Without the clicker you lose draw length
2 studies · 19 archers measured
The summary today
Only one study has measured the draw length of the same archers with and without a clicker, and it goes against the claim. Nine elite women recurve archers, with more than ten years of shooting behind them and some of them on the national team, shot twenty arrows in each condition at 8 metres, in random order: without the clicker, releasing when they felt the moment had come, draw length measured just before the release did not change. Other things did: the draw finished sooner (t = 3.22, p = 0.012) and the aiming points grouped more tightly (p = 0.036). The picture has clear limits. It is a single session, indoors and at short range, with archers who have used a clicker for years and can anticipate it almost from memory, in a regional journal; the archers who would really risk losing draw length, those still learning or those who shoot without a clicker for weeks, have not been measured. A 2024 study of ten traditional Turkish archers adds only an indirect hint: without a reference they could see on the shaft, they could not stop the draw at the set distances.
Also phrased as: "without a clicker you short-draw"; "the clicker guarantees draw length"; "shooting without a clicker"; "draw length and the clicker"; "releasing short without a clicker"
In practice
Archers are told that the clicker is what guarantees draw length and that without it they tend to shorten the draw and release before reaching full draw.
Evidence
-
2023
Against Archers Published later
Nine elite women recurve archers, 25.9 years old on average with more than ten years of experience, some of them on the national team: 40 arrows at 8 m on a force platform with motion capture, twenty with the clicker and twenty without, in random order; without the clicker they had to release by anticipating when it would have dropped. Draw length, measured between the drawing hand and the stabiliser just before the release, does not differ between the two conditions (Fig. 2B, difference not significant).
Effect of Anticipatory Shooting Strategy on Performance Consistency in Skilled Elite Archer · Kitae Kim, Youngsook Kim, Donggyu Baek, Jaebum Park, Junkyung Song
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2023
Context Archers Published later
In the same experiment, without the clicker the draw is shorter in time (t(8) = 3.22, p = 0.012, d = 1.07) and the dispersion index of the aiming points is smaller (t(8) = 2.51, p = 0.036, d = 0.84), meaning tighter aiming; the postural adjustments just before the release grow less than with the clicker. A single session, indoors and at 8 m, in a regional journal.
Effect of Anticipatory Shooting Strategy on Performance Consistency in Skilled Elite Archer · Kitae Kim, Youngsook Kim, Donggyu Baek, Jaebum Park, Junkyung Song
-
2024
Context Archers Published later
Ten experienced traditional Turkish archers, with 6.23 years of practice on average, had to stop the final draw at set fractions of their maximum draw, from 92 to 98%, guided by marks on the shaft: without two 1 mm rubber rings fixed on the marks they could not see them and strayed from the set distances, with errors that spoiled the calculations. It is a note on method, not a measurement of draw length with and without a clicker.
Status history
- 2023 Contradicted The first study to measure the draw length of the same archers with and without a clicker goes against the claim: in nine elite women recurve archers, twenty arrows per condition at 8 metres, draw length just before the release is the same. Without the clicker the draw finishes sooner and the aiming points group more tightly. It is a single small study, of archers who have used a clicker for years, in a regional journal: what evidence there is says no, but there is little of it.
- 2024 Contradicted An indirect hint arrives from ten traditional Turkish archers: without a reference they could see on the shaft, they could not stop the draw at the set distances. It does not measure draw length with and without a clicker and does not concern the recurve bow, so it does not stand against the 2023 study; it is only a reminder that a precise draw position cannot be found again by feel. The status does not change.
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.
- The clicker: the science of a tenth of a secondWhat research measures about the clicker: reaction time, the muscles of the release, its weight on the score and what happens to draw length without it.
- The final pull: what happens in the last millimetres before the clickerHow many millimetres and seconds the final pull takes, how it differs between better and worse arrows, and what the aim and the muscles do as the clicker drops.
Research lines
Cite
Campagna, M. (2026). Without the clicker you lose draw length (Version 1). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/draw-length-without-clicker
@misc{campagna2026_allungosenzaclicker,
author = {Campagna, Matteo},
title = {Without the clicker you lose draw length},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/draw-length-without-clicker},
note = {Version 1; accessed 2026-10-16}
}
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Other claims in this domain
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