity with the protocol and simply getting into the swing of it remain open explanations. In the first study, too, caffeine always came last, and the boys had not slept, so the question it answers is narrower: what caffeine does for someone who has been up all night. That is why the idea that caffeine improves accuracy in archery remains one on which the studies in archers point in opposite directions.
Outside archery the registry has a single study, and it has the soundest design. Seven elite double-trap shooters, double-blind with placebo, shot a 200-target competition with 4 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram, and five of them with 2 as well: they hit 150 and 151 targets with caffeine and 155 with placebo, with no difference in reaction times, heart rate or blood pressure. With seven people, though, an absent effect and one too small to show remain indistinguishable, and clay target shooting asks you to react to a moving target, whereas archery asks you to hold the aim still for several seconds.
Finally, there is one figure on what happens at the top: in an elite national squad followed across four days of a World Cup leg, the feeding routine included about 3.2 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram roughly an hour before competing. It shows that the practice exists, not that it earns points, because that study did not measure the score.
Caffeine, anxiety and tremor
The most common worry is that coffee makes you jittery. The double-trap study had the shooters fill in a competitive anxiety questionnaire before competing, and with 4 milligrams per kilogram the figures are almost the same as with placebo: cognitive anxiety 16.9 against 17.0, somatic anxiety 15.4 against 15.6, self-confidence 25.1 against 23.4. This has not been measured in archers, so the finding that caffeine does not change pre-competition anxiety rests on seven shooters from another sport, and it concerns reported anxiety, not tremor.
The same study, in the side-effects questionnaire completed at the end, records headache, anxiety and tremor, without saying how many shooters reported them. The two findings sit side by side: anxiety measured before the start does not change, but some effects that matter to an archer were reported. Heart rate, on the other hand, shows no sign of agitation: it did not rise in the clay target shooters, and in the Korean boys it was even lower with caffeine, although the fixed order of the sessions means it cannot be put down to the substance alone.
No recommended dose comes out of these studies, only a reason for caution: the response varies from person to person, the effects reported are precisely the ones that weigh on someone holding the aim, and a new substance on competition day adds a variable you cannot read. That is why a change of habit, if one is made at all, is tried in training rather than in competition.
Alcohol and arm steadiness
With alcohol the situation is the reverse of caffeine: the idea is widespread, but there is no measurement on archers actually shooting. The closest data reach archery through a 2005 review chapter on the psychology of shooting, which reports second hand a laboratory test on nine men. At blood alcohol levels of 0.02% and 0.05%, compared with a sober condition and a placebo, the steadiness of the outstretched arm and reaction time got worse, while isometric strength and endurance stayed where they were. In the same tests, electromyography at string release showed more muscle relaxation with alcohol, with marked differences from one person to the next.
The pattern fits what matters to an archer, since fine control gives way and strength does not, and anyone who believes a drop of something steadies the arm finds a hint to the contrary here. It remains reported data, though, on nine people the chapter does not describe as archers and who were not shooting arrows, which is why the claim that even a little alcohol makes the outstretched arm less steady rests on evidence taken from outside the sport. Neither a safe dose nor an effect on score can be drawn from it, nor what is left the next morning, because the test measured people with the alcohol still in their blood.
Beta-blockers: banned, and no measured gain
Beta-blockers are drugs that damp the heart's response to adrenaline, and the idea that they help with aiming comes from pistol shooting, where two studies had found a benefit. They have been banned in archery since 1985, and today the WADA list prohibits them at all times, in and out of competition, as it does in shooting.
The only controlled study in archers tested them in 2021 on fifteen Turkish national-team archers, with two different beta-blockers, in a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled design, and a simulated match of 30 arrows at 18 metres. Heart rate while shooting fell by 12.8% with one drug and 8.6% with the other; the score did not improve, and neither did the movement of the aiming point in the three tenths of a second before release or the travel of the centre of pressure, which stayed as they were with placebo. With one of the two drugs the score in fact tended to drop, but the difference did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. It is a single study, with a single dose and a simulated match in an indoor hall, so the idea that beta-blockers improve accuracy has one test against it, sound in design but still on its own.
