Target panic is the name archers give to a breakdown of the shot that comes between aiming and the release: the arrow goes before its time, or the hand will not let go of the string, or the aim cannot settle on the centre. It is not a rare problem. In the only survey that has counted it, among British competitive archers, almost one in two say they have had it, and those who describe it talk of tremors, panic attacks and excessive attention to their own body: their breathing, their heartbeat, their movements.
On how to get out of it the research has little to offer, and what there is should be taken at its real weight. An unvarying shot sequence, a permanent change of equipment, and specific drills combined with imagery each have some study in their favour, but each rests on very few archers. The classic remedy, the blank bale, takes the symptoms away in archers' accounts, but for several of them they come back as soon as a target face goes up again, which is one reason the classic prescription calls for a gradual return to the target. Either way, the work is counted in weeks and then in months.
What target panic actually is
It is the archery version of what golfers call the yips, and in kyudo it has different names depending on how it shows itself: a movement that used to come without thinking stops responding at exactly the moment it matters. The accounts of seven British archers, from club to national team level, all revolve around a loss of control: the need to govern every detail of the shot, the aim above all, ends up blocking it, so that some cannot reach their anchor, some cannot get through the clicker and some aim off the centre. At an English university club, archers add tremors, panic and a body that becomes intrusive, with breathing and heartbeat taking up all their attention.
How common it is comes from a single survey: among sixty-nine British competitive archers at county level or above, 43.5% report having had target panic. That is an order of magnitude rather than a measurement, because each respondent decided whether the label fitted, and a questionnaire about target panic draws in mainly those who have dealt with it. It is still enough to say that anyone going through it is far from alone.
On the nature of the problem, research has no single answer. In the same survey, counting archers and golfers together, the commonest form combines physical symptoms with performance anxiety, 47 cases out of 61. In kyudo, the block at release shows some features of a task-specific focal dystonia, a movement disorder: it is stereotyped, appears only in the shooting position, and in one case electromyography shows the forearm muscles contracting together. Early release, measured the same way, shows none of these signs. These are a handful of cases, all in kyudo, so the question remains open, and anyone presenting target panic as a mechanism already explained is simplifying.
My own reading is that the release loses its automaticity and comes back under a conscious control that is too slow to govern it. In the registry this idea is a Lab hypothesis awaiting an outcome, with seven predictions still to be tested, because nobody has yet measured what happens at the release in archers who suffer from it.
The three main forms of target panic
On the range three forms are usually distinguished, matching three points between aiming and release where the shot seizes up. A sport psychology review lists four: it keeps the involuntary jerk of the arm and the pluck of the string hand as forms of their own, and puts into a single form the block that stops the sight going onto the centre and the block that stops the release. Whichever scheme you use, recognising your own form helps you understand what is happening and explain it to your coach.
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Form 01
Snap shooting (early release)
The arrow goes the moment the sight picture nears the centre, before the sequence is complete, and those who go through it struggle to say whether they let it go themselves. In kyudo, the most experienced members of a Japanese high-school team say that even when they try to hold, the arrow goes by itself.
It shows in an aiming time far shorter than your own baseline: in that kyudo team, two seconds or less at kai, against the five the instructor asks for.
- What you see
- Release far earlier than usual
- What archers say
- "The arrow goes by itself"
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Form 02
Freezing (release block)
The opposite: the aim is on the centre and the sequence is complete, but the hand will not let go of the string. The archer stays at full draw for seconds, until the release is forced or the shot is let down; for some the block comes earlier, and they cannot get through the clicker or even reach anchor.
It shows in an aiming time far longer than usual. In kyudo this block has a name of its own, motare, and it is the form that in a handful of cases has shown some features of a movement disorder.
- What you see
- Release far later than usual
- What archers say
- "I can't let go"
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Form 03
Drifting (aim drift)
The aim cannot settle on the centre: the sight pin slides off the gold and steadies only outside it, so the release comes from a worse position or the archer lets down and starts again. Some archers describe it as avoidance, because the pin simply will not go onto the gold.
