You reach your anchor, the sight settles towards the gold and, before you have decided to shoot, your fingers have already let go of the string. People who go through it nearly always describe it in the same words: the arrow went by itself. On the range we call it an early release, English-speaking archers file it under target panic, and kyudo, Japanese archery, has long had a name of its own for it, hayake. The question I hear most often comes in two parts: what is it, and do you get over it?
Answering it means looking to Japan, because almost all the figures on early release come from kyudo: a questionnaire run by neurologists in two university clubs, a small case series with electromyography, and video of a high-school team. Outside kyudo there are mainly interviews with British archers and a survey that puts them alongside golfers with the yips. These are small studies, and most of the claims that come out of them are reported, meaning the support for them is limited. Even so, they say some specific things: how archers describe the problem, how common it is in kyudo, how many say they have got over it, and that early release does not behave like the opposite problem, the block in which the arrow will not go.
How archers describe it
The claim that archers with an early release say the arrow goes off by itself, against their will rests on very few people. The clearest account comes from a high-school kyudo team in Japan: fifteen students filmed for two shots each, with the time measured from kai, the full draw in which the aim is held, to the release. Their instructor asked them to hold for at least five seconds. The two third-year students, the most experienced, held for two; the second-years held for between two and five, and the first-year beginners for between two and eleven.
When interviewed, the experienced students said three things: that the arrow went by itself even when they tried to hold it back, that this was the point at which they felt they hit best, and that they were in a hurry to let go before the draw gave way. The authors conclude that early release has a physical side and a mental one. The answers are not counted, and even those who knew they had hayake were taken aback when they saw in figures how many seconds they were actually holding.
Outside kyudo, the closest account comes from an English amateur archer who spent a year observing a university archery club and described his target panic in the first person: his fingers leave the string without his knowing whether by choice or because they give way. It is a single case, in an interpretive essay. Seven British archers interviewed at length, from club to national level, also describe target panic as a loss of control, but not all of them in the form of an arrow that gets away: some cannot release, some cannot get through the clicker and some cannot reach their anchor.
The "against their will" part needs care as well. In a Japanese case series, three kyudo archers with early release were examined alongside three with the block and three with no problem: in the three with early release the symptoms changed from one occasion to the next, and one of them could partly hold it back. That is why the claim stays at reported: the account exists and hangs together, but it comes from few people and almost entirely from one discipline.
How common it is in kyudo
Kyudo lends itself to counting these problems because it has long had names for them. It distinguishes four: hayake, the release that goes before the aim is complete; motare, the block in which the arrow will not leave at kai when the archer wants it to; biku, a jerk while aiming; and yusuri, a shaking of the arm during the draw or the aim. Using these four names, a group of neurologists sent an anonymous questionnaire to the members of the kyudo clubs at two Japanese medical schools, in Gifu and Kumamoto, and 65 of 70 replied.
Of these, 41, or 63%, said they had had at least one of the four problems; leaving out the seven who could not say whether they had, the figure is 41 out of 58, or 71%. That is the basis for the claim that in kyudo almost two archers in three have had at least one release problem, which is reported. By far the most frequent is hayake: it appears in 35 of the 41, and in 26 it is the only problem. Biku and yusuri have seven cases each, and motare three, always on its own. The claim that early release is the commonest shooting problem in kyudo is therefore reported too, on a single questionnaire.
The way of counting matters: it is enough for the archer to recognise the description, the recall covers their whole time in the sport, and the figure includes episodes that are over without saying how many had to stop. Above all, it applies to kyudo: it is shot without a sight or a clicker, with a glove and a bow unlike ours, and the figure does not carry over to the Olympic recurve or the compound, where the release is a different movement.
Who it affects
In the same questionnaire, the authors compared those who had had a problem with those who had not. At first sight the two groups differed in several ways, from sex to bow strength, but once years of practice enter the model that is the only factor left. Those who had had a problem had been practising for five years on average, those who had not for two and a half, and this is the basis for the claim that in kyudo release problems more often affect those who have practised for longer, which is reported. The authors point out the weakness themselves: the question was whether the problem had ever occurred, and the longer someone has practised, the more time there has been for it to happen, so the link says little about what causes it.
Two ideas that go round among archers come out of the same study looking weaker. The first is that an overly heavy bow is what makes the arrow go early. Those who had had a problem did shoot a stronger bow, 13.4 kilograms against 11.2, but they had been practising for longer and hit more often; relative to their hit rate their bow was, if anything, less out of proportion, and once years of practice are taken into account draw weight is no longer linked to the problems. The claim that a bow that is too heavy for the archer encourages the yips is therefore contradicted, on a single study. The second concerns injuries: those who had had a problem reported more of them, 62.5% against 31.3%, but this link does not survive years of practice either, and the claim that in kyudo those who have had the yips report more injuries is contested.
Outside kyudo there is just one figure: in a survey of 69 British competitive archers, from county level upwards, 43.5% say they have had target panic. That is the support, at reported, for the claim that target panic affects almost one competitive archer in two, but respondents decide for themselves whether the label fits, and a questionnaire on target panic mostly draws in people who have dealt with it.
