The Lab: archery research and experiments
Work, theories, experiments: this is where I keep my research on archery. ARCOS comes first: the system I am developing to read competition data across a whole federation. Then come the essays, which measure competition rules or put a hypothesis of mine to the test, with their predictions registered and dated before the data come in. Further down is the rest of the work, from competition formats to try at club level to anonymised single cases.
ARCOS
Archery Reliability & Consistency Operating System
ARCOS is the system I am developing to read archers' reliability, consistency and load across a whole federation, starting from the competition results that already exist. It turns the numbers into technical readings and corrections for archers, coaches and the people who run clubs and federations.
The demo uses a fictional data sample, created only to show how the system works.
- Who it is for
- Federations, clubs, coaches and archers.
- Where it starts
- From the competition results that already exist (Ianseo exports), plus training diaries and wellbeing questionnaires.
- Where it stands
- In development. The online demo shows part of the system on fictional data.
- What it is not
- A medical tool: it makes no diagnoses and prescribes nothing.
Essays
The published essays can be read in full here and as a PDF, and where there is a reproduction package you can redo the calculations yourself. For the book in preparation, Il pavimento (The floor), you will find an overview and its predictions.
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Il pavimento (The floor): how much of archery is real
A theory of how scores measure performance: how much of a competition total is the archer and how much is chance. The book is in preparation; here are its method and the 48 predictions in its register, none of them tested yet.
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When Nobody Won: ties, competitions and seasons in archery
In Olympic recurve archery a set-system match can end five-all, and at that point the rules call for a single arrow to settle it. This volume measures how well that arrow (and every other admissible tie-break rule) identifies the better archer, and then widens the question to the tournament and to the season.
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The shoot-off in archery: how much is one arrow worth?
A shoot-off is not a moral judgement: it is a measuring instrument, and of a measuring instrument you can ask how often it is wrong. These pages ask one question, and it has a numerical answer: out of a hundred shoot-offs between two archers of different ability, how many times does that arrow point to the better of the two.
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Target panic as the de-automatization of a ballistic act
An expert archer reaches full draw and the last movement, the one they master better than any other, suddenly will not come. I developed my own theory of what is really happening. I call it de-automatization: I argue that nothing breaks, neither a muscle nor a nerve, and that the release that fails is the same one that succeeds, only run in the wrong control mode.
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The set system in archery: the mathematics of who wins
These pages measure a competition rule instead of judging it. The question is not whether the set system is fair, but how often, looking at a handful of arrows, it can tell which of two archers is shooting better, and how much that ability changes compared with the old cumulative score. The model is deliberately spare: an archer is the width of their group, and nothing else.
Other work
Shorter pieces that grew out of work on the range: competition formats to try at your club and anonymised single cases.
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ARCHEON
ARCHEON is a faster, more tactical challenge format: two athletes or two teams, short rounds, a 10-second shot clock per arrow, and three mechanics that turn every round into a decision, Trap Call, Pressure Ring and Power Shot.
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Pre-anchor block and premature string release
The string slips off the fingers before reaching the anchor. Out of roughly two hundred shots, the archer completes the anchor about ten times. The problem appears at all distances and in the movement itself, not only when aiming at the centre.
Tell me what you see on the range
I am always glad to read about a case that will not shift or an idea worth putting to the test. If there is work to do together, it starts with a free 30-minute introductory session by video call.
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