Glossary of archery and archery research

The terms that recur in the registry and in the studies, each with a short definition and a link to the page that covers it in full.

Domain by domain, the key terms and the claims with their status are also on a sheet you can print: the field cards.

Actigraphy

A movement sensor worn on the wrist, night after night, to estimate when and for how long a person sleeps. It is easy to wear, even during a competition, but it infers sleep from arm movement rather than brain activity, so it is less precise than laboratory polysomnography.

Go to: Archers get enough sleep

Studies: Esen et al. 2024

Aerobic capacity and VO2max

The maximum amount of oxygen the body can use during exercise, usually expressed per kilogram of body mass, and the standard measure of aerobic capacity. In archers it is almost always estimated with field running tests rather than measured in a laboratory, and the studies that set it beside score are split down the middle.

Go to: Better aerobic capacity goes with higher scores

Studies: Lau et al. 2020, Rabbani et al. 2023, Wahyuningtias et al. 2025, Fitoni N et al. 2023

Aiming trace

The path the aiming point traces on the target face in the seconds before the release, recorded with an optical system fixed to the riser. In a study of international junior archers that follows it second by second the area shrinks as the release approaches, and in the last second it is tighter on arrows that score a ten; between archers, though, its size does not tell you who scores more.

Go to: Bow stability and aiming time: research since 1971

Studies: Edelmann‐Nusser et al. 2006, Taha et al. 2016

Anchor

The fixed point on the face where the drawing hand settles at full draw, for example under the jaw with the string touching chin and nose in Olympic recurve. It is the rear reference for aiming and has to be repeated exactly on every arrow; in research, reaching anchor marks the start of the aiming phase, and studies often time the interval from anchor to release.

Go to: The anchor point in archery: biomechanics and common errors

Studies: Lee et al. 2024, Takai et al. 2009, Lau et al. 2023

Anticipatory postural adjustments

The balance corrections the body sets up before a movement, to counter the push that is about to come. In archery they are measured with force plates and electromyography of the legs: in the only comparison of experts with people who had never shot, the experts' centre of pressure was already moving against the coming push before the release, while in the others it moved with it.

Go to: Posture and stability in archery: what biomechanists reveal

Studies: Na et al. 2024, Kim et al. 2023

Archer's paradox

The historical name for the fact that an arrow resting to one side of the bow, rather than at its centre, still flies where the archer aims. The explanation is flexing: driven by a string rolling off the fingers, the shaft bends and oscillates, and according to the models its tail clears the riser without touching it. For that to happen the shaft has to complete a full cycle of vibration while still on the string, which is why the spine has to suit the bow.

Go to: The archer's paradox: the physics of the flexing arrow

Studies: Park et al. 2012, Park 2012, Pekalski 1990, Kooi 1998, Zanevskyy 2001

Arousal

How switched on the body and nervous system are at a given moment, anywhere from sleep to alarm. It is not the same as anxiety, since high arousal can be felt as excitement rather than fear, and the level at which an archer shoots best differs from one archer to the next. Archery studies estimate it from heart rate or from a rating scale filled in by the archer, and usually find it higher in competition than in training.

Go to: Mental skills training in archery: what the measurements on archers show

Studies: Medeiros Filho et al. 2008, Miyamoto 1994, Kerr et al. 1997

Arrow group

The set of holes a series of arrows leaves in the target, read for its size and for where it sits relative to the centre. Two archers can post the same score with very different groups, one tight but off centre and one wide but centred, which is why some studies digitise the holes rather than looking at the score alone.

Go to: Why do my arrows go left, right, high or low?

Studies: Park et al. 2014, Park 2020, Callaway et al. 2012, Ertan 2014, Shepherd 2026

Arrow vibration modes

The shapes in which a shaft can bend as it vibrates. In the first mode the shaft curves into a single arc, and this mode dominates once the arrow has left the bow; the second, an S shape, vibrates at roughly three times the frequency and shows up mainly early in the power stroke. Studies measure them with laser vibrometers and high-speed cameras.

Go to: Beyond its first bending mode the arrow vibrates in higher modes, the second at about three times the first

Studies: Rieckmann et al. 2012, Park et al. 2012, Park 2012, Park 2013, Meyer 2015

Automatic target scoring

The scoring of each arrow, and often its position, by software working from photos or video of the target. The systems proposed so far locate the holes or shafts, reconstruct the scoring rings and assign each arrow to the zone it falls in; the published tests are mostly small.

Go to: Machine learning and computer vision in archery research

Studies: Zin et al. 2013, Ma et al. 2023, Shepherd 2026, Phang et al. 2023, Adam et al. 2025

Back tension and draw force line

Holding and completing the draw with the back muscles that bring the shoulder blade of the drawing arm towards the spine, such as the middle and lower trapezius, rather than with the biceps and forearm. The draw force line is the imaginary line from the pressure point of the bow hand to the elbow of the drawing arm; studies measure its angles together with the electrical activity of the muscles.

Go to: Expert archers hold the draw with the shoulder and back rather than the forearm

Studies: Kim et al. 2020, Bhutia et al. 2026, Shinohara et al. 2018, Ertan et al. 2005, Hayashi et al. 1976

Basal metabolic rate

The energy the body uses at complete rest simply to sustain its basic functions, measured in the morning after fasting. In the studies on archers the measured value is compared with the one predicted by tables for age and sex, expressed per unit of body surface or per kilogram of body weight.

Go to: An archer's basal metabolic rate does not differ from the value predicted for their age

Studies: Tsuji et al. 1981, Tsuji et al. 1984

Beta blockers

Drugs that blunt the effect of adrenaline on the heart and lower heart rate. They are prohibited in archery, and the only placebo-controlled study on archers saw heart rate fall with no improvement in score or aiming stability.

Go to: Beta-blockers improve accuracy in archery

Studies: Ergen et al. 2021

Bilateral asymmetry

The difference between the bow side and the string side in strength, muscle thickness, mobility or the electrical activity of the muscles. Studies express it in different ways, as a gap in kilograms, a percentage or an effect size, and in archers they find it in the arms and hands more than in the trunk.

Go to: The asymmetric shooting action creates muscle asymmetries

Studies: Sarı et al. 2025, Lau et al. 2025, Dar et al. 2025, Pukhov 2025, Schmitt et al. 2021

Biofeedback

Training while watching or listening to one of your own physiological signals in real time, such as heart rate, breathing or heart rate variability, until you learn to change it. Work on archers is scarce, brief or limited to a handful of athletes, so almost everything known about its effect on anxiety comes from studies outside archery.

Go to: The heartbeat and the shot: heart rate and HRV since 1981

Studies: Hong 2011, Takai et al. 2009, Ohsuga et al. 1992, Lehrer et al. 2014, Zaccaro et al. 2018

Bistable drag regime

Within a certain speed range the same arrow can fly with two very different amounts of drag, depending on whether the air layer around the shaft stays laminar or turns turbulent, and a slight angle to the airflow is enough to tip the balance. That this changes the height of impact is so far only a calculation, as nobody has counted impacts. Shot from a bow, the flexing of the shaft also matters: with arrows released by a robot with mechanical fingers the flow was turbulent across the whole range, while with a mechanical release, which barely flexes the shaft, the two drag values reappear.

Go to: Within a certain speed band the arrow can fly in either of two regimes, and that shifts the point of impact in height

Studies: Okawa et al. 2012, Miyazaki et al. 2012, Miyazaki et al. 2017, Matsumoto et al. 2015, Matsumoto et al. 2016

Body mass index

Body weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in metres. It is a crude measure because it cannot tell muscle from fat: in archers, where studies often find values at the top of the normal range, it matters whether body composition was measured alongside it.

Go to: Many competitive archers weigh more than is normal for their height

Studies: Kim et al. 2020, Mazumder 2023, Lau et al. 2025, Uršulin-Trstenjak et al. 2026

Boundary layer and drag

The boundary layer is the thin layer of air flowing in contact with the shaft. While it stays smooth, or laminar, the arrow meets little drag; once it turns turbulent, drag rises sharply. Studies measure it in wind tunnels and on arrows in free flight, and the switch depends on speed, point shape, the arrow's attitude and how much the shaft flexes.

Go to: Within a certain speed band the arrow can fly in either of two regimes, and that shifts the point of impact in height

Studies: Miyazaki et al. 2012, Okawa et al. 2012, Matsumoto et al. 2015, Matsumoto et al. 2016, Hasegawa et al. 2018

Bow efficiency

The share of the work done in drawing the bow that reaches the arrow as kinetic energy. The rest stays in the limbs, the string and the vibrations, while recoil and the nock leaving the string account for very little. The often quoted figure of about three quarters comes from a model, and the only direct measurement on a modern bow, a compound, gives a similar value; the figure also changes with the arrow, because the same bow is more efficient with a heavier one.

