Common beginner mistakes in archery and how to avoid them

The mistakes people make when they start archery are nearly always the same ones, and it pays to know them before they turn into habits: a movement repeated hundreds of times a week tends to become automatic, flaws included, and an automatic pattern then has to be rewritten, which takes time and patience (I have covered motor learning in a separate article). Here I have gathered the ones I see coming back again and again: ten concern technique and the way you train, four concern equipment. For each one I explain how to recognise it, what it leads to and how to avoid it, and where research has measured something I say so, with a link to the registry entry.

Measurements on beginners are few and made on small groups, but they point in a recognisable direction. Posture faults tend to come together, and in young club archers technical errors cluster in the phase before the release. On the mental side, the only experiment on goals suggests that a concrete target for the week helps more than a general talk, while the one study that taught beginners a growth mindset found no clear link with their scores. And in the first sessions progress is small, with everyone moving at their own pace: worth knowing before you get discouraged.

Posture errors

• Mistake 01

  Poor foot position

  The feet are too wide apart, too close together or not aligned with the target, so the base sways and the trunk does not rotate as far as it should. In a beginner, moreover, a fault rarely comes alone. A Japanese study comparing experienced university archers with young men who had never held a bow describes, in the newcomers, the bow shoulder rising, the trunk and neck leaning back, the bow held away from the body and the neck bending forward to aim as if with a rifle. The authors suggest that one fault drags the next along, but they did not measure that chain, and nor has anyone since: that a beginner's faults come together is documented, that they spread from one part of the body to the others remains a hypothesis.

  Fix: feet shoulder-width apart, straddling the shooting line, with the line across the toes pointing at the centre of the target or slightly open, and weight spread evenly over both feet. In the first few weeks it is worth having an instructor check it. There is no single stance that suits everyone, in any case: among the top fifteen in the world ranking square and open stances sit side by side, and in eleven experienced archers changing foot position for an end of six arrows did not lower the score.

• Mistake 02

  Raised shoulders during the draw

  During the draw the upper trapezius lifts the shoulders towards the ears. A rising bow shoulder is precisely one of the faults described in complete beginners, and the tension it puts into the neck and arm makes a clean release harder.

  The drawing shoulder matters too. Among 104 students who had never shot, those who scored held the drawing arm more closed at the shoulder at the release, 75 degrees against 86; the data come from a toy bow at 3 metres, though, with no statistical test, and the men had the more closed angle and also scored more, so part of the difference may come from sex. Among thirty Japanese recurve archers grouped by level, the opening of the drawing arm at the shoulder falls from 107 degrees in the weakest group to 99 in the elite: it shows where the best archers sit, not that closing that angle makes anyone shoot better.

  Fix: draw with the feeling of keeping the shoulders low and let the work pass to the muscles that stabilise the shoulder blade, strengthening the lower trapezius in the gym. In recurve archers, twelve weeks of targeted exercises reduced the work of the upper trapezius relative to the lower, but they did not show a clear effect on the target.

Anchor errors

• Mistake 03

  Inconsistent anchor

  The point where the drawing hand settles under the jaw shifts by a few millimetres from one arrow to the next. Arrows spread vertically, and the sight cannot be set because every shot starts from a different reference.

  Fix: fixed reference points to find again with every arrow, that is the hand under the jaw and, on a recurve, the string at the centre of the chin, with the same pressure, checked on video. Light contact is enough: in sixteen world-class recurve archers filmed at high speed, the string visibly touched the face in only four. To consolidate the anchor, blank bale work at close range is what helps, with no target face, so that attention can stay entirely on the movement.

• Mistake 04

  Incomplete draw

  The beginner lets the arrow go before reaching full draw, out of apprehension, inexperience or because the bow is too heavy for them. The arrow leaves more slowly, the release gets messy and groups open up.

  Fix: in the first months, a low draw weight that lets you reach anchor without strain and stay there long enough to aim, with small increases only once full draw has become routine. The draw weight to look at is the one you actually pull at your own draw length, which can differ from the figure printed on the limbs: more on this in mistake 11.

Draw and release errors

In young club archers the weakest part of the shot seems to come before the release. At an Indonesian club fourteen boys and girls were rated on video by a coach, with a grid of nine indicators spread over the three phases of the release: in the phase before it, thirteen out of fourteen were rated insufficient, in the release and the follow-through ten. The margin is one athlete per group, and a second club found the initial phase as weak as the release itself, so the errors cluster before the release without the later phases faring much better. The error described most often in that phase is gripping the string with the fingers during the draw.

Scroll the figure→

• Mistake 05

  Plucking the string

  At the release the drawing hand comes away from the face outwards, instead of sliding back along the neck. The string gets a sideways push, arrows go wide and the shot feels like a jerk rather than a release. At the Indonesian club the fault described at the release was a different one: the drawing hand dropped instead of staying on its line, the fingers left the line under the chin and the hips moved forward.