The result is consistent with an earlier finding: in thirteen international-level archers, raising heart rate to around 166-168 beats a minute with a shuttle run did not change the score at 18 metres. If a much higher heart rate costs no points, it is less obvious that lowering it adds any, and indeed the link between a lower heart rate and the score remains contested: observational studies find it, experiments that shift heart rate do not.
Anyone who takes beta-blockers for medical reasons is subject to the same ban. If they compete, they discuss it with the doctor who prescribed them and check the therapeutic use exemption procedure with their federation; a prescribed drug is never stopped on one's own initiative in order to shoot.
Nicotine: an isolated result
Nicotine is the oddest case, and it should be read as such. There is a single study, from 2021: eleven national-level recurve archers, all men and non-smokers, chewed either a nicotine gum or a flavour-matched gum without nicotine for half an hour, then took attention and dexterity tests and shot a simulated competition. With nicotine the mean over 36 arrows, averaged across three days, was 298.05 points against 290.58. An attention test and fine dexterity on the grooved pegboard also improved, the pegboard taking 48.8 seconds instead of 53.4, while motor reaction times stayed the same.
The gain does not seem to come from greater calm: while shooting, the heart beat faster with nicotine, about 102 beats a minute against 95, and after the test a salivary marker of arousal was higher. The limits are serious, since this is eleven people, a single dose, no women and no smokers, and nothing on repeated use. The registry records that nicotine gum before shooting raised the score and that concentration and manual dexterity improved in the same study as the results of a single study. The authors point out that nicotine is not on the WADA prohibited list, but it is addictive: this is a result to know about, not a practice to follow.
L-theanine and anxiety before the start
Among the substances put forward to settle the nerves, L-theanine, an amino acid found in tea, has a single study in archery. Eighteen Korean women university archers took a daily capsule of L-theanine or placebo for four weeks and were measured during a national competition. Half an hour before the start the two groups were alike; ten minutes before, anxiety was lower in the theanine group, 6.9 against 8.7 out of ten, and so were salivary alpha-amylase and cortisol. On the competition result the author writes that there was no difference, without giving the scores. The effect on anxiety in the minutes before competing is therefore a hint from nine people per group, and it says nothing about performance.
Coaches and anti-doping rules
For an archer who competes, it also matters how much the coach knows about the anti-doping rules. The only survey on the subject questioned all seventy-one coaches and assistant coaches in the archery clubs of the Jakarta region in 2020: 28 fell below a pass, 40 reached a pass and only 3 reached a good level. Rather than a general blank, it shows a majority stuck halfway. It is a single questionnaire, though, in one Indonesian region and with bands built on the sample's own scores, so the finding that many archery coaches know little about anti-doping rules says nothing about the situation in Europe or in Italy.
The prohibited list is updated every year, and beta-blockers show that in archery it can be stricter than in most sports. Anyone on medication does well to check it with their doctor before the season rather than rely on what gets said at the range.
What this leaves the archer with
Taken together, the picture is made of small, single studies, and the most useful thing to take from it is what has not been shown. For caffeine, no study in archers has seen the score drop, and the only one that saw it rise had no placebo; the side effects reported in clay target shooting, however, are the ones that weigh on someone holding the aim. For alcohol, the only hint points to a less steady arm with even a little alcohol in the blood. Beta-blockers are banned and, in the only test in archers, brought no points. Nicotine has one supporting result and a risk of dependence that no study in shooting has measured.
The rest of competition day rests on less disputed things, such as drinking and eating regularly, which the page on hydration and nutrition on competition day covers. Anyone who wants to see how they respond to their own habits can note down for a few weeks, next to their training scores, the coffee they had and the alcohol of the previous days: one archer is not a study, but it shows whether a pattern repeats.