Go to: A competition bow passes about three quarters of the drawing work to the arrow

Studies: Pekalski 1990, Meyer 2015, Kooi 1991, Marlow 1981

Bow torque

The rotation the bow hand puts into the grip around the vertical axis, at full draw and during the release. Models and shooting-machine tests show that a tiny difference from one arrow to the next is enough to move the point of impact; in archers, though, it has only been measured directly with an instrumented kyudo bow, while in recurve it is inferred from high-speed video, where seven of sixteen national team archers appeared to torque the bow.

Go to: Twisting the bow with the hand moves the arrow on the target

Studies: Park et al. 2012, Pekalski 1990, Kobayashi et al. 1997, Koike et al. 2007

Cam timing

On a compound with two cams, how closely the cams turn together through the draw and the release. If one cam bottoms out before the other, the nocking point rises over the last part of the draw and the arrow tends to hit low, more so the harder the archer pulls into the wall; timing is adjusted through the cable lengths.

Go to: On a compound the nocking point does not travel in a straight line during the draw, and how far it strays depends on the bow's geometry

Studies: Park 2010, Park 2011, Zanevskyy 2012

Ceiling effect

It occurs when scores sit so close to the maximum possible that the measure can no longer tell the people being measured apart. In archery the nearest case is top-level compound: over the 72 arrows of an outdoor qualification round, men need about 700 out of 720 to sit in the top twenty, which leaves the best archers little room to separate themselves.

Go to: Barebow / instinctive vs Olympic recurve vs compound: differences in the shot, the equipment and the score

Studies: Park 2019, Park et al. 2014

Centreshot and plunger

Centreshot is the sideways position of the arrow point relative to the string line, seen from behind the bow; the plunger, or pressure button, is the small spring-loaded piston the arrow rests against sideways and which gives during the power stroke. In a model of the recurve no setting of either came out ahead of the others: the adjustments offset one another, and several combinations within a range give clean flight.

Go to: On a recurve there is no single right centreshot or button tension, but a range

Studies: Park 2012, Kooi et al. 1997

Choking

A sudden collapse in performance in competition, as the stakes rise, compared with what the archer can normally do. Archery studies do not derive it from scores: archers say for themselves whether, and how often, it has happened to them.

Go to: Most competitive archers say they have fallen apart in competition at least once

Studies: Diotaiuti et al. 2021, Clarke et al. 2020, Wood et al. 2017

Chronograph

The instrument that measures arrow speed from the time the arrow takes to pass between two sensors a known distance apart. In the only test against a calibrated reference, three commercial optical chronographs all read slightly below the reference speed: a small gap, but one that matters when readings taken with different instruments are compared.

Go to: Commercial optical chronographs read arrow speed with an error of a couple of per cent

Studies: Barton et al. 2011

Circuit training

A sequence of stations with different exercises, performed one after another with little rest in between. In studies on archers, many of them on children and teenagers, circuits improve fitness test results, but mostly without a comparison group that did not do them, so the gain is hard to attribute to the circuit alone; the only randomised trial, on adult archers, stands alone for now.

Go to: Physical training interventions: what has been tested

Studies: Prastyawan et al. 2026, Susanto et al. 2021, Yachsie et al. 2023, Fitoni N et al. 2023

Clicker

The thin blade mounted on the riser that the arrow sits under: when the point passes it during the final pull, the blade snaps against the riser and marks that draw length is complete, and for many archers it is the cue to release. In research the clicker snap is the time reference used to synchronise electromyography, force plates and sensors, and the time between snap and release is one of the most common measures.

Go to: The clicker: the science of a tenth of a second

Studies: Erkek et al. 2010, Edelmann-Nusser et al. 1998, Ertan et al. 2021, Spratford et al. 2017

Clicker reaction time

The interval between the clicker going off and the release, which in trained archers lasts a little under two tenths of a second and becomes shorter and more regular as level rises. Whether it is a reaction to the click or the tail of a movement already under way is still debated: a single study finds it shorter than the same archers' reaction time to a sound. Among elite archers its link with score is small, and not every study finds one.

Go to: The clicker: the science of a tenth of a second

Studies: Nishizono et al. 1984, Nishizono et al. 1987, Edelmann-Nusser et al. 1998, Tinazci 2011, Spratford et al. 2017

Coefficient of variation

The standard deviation of a series of measurements divided by their mean and expressed as a percentage. It allows the consistency of archers, or of movements, with different averages to be compared, and studies apply it both to scores and to measures of the shot such as muscle activation or the time between the clicker going off and the release.

Go to: Repeatability and consistency: measuring the steadiness of your shot

Studies: Zhang et al. 2024, Qiu et al. 2021, Heller 2012

Core stability

Core stability is the ability of the trunk muscles, from the deepest, such as the transversus abdominis and multifidus, out to the obliques and erector spinae, to keep the pelvis and spine steady while the legs and arms work; in archery it is the link between the base of the feet and the upper body through the draw and aiming. Studies assess it with holding tests such as the side bridge or by measuring muscle thickness, and train it with stabilisation exercises or Pilates, with effects on balance in some cases and no difference in others.

Go to: Balance, core and proprioception: the training you never see

Studies: Kulunkoglu et al. 2022, Dar et al. 2025, Park et al. 2016

Creeping

When, under the clicker, the draw shortens and the arrow slides forward instead of continuing to move back. Studies pick it up with a strain gauge on the clicker or by tracking the draw hand: in a group of international junior archers, pauses and creeping showed up in the two with the lowest averages, and precisely on their worst arrows.

Go to: A continuous final pull through the clicker leads to better shots

Studies: Leroyer et al. 1993, Edelmann-Nusser et al. 2006, Edelmann‐Nusser et al. 2006

Cross-dominance

Having the dominant eye on the opposite side to the dominant hand, the one that usually draws the string. Beginners shooting without a sight score less when they are cross-dominant, while among trained archers, who use a sight, the disadvantage does not show and cross-dominance does not separate levels; the idea that it harms accuracy therefore remains contested.

Go to: Dominant eye: how to find it and what to do if it is on the other side

Studies: Landers et al. 1986, Laborde et al. 2009, Moreno et al. 2022, Türker 2022

Crosswind and tailwind

A crosswind blows across the shooting line, while a tailwind pushes from behind the archer towards the target. Flight simulations suggest that at 70 metres a crosswind moves the arrow far more than a wind of the same strength coming from behind or head-on.

Go to: Wind and weather conditions in archery: how to read and manage them

Studies: Ortiz et al. 2018, Shen et al. 2025, Park 2019

De-automatization

My hypothesis about target panic: the release, which normally runs automatically, slips under conscious control and turns from fluid to rigid, and for a ballistic movement that kind of control is too slow. Nothing breaks, neither a muscle nor a nerve: what changes is the way the movement is controlled. On this site it always appears as a hypothesis, with predictions that can be tested, not as an established finding.

Go to: Target panic as the de-automatization of a ballistic act

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)

Muscle soreness that appears hours after unfamiliar or harder-than-usual exercise, rather than during the session itself. The only study on archers measured it forty-eight hours after an upper-body weights session, using a scale the young archers filled in themselves, without checking whether it changed their shooting in the following days.

Go to: One upper-body weights session leaves young archers sore two days later

Studies: Putra et al. 2022

Detraining

The loss of training adaptations when training stops or is cut back sharply. In archery-related studies, strength gained through shooting falls after a break but stays above where it started, and a period of reduced training goes with a lower score; each finding rests on a single small study, and neither involves experienced adult archers.

Go to: Periodisation for archers: how to structure the season

Studies: Zolkafi et al. 2020, Ravena et al. 2021

Dispersion

How far the arrows spread from the centre of their own group. Studies measure it in millimetres, as the standard deviation of the hole positions or as the diameter of the smallest circle that contains them, and competition data suggest it grows faster than distance does.

Go to: Why do your groups open up with distance?

Studies: Park et al. 2014, Park 2020, Park et al. 2017

Dominant eye

It is the eye the brain favours when looking at a distant point, and it is normally the one an archer aims with. It can be found with simple checks, such as looking at the target through a hole in a card held in both hands. Studies focus mainly on crossed cases, where the dominant hand and the dominant eye are on opposite sides, and on what changes when shooting with the non-dominant eye closed or with both open.

