About · Matteo Campagna · MCPerformance

Matteo Campagna

01 · Story

From competitive archer to performance analyst.

My name is Matteo. What I do now has a long title, Performance Analyst for Precision Sports, Clinical Kinesiologist AMA, but the substance is simple: I help archers understand what is really happening in their shot, working from data rather than from feeling.

I started on the field, as an archer, and I got to know well all the kinds of days that anyone who shoots will recognise immediately: the ones where the movement comes naturally, without having to think about it, and the ones where nothing seems to work, for no reason you can put into words. It was exactly that "can't explain it" that brought me to where I am today. For years I treated it as a limitation; at some point I understood it was actually the question worth starting from.

For a long time those questions went unanswered. Why do two archers who train in exactly the same way improve at different speeds? Why does a movement that looks clean at the start of a session break down by the end, when fatigue sets in? Why do certain errors keep coming back even after you have corrected them ten times? I did not have the tools to answer, so I decided to go and get them, approaching the problem from the side of human movement rather than shooting technique alone.

I built my education around that. A bachelor's degree in Sports and Exercise Science at the Università di Bologna, with a thesis on motor learning applied to archery; then a master's degree with honours in Preventive and Adapted Physical Activity at Urbino, and a specialisation in functional rehabilitation. During those same years I worked as a kinesiologist, conditioning coach, and lecturer, and since 2019 I have worked with FIARC as an instructor and educational collaborator, bringing biomechanics and motor learning into the federation's training circuit.

MCPerformance was born from the intersection of all of this: concrete experience in preventive, rehabilitative, and performance exercise, years in the lab, hands-on work with the body, and an obsession with measuring what archery, until recently, left to "in my opinion".

There is also a side of me that, on the surface, has nothing to do with archery. I come from a computing background, I followed the National Informatics Programme, and I never really stopped programming. Over the years the two worlds converged: rather than bend myself to software designed for other sports that never asked the right questions, I preferred to build my own. That is how Eyercer came about, the programme I use for video analysis, and Arcos, which keeps together over time the performance data of the archers I work with. I wrote them myself, line by line, precisely because I know this work from the inside: I know which numbers actually matter on the shooting line and which do not. They are tools of the trade, built to measure by someone who does that trade every day.

One thing, though, I want to say upfront: I am not a replacement for your shooting coach, and I have no intention of being one. I work alongside them, not instead of them. What I bring is a biomechanical and performance reading that the coach usually does not have the tools to provide: the same reading that explains why certain corrections fail to stick, or why errors that look purely technical are, when you look closely, coming from the body.

In the end the point is not to shoot more. It is to understand exactly what is limiting your shot.

02 · Path

The milestones that actually matter.

/ 01 Origin

First I shot

Everything started on the field: arrows, repetition, weeks of training, competitions, and those errors that keep coming back at the same point for reasons you cannot quite pin down in the moment.

Archery looks like a still sport, but it is the exact opposite. Every arrow is a fragile balance of posture, alignment, hand control, visual attention, and the ability to repeat the same movement in conditions that shift ever so slightly each time. When everything falls into place, it feels like the simplest thing in the world; when something goes wrong, understanding what is almost always the hard part. It was in that gap, between the shot that works and the one you cannot explain, that I spent my years as an athlete.

/ 02 Competition

The questions the target doesn't answer

The more I competed, the clearer one thing became: the score tells you what happened, but almost never why. A poor grouping can come from five different causes: the shoulder giving way, the forearm locking up, the head shifting by the smallest amount, attention dropping in the last end, the breath losing its rhythm. The target gives you the effect and keeps the cause to itself.

This is where the core of how I work comes from: not stopping at the visible error. Saying "you plucked" is easy. Understanding why you plucked on that specific arrow, at that moment in the session, with that draw weight and in that physical condition, that is the real challenge. And it was ultimately this question that convinced me to study properly, rather than settle for shooting more.

/ 03 Education

University

I built my education around exactly those questions. First a bachelor's degree in Sports and Exercise Science at the Università di Bologna, with a thesis on motor learning in archery; then a master's degree with honours in Preventive and Adapted Physical Activity at Urbino, and a specialisation in functional rehabilitation. In between, five years spent on exercise physiology, biomechanics, motor control and learning, functional anatomy, athletic conditioning, and injury prevention.

