A more consistent release: Vinogradskiy 1998

The paper proposes a method for making the duration of the release more consistent and tests it on medium-level archers split into an experimental and a control group. The author starts from the idea, backed by a correlation of 0.79 to 0.94 whose source is not given, that competition results are tied to how stable the release timing is.

The method relies on a device that measures release time in hundredths of a second. After each arrow the archer puts a number on how long the release seemed to take, then compares that estimate with the device's reading and with the feeling of the previous shot. By the third stage of the programme the mean estimation errors were between 0.005 and 0.008 seconds. In the experimental group, comparing before and after, the Student's t values are 2.2 for mean release time, 4.8 for its standard deviation, 5.1 for its coefficient of variation and 2.4 for the competition result, against a stated threshold of 2.262. The author concludes that the method made the release more regular and improved results, which did not happen in the control group.

The device, covered by a Ukrainian patent, has two contacts, one on the clicker and one on the riser beneath it, and an optoelectronic pair, an LED and a photodiode, on a mount that slides along the sight bar: as far as can be told, it times the interval between the clicker going off and the string or arrow passing the light beam. The programme has four stages: one or two sessions to get used to the device; two or three to establish each archer's mean values; seven to ten in which the archer estimates each release time unaided; and five to seven in which the aim is to make it as uniform as possible. The principle, drawn from Soviet work on the sense of time, is to tie the subjective sensation to the objective figure after every shot, in a sequence running from the sound of the clicker to the reaction, the remembered sensation, the device's reading and the comparison with the previous shot. The before-and-after comparison uses a paired Student's t test.

The text, three pages of conference proceedings, does not say how many archers were in each group, what bows they used, how many weeks the programme lasted or how the competition result was measured. The degrees of freedom given (34) do not match the threshold used: 2.262 is the critical value for 9 degrees of freedom, which means about ten archers, while for 34 it would be about 2.03. With the author's own threshold, the t for mean release time, 2.2, falls short, and the competition result only just clears it. No figures at all are reported for the control group, and it is not known whether the two groups started level. That a more regular release caused the improvement is an interpretation: weeks of shooting with a device and some extra attention may count for something too. The 0.79 to 0.94 correlation between timing stability and results is also cited without a source.

The work is of interest to anyone who shoots with a clicker because it ties a sensation, how long the release takes after the click, to a measurable number, and it suggests that with constant feedback archers learn to estimate it to within a few thousandths of a second. The claim that making it more regular brings more points rests on data too thin to rely on: the paper gives no way of knowing how large the improvement was or across how many archers. It remains a documented training idea awaiting a sounder test, not an established result.