Go to: Dominant eye: how to find it and what to do if it is on the other side

Studies: Strydom et al. 2010, Laborde et al. 2009, Hirota et al. 2023

Draw force curve

The graph that links the force on the string to each point of the draw. In bows without cams the force rises throughout the draw, almost in a straight line in the historical bows that have been measured; in a compound it rises, stays almost flat for a stretch and then drops sharply into the valley just before the wall, with a shape set by the cam profile. Studies obtain it by drawing the string in steps and measuring the force at each one, and the area under the curve is the energy the bow stores.

Go to: On a compound bow the shape of the force-draw curve is governed by the cam profile

Studies: Meyer 2015, Tiermas 2015, Tiermas 2016, Butnariu et al. 2018

Draw force hysteresis

The gap between the force measured while drawing the bow and the force measured while letting it down slowly: the drawing curve always sits a little above the return curve. The area between the two curves is energy lost to friction and within the materials, and it never reaches the arrow; the two measurements in the registry, both on compound bows, show it but do not put a figure on it.

Go to: On a compound bow the draw force is a little higher than the let-down force

Studies: Tiermas 2015, Tiermas 2016

Draw length

The distance at full draw from the bottom of the nock groove to the pivot point of the grip, with a small fixed amount added by convention. The rest of the set-up follows from it, from arrow length to spine; studies of the final pull instrument it to see whether, in the last seconds, the draw keeps lengthening, stops or shortens.

Go to: The final pull: what happens in the last millimetres before the clicker

Studies: Leroyer et al. 1993, Edelmann-Nusser et al. 2006, Kim et al. 2023, Humaid 2014

Draw weight

The draw force of the bow, in pounds: on bows without cams it is the force at full draw, on a compound the peak force. Among the recurve archers at one World Cup stage the average was just under fifty pounds, with wide differences from one archer to another, and among compound archers it was higher. Studies use it to explain arrow speed, the energy cost of shooting and the loads on the body.

Go to: Draw weight and score in the research: how much do the pounds matter?

Studies: Rao et al. 2025, Tsuji et al. 1984, Ji et al. 2025, Tsuji et al. 1981

Dysmenorrhoea

Period pain strong enough to weigh on the day. Studies on women archers compare scores during menstruation, or on a day with pain, with scores on a day outside the cycle, but none has measured how severe the pain was or whether the athlete had taken painkillers.

Go to: On days of period pain women archers' average score does not drop significantly

Studies: Nurdin et al. 2021, Serin et al. 2019

EEG bands: theta and alpha

Theta and alpha are two frequency ranges of the brain's electrical activity, recorded with EEG while the archer aims. In elite archers, alpha power over the left hemisphere has been seen to rise in the last seconds before the release, and it was higher on their worst arrows; in beginners learning to shoot, improvement was linked to a shift of theta towards the left hemisphere, not to its power.

Go to: EEG and neuroscience in archery: the brain of the elite archer

Studies: Salazar et al. 1990, Chen et al. 2010, Rampp et al. 2022

Elastic resistance

Load provided by a rubber band or tube, which increases as it is stretched, much as the force rises when a recurve is drawn. In studies on archers it appears as a shoulder exercise and as a simulated draw: measured strength improves, while the gain in score cannot yet be told apart from what shooting itself provides.

Go to: Elastic band exercises improve the score

Studies: Kul et al. 2026, Rukmana et al. 2025, Purnama et al. 2025, Yachsie 2019, Chatla et al. 2023

Electromyography (EMG)

Electromyography records the electrical activity of muscles as they work. Archery studies nearly always use electrodes on the skin, over muscles such as the deltoid, the trapezius and the finger flexors and extensors, to see when and how strongly they fire during the draw, aiming and the release, often synchronising the signal with the moment the clicker falls. The signal shows when a muscle is working and how hard compared with a reference contraction of the same muscle, usually its maximum, but not how much force it produces.

Go to: Surface EMG in archery: what it measures and how to read it

Studies: Hayashi et al. 1976, Nishizono et al. 1987, Watanabe et al. 1993, Clarys et al. 1990, Ertan et al. 2003

EMG median frequency

The frequency that splits the power spectrum of a muscle's electrical signal into two halves of equal power. It tends to fall during a sustained contraction, which makes it the standard fatigue index in electromyography studies; in archers, after many arrows, it falls in some shoulder muscles and not in others.

Go to: Surface EMG in archery: what it measures and how to read it

Studies: Naderza et al. 2024, Hamdan et al. 2022, Ibrahim et al. 2024, Soylu et al. 2006, Studnicki et al. 2024

EMG silent period

A brief stretch in which a muscle's electrical signal drops almost to nothing, recorded with surface electromyography. In archery it has been described mainly in the deltoid, just after the clicker goes off and before the release, more often in high-level archers; the authors read it as the sign of an action prepared in advance, but only one research group has measured it, and never against the score of the individual arrow.

Go to: In expert archers the deltoid falls silent just before the release

Studies: Nishizono et al. 1984, Nishizono et al. 1987, Haywood 2005

End

The group of arrows shot in a row before archers walk forward to score and collect them. The number depends on the format: six in outdoor qualification, three in head-to-head matches, whether set system or cumulative score, and in indoor competition. Many studies read the score end by end, or arrow by arrow within the end.

Go to: Within an end the first arrow scores more than the ones after it

Studies: Borges et al. 2020, Carrillo et al. 2011, Ivanov 2025, Hamdan et al. 2022

Energy expenditure

The energy the body uses over a given time, usually a day, expressed in kilocalories. At competitions it is generally estimated rather than measured, from resting metabolism and the type of activity: at a European Grand Prix followed with six Turkish national-team archers, the estimate ran from about 2,500 to about 4,100 kilocalories a day, depending on how many arrows were shot and how long the day on the field lasted.

Go to: Hydration and nutrition on competition day in archery: a practical guide

Studies: Esen et al. 2024, Tsuji et al. 1984, Singh 2016

Enthesis

The point where a tendon or ligament anchors to bone. In archers, ultrasound examines it for signs of repeated loading, such as thickening, erosions and small bony spurs, but an enthesis that looks altered on a scan is not necessarily a painful one.

Go to: Ultrasound finds more entheseal changes in the elite archer's arm than in sedentary people

Studies: Bakirci et al. 2025

Final pull (expansion)

The last short stretch of the draw, made after reaching anchor while aiming; in Olympic recurve it is a matter of a few millimetres and ends when the clicker snaps. Studies measure it with a strain gauge on the clicker or with accelerometers on the hands and grip, and look at how smooth it is and how it fits with aiming stability.

Go to: The final pull: what happens in the last millimetres before the clicker

Studies: Edelmann‐Nusser et al. 2006, Edelmann-Nusser et al. 2006, Ödek 2024, Leroyer et al. 1993

Fine manual dexterity

The precision and speed of small hand and finger movements, measured with pegboards in which pegs are inserted against the clock, such as the Purdue Pegboard. In studies on archers it is used both to compare them with non-archers and to see whether it goes with score.

Go to: Archers have better fine manual dexterity than people who do not shoot

Studies: Gao et al. 2026, Kalkavan et al. 2025, Ganjave et al. 2021, Eyibil et al. 2025

Fishtailing and porpoising

The arrow's two oscillations in flight about its centre of mass, often visible to the naked eye. In fishtailing, or yaw, the tail swings from side to side, in the horizontal plane; in porpoising, or pitch, it moves up and down, in the vertical plane. A small oscillation is present on every shot and dies away during the flight. When it is large and visible, in tuning fishtailing is linked mainly to spine, lateral tuning (pressure button and centreshot), contact with the rest or button as the arrow passes, and the release; porpoising points to nocking point height and to how the arrow clears the rest. Studies describe both oscillations with models of shaft flex, checked against high-speed video and photographs of the arrow in flight.

Go to: Fishtailing and porpoising: what arrow flight says

Studies: Park 2011, Williams 2025, Zaniewski 2009, Park 2012, Ortiz et al. 2018, Miyazaki et al. 2017, Park 2020

Five all

The score of a set match that ends level, five set points each, after the five scheduled sets. The match is then decided by a shoot-off, one arrow per archer: the higher score wins and, if the scores are level, the arrow closest to the centre.

Go to: Five-all in archery: why it happens, and to whom

Studies: Bucciol et al. 2020

Follow-through

What the archer does after the release: the drawing hand carries on backwards along the line of the draw, the bow arm keeps pushing towards the target and the posture is held for a moment. Studies read it through electromyography, to see how far the muscles stay active compared with aiming, and through shoulder kinematics.

