https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/heart-rate-variability-best-arrows 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/heart-rate-variability-best-arrowsThe idea has a single piece of direct support, a 2008 conference abstract: in sixteen pre-elite Taiwanese archers, comparing each archer's three best arrows with the three worst from a 24-arrow simulated competition, the high frequency band of heart rate variability was higher on the best ones, the low band lower and the ratio between them shifted towards the parasympathetic side. The abstract, however, gives no values and no test. The full study that came later says the opposite: in seventeen adolescent archers followed through an indoor competition at 18 metres, with about a thousand arrows analysed over the 20 seconds before each release, the arrow score rises with the low band and with the ratio between the bands, the part usually read as sympathetic, and in the experienced archers the rise in high frequency activity from the first to the second arrow of the end goes with a drop in score. The effects are small: the model, which also includes the time taken to shoot, accounts for about 12 per cent of the variation in score. The measure itself complicates the reading, because the high band depends on how one breathes, the ratio between the bands does not really measure the balance between the two systems, and while aiming the archer controls their breathing. A 2019 paper on thirty novices points the same way as the 2011 study, with a higher ratio between the bands in those who shoot more accurately, but it compares archers with each other over the whole session rather than arrows. Today the studies on archers point in opposite directions, and neither is solid enough to settle the question.claim:hrv-frecce-migliori:revision:2026-09-02:2Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/heart-rate-variability-best-arrows#storiaIn thirty Turkish novices shooting ten arrows at 18 metres, those with the higher ratio of the low to the high band over the session are also the more accurate (r = -0.49 with distance from the centre), so the part usually read as sympathetic once again goes with the better shooting, as in 2011. The study, however, compares archers with each other over the whole session, not arrows or the seconds of the aim, and cannot decide the question: the status stays contested.claim:hrv-frecce-migliori:history_entry:2026-07-11:2019Sat, 11 Jul 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/heart-rate-variability-best-arrowsclaim:hrv-frecce-migliori:new_claim:2026-04-06:contestatoMon, 06 Apr 2026 08:00:00 GMT