But the part that really interested me came after the exam: taking all that theory and bringing it into the shooting range in a form that would actually be useful, not as an academic paper. Translating, cutting what was superfluous, deciding each time what to leave in the lab and what could genuinely help an archer on competition day.

Science on its own doesn't make anyone shoot better. But it stops you from proceeding by trial and error, and that alone is usually a great deal.

/ 04 Coaching · Teaching

On the field, in the gym, in the classroom

While I was studying, I was working. At first as a personal trainer and kinesiologist, with people and athletes from different sports; then increasingly focused on archery. That is where the work became targeted: the strength the movement actually requires rather than the kind that just adds bulk, scapular stability, core control, thoracic mobility, shoulder health, and above all the ability to maintain technical quality when fatigue arrives, because it is at that moment, not when fresh, that most competitions are decided. That is the point where the gym stops being a world apart from the field and starts speaking its language.

From 2019, alongside this, I have been teaching for FIARC as an instructor and educational collaborator, and teaching left me a side effect I had not expected: it forces you to be clear. And in archery, being clear means, first of all, separating what is genuinely useful from what we repeat only because it has always been done that way. Not everything you hear at the range is wrong, to be clear. But not everything is precise enough to build a serious athlete's performance on top of it.

/ 05 2026 · Today

MCPerformance

In 2026 I gave all of this a name: MCPerformance. It is how I bring my work to archers, Italian ones and, increasingly, international ones as well. In practice that means video analysis, biomechanical assessment, physical preparation built around the individual, performance testing, and reports you can actually read without needing a degree to understand them.

The work has also started taking me across borders: I was fortunate to volunteer with the Danish Olympic national team, one of those environments where you work at the highest level and always come back with something to bring to your own athletes. And when I am not on the field, I write: I have a book on athletic conditioning for archery currently in scientific peer review, with others already in progress.

I work with archers, coaches, and clubs that want to leave behind the old "observe and correct" and try a more solid method, one where every decision comes from something that has first been measured. The cycle is always the same, and it works because it closes on itself:

assess, measure, interpret, intervene, verify. Then start again.

Teaching

Now and then, the method enters the classroom.

In 2027 I will be teaching at the IFAA Youth Camp.

03 · Approach

"Opinions are fine at the club bar. Training decisions deserve data."

I start from a very simple idea: what you cannot observe, measure, or interpret, you will struggle to improve. This does not mean reducing an archer to a table of numbers, that would be the surest way to lose sight of the person. It means the opposite: using data to understand them better.

An athlete, in the end, is not their score. They are the way they build the movement, how they hold their posture as the ends accumulate, how they manage draw and breath, how they recover between arrows, how they react when tiredness sets in and how they change, often without noticing, on competition day. Archery is a precision sport that, paradoxically, is almost always trained with imprecise tools. My job is to make that process more readable, line by line.

Principle 01

Measure, then correct

Before changing anything, I need to understand what is really happening. The technical error you can see is almost always the end of a chain. Fix only the last link and it works for a few arrows, then the problem comes back unchanged. That is why I start from physical, video, and functional assessments. No on-the-fly diagnoses.

Principle 02

Body and technique are inseparable

In archery, technique lives inside a body. If the scapula cannot control its position, if the thorax is stiff, if the core does not hold, the movement changes even when the archer knows perfectly well what they should be doing. The body is not a detail. It is the infrastructure everything else rests on.

Principle 03

Train what you need, not what you want

An archer's gym is not a CrossFit gym. Being strong is not enough. You need strength specific to the movement, stability, isometric endurance, and sensitivity. An archer must be strong without becoming rigid, stable without locking up, enduring without losing feel.

Principle 04

Evidence, not opinion

When scientific literature has an answer, I use it. When it does not, you work from principles, observation, measurement, and progressive verification. Archery carries a lot of beliefs handed down over decades: some are rock solid, others are half-truths that have been repeated too many times. My job is to separate the two.

04 · Areas of work

The areas I actually work in.

/ 01

Shooting biomechanics

Posture, body-bow-target alignment, scapular control, draw line, anchor, follow-through. I am not looking for "the perfect movement" in the abstract. I am looking for the most stable movement for the real archer in front of me, with the body they have.