Go to: Keeping the shoulder muscles active through the follow-through is linked to better arrows

Studies: Watanabe et al. 1993, Hah et al. 2008, Yi et al. 2007, Jacquot et al. 2025, Hayashi et al. 1976

Force steadiness

How little force fluctuates while it is held at a set level, for instance half of maximal strength or the archer's own draw weight. It is measured as the variation around that level, usually with the coefficient of variation, and it is a different quality from maximal strength: two equally strong people can hold the same force very differently.

Go to: Bow arm tremor in archery: why it happens and how to reduce it

Studies: Çilli et al. 2025, Rose et al. 2011

Grip pressure

The force the bow hand puts into the grip and how it is spread, read by sensors fitted under the hand. In the two studies that measured it, one of them in kyudo, the better archers repeat it more consistently from arrow to arrow, in recurve only in the vertical plane, while the distribution on its own does not tell you where the arrow will land.

Go to: Better archers apply a more consistent pressure on the grip

Studies: Martin et al. 1992, Koike et al. 2007

Handgrip dynamometry

Measurement of grip strength with a dynamometer squeezed in the hand, expressed in kilograms. It is among the simplest and most widely used tests on archers: higher-level archers have a stronger grip on average, but they are also taller and heavier, and within similar groups grip strength does not track score.

Go to: Higher-level archers have a stronger grip than beginners

Studies: Lau et al. 2020, Ganjave et al. 2021, Sezer 2017, Wahyuningtias et al. 2025, Sarı et al. 2025

Hayake

In kyudo, a release that goes before the aim is complete. In the only questionnaire that has counted shooting disorders it is the most common, and two in three of the practitioners who had developed it had not yet got over it.

Go to: In kyudo, the commonest shooting problem is releasing too early

Studies: Nishio et al. 2021, Ogiso et al. 2023

Heart rate variability (HRV)

It is the variation in the time between one heartbeat and the next, which never stays exactly the same. It is taken from a chest strap or an electrocardiogram and used as an indirect window on the balance between the two branches of the autonomic nervous system: archery studies measure it at rest before training and competition, in the seconds before the release, or before and after a period of training. Here it matters as an indicator of arousal, not as a clinical measure.

Go to: HRV in archery: what it says about recovery and training load

Studies: Lo et al. 2008, Aksüy et al. 2025, Zolkafi et al. 2019, Carrillo et al. 2011, Laborde et al. 2017, Ohsuga et al. 1992, Dal et al. 2024

Heat acclimatisation

The set of adaptations that make the body more tolerant of heat. In archery the evidence comes from a study of Chinese competitions, where long-term exposure is what counts: archers training in the south of the country and those competing in their home province lost fewer points on the hottest days, while exposure to heat in the twelve months before the event showed no effect.

Go to: Wind and weather conditions in archery: how to read and manage them

Studies: Qiu et al. 2021

Heat index

A value that combines temperature and relative humidity to estimate how hot the body feels. In the study of Chinese competitions that uses it, it is calculated from the area's weather stations rather than measured on the shooting line, and it relates to scores more closely than humidity on its own.

Go to: Wind and heat in archery: research since 2011

Studies: Qiu et al. 2021

Holding test

The time an archer can hold the bow at full draw in the shooting position, timed on the bow itself or on a device that reproduces the action, such as a riser fitted with a force sensor. It is among the fitness tests closest to the shot itself, and several strength training studies use it as an outcome alongside the score.

Go to: Field fitness tests

Studies: Prasetyo et al. 2022, Prasetyo et al. 2022, Yachsie 2019, Yachsie et al. 2022, Artiuh et al. 2018

Hypohydration

The state of having lost body water without replacing it. Studies on archers estimate it in two ways: from the weight lost during a session, where the usual threshold is a drop of 2% of body weight, or from how concentrated the urine is.

Go to: One study found that arriving dehydrated at a hot competition does not lower the score

Studies: Savvides et al. 2020, Esen et al. 2024, Arifin et al. 2026

Imagery (VMBR)

Imagery is the mental rehearsal of the shot, usually pictured from the archer's own point of view and with as many sensations as possible: the sight of the target, the grip, the work of the back, the sound of the string. VMBR (Visuo-Motor Behavior Rehearsal) adds a relaxation phase before it. Studies on archers compare it with training alone or with other techniques, measuring the score before and after a few weeks of practice.

Go to: Mental training: what has been tested on archers since 1979

Studies: Zervas et al. 1991, Keskin et al. 2025, Wattimena 2020, Landers et al. 1986, Isar et al. 2022, Tiwari et al. 2026

Individual zones of optimal functioning (IZOF)

It is the model holding that each athlete has their own band of arousal, and more broadly of emotional states, in which they perform best, and that this band can differ from one athlete to another. Finding it means collecting the archer's reported feelings alongside the scores over a long period, competition after competition, and seeing which band the best ends fall into. Data on archers are scarce, and the zone describes a likelihood of shooting well, not a guarantee.

Go to: The ideal level of arousal for shooting well differs from archer to archer

Studies: Medeiros Filho et al. 2008, Haywood 2005, Roy et al. 2015

Inertial measurement unit

A small sensor combining an accelerometer and a gyroscope, fixed to the bow or to the body. It is the easiest measurement to take into the field; a conference abstract comparing it with an optical laboratory system, in six Chinese national team archers, finds acceleration curves of similar shape, but does not yet show whether the two instruments give the same values.

Go to: How archery studies measure aiming

Studies: Lin et al. 2024, Sien Phang et al. 2024

Instrumented riser

A wooden riser linked to a spring and a load sensor, which measures how much force an archer produces in the drawing action and how long it can be held, without shooting any arrows. The registry holds only one such device, developed in Indonesia: it agrees well with the manual test, but its validation rests on a single sample and no one has yet calculated the error of a single trial.

Go to: Field fitness tests

Studies: Prasetyo et al. 2022, Prasetyo et al. 2022, Subekti et al. 2023, Yachsie et al. 2024

Internal and external focus

Where your attention sits during the shot: on the body carrying out the movement (internal focus) or on its effect, such as the sight on the gold (external focus). In other sports an external focus often comes out ahead; in the only archery study that compared the two instructions, scores did not change, although brain activity did.

Go to: Where to put your attention: internal and external focus in archery

Studies: Qin et al. 2025

Internal and external load

External load is the work done: arrows, sessions, hours and draw weight. Internal load is the body's response to that work, read through heart rate, heart rate variability, lactate or perceived exertion on a rating scale. The same number of arrows can weigh differently on different archers, or on the same archer on different days, which is why the two are kept apart.

Go to: How many arrows per week: what the research says about training volume

Studies: Borges et al. 2020, Oliveira 2021, Plews et al. 2013

Isometric endurance

The ability to hold a contraction without movement for as long as possible, as when an archer stays at full draw. Studies on archers measure it as holding time, at full draw or in a plank, or as repetitions of a bodyweight exercise such as push-ups, and often set it against maximal strength; in the little evidence there is, holding capacity does not come out as more important than strength.

Go to: For archers, isometric endurance matters more than maximal strength

Studies: Chatla et al. 2023, Putra et al. 2022, Prasetyo et al. 2022, Saleh et al. 2022

Isotonic drink

A drink containing sugars and salts at a concentration close to that of the body's fluids, designed to replace the water and salts lost in sweat. In archers it has been compared with water across two shooting sessions, looking at score and urine specific gravity.

Go to: Over a shooting session, an isotonic drink instead of water did not change scores

Studies: Qolbi et al. 2026

Joint position sense

The ability to know where a part of the body is without looking at it. Studies on archers measure it at the shoulder: with the eyes closed the arm is taken to an angle and the person has to find it again unaided, and the error is recorded, usually in degrees.

Go to: Kinesiology tape improves an archer's sense of shoulder position

Studies: Athavale et al. 2022, Rajabzadeh et al. 2019, Aslan et al. 2025, Kul et al. 2026

Kinesiology tape

The elastic adhesive tape applied to the skin over a muscle or joint. In archers it has been tried on the shoulder, measuring score and joint position sense, but none of these studies compared it with a sham tape.

Go to: Kinesiology tape on the shoulder improves scores

Studies: Mülazımoğlu et al. 2018, Rajabzadeh et al. 2019, Dinihari et al. 2025

L-theanine

An amino acid found in tea, sold as a supplement with the aim of easing tension. In the study on archers it was taken for four weeks and compared with a placebo, measuring self-reported anxiety and some salivary stress markers in the minutes before competition.