  Fix: deliberate work on the follow-through, with the drawing hand carrying on back along the neck after the release and the bow arm staying on the target until the arrow has landed (letting it drop early was the typical follow-through error at the same club). In the best archers the shoulder and back muscles stay active after the release, but whether arrows shot with more activity land closer to the centre is contested: the follow-through is worth working on as the continuation of the movement, without expecting it to bring points on its own.

• Mistake 06

  Fingers gripping or pushing the string

  During the draw the fingers grip the string, and at the release, instead of letting it go, they follow it or push it forward. The release changes from one arrow to the next and groups open up.

  Fix: hook the string and hold it with the hand as relaxed as possible, then let the fingers open without following it. Among experienced archers some relax the flexors and some open the fingers with the extensors, and in the fifteen high-level archers, nearly all from the United States national team, in whom this was measured, the two patterns had the same average score, 1,209 and 1,213 out of 1,440. The rule of a purely passive release therefore does not separate the better archers from the rest: rather than choosing between the two, it pays to keep your own the same from one arrow to the next.

  At the start the type of grip carries weight too. Sixteen adults who had never shot, randomly assigned to a thumb grip or a reversed grip, scored 77% more points over 80 arrows with the thumb at their first session, and tired sooner with the reversed grip. Those are two grips a target archer does not use, though, and people at their first session rather than archers: the result says that the way the string is held can change a beginner's score, not which to choose among the ones actually taught, the Mediterranean grip with one finger above the nock and two below or three fingers under.

Aiming errors

• Mistake 07

  Holding the aim too long

  The beginner stays at full draw far longer than usual, waiting for everything to be perfect: the bow arm tires, tremor increases and the release ends up forced.

  Fix: a pre-shot routine with a fairly constant aiming time, which each archer finds within their own window. If the aim is not ready in that time, let down and start again, without forcing a release on a sight picture that has fallen apart. On how aiming time relates to score the studies point in opposite directions, and in elite samples the link changes from one archer to another, so there is no number of seconds that holds for everyone.

• Mistake 08

  Internal focus instead of external

  The beginner concentrates on how the arm is moving, on how the draw feels, on bodily sensations, and the movement stiffens just when it ought to flow.

  Fix: while aiming, attention on the target and the sight. Motor learning research, carried out outside archery, generally shows an advantage for an external focus over an internal one, especially in the early stages, with contexts and levels where the picture is more nuanced. In archers, the only trial that has compared the two found no difference in score, although with too few arrows to pick up a small effect.

Approach errors

• Mistake 09

  Too much volume too soon

  Pushing volume too high in the first months, convinced that shooting a lot speeds up learning. Fatigue builds up, degrades technique and sets in exactly the faults you wanted to remove, while the load falls on the fingers, forearm and shoulder. It shows from the very first sessions: in eleven adult beginners shooting three sessions of a hundred arrows in one week, one lost the third day's progress to muscle fatigue.

  Fix: in the first months, short sessions, attention to the quality of every shot and volume that rises only a little at a time. Training guidance tends to set a cap on arrows per session for this reason.

• Mistake 10

  Comparing yourself with experienced archers

  The beginner measures their scores and technique against archers with ten years of practice behind them, gets discouraged and quits, or pushes on faster than their current level allows.

  Fix: the useful comparison is with yourself over time, and it works better with a concrete goal. In the only experiment on the subject, forty university students from three beginners' classes randomly split into two groups, those who set a written score goal and a technique goal every week averaged 37.1 points per six-arrow end over the mid-course and final tests, against 32.0 for those who only had a conference with the instructor, adjusting for starting level. The advantage appeared only at the final test, and the other group lost far more students along the way: it is a pointer, resting on a single study.

  Working on mindset in general, on the other hand, has not produced a clear result. In fifty beginner pupils who followed a growth mindset programme, those whose way of thinking changed most did not improve more than the others; the same study does contain a descriptive comparison pointing the other way, so the picture remains contested. With people starting out I use the concrete instruction: one thing in the technique to work on and one score to improve.

  Comparisons with your classmates say little as well. That archers who start lower gain more points from training is a common idea, but in the small programmes that have measured it the results point in opposite directions; and among children starting out, boys and girls score alike in some studies and differently in others, including the oldest, which is the only one to have put the difference to a statistical test. Keeping track of your own scores month by month reveals progress that comparison with others hides.

Equipment errors

The first equipment mistake is buying too much of it too soon. In the first months the club's bows are enough, or a training recurve with interchangeable limbs that you swap as the draw weight goes up, and putting off advanced equipment until your technique has developed lets you choose from your own experience rather than on the advice of whoever is selling. When the time comes to buy a first bow and first arrows, these are the four mistakes I see most often.

• Mistake 11

  Trusting the draw weight printed on the limbs

  The figure on the limbs holds at the maker's reference draw length, usually 28 inches: an archer with a shorter draw pulls fewer pounds, one with a longer draw pulls more. In 49 university beginners, with the figure referred to 26 inches, the women pulled on average just over 21 lb against the 26 marked and the men 30.6 against 33.5, while in archers drawing around the reference length the marked figure and the measurement matched. The registry counts the two studies as conflicting, but read together they describe the same rule.