/ 02

Sport-specific physical conditioning

Back, scapula, shoulder, thoracic mobility, core, cervical and lumbar prevention. The goal is one: to hold the same technical setup even when fatigue arrives, when pressure mounts, or when both arrive at once.

/ 03

Video analysis

Set-up, draw, anchor, expansion, release, follow-through. Oscillations, angles, asymmetries. Video is not for show: it is for making better decisions about what to change and what to leave alone.

/ 04

Motor learning

How the athlete learns, modifies, and consolidates a movement. Quality of feedback, routine building, progression, variability. Repeating an error many times does not correct it: it stabilises it.

/ 05

Visual training and attention

Quiet eye, attentional stability, visual timing, the relationship between aiming and release. Doing odd eye exercises is not enough: you first need to understand whether the visual component is actually the limiting factor for that athlete. Often it is not.

/ 06

Periodisation and load management

Macro, meso, micro. Weekly arrow volume, integration with gym work, unloading weeks, preparation for target competitions. Transforming training from "accumulating arrows" into an organised process.

/ 07

Load, recovery, injury prevention

Load monitoring, fatigue management, overuse issues, shoulder, cervical spine, thoracic stiffness. An archer who trains a lot but recovers poorly is not building performance: they are simply accumulating risk.

/ 08

Target analysis

Grouping, error direction, pattern recurrence, differences between the start and end of a session, training versus competition. The target gives you the effect. Video gives you the behaviour. The body gives you the cause. Serious work means putting all three together.

/ 09

Field-based performance indices

I assess an archer's performance directly where they shoot, using my own methodology, built and refined over the years. Not lab tests that stay far removed from real competition, but measurable, repeatable field indices that say something concrete about where you are and what is worth working on.

05 · Who I work with

Three audiences, one shared idea of method.

/ Archers

For archers

I help archers understand their own movement better, identify physical and technical limitations, build a training plan that makes sense, and maintain quality even when fatigue sets in.

They train a lot but have been stuck for months
They have errors that keep coming back unchanged
They want to integrate gym work and shooting seriously
They have pain, stiffness, or compensations that are getting worse
They want to improve stability and repeatability
They are tired of working by feel

/ Coaches

For coaches

I work alongside the shooting coach, never instead of them. They guide the technical build; I bring the biomechanical and physical reading of the athlete's body, which often explains why certain corrections fail to consolidate.

Particularly useful when the athlete understands the correction perfectly but cannot hold it. Or when an error looks technical but is actually physical or coordinative.

/ Clubs

For clubs

With clubs and sports organisations I can build:

Group assessment days
Physical screening for archers
Video analysis sessions
Workshops on biomechanics and conditioning
Injury prevention programmes
Training for internal coaches
Monitoring protocols
Individual and group reports

06 · My vision

Archery deserves a more modern performance culture.

Not because everything that exists today is wrong. Far from it: I build on the work of those who came before me, on those who brought this sport to where it is now. But we have tools, evidence, and methods that did not exist twenty years ago, and they can help athletes and coaches work better. Leaving them unused, today, is a waste.

Archery is technique, mind, body, and equipment put together. Remove even one of these components and you lose the full picture. An archer who truly performs is not the one who shoots well when everything runs smoothly. It is the one who maintains quality even when the wind shifts, fatigue arrives, tension rises, or the body is not at 100%.

Observe → Measure → Interpret → Train → Verify → Repeat

Less intuition. More method.

07 · In brief

Archer, kinesiologist, trainer, and performance analyst.

My work was born from the meeting of two things that usually stay separate: the direct experience of someone who shoots and five years of university in Sports Science, with a specialisation in preventive and adapted physical activity. In between, the years on the field as a trainer, FIARC instructor, and analyst, which is the point where theory stops being theory.

Today, with MCPerformance, that is exactly what I do: I help archers, coaches, and clubs read more clearly what is happening behind every arrow.

The target shows the result.
Performance begins earlier.
In the body, in the movement, in the method.

Let's work together

It starts with two lines.

Write and tell me where you are, where you want to get to, and what you have already tried. I will tell you whether working together makes sense. Honest, even if the answer is no.

Get in touch

Archer. Kinesiologist. Performance Analyst.