Go to: L-theanine lowers an archer's anxiety and stress markers in the minutes before competition

Studies: Lim 2024

L4-L5 lumbar load

The force acting on the disc between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, mainly as compression. In archers it is not measured directly: it is estimated with ergonomic models that start from trunk posture recorded with inertial sensors, body weight and draw weight, and it is compared with the safety limits used in ergonomics.

Go to: With bows up to 32 pounds the loads on the lower back stay below risk thresholds

Studies: Ji et al. 2024, Ji et al. 2024, Ji et al. 2025

Lateral epicondyle

The bony prominence on the outer side of the elbow where the muscles that extend the wrist and fingers begin. In studies that record archers' complaints, nearly always through a questionnaire, it is the elbow site named most often, while the only ultrasound study of elite archers found thickening more often on the inner side, not the outer one.

Go to: When an archer's elbow hurts, the outer side is the spot most often affected

Studies: Tomizawa et al. 1971, Niestroj et al. 2018, Vasilis et al. 2024, Bakirci et al. 2025

Let-off

In a compound, the share of the peak force that the cams take away at full draw: on aim the archer holds only a fraction of the force needed halfway through the draw. It is read on the draw force curve as the gap between the peak and the holding weight, given as a percentage of the peak, and it depends above all on the cam design; the only direct measurement in the registry puts it at about two thirds.

Go to: A compound bow stores between 70 and 100 joules and sheds about two thirds of the force at full draw

Studies: Meyer 2015, Tiermas 2015, Tiermas 2017

Lower trapezius

The lower part of the trapezius, which draws the shoulder blade down and towards the spine and helps it rotate upwards as the arm rises. In studies on archers it is the muscle chosen for scapular strengthening programmes, judged on shoulder pain, muscle activation and score.

Go to: Strengthening the lower trapezius reduces shoulder pain in archers

Studies: Kim et al. 2020, Liao et al. 2022

Macular pigment

The yellow pigment at the centre of the retina, in the macula, made of lutein, zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin; it filters part of the blue light. In the study on archers it was not measured directly: after supplementation the researchers measured carotenoids in the blood and skin, and contrast sensitivity.

Go to: A macular carotenoid supplement with omega-3 raises scores in precision sports

Studies: Sivaperuman et al. 2026

Manual therapy

The group of techniques in which the therapist uses their hands to move a joint or the surrounding tissues, from slow mobilisation to manipulation. In archers it has been tried after a long series of arrows, using electromyography and a myotonometer to check whether the muscles of the shoulder and arm returned to their starting values.

Go to: A session of manual therapy after shooting did not help the archer's shoulder recover

Studies: Studnicki et al. 2024, Studnicki et al. 2026

Marked and actual draw weight

The figure marked on the limbs applies at a reference draw length set by the manufacturer. An archer with a shorter draw pulls less than that figure and one with a longer draw pulls more, and the gap grows the further the draw length is from the reference; on a recurve the actual weight also depends on the riser the limbs are fitted to and on how the limb bolts are set. That is why the actual draw weight is measured at the archer's own draw length, with a scale.

Go to: The draw weight marked on the bow differs from what the archer actually pulls at their own draw length

Studies: Eckert et al. 1967, Tsuji et al. 1981, Kuch et al. 2025

Mean score per arrow

The total divided by the number of arrows shot. It allows rounds with different formats and arrow counts to be compared, and many studies use it as their outcome measure or report it to describe the level of their sample.

Go to: In studies of competitive archers the mean score per arrow sits around seven points, not nine

Studies: Qiu et al. 2021, Li et al. 2024, Bucciol et al. 2020

Menarche

A girl's first menstrual period. In girls who train at a high level from an early age it can come later than average, so it is recorded together with growth data; in archery there is a single data point, a small group of archers within a study of athletes at a sports high school.

Go to: In young women archers menarche does not come late, as it does in many other athletes

Studies: Fujii et al. 2011

Mental toughness

The ability to stay committed, focused and self-assured as pressure rises; studies measure it with questionnaires in which athletes describe themselves. In the study of Indian university archers the parts were commitment and motivation, concentration, control under pressure and self-confidence. There the medallists reported more toughness than the non-medallists, but the comparison was made after the medals had been won, on a single sample and in a questionable journal, so it describes who won without explaining why.

Go to: Archers who win medals have greater mental toughness

Studies: Amit 2026, Cahyo et al. 2025

Metabolic equivalent (MET)

A way of expressing the intensity of an activity as a multiple of resting energy use: one MET is what the body uses sitting still. Recent studies on archers take MET values from published tables to estimate the energy cost of a competition day, without measuring it; older Japanese studies used a different index, which counts only the energy used above rest, and the two numbers should not be confused.

Go to: Archery practice is a light-intensity physical activity

Studies: Esen et al. 2024, Esen et al. 2025, Tsuji et al. 1984

Mindfulness

A practice that trains attention to the present moment, accepting thoughts and sensations without judging them, usually taught in programmes lasting a few weeks. In archers it shifts some mental skills and not others, results on attention do not agree, and only a few studies have a comparison group.

Go to: A mindfulness programme improves an archer's attentional control

Studies: Terzioğlu et al. 2020, Wu et al. 2021, Lo et al. 2024, Lu et al. 2021, Valentine et al. 2024

Motare

In kyudo, the freeze in which, once at kai, the aiming position at full draw, the arrow will not leave when the archer wants it to. Two small Japanese studies, with six cases between them, find in it the features of focal dystonia, a movement disorder tied to one specific task: this describes what they measured and is not a diagnosis for the reader.

Go to: In kyudo the release block resembles a task-specific focal dystonia

Studies: Nishio et al. 2021, Ogiso et al. 2023

Movement variability

How much the movement changes from one arrow to the next, measured on muscles, joints or timing. Between beginners and experts it falls on most measures, though not all, and it does not disappear: on the best arrows of elite archers, shoulders, elbows and wrists vary in ways that cancel each other out and keep the arrow pointing the same way, so what matters most is the variability that moves the arrow.

Go to: Expert archers repeat the shot with less variability than beginners

Studies: Serrien et al. 2018, Soylu et al. 2006, Martin et al. 1990, Zhang et al. 2024

Muscle economy

Producing the same movement with less muscle activation. While aiming, elite archers nearly always use the muscles of the fingers, arms and trunk less than less skilled archers do, but not every muscle: the middle and lower trapezius, which hold the shoulder blade on the draw side, work harder in the elite, so it looks less like an overall saving than a shift of the work towards the shoulder blades.

Go to: While aiming, elite archers activate their muscles less than intermediate archers

Studies: Simsek et al. 2014, Shinohara et al. 2018, Jacquot et al. 2025, Jacquot 2026

Muscle synergies

A muscle synergy is a group of muscles that fire together, with the same pattern over time, as if the nervous system controlled them as a single unit. Studies extract synergies by breaking down the EMG signals of several muscles mathematically, then look at how many groups are enough to describe the shot and how consistently they recur from one arrow to the next. A second approach measures how far the groups compensate for one another to keep an outcome steady, such as the position of the centre of pressure.

Go to: Muscle synergies in archery: the motor patterns of elite archers

Studies: Matsunaga et al. 2017, Song et al. 2023, Vendrame et al. 2021

N1 potential

The first negative wave in the brain's electrical response to a sudden stimulus such as a sound, recorded with EEG a moment after the stimulus. In archery it has been measured at the snap of the clicker: in one study of high-level recurve archers it was larger on arrows that landed close to the centre of the archer's own group, but only when that central zone was drawn tightly.

Go to: The brain's response to the clicker is larger on the arrows that land near the centre

Studies: Ertan et al. 2021

Neurofeedback

The same principle as biofeedback, applied to the brain's electrical activity as read by EEG. In the only controlled trial on archers whose original data can be read, the trained signal changes but the score does not, while an improvement appears in an older study known only through a review: for now it is a possibility still to be tested, not an established method.

Go to: EEG neurofeedback improves an archer's score

Studies: Paul et al. 2012, Corrado et al. 2024

Nocking point

The spot on the string where the nock clips on, marked by brass or tied nock locators. Its height relative to the rest decides whether the push of the string runs in line with the arrow's axis: if it is off, the tail kicks up or down as the arrow leaves. During the draw it does not travel in a straight line: with the arrow above the bow's centre, as is almost always the case, it rises as the bow is drawn, and how far it strays depends on the bow's geometry. That a nock wobbling on the nocking point makes impact height vary is a hypothesis nobody has yet measured.

