Sooner or later every archer is offered something to take: an eye supplement that is supposed to make the target easier to read in strong sun or poor light, a capsule meant to keep you calm without slowing you down, a herbal extract against hand tremor. For anyone who shoots the question is always the same: is there a supplement that raises your score, and what is the evidence? Coffee and alcohol, which most archers already consume, have a page of their own; here I look at the things people buy on purpose.
Few supplements have been tested in archers, and each has a single study. A macular carotenoid supplement with omega-3 was tested for nine months with a sound design, and the score rose slightly only when archers and target shooters were taken together, while in the archers alone the arrow group did not tighten. L-theanine lowered anxiety and two stress markers in the minutes before competition, but the scores were not published. Jatamansi, a root used as a calmative, only partly improved hand steadiness in a seated test, without raising the score, and in the same study elastic band exercises did better. In none of the three cases was a rise in the score of archers alone measured.
How you tell whether a supplement works
Before looking at the supplements, consider what happens when the same substance is measured in two different ways, and caffeine is the clearest example the registry has in archers. In a Korean study six middle-school boys, after a sleepless night, shot 339 points at 30 m with caffeine and 335 with a placebo, also given as a capsule and blind: a difference the analysis cannot separate from chance. In a Turkish study twelve university recurve archers shot 8.33 points per arrow with caffeine and 6.61 without, a huge jump; there was no placebo, though, and the caffeine session always came second, on a protocol the archers already knew.
The second result is far larger than the first, but it is also the one with more possible explanations, because people who shoot the same test twice usually do better the second time, and an archer who knows they have taken something meant to help shoots with different expectations. That is why the registry rates the claim that caffeine improves accuracy in archery as contested: the two studies in archers point in opposite directions, and the one with the weaker design is the one that finds the effect. It gives me the yardstick I use for the rest of this article, made of four questions: whether there was a placebo given blind, whether the groups were randomised, whether the archers' score was measured rather than only something that is supposed to lead to it, and how many people there were in each group.
Carotenoids and omega-3 for the eyes
The best-studied supplement is also the most recent. Lutein, zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin are pigments that collect in the macula, the part of the retina you use to look at the centre of the target, and vision research has long linked them to contrast sensitivity. The idea that in aiming sports this turns into points was tested in Singapore, on recurve and compound archers, air rifle and air pistol shooters and competitive video gamers: for nine months half of them took a daily capsule with the three carotenoids dissolved in fish oil rich in omega-3, and the other half an identical capsule of sunflower oil. Allocation was done by computer, neither the athletes nor the researchers knew who was taking what, and the study was entered in a public trial registry. By the yardstick above, it is the most robust design among the studies on this page.
In the body the supplement did what it was meant to do: blood lutein rose by 88%, zeaxanthin by 107% and the skin carotenoid score by 25%. Only one aspect of vision changed, though, contrast sensitivity in dim light in the dominant eye, while visual acuity and the athletes' own rating of their eyesight stayed the same.
Performance was measured in a simulated indoor competition of sixty shots in six series of ten: the archers shot at 18 m, the shooters at 10 m, seated and with the gun on a rest. To pool them the authors converted the scores into a percentage of the maximum, and across 49 athletes, 25 on the supplement and 24 on placebo, the result went in favour: from 86.7% to 90.3% in the active group and from 84.2% to 83.3% on placebo, a difference just under the significance threshold (p = 0.047). The advantage was concentrated in the last two series, while on placebo the score was already falling after the third.
The study does not, however, break out the figure an archer actually wants, because the score of the archers alone is not reported. For them there is one precision measure, the size of the arrow group, estimated from the scores rather than measured on the target face, and it does not move: after nine months it goes from 76.4 to 87.3 millimetres on the supplement and from 104.0 to 108.0 on placebo, with a comparison between groups that cannot be told apart from chance (p = 0.712). Aiming time, recorded by a sensor on the riser, did not change either. There were eleven archers on one side and ten on the other, few for detecting a difference in spread, but theirs is a null result and the registry does not set it aside. That is why the claim that a macular carotenoid supplement with omega-3 raises scores in precision sports is contested: there is one study, and it points two ways within itself.
Two details matter before reading this study as an invitation to buy. The first concerns light: contrast improved in dim light, while the competition was shot indoors under controlled lighting, so the step from eyesight to score remains the authors' hypothesis rather than a measurement. The second concerns the authors themselves, who declare it in the paper: one consults for companies selling supplements with these active ingredients, another for nutraceutical companies, and a third works for a company that sells carotenoids and omega-3, while the funding came from a foundation. A declaration like that does not change the numbers, but it belongs next to the paper's conclusion, which proposes adding these nutrients to athletes' diets on the strength of the results just described.
In the same study the archers' sleep also improved, measured with a questionnaire: the score rose from 8.45 to 9.91 on the supplement and fell from 9.20 to 8.60 on placebo. The registry keeps this as a separate entry, that a carotenoid and omega-3 supplement improves the archer's sleep, and rates it as reported, because the result points the way the claim does but rests on eleven people against ten, comes partly from the placebo group getting worse, and does not appear in the target shooters, who took the same supplement for the same length of time. I cover sleep and recovery at greater length in a dedicated article.
L-theanine and anxiety before the start
L-theanine is an amino acid found in tea, and among competition supplements it circulates as the way to stay calm without slowing down. In archery there is a single study, from 2024: eighteen Korean university women archers, each with more than ten years in the sport, were split into two groups of nine, took a daily capsule of L-theanine or a lactose placebo for four weeks, and were measured during a national competition at 50 m. There were three measures, anxiety, which each archer rated on a scale from 1 to 10, and two stress markers in saliva, alpha-amylase and cortisol, all collected thirty, twenty and ten minutes before shooting and after the competition.
