https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety Changes to this claim in Matteo Campagna's evidence registry: its status, its year-by-year history, revisions of the page. en-gb https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxietyStudies of archers do not agree, and what divides them is the design more than the technique. Where anxiety was also measured in a comparison group the picture is thin and split: the oldest study, four weeks of relaxation and imagery in eighteen Greek archers, does not shift the anxiety measured a quarter of an hour before competition, while the three supporting comparisons that arrived in 2025 and 2026 rest on ten archers per arm or fewer, one in a regional journal and two in venues with questionable editorial standards. The large falls, sometimes enormous, come instead from studies with no controls or with controls who were never given those questionnaires: six Olympic archers after a year and a half of psychological support, three young Korean women after twenty-four weeks of biofeedback, twelve Hong Kong archers after twelve weeks of mindfulness. The cases in which nothing moves carry little weight either, such as three young members of the Korean national reserve squad and six elite Koreans who were calm to begin with. The most instructive contrast sits inside a single study, where imagery together with self-talk lowers cognitive anxiety from 12.8 to 9.9 and imagery on its own raises it: the direction seems to depend on which technique is trained and on how anxious the archer was to begin with.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:revision:2026-10-06:4Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety#storiaAn Indian randomised trial of thirty national-level archers combines six weeks of psychological skills training with shoulder strengthening and reports competitive anxiety changing in the treated group and staying put in the controls. It gives not a single mean, though, measures trait anxiety instead of pre-competition anxiety and appears in a journal with questionable editorial standards: it reads neither for nor against, and the status stays contested.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:history_entry:2026-09-17:2016Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety#storiaThe first supporting comparison with a control group measured on the same scales arrives: ten Indonesian para-archers do two months of 4-7-8 breathing, twenty-four sessions of a quarter of an hour, and competition anxiety falls by 27 per cent in the standard bow division and 31 per cent in compound, while in the ten controls it stays put. It is the cleanest result of the set, but it rests on five people per division, sits in a regional journal, and the authors do not directly compare the change between treated and controls. The same year twenty Indonesian archers at provincial games report anxiety down from about 60 to 40 per cent of the scale after four weeks of calmness training, but with rounded figures and in a venue with questionable editorial standards. Together they are not enough to close a question on which studies of archers keep disagreeing.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:history_entry:2026-08-18:2025Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety#storiaThe disagreement moves inside a single study. In forty-five young Malaysian archers split by technique, imagery and self-talk together lower cognitive anxiety from 12.8 to 9.9, self-talk alone from 12.7 to 10.1, while imagery alone raises it from 13.1 to 13.9. Somatic anxiety, by contrast, halves in all three groups to the same degree, and with no control group at all a fall that equal is hardly plausible; the venue has questionable editorial standards and by rule does not decide a status. It stays contested, with one more hypothesis: the direction may depend on which technique is trained. The same year an Indian study of twenty archers finds the anxiety score rising after six weeks of meditation, without the authors saying which way the scale runs: it reads neither for nor against.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:history_entry:2026-08-18:2022Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety#storiaSix elite Korean archers do eight sessions of neurofeedback-guided imagery, and anxiety barely moves: cognitive anxiety from 1.88 to 1.85 out of four, down in three archers, unchanged in two and up in one. They started out calm already, and with no statistical tests the figure stays context: the status does not move.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:history_entry:2026-08-18:2020Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety#storiaThe first randomised trial on archers chosen because they were anxious arrives: eighteen Taiwanese university archers do six weeks of computer training to shift attention away from threatening words and towards positive ones linked to competition. The brain's early electrical response to the stimuli changes, but competition anxiety is not measured again after the training, so the study does not say whether it falls. It is context, and the status stays contested.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:history_entry:2026-08-18:2015Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety#storiaThe first comparison with a control group whose result points the claim's way comes from India, but it measures something close to anxiety rather than anxiety itself: in twenty-four university archers, twelve neurofeedback sessions lower felt arousal before competition, from 6.83 to 5.75 out of nine, while in the controls it barely moves. Arousal is not anxiety, so the figure stays context and the status does not change.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:history_entry:2026-08-18:2012Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety#storiaThree Korean archers aged fifteen, sixteen and seventeen do twenty-four weeks of arousal control with heart-rate biofeedback: cognitive anxiety falls from 2.68 to 2.26, somatic anxiety from 2.67 to 1.92 and confidence rises from 1.85 to 2.85. The figure that explains the rest is the starting point: confidence was very low and the archer who started worst moved most. Three cases with no control, in a regional journal, add to the supporting side but do not touch the 1991 null. In the same year a one-year follow-up of a mindfulness course for archers, golfers and runners finds sport anxiety higher at the end of the course and back at its starting level twelve months later, from 35.7 to 40.4 and then to 34.1, but with the three sports pooled and only four archers among the twenty-five who replied: it is context. It stays contested.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:history_entry:2026-08-18:2011Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxiety#storiaA second contrary result, much smaller than the first: three archers from the South Korean national reserve squad do eight weeks of biofeedback, cognitive restructuring and routines before the World Youth Championships, and the anxiety measured before, halfway and at the end shows no trend. These are three cases read off graphs, and they take nothing away from the Taiwanese figure of 2008: studies of archers stay in disagreement, contested.claim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:history_entry:2026-08-18:2010Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-and-pre-competition-anxietyclaim:allenamento-mentale-ansia-gara:new_claim:2026-07-20:contestatoMon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 GMT