Go to: Bow tuning in archery: how to tune your bow, backed by science

Studies: Park 2010, Zaniewski 2009, Park 2013, Nakamura et al. 2019

Optical aim tracking

It is the moment-by-moment record of the point on the target at which the bow is aiming. The system used in studies was developed for target shooting: an optoelectronic unit fixed to the riser follows where the bow is pointing and returns the aiming trace for the last moments before the release, from which researchers work out how far and how fast the aim moves.

Go to: How archery studies measure aiming

Studies: Edelmann‐Nusser et al. 2006, Ganter et al. 2010

Overuse injury

A complaint that does not come from a blow or a single incident but from repeating the movement, arrow after arrow, until the tissue can no longer cope with the load. In studies of archers, mostly based on questionnaires, it is the most frequently reported type of injury and mainly affects the shoulder.

Go to: In archery the shoulder is the most common site of overuse injury

Studies: Niestroj et al. 2018, Prine et al. 2016, Kim et al. 2021, Gimigliano et al. 2021

Pain scale (VAS and NRS)

Pain is measured by asking the person to mark it on a line running from no pain to the worst imaginable (VAS) or to give it a score from zero to ten (NRS). It is a value reported by the archer, not an instrument reading, and it is the measure used by studies that test exercises or treatments for the shoulder.

Go to: In competitive archers shoulder pain is common but almost always mild, and it comes back

Studies: Kim et al. 2020, Kohar et al. 2025

Percentage of maximal force

The ratio between the force needed to hold the bow at full draw and the maximal force the archer can produce in the same action, given as a percentage. Among fifteen recurve archers ranging from sub-elite to elite, the bow came to just over a third of that maximum; in a small study of university archers, holding the shooting position to exhaustion took between 40 and 50 per cent of maximal force and lasted under a minute, which is why the figure comes into discussions of draw weight. It should not be confused with the percentage of the maximal EMG signal, which measures how strongly a muscle is activated rather than force.

Go to: Holding the shooting position demands between forty and fifty per cent of maximal force, and at that level the muscle fails in under a minute

Studies: Leroyer et al. 1993, Rose et al. 2011, Clarys et al. 1990, Erkek et al. 2010

Phases of the shot

The division of the shot into phases, usually raising the bow, drawing, anchoring, aiming with the final pull, release and follow-through, which nearly every study uses to time the action. Only a few seconds pass between the draw and the release, but each study sets the start and end of the phases in its own way, so durations are not always comparable.

Go to: The phases of the shot last only a few seconds: about one second to draw, one or two to aim

Studies: Takai et al. 2009, Lau et al. 2023, Zhang et al. 2024, Ahmad et al. 2014

Postural sway and centre of pressure

Even while aiming, the body is never completely still: postural sway is that small, continuous movement, and the centre of pressure is the point under the feet at which all the weight pressing on the ground can be taken to act. Studies record it with a force plate or a pressure mat and measure how far it travels, forwards and backwards and from side to side, in the seconds before and after the release.

Go to: Posturography: the centre of pressure

Studies: Fan et al. 2025, Chalkley et al. 2016, Sarro et al. 2020, Spratford et al. 2017

Pre-shot cardiac deceleration

The slowing of the heartbeat in the seconds around the release, first described in 1990 and only partly confirmed since: one study does not see it during aiming, while others place the lowest point after the arrow has gone. It also raises the question of whether it pays to release between beats, in diastole.

Go to: An archer's heart slows down in the seconds before the release

Studies: Keast et al. 1990, Salazar et al. 1990, Guru et al. 2020, Takai et al. 2009

Prevalence and incidence

Prevalence is the proportion of archers in a group who have, or have had, a complaint over a given period; incidence counts new cases against the time spent shooting, usually per thousand hours of exposure. Almost every archery study measures prevalence through a questionnaire, and the few hourly rates depend on how the hours of shooting are estimated, so comparisons with other sports remain fragile.

Go to: Archery is a sport with a low risk of injury

Studies: Prine et al. 2016, Grover et al. 2017, Niestroj et al. 2018, Gimigliano et al. 2021, Subramaniam et al. 2026

Prohibited list

The list the World Anti-Doping Agency updates every year, stating for each substance whether it is banned at all times, only in competition or only in certain sports. Archery is named in the entry for beta blockers, which are banned in this sport; other substances, such as nicotine, stay off the list and are only monitored.

Go to: Many archery coaches know little about anti-doping rules

Studies: Kuswahyudi et al. 2020, Hung et al. 2021, Ergen et al. 2021

Qualification round

The round that opens a competition and sets the bracket for the head-to-head matches: at World Archery outdoor events it is now 72 arrows, shot with no direct opponent. Many studies of competition data use the qualification score as a measure of level, because results from major events are public and everyone shoots the same number of arrows without depending on how anyone else shoots.

Go to: The top qualifier is the best archer once in seven

Studies: Park et al. 2014, Park 2016, Qiu et al. 2021

Quiet eye

The final fixation of the gaze on the centre of the target before the release, measured in milliseconds with an eye tracker or with electrooculography. In expert archers it lasts longer and starts earlier than in beginners; that it lengthens when aiming gets harder has been seen in a single laboratory study.

Go to: Quiet Eye and Visual Training: the Science of Stable Aiming

Studies: Gonzalez et al. 2017, Söğüt et al. 2025, Söğüt et al. 2025, Saito et al. 1994

Range of motion

How far a joint moves from one end of its range to the other. It is usually measured in degrees, with a goniometer or an inclinometer; for the shoulder some studies also use the distance between the hands brought together behind the back. At the archer's shoulder studies look at flexion, abduction, extension and the two rotations, but values vary a great deal from one examiner to another, so figures from different studies are hard to compare.

Go to: Measuring pain and mobility: scales and goniometers

Studies: Kohar et al. 2025, Schmitt et al. 2021, Kul et al. 2026

Rating of perceived exertion

How hard the archer rates the effort being made, marked on a numerical or visual scale. In studies of simulated competitions it is collected at regular intervals, alongside measures such as blood lactate, to estimate how demanding a round is; it is also used to compare different settings, such as real shooting and virtual reality.

Go to: Shooting a full competition puts little physical strain on a trained archer

Studies: Borges et al. 2020, Oliveira 2021, Dal et al. 2024

Release aid

The device that holds the string in place of the fingers and lets it go with a trigger or a rotation of the hand. The string leaves from a single point instead of sliding sideways off the fingertips, and in the only laboratory comparison, on a recurve, the arrow flexed far less than when shot by archers using their fingers. It is standard on compound bows, while recurve rules do not allow it.

Go to: With a mechanical release the arrow flexes far less than it does off the fingers

Studies: Ando et al. 2014, Park 2012, Park 2011

Riser and limbs

The riser is the central body of the bow, with the grip, the sight window, the limb pockets and the accessory fittings; the limbs are the two blades that bend and store the energy. On a recurve the draw weight and the shape of the draw force curve depend mainly on the limbs, while the riser has to stay stiff and light: optimisation studies calculate by computer how much material can be removed for only a small loss of stiffness.

Go to: A competition riser can be made a fifth lighter with almost no loss of stiffness

Studies: Edelmann‐nusser et al. 2004, Fauzi et al. 2016, Kooi 1991

RMSSD

A heart rate variability index calculated from the differences between consecutive beats, which estimates vagal tone and is little affected by breathing. It holds up even on very short recordings, whereas the ratio of low to high frequency power, still common in studies, does not measure the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems as was long assumed. The guidance comes from general psychophysiology: the two indices have not yet been tested against each other in experienced archers, and the only study to set them side by side, in people who had never shot before, found that RMSSD told real and virtual shooting apart while the frequency ratio did not.

Go to: To measure an archer's heart rate variability you need RMSSD, not the ratio between the bands

Studies: Laborde et al. 2017, Aksüy et al. 2025, Dal et al. 2024

Rotator cuff

The group of deep shoulder muscles (supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor and subscapularis) that keeps the head of the humerus centred in the socket. In archers it works to stabilise the shoulder through the draw and the hold at anchor, and studies assess it with strength tests, ultrasound or computer models.

Go to: Rotator cuff strengthening prevents shoulder injuries in archers

Studies: Reddy et al. 2015, You et al. 2016, Grover et al. 2017, Zanjani et al. 2022

Rumination

Thoughts that keep going back to mistakes just made, or to those of past competitions, when you should be preparing the next arrow. Studies link it both to lower scores and to more reported collapses in competition, but these are snapshots taken at a single point, so they cannot show which comes first.