It shows in lateral or vertical wandering that calms down only away from the centre, and in arrows landing outside the gold even when the rest of the shot is in order.
- What you see
- Systematic off-centre aim
- What archers say
- "I can't aim at the gold"
The forms do not always stay separate. On the range you sometimes see an archer move from one to another, and in kyudo, the only setting where the order of onset has been counted, the jerk while aiming almost always comes after early release: the authors think it arises from the very effort of holding the early release back. I go into this in more depth in the article on early release and the yips.
How it starts, according to those who have had it
Nobody has measured what causes target panic. What there is consists of accounts from archers who have had it, which say how they explain their own problem rather than what caused it, and some data from kyudo. Read together, they say something about when and how it begins.
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Attention on the score
Seven British archers with target panic, interviewed one by one, all trace its onset to the point when they started thinking about the score of every arrow, driven by their own expectations or other people's: from there came the need to control the shot in every detail. In the same group the more experienced archers had it mainly in the closing stages of a competition, while the less experienced had it in training and on the first arrows as well.
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A specific episode
In the same interviews, one archer links the onset to a bow failure that injured her face, another to sudden noises on the range and to family experiences that have nothing to do with shooting. At an English university club each archer identifies a concrete trigger, a piece of equipment, a step in the sequence or something in the surroundings, and tries to remove it.
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A change in the shot
In kyudo, in two of the three cases of early release examined with electromyography, the problem appeared after a change in the way of drawing or after a run of hits; in one of the three cases of the block, after an increase in draw weight.
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Years of shooting, more than the bow
Among Japanese university kyudo students, those who have had the yips have practised for longer, five years on average against two and a half, but more years also means more time in which to have had them. The idea that a bow that is too heavy lies behind it, on the other hand, points the other way in the only study to have looked: relative to hit rate, the bows of those who had had the yips were less out of proportion than everyone else's.
What helps, and how strongly
There is no protocol that has been tested against another. There are a few remedies that archers describe or that a small study has followed, and each is worth as much as the studies behind it, which are few and small. Next to each one you will find its status in the registry and who it rests on.
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Remedy 01
Specific drills and imagery
Twelve Indonesian para-archers, from beginners to elite athletes, did twenty sessions of specific physical drills with the bow combined with imagery over five weeks. At the start only three in twelve controlled their symptoms under pressure, according to a sheet filled in by an observer; after two weeks the figure was five, and by the end ten.
It is an encouraging signal, and it needs reading with care. There was no group carrying on with normal training, so the method cannot be separated from the time and attention the archers received; the judgement was made by eye, not by measuring the release; and one archer finished below his starting point, while two stayed under the threshold.
- In the registry
- Reported
- Based on
- 12 para-archers, before and after
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Remedy 02
An unvarying shot sequence
At an English university club, followed for a year by a researcher who was a member and had target panic himself, the archers who suffered from it leaned on a fixed sequence, sometimes of just three words: one archer repeated her coach's cues before every arrow, front elbow, back elbow, anchor. According to the author the consistency of the sequence matters more than its content, because it draws attention away from the heartbeat and the breathing.
The same study warns that it is not always enough, and that a step in the sequence can itself become the point where the problem flares up again. I explain how to build one in the article on the pre-shot routine.
- In the registry
- Reported
- Based on
- One university club, accounts
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Remedy 03
A permanent change of equipment
Among seven British archers, for several the problem hit one bow type harder than the other, and one at national level managed it better with a compound, because it took away the chance to control the shot in minute detail. At a university club one archer found his aiming calmed down when the coach removed the fibre optic pin from his sight, and according to the study's author permanent changes worked, while temporary ones gave only temporary relief.
The same author tells the other side: a change of equipment eased his own symptoms, but the way of shooting that resulted no longer appealed to him, and he stopped. Relief from the symptom and the wish to keep shooting are not the same thing.