  Fix: have the draw weight measured at your own draw length with a bow scale, at the club or in a shop, and work from that figure, including when you choose arrows.

• Mistake 12

  Arrows with an unmatched spine

  Spine, the stiffness of the shaft, has to be chosen according to the actual draw weight and the length of the arrow. In the physical models that have studied the question, a shaft too weak for the bow slaps against the button, one too stiff leaves the string with a sideways jolt on the nock, and in both cases the arrow does not come off cleanly. Those models all reach this rule, and one calculates that at a given draw length only one or two spines can be tuned well, because the draw weight of a recurve can only be adjusted within about 10%. How many points an unmatched shaft costs on the target is something nobody has measured yet.

  Fix: an arrow of the right length for your draw, spine taken from the manufacturer's chart at the measured draw weight, and a check of arrow flight with your instructor. I have written about the archer's paradox and spine in a separate article.

• Mistake 13

  Shooting a shaft that can buckle

  An arrow that gets trapped between string and bow at the release takes the full thrust of the string without being able to move forward. In the laboratory, aluminium kyudo shafts compressed in this way buckle and then snap exactly in half, with sharp metal edges, and the authors warn that the fragments fly right in front of the archer's face. The study reconstructs the kyudo case, with the point slipping behind the bow, and covers aluminium only: carbon shafts and target arrows have not been tested, and that a buckling shaft snaps in the middle rests for now on this one test.

  Fix: arrows long enough never to slip behind the rest at full draw, a spine suited to the draw weight, and shafts checked after any impact against something hard, discarding those that are cracked or bent.

• Mistake 14

  Giving up because of the cost

  Equipment costs money, and the cost rises just as you start doing well. Among ten archers at a Philippine secondary school interviewed one by one, two named money as the main problem, because every level calls for more expensive equipment. These are the accounts of a handful of young people, with no count or ranking of the obstacles, so the idea that cost is the biggest one is a hint rather than a measurement.

  Fix: in the first months, the club's equipment, then a training recurve and second-hand limbs, which change hands precisely because they get swapped as the draw weight goes up. The competition bow can wait until you know what you need.

What to do in the first year

In the months that follow, scores go up anyway. In a Ukrainian study, beginners doing only standard training went from 247 to 298 points out of 600 in two months, and almost every study that has measured the first months finds the same. It is also why a jump in score in the early months does not, on its own, show that a particular exercise works: a beginner improves anyway. The way I organise it, the first year has three phases.

1. Months 01-03

   Fundamentals

   Lessons with a qualified instructor, low draw weight, work on posture, anchor and release. Short distances, chosen for comfort and safety rather than for any proven advantage: the only controlled comparison, on 58 university beginners starting at 10, 25 and 40 yards, found no difference by the end of the course. No pressure on the score.

2. Months 04-08

   Consolidation

   Draw weight and volume rising a little at a time, longer distances, the clicker for recurve archers. First sessions on your own, with periodic check-ins from the instructor.

3. Months 09-12

   First competitions

   The first competitions, chosen from those designed for newcomers, and the start of work on the pre-shot routine. At this stage the comparison is with other beginners.

Why an instructor at the start

Starting on your own, with a few videos and a book or two, is possible, but it is easier to let errors take root without noticing: flaws picked up on your own get consolidated before you are even aware of them. A qualified instructor, a FITARCO coach or one from another federation, catches them while correcting them still costs little, and with regular lessons in the first months, in my experience, shortens the road. The studies on beginners' courses all find pupils who improve, but none separates the effect of the lessons from that of simple practice, so whether a course on the fundamentals raises scores has not been put to the test. If your budget is tight, it makes sense to concentrate the lessons at the start rather than spend the same amount later correcting mistakes that could have been avoided, and to stay in touch with the instructor afterwards, with a check every so often.

Correcting already-established errors

If you have been shooting for a few years and recognise yourself in one of these mistakes, you can still correct it. It takes patience, and you have to accept that while you rebuild, your score will drop for a while.

The process usually has three steps. The first is identifying the error precisely, with slow-motion video and, if possible, an experienced coach, because internal sensation is often misleading. The second is unlearning the old movement with low-volume drills, on the blank bale and at short distance, accepting a few weeks in which you shoot worse than before under normal conditions. The third is consolidating the new movement, raising volume and difficulty a little at a time, until you are back to your starting scores or beyond them.

The mistake I see most often at this point is impatience: many archers go back to the old pattern after a few weeks because their score drops, and throw away the work they have done. Even those who stick with it, though, should know that the old movement tends to resurface: very experienced coaches warn of it, and prefer for this reason to build on an archer's strengths, and how well a correction actually holds no study has measured. My practical advice is to start with the error that is doing most damage to your groups right now and to deal with one at a time, with a coach alongside you for the first few weeks, because tackling several at once usually fails.

@misc{campagna2026_erroricomuniprincipiantitiroconarcocomeevitarli,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Common beginner mistakes in archery and how to avoid them},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/articoli/common-beginner-mistakes-in-archery-and-how-to-avoid-them},
  note = {accessed 2026-10-16}
}