Go to: Archers who dwell on past mistakes shoot lower scores

Studies: Landers et al. 1986, Diotaiuti et al. 2021, Clarke et al. 2020, Wu et al. 2021

Salivary alpha-amylase

An enzyme in saliva that rises when the sympathetic nervous system is activated, used in studies as a stress marker because it can be collected without a blood sample. At archery competitions it climbs quickly in the minutes before the start, while cortisol, the other marker taken from saliva, comes later; its links with scores are observed associations, which do not show whether stress harms the shooting or a round going badly drives the marker up.

Go to: Before competition, stress markers in archers' saliva rise, and stay higher in those who shoot worse

Studies: Lim 2016, Lim 2018, Lim 2024

Salivary IgA

The class A antibodies (immunoglobulin A) found in saliva, a first line of defence for the nose and throat. In endurance sports they tend to fall after heavy loads, which is why they are used as a marker of load; in the two studies on archers a competition did not lower them.

Go to: A day of competition does not lower an archer's salivary IgA

Studies: Oliveira 2021, Souza 2023

Scapular dyskinesis

A movement of the shoulder blade that departs from the expected pattern as the arm is raised and lowered. The test used in archers judges it by eye, from behind, while the person raises the arms several times holding a light weight; it has been found more often in more experienced, higher-level archers, but on its own it does not say whether it is a risk to the shoulder or an adaptation to shooting.

Go to: Experienced archers show scapular dyskinesis more often than beginners

Studies: Ganjave et al. 2021

Scapular stabilisation

Work on the muscles that hold the shoulder blade in place and guide its movement, with the lower trapezius foremost. In studies on archers it improves shoulder function and the balance between upper and lower trapezius, while the results on score do not agree.

Go to: Scapular stabilisation exercises improve score

Studies: Kim et al. 2020, Liao et al. 2022, Yamanarda et al. 2025, Kim et al. 2018

Seeding

The position qualification gives each archer in the bracket, which decides who meets whom in the head-to-head matches. It weighs on the final result: in a study of major international events, gold went to an archer seeded in the top sixteen nine times out of ten, although a seed is still the outcome of a single measurement, with its own margin of error.

Go to: The top qualifier is the best archer once in seven

Studies: Park 2016, Park et al. 2014

Self-regulation

The ability to notice for yourself what is not working and put it right, in training or in competition. In a study of French national team archers, one typical response to a disappointing end was to look for the fix alone, by relaxing, rehearsing the shot mentally and using self-talk; another was to go to the coach and set their own reading of the end against the coach's.

Go to: After a poor end, one of the ways elite archers respond is to look for the fix on their own, without going to the coach

Studies: d'Arripe-Longueville et al. 2001, Roy et al. 2011

Self-talk

The phrases you say to yourself while shooting. Studies separate those that give a technical instruction from those that encourage or psych you up: both kinds have been tried on archers, in small trials with weaknesses of method, and in a large questionnaire study how much archers talked to themselves in competition was not linked to their scores.

Go to: Instructional self-talk improves the score

Studies: Landers et al. 1986, Isar et al. 2022, Tiwari et al. 2026

Set system

The match format for recurve and barebow head-to-head matches. In individual matches each set is three arrows per archer: the winner of a set takes two set points, a tied set gives one to each archer, and the first to six wins. The arrow total does not decide the match, so an archer can outscore the opponent and still lose; in compound, by contrast, every arrow is still added up.

Go to: I scored more and lost: how the set system works

Studies: Li et al. 2024, Bucciol et al. 2020

Shaft straightness

How far a shaft departs from a perfectly straight line, usually stated by manufacturers in thousandths of an inch. Machine tests give different answers: with shafts bent on purpose or fresh off the production line, the straighter ones gave tighter groups, while within a modern competition set that was already very straight, straightness did not explain where the arrows landed.

Go to: A straighter shaft gives tighter impacts

Studies: Jeong et al. 2014, Park et al. 2017, Park 2019, Kuch et al. 2025, Meyer 2015

Shoot-off

The single arrow, one per archer, that decides a tied individual match: in recurve after a 5-5 finish in the set system, in compound when the scores are level. The higher ring wins and, with equal rings, the arrow closest to the centre. Analyses of international competition use it to study performance under pressure, since it is one shot that decides everything.

Go to: The shoot-off in archery: what one arrow decides

Studies: Bucciol et al. 2020, Park 2016

Shooting machine

A rig that holds the bow, draws the string and releases it the same way every time, so that the archer is taken out of the experiment when arrows or components are compared. The best-built machines group very tightly and, with redesigned mechanical fingers, come close to the arrow flex an archer produces, but direct comparisons with archers involve no more than two of them.

Go to: A shooting machine reproduces the arrow's behaviour with a human archer

Studies: Pekalski 1990, Lin et al. 2009, Wakatabe et al. 2015, Ohara et al. 2020, Kuch et al. 2025

Shoulder proprioception

It is the ability to sense, without looking, where the shoulder is and how it is moving. Studies usually measure it as joint position sense: with eyes closed, the archer has to bring the arm back to an angle set a moment earlier, and the error is measured. The interventions tested on archers range from balance work and kinesiology taping to mobility exercises with resistance bands.

Go to: Balance, core and proprioception: the interventions, year by year

Studies: Acaröz et al. 2026, Rajabzadeh et al. 2019, Kul et al. 2026

Side plank

A holding test on one side, resting on a forearm and the feet with the body in line, timed until the position gives way. In a single study of young elite archers it is the only one of the clinical trunk tests tried that relates to how much the deep back muscles thicken on contraction, as seen on ultrasound, and only when it is held on the non-dominant side.

Go to: Of the clinical trunk tests, only the side plank is linked to how well an archer activates the deep back muscles

Studies: Dar et al. 2025

Specific and variable practice

Specific practice means training in the same conditions as competition, for example always at the competition distances; variable practice means deliberately changing the conditions, such as the distance, from one end to the next. In archery, research has mainly asked whether accuracy built at one distance carries over to others, and whether it pays to train at a fixed or a changing distance. A study of recurve archers found that competition distances, despite years of training, sit almost entirely on the curve drawn from the distances they did not train at.

Go to: Distance, group size and score

Studies: Czyż et al. 2016, Singer 1966, Saing et al. 2022

Specific strength

Strength trained in the movement and joint angles of the shot, with the bow, resistance bands or devices that reproduce the draw, as distinct from general gym strength. Studies on archers compare the two kinds of work, and their combination, by looking at score and holding time.

Go to: Specific strength for archers: 8 exercises and why they matter

Studies: Chatla et al. 2023, Fauzan 2024, Yachsie 2019

Spine variation around the shaft

Turn a shaft about its own axis and the spine changes slightly. In a study of a single model of competition shaft, almost every shaft had a stiffer side and a softer one, but on a rig that bent them all the way round the difference proved small and varied a great deal from one shaft to the next; shot by a machine, the shafts with the largest difference landed further right, while orienting the fletching to the stiff side did not move the impact by any measurable amount.

Go to: Shafts have a stiffer side and a softer side: stiffness changes as you turn them around their axis

Studies: Kuch et al. 2025

Spirometry: FVC and FEV1

The test in which a person blows as hard as possible into a mouthpiece connected to a spirometer: FVC, forced vital capacity, is all the air that can be pushed out after a full breath, and FEV1 is the part that comes out in the first second. Studies on archers use them to describe lung function and to see whether it relates to score.

Go to: In archers a larger lung capacity goes with higher scores

Studies: Bostanci et al. 2021, Eswaramoorthi et al. 2018

Stabilisers, side rods and TFCs

The long front stabiliser, the side rods mounted on a V-bar and TFCs, elastomer torque compensators fitted between riser and stabilisers that were widespread in the 1980s. Together they add inertia to the bow and damp its vibration: a laboratory test finds smaller and more consistent sideways movement while the arrow is still on the string, although it stays under a millimetre in every set-up, and a model suggests that the spread and angle of the side rods change how much they damp. On a barebow their place is taken by weights screwed to the riser.

Go to: Stabilisers in archery: what they actually do, beyond the folklore

Studies: Leonardi et al. 1987, Zaniewski 2012, Park et al. 2012, Pietra et al. 2023, Mizuno et al. 2017

Stance

The position of the feet on the shooting line: square, open, closed or oblique. Among the world's leading archers almost only the square and open stances are seen. In the only study of qualified archers changing it did not lower scores, while in one of complete beginners the square stance gave the best results and the oblique the worst.

