Stabilisers reduce the bow's lateral movement while the arrow is still on the string

The summary today

Only one laboratory experiment has tested the question directly, and the answer is yes, though on a scale that cuts the matter down to size. With one Italian national-team archer, fifteen shots per set-up and the force on the pressure button sampled at 2,500 Hz, twenty-six milliseconds after release the bow had moved sideways by 0.94 mm with no stabilisers, 0.84 mm with soft TFCs and 0.70 mm with hard ones, every comparison being significant. In absolute terms, though, it stays under a millimetre even with no stabiliser at all: what really changes is the consistency, because without stabilisers the shot-to-shot spread almost doubles. A model of an Olympic bow with a commercial stabiliser shows where the gain comes from, the long rod flexing about a millimetre upwards and partly cancelling the riser's rotation. Where the picture stops is the next step. Films of sixteen world-level archers shooting their own set-ups find no measurable movement of the bow while the arrow is on the string, at most a millimetre sideways and less than a tenth of a degree of rotation, and without a comparison with and without stabilisers that stillness cannot be credited to the stabilisers. On the barebow there is a single test, of weights fitted to the riser, which greatly reduce the bow's movement over the shot as a whole but say nothing about those first milliseconds. Nobody has yet linked the bow's movement in those milliseconds to where the arrow ends up.

Also phrased as: "what stabilisers are for"; "the long rod holds the bow still"; "stabilisers and bow torque"; "soft or hard tfcs"; "how much the bow moves at release"

Evidence

• 1987
  For Equipment tests Published later

  A leading Italian national-team archer, a 66 inch, 52 lb Hoyt TD4, three stabiliser set-ups of fifteen shots each, button force sampled at 2,500 Hz: twenty-six milliseconds after release the bow's lateral displacement is 0.94 mm with no stabilisers, 0.84 mm with soft TFCs and 0.70 mm with hard ones, every comparison at p below 0.05. It has to be read together with the absolute figure, because even with no stabiliser at all it stays under a millimetre; the large difference is in the consistency, with a standard deviation of 0.35 mm without stabilisers against 0.20 mm with the soft ones and 0.25 mm with the hard ones. The same work describes the phases of the movement: up to about 22 milliseconds the arrow bends and loads the button, between 22 and 26 the button and the arrow spring back and the push falls to zero as they part, and between 26 and 30 the bow's lateral movement comes mainly from its own internal oscillations, set off by the force peak on the button.

  Reduction of Lateral Bow Displacement Using Different Torque Flight Compensators and Stabilizers in Archery · L. M. Leonardi, C. Gallozzi, A. Pace, A. Dal Monte

• 2012
  For Model Published later

  A simulation of an Olympic bow with a commercial multi-rod stabiliser, with no archers: while the string drives the arrow, the free end of the long rod flexes about a millimetre upwards and completes only a fifth of an oscillation, and the share of that flexing which cancels the riser's rotation is worth 1.2 mm. The motion is monotonic, so the process takes place below the system's resonant frequency. It says where the gain comes from, not how much of it shows on the target.

  Recoil and Vibration in an Archery Bow Equipped with a Multi-Rod Stabilizer · Igor Zaniewski

• 2012
  Context Archers Published later

  Sixteen world-level recurve archers filmed at 4,000 frames per second with their own set-ups: while the arrow is on the string the bow's lateral displacement is at most a millimetre and its rotation certainly less than a tenth of a degree, while the sight and the stabilisers flex visibly only after the arrow has left. There is no comparison with and without stabilisers, so that stillness cannot be credited to them.

  High-speed video analysis of arrow behaviour during the power stroke of a recurve archery bow · James L Park, Oliver Logan

• 2012
  Context Model Published later

  A model of a 166 N recurve bow with an X10 600 arrow: the bow weighs 3.63 kg against the arrow's 21.65 g, more than a hundred and fifty times as much, with part of the bow arm's mass on top of that. In the model, the effect of the lateral velocity the arrow imparts to the bow on the arrow's own behaviour turns out to be very small. It explains why there is little to be gained in those milliseconds.

  Arrow behaviour in the lateral plane during and immediately following the power stroke of a recurve archery bow · James L Park

• 2023
  Context Archers Published later

  A barebow in eleven configurations of riser weights, with an Arduino MPU6050 inertial sensor next to the pressure button, four shots per configuration, and seven club archers rating how the shot felt: with no weights the recorded lateral displacement is 139.2 mm, against 13.0 mm with 200 g in the centre and 350 g low and 16.9 mm with 250 g in the centre and 200 g low, and the mean displacement is 197.4 mm against 59.8 and 86.8 mm. The naked bow's dynamic behaviour scores 2 out of 5, the best configurations 4. The paper does not restrict the measurement to the milliseconds while the arrow is on the string, barebow weights are not stabilisers, and values this large from a sensor of this kind read as a comparison between configurations rather than as literal millimetres.

  Analysis of preferred weight configuration for barebow shooting style · Francesco Pietra, Philip Loveday, Robert Reid

Status history

1. 1986 Not studied Nobody in the registry's bibliography has yet measured how far the bow moves sideways in the milliseconds while the arrow is still on the string, either with stabilisers or without.
2. 1987 Reported The first measurement arrives, and it compares three set-ups on the same archer: with no stabilisers the bow moves 0.94 mm at twenty-six milliseconds, 0.84 mm with soft TFCs and 0.70 mm with hard ones, and without stabilisers the shot-to-shot variability almost doubles. It is a bench test on the equipment, which in this domain counts as direct evidence, but on one archer and in one study: reported.
3. 2012 Reported Two pieces arrive that do not shift the status. The simulation of an Olympic bow with a commercial stabiliser shows the long rod flexing about a millimetre and partly cancelling the riser's rotation, but it is a model. Films of sixteen world-level archers shooting their own set-ups show the bow not moving measurably while the arrow is on the string, and the arithmetic explains why, since the bow weighs more than a hundred and fifty times the arrow. Without a comparison with and without stabilisers that stillness cannot be credited to the stabilisers, so the status holds.
4. 2023 Reported The first figures on the barebow come from a test of weights fitted to the riser: with no weights the sensor next to the button records a lateral displacement many times larger than with the best configurations, 139.2 mm against 13.0 and 16.9 mm, and the archers rate the bow's behaviour as worse. The measurement, though, covers the shot without stopping at the milliseconds while the arrow is on the string, and barebow weights are not stabilisers: it is context, and the status stays reported on the strength of the 1987 test alone.

Related

Related articles

• The parts of an Olympic recurve bow, one by oneThe parts of an Olympic recurve bow, from riser and limbs to arrow rest and clicker: what each one is called, what it does and what the rules allow.
• Stabilisers in archery: what they actually do, beyond the folkloreWhat research has measured about stabilisers: how the bow moves at release, muscle work, vibration, barebow weights and accuracy.

Research lines

• 10 studiesVibration and stabilisers: what research has measured since 1987
• 29 studiesThe archer's paradox in research: from 1987 to today

Other claims in this domain

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• ReportedA camera-based scoring system misreads some arrows: the ones barely sticking out and the ones that shift the target face7 studies · 2 archers measuredStatus since 2017
• ReportedA chest band with fibre optic sensors measures breathing and mean heart rate with small errors, and an archer can wear it while shooting2 studiesStatus since 2019
• ReportedA compound bow stores between 70 and 100 joules and sheds about two thirds of the force at full draw4 studiesStatus since 2015

See all claims on equipment and tuning