The effect is there, but it is confined to a few minutes. Half an hour before the start the two groups were alike on all three measures; at twenty minutes alpha-amylase was lower with theanine, 42.7 against 58.3; at ten minutes all three were, with anxiety at 6.9 against 8.7, alpha-amylase at 81.3 against 102.5 and cortisol at 10.7 against 14.6. Twenty minutes after the end anxiety was identical in the two groups, at 4.56, while cortisol stayed lower with theanine. In the placebo group, meanwhile, anxiety had tripled between half an hour and ten minutes before the start, from 2.8 to 8.7, and alpha-amylase had gone from 28.5 to 102.5: the same rise the registry finds in other studies, in the entry on stress markers in archers' saliva before competition.
Read closely, the result narrows further. Theanine changes the course of the two salivary markers over time, but not that of self-rated anxiety, so the difference in anxiety comes from a single comparison, the one at ten minutes. There is no measurement at the start of the four weeks, so nobody knows whether the groups started out alike; the paper does not say how the archers were allocated or whether they knew what they were taking; and some passages of the text contradict the table, including the one on cortisol after the competition. On the competition result, finally, the author writes only that there was no difference between groups, without giving the scores. That is why the claim that L-theanine lowers an archer's anxiety and stress markers in the minutes before competition is reported: it is a pointer on anxiety before shooting, in nine people per group, and it says nothing about performance.
Jatamansi and a steady hand
The third supplement tested in archers comes from Indian tradition. Jatamansi is a root that the study's authors describe as sedative, and in 2008 it was set against ordinary training in 45 national-level Indian archers aged 16 to 28, randomly split into three groups for four weeks: one took the root extract, one did elastic band exercises for the shoulders and arms together with respiratory muscle work, and the third carried on with usual training, which the other two groups kept up as well.
Hand steadiness was measured seated, holding a probe inside a 4 mm hole for a minute, and those taking the root touched the edges for less time than the control group, but not less often. On the shooting test, twelve arrows at 10 and 20 yards, their group did not differ from the controls, while the band group beat both, in steadiness and in score. The registry words the claim as the result, jatamansi only partly improves hand steadiness in a seated test and does not raise the score more than training alone, and rates it as reported, with serious limits: the paper gives no means or standard deviations, there was no placebo and those taking the root knew it, the steadiness test is done without a bow in hand, and the journal is a regional one. Anxiety, which the authors put forward as the root's route of action, was not measured, and neither was the safety of the preparation.
Sports drinks and tryptophan
On the edges of the supplement shelf sit two products bought in a similar hope. The first is the isotonic drink: twenty Indonesian university archers shot two sessions of 72 arrows at 30 m, drinking an isotonic drink once and mineral water once, served in dark cups, and the median score was 560.5 against 551.5, a difference that does not reach significance (p = 0.070). The registry rates the claim that over a shooting session, an isotonic drink instead of water did not change scores as reported, and I cover how much and what to drink at a competition in the article on hydration and nutrition.
The second is tryptophan, an amino acid also sold in capsules. The only study in archers did not test a supplement: it estimated from a food record how much tryptophan 45 Iranian recurve archers were eating and set it beside their score in a competition. The study finds a link, but it is an association measured once, in people who, by eating more poultry, dairy, seeds and pulses, may differ in many other ways, and the study appears in a journal with questionable editorial standards. The registry reports it without using it to decide the status, and the claim that archers who eat more tryptophan shoot higher scores in competition remains not studied. Even if the link were confirmed, it would concern diet, and it would not show that adding a capsule raises the score.
Where the research stops
Set side by side, the studies answer the opening question narrowly. Three supplements have been tested in archers, each of them once, and in none of the three was a rise in the score of archers alone measured: for the carotenoids the score is not reported separately from the shooters', for theanine it is mentioned without numbers, and for jatamansi it does not change compared with the controls. The clearest effects are in the body, with carotenoids rising in the blood and skin and stress markers rising less in saliva, but no study has shown the step from there to points in archers alone.
Questions closer to competition conditions remain open too. Nobody has tested whether an eye supplement changes anything outdoors, in sunlight and at competition distances, because the only test was shot indoors at 18 m; and nobody has looked at whether the effect of theanine lasts beyond the minutes before the start, or what it does in men, because the study included only women.
What I take from it for the shooting line
These studies do not produce a supplement to recommend, and that is not this page's job. What they do offer is a way of reading what you are offered, the same one used for caffeine: when a product promises points, I ask who it was tested on, against what, and with what measure of the result. For the products covered here the answer is a single study each, almost always with few archers, and an effect on the body that is clearer than the effect on the target.
The most telling comparison remains the jatamansi one, because the study set the root beside a training programme. Over the same four weeks the band group improved in steadiness and score more than the root group, which did not differ in score from those doing only their usual training. I do not conclude that elastic bands bring points, because in the registry that claim is itself contested and here the shooting test was short and at close range; what I conclude is that, of the two things tested, the root brought nothing to the target beyond training alone.
Anyone who still wants to try a supplement should bear in mind two things that have nothing to do with points. The first is that a new substance on competition day is one more variable, and not one you can read on the day. The second is that anyone competing under anti-doping controls needs to know what is in every capsule: in the carotenoid study the products had been checked by a third party for substances prohibited in sport as well. Whether a supplement makes sense for a particular person, and in what amount, is a question for a doctor or a sports nutritionist, who know that person's health and any medicines they take.