Go to: In experienced archers, changing the foot position does not lower the score

Studies: Pukhov 2023, Stone 2007, Shafizadeh et al. 2024

State and trait anxiety

State anxiety is what you feel at a given moment, before an end for instance; trait anxiety is your general tendency to feel anxious. Studies of archers measure them with different questionnaires, and a link with score shows up mainly for competition anxiety measured shortly before shooting, though not in every sample, and not for trait anxiety: mixing the two up makes results that measure different things look contradictory.

Go to: More anxious archers shoot lower scores in competition

Studies: Landers et al. 1986, Lim 2016, Serin et al. 2019, Shaari et al. 2023, Rhyme et al. 2025

Static and dynamic spine

Spine is the stiffness of the shaft. Static spine is measured by resting the shaft on two supports and hanging a weight from the centre: the resulting deflection gives the spine number, which is higher for softer shafts. Dynamic spine is how the arrow actually flexes as it leaves the bow, and it also depends on draw weight, arrow length, point weight and release; studies investigate it with vibration tests and numerical models.

Go to: The archer's paradox: the physics of the flexing arrow

Studies: Kuch et al. 2025, Zanevskyy 2001, Fish et al. 2019, Williams 2025, Rieckmann et al. 2012, Zaniewski 2009, Park 2012

Stress fracture

A bone injury that builds up from many repeated loads, each too small to break the bone on its own. In archery only one case has been described, in the first rib on the bow side of a young kyudo practitioner.

Go to: Archery can cause a stress fracture of the first rib on the bow side

Studies: Kubota et al. 1992

String strands

The threads, usually of synthetic fibre, that together make up the bowstring. A lighter string leaves a larger share of the energy to the arrow, and the material changes the launch speed slightly as well as how quickly the bow's vibration dies away. On the number of strands laboratory tests disagree, because removing strands makes the string lighter but also less stiff.

Go to: The string's material and number of strands change the arrow's speed

Studies: Lin et al. 2009, Kooi 2007, Hosoya et al. 2001, Hickman 1937

Tail weight

The weight at the back of the arrow, meaning the nock and fletching. In a mathematical model of the recurve, lightening the fletching shifted the tune between bow and arrow far more than taking weight off the point, despite removing less mass; it is a calculated result that nobody has yet checked on the bench or on the target.

Go to: For tuning a recurve arrow, the weight at the tail matters more than the point weight

Studies: Park 2012

Target panic

Difficulty executing the shot the way you intend, which shows up at the moment of aiming and release: some archers cannot let go, some cannot get through the clicker, some cannot get to anchor, and some cannot bring the sight onto the centre or hold it there. The literature knows it from accounts, interviews and questionnaires rather than measurements of the shot, and the idea that it starts when the release loses its automaticity, de-automatisation, is Matteo's hypothesis, not a conclusion of the studies.

Go to: Target panic in archery: what it is and how to manage it

Studies: Prior et al. 2019, Rooke 2023, Haywood 2005, Clarke et al. 2020, Ogiso et al. 2023, Priambudi et al. 2023

Test-retest reliability

How closely a measurement repeated on the same people, a short time apart and under the same conditions, returns similar values. It is usually expressed as a correlation coefficient between the first and second sessions, often the intraclass one, and it is one of the first figures to look for in any test that claims to measure an archer's level.

Go to: How we read a study

Studies: Ichsandi et al. 2025, Ertan et al. 2005

Thumb release

Holding and releasing the string with the thumb, often protected by a ring, rather than with the three-finger Mediterranean draw: it is typical of Asian and Middle Eastern traditions and of horseback archery. The only comparison in experienced archers finds the lowest average activity in the draw-arm muscles with the thumb, but muscle by muscle the differences are mostly not significant.

Go to: A thumb grip on the string is less tiring than a finger grip

Studies: Clarys et al. 1990, Stone 2007, Ariffin et al. 2018

Tremor and force steadiness

Tremor is the fast, involuntary oscillation of the bow arm, and with it the bow, while the archer holds the aim. Force steadiness is the ability to keep a force constant: in the laboratory the participant holds a set fraction of their maximum force and the study measures how much the value fluctuates. Tremor is usually recorded with accelerometers on the bow or the arm, steadiness with a force sensor.

Go to: Bow arm tremor in archery: why it happens and how to reduce it

Studies: Çilli et al. 2025, Ogasawara et al. 2021, Mizuno et al. 2017, Lin et al. 2010

Urine specific gravity

How concentrated urine is compared with water: a high value is read as a sign that the body is short of fluid. It is an indirect measure, but it is the one most used in the field in studies on archers' hydration; it is read with a refractometer or with reagent strips, and the threshold for calling an archer dehydrated differs from one study to another.

Go to: Many archers arrive at training already dehydrated and drink less than they need

Studies: Savvides et al. 2020, Esen et al. 2024, Qolbi et al. 2026

Vanes, feathers and Spin Wings

The surfaces glued at the back of the arrow that bring it back into line with the airflow: vanes are plastic, feathers are natural, and Spin Wings are thin, pre-curved plastic film vanes that set the arrow spinning and are widely used on recurve arrows. The type of fletching changes how quickly the arrow straightens, how fast it spins and how much energy it loses over the first few metres, but makes little difference to its launch speed.

Go to: Vane type changes how quickly the arrow settles in flight

Studies: Hirano 2019, Okawa et al. 2013, Ortiz et al. 2020, Lepers et al. 2020, Lin et al. 2009

Video pose estimation

Software that locates the archer's joints in ordinary video, with no markers on the body. It is used to time the phases of the shot and to follow the paths of the shoulders, elbows and wrists, but how accurate it is on shooting footage, with the hand and string close to the face, has barely been measured.

Go to: Machine learning and computer vision in archery research

Studies: Prasetya et al. 2026, Lee et al. 2024, Park et al. 2025, Muslim et al. 2025

Wind drift

The sideways movement of the arrow caused by wind during its flight. What counts is the part of the wind blowing across the shooting line, and according to the models the drift grows roughly with the square of the distance and linearly with wind speed; it also depends on the diameter and weight of the arrow and on how cleanly it leaves the bow.

Go to: Wind and weather conditions in archery: how to read and manage them

Studies: Park 2011, Park 2020, Shen et al. 2025, Ortiz et al. 2018

Wind tunnel and CFD

Two ways of studying air resistance on the arrow. In a wind tunnel the shaft is held still in a controlled airflow (in the Japanese studies in the registry it is suspended by magnetic fields, so that no support disturbs the flow), while computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculates the flow by computer; much of what is known about points, fletchings and the boundary layer comes from these methods or from free-flight tests, not from the target.

Go to: Point shape and vane type change the arrow's aerodynamic drag a great deal

Studies: Komori et al. 2011, Miyazaki et al. 2012, Matsumoto et al. 2015, Büyükcura et al. 2024, Shen et al. 2025

Worry and somatic anxiety

Worry is the part of anxiety that lives in your thoughts; somatic anxiety is the part you feel in your body, in your hands, your breathing, your stomach. Before competing, archers usually report slightly more worry, but the two components nearly always rise and fall together. As for choking in competition, the only study that links them, using questionnaires alone, finds somatic anxiety feeding rumination, and rumination explaining a small part of how often archers say they choke.

Go to: Before competition worry weighs on archers more than somatic anxiety

Studies: Shaari et al. 2023, Rhyme et al. 2025, Ahmad et al. 2023, Diotaiuti et al. 2021, Miyamoto 1994

Yips

The name used in precision sports for the involuntary movements, freezes and jerks that disrupt a long-practised skill. Among archers it mostly goes by the name of target panic; in kyudo, tradition gives names to four distinct shooting disorders, and in the only study to have counted them the most common is the early release.

Go to: In kyudo, nearly two archers in three have had at least one kind of release problem

Studies: Nishio et al. 2021, Ogiso et al. 2023, Clarke et al. 2020

Yumi, tenouchi and tsunomi

The yumi is the kyudo bow, long and asymmetric, with the grip below the middle, so the two limbs bend differently. Tenouchi is the way the left hand holds and twists the grip; tsunomi is the push from the base of the left thumb that twists the bow and, at the release, lets it turn in the hand (yugaeri). The twist is there to send straight an arrow that sits on the right side of the bow, and bench tests show that changing it moves the point of impact sideways.

Go to: On the asymmetric Japanese bow the two limbs deform differently

Studies: Shoji et al. 2013, Ohtsuki et al. 2019, Koike et al. 2007, Kobayashi et al. 1997, Yamamoto et al. 2008

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