- In the registry
- Reported
- Based on
- Two qualitative studies, few archers
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Remedy 04
Blank bale and a gradual return
This is the classic remedy, much used by coaches. In coaching texts the recipe is hundreds of arrows over several weeks at a bale with no target face, then further weeks of gradual return, from large faces at short distances up to the competition face and distance, without keeping score and going back a step whenever the symptom reappears.
Archers who have tried it say the symptoms do go away at the blank bale, but for several of them they come back as soon as a face goes up again, and one archer adds that after training only at a blank bale, competition frightens her more. That is why the idea that the blank bale cures target panic is contradicted in the registry. It does not make the blank bale useless: those accounts do not say whether the return to the face was gradual, and the bale is still a good place to work on technique. The same caution applies to holds without releasing: one archer using a release aid draws five arrows without pressing the trigger and feels her anxiety rise on the sixth, the one she has to shoot.
- In the registry
- Contradicted, as a cure
- Based on
- 7 British archers, accounts
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Remedy 05
The clicker as a signal you do not wait for
For recurve archers, a number of coaches suggest using the clicker as a surprise signal: the archer stops deciding when to release and keeps expanding until the click comes, so the aim no longer acts as the trigger. It needs explaining carefully, though. In expert archers the release is not a reaction to the clicker going off: in nine German national team archers the interval between the click and the string leaving was shorter than their reaction time to a sound, at least against the task closest to shooting.
If that result holds, the click accompanies a movement already under way rather than being a signal to respond to. For target panic, using the clicker this way is a technical choice to make with a coach, with no studies behind it, and for some archers the block arrives precisely at the clicker.
- In the registry
- Reported, on the expert release
- Based on
- 9 national-level archers
What tends to make it worse
Two reactions come instinctively and, in the accounts of archers who have had target panic, make things worse. On top of these comes a habit that does not help you get out of it.
The first is trying to control more. Among the British archers interviewed, it is the very attempt to govern every detail, the aim above all, that makes the block grow, and for most of them the problem gets worse when they try to control their movements in order to aim better.
The second is chasing the symptom with your attention. At the English university club one archer says his snap shooting stayed away as long as he did not think about it, and came back as soon as somebody remarked that he no longer did it. So with an archer who is getting over it, clubmates and coaches do well not to comment on the progress arrow by arrow.
The habit is keeping it to yourself. The author of the same study notes that target panic is rarely talked about, almost a taboo, and yet in the British survey almost one competitive archer in two says they have had it. Keeping it to yourself means facing it alone, whereas an experienced coach or a sport psychologist has seen it before and can work on it with you.
When to seek professional help
A mild case, caught early, can be tackled on your own to begin with, ideally with an attentive clubmate watching the shot. When the problem is entrenched, outside help changes the way you work.
An experienced coach who knows target panic can watch your shot in slow motion, recognise the form and build the gradual return to the face with you. Not every coach has this experience, so look for one who does.
A sport psychologist is the right person when target panic comes with broader anxiety: poor sleep before competitions, thoughts going round in circles, a tendency to avoid events. In those cases the problem goes beyond the shot, and it needs someone with the tools to deal with it.
If the problem has not responded to technical work after many months, or if the block always looks the same, with the arm or forearm stiffening on its own in the shooting position, it makes sense to talk to a doctor as well, who can assess whether a movement disorder is involved. In kyudo the block at release has shown some features of a focal dystonia, in a handful of cases and without a diagnosis.
How long it takes to get over it
There is no measured timetable, because nobody has followed a group of archers with target panic over time. The closest data come from kyudo: among thirty-five university students who had had early release, twelve say they have got over it and twenty-three have not, so two in three still had it when they answered the questionnaire. It is a snapshot, and those who had only recently developed it had not had time to get over it; most of them say, though, that the problem eases when the pressure is off or when the coach keeps telling them not to release early.
In practice the timescale is counted in weeks and then in months. The classic prescription is several weeks at the blank bale followed by further weeks of gradual return to the face, and in the Indonesian study, according to the observer, ten para-archers out of twelve were controlling their symptoms after five weeks. During the return to the target, as the same prescription says, the score is not kept.