Look along any shooting line and you will see how much archers carry besides the bow. On many recurve strings there is a kisser button, the small bead that touches the lips at anchor; on the head, as soon as there is some sun, a peaked cap; on the body a close-fitting top with a chest guard over it, and some archers clench a bite plate between their teeth while aiming. These things are chosen out of habit, because the coach wears them or because everyone does, and sooner or later you wonder whether they do anything at all.
On bows and arrows research has measured a great deal, from draw weight to stabilisers to spine. On these accessories the registry has five claims, and behind them there are four studies in all, which between them involve around fifty people, and only some of those people shoot. None of the four recorded a score. What follows is an account of what was measured for each item, and of how much can be taken from it.
Four studies and around fifty people
The four papers are very different from one another, so it helps to see them side by side before going into detail. Two collect opinions: an Indonesian questionnaire on the cap and the kisser, and comfort ratings of a prototype shooting shirt. The other two measure something in the body, namely leg muscle activity in people wearing shooting clothing, and the sway of one archer wearing a bite plate. None of them links the accessory to where the arrow lands.
For comparison the figure also includes a sixth item that archers wear, the insole, because it is the only one for which someone measured both body sway and score in the same experiment. I come back to it later, after looking at the others one at a time.
The kisser
The kisser is an extra anchor reference: the hand brings the string under the chin, and the button on the string confirms, by touching the lips, that head and string are where they always are. On how archers feel about it, the only data come from a closed questionnaire completed online by fifteen Indonesian experts, members of a provincial committee, coaches and archers. Eleven had used a kisser and four never had. Asked whether the kisser is distracting while shooting, eleven said no and four said yes, and the question was put to all fifteen, including those who had never tried one.
The four who find it a nuisance give three reasons: difficulty getting used to it, the risk of minor injuries and an unpleasant smell after long use. All fifteen answer that the kisser is not compulsory, and twelve would welcome an alternative aid to consistency. Where the questionnaire comes from matters as well, because it is the first stage in developing a cap that the authors designed to replace the kisser, so the survey was looking precisely for reasons to propose an alternative. This is why the claim that most archers do not find the kisser a nuisance is reported and no more: it is the opinion of a few people, gathered with a declared purpose.
The question that matters to archers, whether the kisser makes the anchor more repeatable and the score higher, has not been put to the test: nobody has compared shots with and without a kisser in the same archers. What is known about the anchor, gathered in the article on the anchor point, concerns the hand, the head and the string, not the button.
The cap and the light
The same questionnaire asked six questions about the cap, and it is the only source on that too. All fifteen say they often wear a cap in training and competition, and all fifteen answer that it helps against light-related visual disturbance such as glare. On everything else the group splits: twelve say the cap raises their confidence, nine that it helps the shot and nine that it affects technique and posture, while only six think it helps a beginner stay consistent, which was the very idea the authors were building their product on.
The unanimous answer on glare is striking, but it has to be read for what it is. The questions were asked by the people designing the cap, of people who would later use it, with yes or no answers only, in a group that mixed coaches, officials and archers; and nobody compared shots with and without a peak, in sunshine or under controlled light. The registry keeps these answers as context, and the claim that a cap reduces light-related visual disturbance in training and competition is not studied: fifteen people say what they think, not how much a cap changes what you see while aiming, nor the score.
It may seem odd that the same questionnaire supports one claim and not the other. The difference lies in the question. Whether the kisser is a nuisance is a matter of how it feels, and on that the archers' own opinion is already an answer, however weak; whether a cap reduces visual disturbance is an effect, and an effect has to be measured.
The shirt with the guards sewn in
The paper on the shirt is read by the same standard. Two researchers from a university in Medan, on Sumatra, sewed a foam chest guard and a synthetic leather arm guard into a shooting shirt, so that archers no longer have to strap on separate guards, and had it tried by the archers of a club in the city. Two expert judges gave it 83 and 88 out of 100. The lower mark came from the archery expert, who gave 7 out of 10 precisely to innovation and commercial potential and 8 out of 10 to comfort, while the clothing expert gave comfort 10.
More telling than the marks are the two changes asked for by the club's six archers, children, teenagers and adults, who tried the first version. The chest guard, a square of foam on the chest, had to be widened up to the shoulder according to each archer's chest size, and the top of the sleeve needed more fabric so that it would not restrict the draw. With these changes the shirt was tried a second time, and the authors write that 90% of participants found it comfortable and effective, a percentage that does not correspond to a whole number out of six people and does not say which of the two versions it refers to.
The claim that a shooting shirt with built-in chest guard and arm guard is judged comfortable by archers is therefore reported. It is a comfort rating, which is exactly what the claim states, but it comes from six people and a single development project in a regional journal, and the questionnaire is not reported in the paper. Whether the shirt keeps the string off the clothing more often, or helps anyone shoot better than separate guards, nobody has measured.
The weight of clothing and the legs
The fourth paper, published in 2024 in an Iranian university journal, asks a more physical question: whether wearing shooting clothing changes the way the leg muscles work. Thirty young men aged 18 to 25, none of them archers, shot three arrows at ten metres without and with the clothing, while electromyography recorded eight leg muscles while taking up the bow, during the draw and at the release. Half the group was blind, and the effect of the clothing was calculated on all thirty together.