Personality and self-image
That British survey is also the only one to have looked at the personality of people with target panic, and it puts 69 archers together with 86 golfers, with the archers' target panic and the golfers' yips in the same question. Across the whole sample, those who report the problem describe themselves as less conscientious, with more social anxiety and a stronger need to hide their imperfections. In the averages for archers alone, however, the picture changes: conscientiousness is 3.92 in those with target panic and 3.96 in those without, social anxiety 3.07 against 3.05, so the differences in the whole sample come from the golfers. Only the need to hide one's flaws points the same way in archers too, 3.82 against 3.51, with a small gap compared with the golfers. The paper does not run separate tests for each sport, and the measures are questionnaires collected after the problem had appeared, so they do not show which came first.
Two claims come out of it contested: that those who choke in competition and those with the yips score lower on conscientiousness, which in archers holds for choking but not for target panic, and that those who have had the yips report more social anxiety and a stronger need to hide their flaws, where in archers the first half does not show and the second does. Accounts of how it started belong on a different level. The seven British archers interviewed at length all trace the onset to the moment they began thinking about the score of every arrow, and it is reported that archers with target panic trace its onset to focusing on the outcome and on expectations. That is how archers explain their own problem, not a measure of what caused it, and in the same interviews some point to other origins as well.
Early release and the release block
In everyday range talk, early release and the block often end up under the same label. In kyudo they are two problems with two names, and the data that exist make them look different in the way they present as well. In the questionnaire, motare, the block, appeared in three archers, always on its own, with a contraction of the arm and forearm that came only in the shooting position. In the electromyography series, in the three with the block the problem was stereotyped and tied to the shot in all three, eased when the teacher touched the forearm, arm or shoulder in two cases out of three, and in one of the two who had it during the recording, shooting a rubber bow, there was a co-contraction of the forearm flexors and extensors that began about a second before kai and disappeared with the release.
These are features found in a task-specific focal dystonia, and the claim that in kyudo the release block resembles a task-specific focal dystonia is reported. It resembles one, no more: there are six cases across two studies, the questionnaire accounts lacked two typical signs, easing with touch and variation with the time of day, and the resemblance is described, not diagnosed. Early release, examined in the same way, showed none of these signs: it was tied to the shot but not stereotyped, the teacher's touch made no difference, there was no co-contraction on electromyography, and one of the three could partly contain it. In two cases it had appeared after something specific: in one a change in the way of drawing, in the other a run of consecutive hits.
The questionnaire adds a clue about the order in which the problems arrive. Biku, the jerk while aiming, never appeared on its own, and in the five who had it alongside hayake, hayake had come first in four cases; the authors suggest that the jerk arises from the very effort of holding back a release that wants to go early, and write that the idea needs testing. Arm tremor, by contrast, tended to come before hayake, in three cases out of four. These are ten people, and sequences recalled from memory.
Do people get over it?
This is the half of the question that weighs most, and there is only one figure. In the Japanese questionnaire, of the 35 archers who had had hayake, 12 say they have got over it and 23 have not: two in three still had it when they replied. That is the support for the claim that in kyudo those who develop early release often do not get over it, which is reported. Most say the problem eases when the pressure drops, as in training, or when the coach keeps insisting that they do not release early; a good number, though, have it in any situation.
For the other problems the cases are few: biku was overcome by one in seven, yusuri by five in seven and motare by two in three. The authors write that below ten cases it is impossible to say whether the chance of recovery varies from one type to another, which is why the broader claim, that those in kyudo who develop a release problem often do not get over it, also stays at reported.
The limit of these figures is that they are a snapshot. Nobody was followed over time and the questionnaire has no date of onset, so those who had started recently had not had time to get over it, while those who had given up because of it were no longer in the club to reply. The two biases pull in opposite directions, and the figure says neither how long recovery takes nor what helped those who recovered.
Where the studies stop
These studies describe early release from the outside. Nobody has yet measured what happens in the release of a recurve or compound archer with an early release, or followed a group of archers from their first episode onwards. The instrumental measurements of early release come from three kyudo archers shooting a rubber bow, and the figures on recovery from a questionnaire filled in from memory.
The question of why also remains open. On this I have a hypothesis of my own, the de-automatisation of the release: the idea that target panic begins when a movement that had become automatic comes back under conscious control. It is my hypothesis, not a conclusion of the literature, and in the registry the claim that target panic starts when the release loses its automaticity has the status "predicted": I have written down the predictions that would test it, and they are awaiting an outcome. I set it out briefly in the page on why target panic happens.
What I take to the shooting line
These studies do not produce a way out, and I would not build one on figures like these. I take three things from them, which help more with seeing the problem clearly than with solving it.
The first is to measure before judging. The Japanese students knew they had hayake, and yet the measured seconds surprised them. Filming a set of arrows and timing the gap between anchor and release, even just on a phone, shows whether that time is getting shorter and how much it varies from one arrow to the next, and it is a measurement you can repeat weeks apart. I have written about aiming time separately.
The second is to tell the forms apart. In kyudo, the arrow that gets away and the arrow that will not go behave differently: in the few cases examined, early release changes from one occasion to the next, can sometimes be contained and, in the archers' accounts, eases when the pressure drops. A stereotyped block, which always arrives at the same point in the shot with a contraction the archer cannot control, looks like something else, and no article can tell an archer what they have: that is a question for a doctor, not for a coach.
The third concerns expectations. In kyudo one in three of the archers with hayake said they had got over it and two in three still had it, so quick fixes have no data to lean on; equally, those figures do not say that recovery is impossible, nor how long it takes. As for draw weight, the data give no reason to start there: the only study that looked at it, in kyudo, does not find an overly heavy bow behind release problems. What archers try, and what is known about it, I cover in the page on target panic.