https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/one-correct-elite-technique Changes to this claim in Matteo Campagna's evidence registry: its status, its year-by-year history, revisions of the page. en-gb https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/one-correct-elite-techniqueOn this claim the literature is plentiful and unusually consistent, and it points the opposite way from what is said on the range. From 1990 onwards, independent samples measured with different instruments all reach the same place: each archer repeats their own way of shooting with great consistency, and between archers that way changes. In the fifteen archers of the United States national team the muscle pattern of the release varies by sixteen per cent within the same archer and by fifty-two per cent between archers, more than three times as much. In twelve Italian archers the electromyographic traces are almost identical from trial to trial and no shared pattern exists, and even the way of reaching full draw splits into two strategies, both present among the strongest. In the twenty-five athletes of one national squad the angles of the drawing arm spread across eighteen and nearly thirty-two degrees, and the most extreme values belong to those with the highest federal title. Measured in competition, the picture holds: in the video of the top fifteen men and top fifteen women in the world rankings every phase of the shot holds at least two styles, and a model trained on the trajectories of shoulders, elbows and wrists alone identifies which of four national-level athletes is shooting in 98.7 per cent of cases. Timing has no single value either: at the 2007 World Championships the women's recurve champion aimed for between 0.61 and 1.24 seconds per match, the men's champion for between 2.65 and 4.37. One result pulls the other way and deserves careful reading: in twenty-eight Chinese archers of three levels the number of muscle synergies is the same, around three, at every level. So a shared skeleton of the shot does exist, but inside that skeleton the muscles, the timings and the geometries are a personal signature.claim:tecnica-unica-elite:revision:2026-09-05:4Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/one-correct-elite-technique#storiaThe same result repeats with entirely different methods. A model trained on the trajectories of shoulders, elbows and wrists alone identifies which of four national-level athletes is shooting in 98.7 per cent of cases, meaning the execution is a signature readable from movement alone; in eight French elite archers eighteen parameters out of twenty-six are not tied to score at group level and individually hold only for some; in barebow the end of the shot changes from archer to archer, with some keeping the hand level with the face and others taking it behind the head; and three coaches with over thirty years in the job, all of whom have coached the national team, describe choosing not to touch the technique, far from the style they preferred, of the first man from their country to win an individual Olympic gold, an account the registry keeps as context and does not count among the studies.claim:tecnica-unica-elite:history_entry:2026-08-12:2025Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/one-correct-elite-technique#storiaThe measurement reaches competition. In the notational analysis of thirty recurve archers, the top fifteen men and top fifteen women in the world rankings, with eighteen shots each from World Cup and Asian Games events, none of the seven phases of the shot has a single form: on the bow raise fourteen out of thirty go straight along the target line and sixteen rise higher and then come down; on the draw to the face nineteen bring the string straight in close to the jaw and eleven on a curved path; on the follow-through twenty-four slide the hand back towards the centre of the neck and six towards the earlobe; and square and open stances coexist without either prevailing. Coding repeated by the same observer twenty-four hours apart has a reliability of 0.91. Away from the laboratory, at the top of the world rankings, the single correct technique is not there. The same year a reanalysis of the 2021 Chinese sample, in a questionable venue, looks at joint coordination: the difference between levels reaches significance, but within each level archers differ four to five times more than one level differs from the next.claim:tecnica-unica-elite:history_entry:2026-08-12:2024Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/one-correct-elite-technique#storiaThe measurement moves from the laboratory to the competition field, and from muscles to timing. At the 2007 World Outdoor Championships the two individual recurve winners, filmed in all their matches, aim in opposite ways: the women's champion holds for between 0.61 and 1.24 seconds per match, less than any of her opponents, the men's champion for between 2.65 and 4.37. These are only two cases, but they are the two archers who won the world title that year, and they do not even share how long they aim. The status holds.claim:tecnica-unica-elite:history_entry:2026-08-12:2009Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/one-correct-elite-technique#storiaA second sample, ten Japanese club archers, finds individual differences so large in the activation levels of the six sites measured that no typical value emerges for any of them. It points the same way as 1990, but it concerns club archers rather than top ones, with a descriptive reading in a regional journal: two contrary studies, only one of which holds up as a measurement of elite archers, are not enough for refuted, and the status stays contradicted.claim:tecnica-unica-elite:history_entry:2026-08-12:1993Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/one-correct-elite-technique#storiaThe first figure in the bibliography runs against the claim and concerns variability: in the fifteen archers of the United States national team the muscle pattern of the release varies by sixteen per cent within the same archer and by fifty-two per cent between archers. In the same year, across eight experienced archers, only one muscle turns out to have a pattern shared between archers and identical across distances, the brachioradialis of the bow arm, while the others are mostly only analogous or conforming. Also in 1990, eight skilled archers measured with optical markers add a background figure: at the release the elite are about twice as spread out among themselves as the county archers in the distances between head, bow and elbow, though the difference is not significant, and in the final moments each moves in their own way, with no shared pattern. It concerns posture rather than the whole technique, so it stays context. With a single study, and a contrary one, the evidence runs against the claim but is still thin.claim:tecnica-unica-elite:history_entry:2026-08-12:1990Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/one-correct-elite-techniqueclaim:tecnica-unica-elite:new_claim:2026-06-08:smentitoMon, 08 Jun 2026 08:00:00 GMT