Even taken on its own terms, the result is thin. Across muscles, phases of the shot and effects there are seventy-two statistical tests, with no correction for multiple comparisons, and only four fall below the 0.05 threshold; just one of these concerns the clothing, vastus medialis activity at the release, while the other three separate the two groups. The authors infer that the clothing may help balance, but one effect out of twenty-four combinations of muscle and phase does not carry that conclusion. The registry, moreover, does not rest its claims on a sample that is half blind when the question concerns people who usually shoot, so the study stays as context and the claim that the weight of shooting clothing does not change how the leg muscles work is not studied, in either direction.
The bite plate and sway while aiming
The bite plate is the only one of these items measured on an archer's body. In 1992 a group of Japanese dentists put a 22-year-old archer, a regular in his archery team, on a stabilometric platform in the aiming position. They first established how much his values varied by themselves, with nine measurements over three days; then they had him wear three resin bite plates that raised the occlusion by 2, 5 and 10 millimetres.
Only the thickest changed anything. With the 10 millimetre plate the area of sway and the length of the centre-of-pressure path fell below the archer's normal variability as early as five minutes after it went in, and the largest reduction came at thirty minutes. With 2 and 5 millimetres the values stayed within that variability up to sixty minutes. The same experiment therefore says yes for one plate and no for the other two, which is why the claim that a bite plate that raises the occlusion reduces body sway while aiming is contested.
Even the positive result has narrow limits. There is a single archer, and there was no plate without a raise, so the effect of thickness cannot be separated from that of having something in the mouth or of getting used to the platform. The target was about one metre away, so the visual task was not that of a real shot, and no score was recorded. The authors themselves write that each archer might respond differently.
Sway and the score
Even if a bite plate reduced sway in everyone, it would remain to be seen what that is worth in points. Here the registry has far more material, and the claim that the less the body sways while aiming, the better the shot is reported, because force platform studies point almost entirely the same way. Two qualifications matter here, though. In elite archers the worst arrows come with a faster centre of pressure, and elite sway is smaller but quicker than that of intermediate archers, so it is not only how much the body moves that counts but how. In the largest sample of elite archers, moreover, the sway that predicts the score is the sway after the release, not the seconds of aiming that the 1992 bite plate reduced.
The only accessory tested on score as well
What it means to put an accessory to the test is shown by the insole, the only item worn on the body for which the registry has both sway and score. Fifteen university compound archers with experience of national competition shot fifteen arrows at 30 m, first with a flat insole and then with one that supports the arch of the foot. With the second the mean score per arrow rose from 9.58 to 9.74 and the centre of pressure moved less, although the overall sway area of the two feet did not change.
The order of conditions was fixed, always the flat insole first and then the other, so the gain cannot be separated from getting used to the test, and the claim that insoles with arch support improve stability and scores is reported. It is a small result, from a single study and on one type of bow, but it has the score among its outcomes, and that is the kind of test nobody has run for the kisser, the cap, the shirt or the bite plate.
What I take from it for practice
These studies give no indication of which accessory is worth points, because nobody measured it. They do yield a couple of useful things, and beyond that the choice stays with the archer, who can make it for comfort alone.
On the kisser, the only data say that most of those asked do not find it a nuisance and that nobody considers it compulsory. I would keep one if it gives a reference that always lands on the same spot on the lips, and I would check it the way I check the rest of the anchor: now and then a side-on photo at full draw, always taken from the same position, to see whether the button touches where it should or has moved along the string. If it bothers you, the reasons gathered in the questionnaire are the same ones you hear at the range, and taking it off goes against no finding.
On the cap, no measurement says how much it helps, and none says otherwise, while anyone who has shot outdoors knows what sun in the eyes does to the aim. The one thing I would check is practical: at full draw the peak must not touch the string or come into the line between the eye and the sight, and with your own anchor a few shots are enough to tell.
On the shirt, the two changes asked for by the six archers point to the two places where clothing interferes with the shot: the chest, where the string passes, and the top of the sleeve, which stretches during the draw. Whatever you wear, those are the two places to look at full draw, perhaps in a video taken from behind and from the side.
On the bite plate I take nothing. One archer, with a target one metre away and no score, is not enough reason to put something in your mouth to shoot, and a bite plate is a dental device, a choice for the dentist rather than for the aim. As for the weight of clothing, nothing suggests changing what you wear.
Where the measurements stop
For all four accessories the question that matters to archers is the same, and it was left out of the studies: whether the item changes the score, or at least the group, in the same archers shooting with and without it. The studies that exist answer other questions (perceived comfort, opinions, the activity of a few muscles, the sway of one archer) and they do so with samples of six, fifteen and thirty people, or one. For the kisser and the cap the answers also come from a questionnaire that was looking for reasons to launch a new product. The insole shows that a test with the score among its outcomes can be run with fifteen archers and fifteen arrows per condition; for the accessories in this article nobody has run one yet, and what is said about them at the range comes, for now, from the experience of the people who wear them.