Il pavimento (The floor): how much of archery is real
The book I am preparing starts from a single thesis: the score is not the performance. Here I set out its method and register its 48 predictions in public, before it comes out.
Summary
Il pavimento (The floor) is a book in preparation, with no publication date yet. It is a theory of how scores measure performance in archery: it starts from the geometry of the target, the rules and the mathematics of noisy measurement, and calculates how much a total swings when nothing about the archer has changed (the floor that gives the book its title), how well a competition can tell who is better, and what follows for those who shoot, those who coach and those who write the rules. It rests on no archive of competition results. Every claim carries one of five labels (proven, bounded, calculated, simulated, predicted) and the criterion that would refute it. The predicted ones are 48 hypotheses of mine about the world, born of twenty years on the range, which the book has not measured: I register them here, with a date, so that anyone can put them to the test.
Predictions
Breakdowns exist, for everyone (P-CAT)
Every archer produces a minority of shots that do not obey the same law as the ordinary shot: a few per cent, never zero. The book calls these shots breakdowns and gives three plausible origins: physiological (the release is a fine motor skill performed under load, and under load it can degrade in jumps as well as by degrees), technical (nocks, rests and limbs) and attentional (a lapse of attention in the middle of the release, which punches a hole in the group rather than widening it). The expected signature is an excess of impacts far from the group even within a single session, on a steady day, that a single bell curve does not contain.
Breakdowns get rarer with level, not milder (P-EPS)
The frequency of breakdowns falls as level rises: from about 5–6 per cent at the lower end of the competitive scale towards about 2 per cent among the elite. Their severity, on the other hand, stays roughly constant. According to the model the best archers do not make smaller errors: they make the same kind of degraded execution less often, because learning makes breakdowns of the shot less frequent but not less severe, and part of the breakdowns (equipment, lapses of attention, chance events) does not belong to trainable technique and never falls to zero.
The day dominates, and it is lopsided (P-DAY)
Once the sampling floor (how much the total swings from chance alone) is taken out, the largest individual component of noise is the state that changes from one day to the next: it weighs more than the tails of single arrows and more than fine drifts. Days, moreover, are not symmetrical: bad days are worse than good days are good, because many causes can take ten points off in an afternoon and almost none can add them beyond the ceiling of the consolidated shot. The two parts stand together.
The real floor sits a fifth above the bell curve (P-FLOOR)
At every level, the floor measured on an archer's totals under steady conditions exceeds by about 15–25 per cent the one the pure bell curve (the model without breakdowns) predicts for the same expected score. The difference is not constant along the scale: it is largest around the middle and smallest at the ends, because lower down the group is already wide and breakdowns add little, while among the elite a broken arrow has less room to hurt the result. The signature is a ratio between the observed personal floor and the bell-curve floor of about 1.2 on average, which itself traces a bell shape along the scale. The book specifies that the prediction is read on the floors, that is on the standard deviations, and not on the variances.
Within a round, arrows have no memory (P-IID)
Each arrow is a draw without memory: the previous error does not raise the probability of the next one, and there is no such thing, as a mechanism in its own right, as a cursed end. Shooting is a discrete task, a programme that closes and restarts with every arrow, and the cluster of errors an archer feels as contagion may be the kind of sequence the mind picks out even in pure chance. The signature: in series where the shooting order is kept, with the state of the round held steady, a breakdown is not followed by an excess of further breakdowns. That the state does not move within the round is a separate assumption, which the book declares on its own and which is not part of the bet.
The tail runs deeper than the bell curve (P-DEPTH)
Measured in units of the personal floor, the depth of an archer's worst round clearly exceeds what a Gaussian distribution predicts, and the difference grows as level rises. Two reasons are proposed: a round that collects several breakdowns can sink further than sampling from a Gaussian core allows; and near the theoretical maximum the room above the average shrinks while the room below stays wide. The alternative is that this second effect, the ceiling of the scale, is enough on its own to explain the whole tail.
A collapse round is a crater, not a bad afternoon (P-BLACK)
In the same archer's worst rounds, ends are far more scattered among themselves than in their best rounds, and the best rounds are also the most even. The proposed mechanism adds the day and the breakdowns together: the state of the day shifts performance in a diffuse way, while breakdowns are sharp events that sink a single end, and chance can pile more than one into the same round. The alternative is the spiral, in which the error changes what comes next and calls up further error.
The floor changes with the bow (P-DIV)
For the same expected score and conditions, the floor curve changes from one division to another: compound quieter, barebow noisier. The difference does not come from the arithmetic of the scoring rings, which cannot tell which bow shot the arrows, but from the shape of the distribution and its tails: in compound the mechanical release removes one of the main sources of breakdowns, the one tied to the fingers, and changes the tail above all; in barebow the lack of a sight adds an aiming error on both axes.
Level is stable (P-REL)
Latent level, that is the real ability underneath the observed scores, measured over windows of at least eight comparable rounds, is very stable from one window to the next. Once enough averaging has reduced the noise of sampling and of single days, a persistent personal component emerges: consolidated technique changes over months, days and sampling over days or a single round. The alternative is that there is only the moving average of a state that keeps wandering.
Day-to-day drift is vertical (P-DIR)
The centre of the group moves from one day to the next mainly in the vertical, while within a single day the group stays almost round. Elevation depends on launch speed, draw length and release timing, which can change from day to day, and on a judgement that has to be rebuilt every time; horizontal alignment rests on steadier references, such as the shooting line, the torso and the lateral set-up. The alternative is a drift with no preferred direction, spread in a similar way over the two axes.
Precision and consistency are two separate axes (P-AXIS)
Precision, that is how tight the core of the group is within a round, and consistency, that is how little that core changes from one round to the next once the floor is taken out, are largely independent across archers. Precision depends on fine control of the ordinary shot, which repetition refines; consistency depends on whatever interrupts, degrades or shifts that shot: attention, routine, equipment, sleep, tuning, the state of the day. The fraction of breakdowns is not a third axis but one of the components of consistency. The alternative is that ability is a single dimension.
The shape of the group is more stable than its size (P-SHAPE)
The ratio between the axes of the group repeats from one session to the next better than its overall spread: the individual shape of the group is a more stable trait than its size. Shape depends on the architecture of the shot, that is on which link in the technical chain is the main limit and on how that asymmetry shows up on the target, and it changes slowly with technical work; size absorbs more of the condition of the day. The alternative is that shape and size are equally unstable.
Vertical error has a ballistic component (P-VERT)
Vertical error grows with distance more than proportionally and carries the signature of the spread in launch speed; horizontal error grows almost in proportion to distance, as expected of a mainly angular error. The reason is ballistic: the arrow's drop depends on the square of the time of flight, and small differences in speed turn, over distance, into vertical differences that do not follow the law of angular error. The alternative is that both axes grow in proportion to distance.
The X count measures fine centring (P-XRATE)
At the same score, the percentage of Xs measures mainly the quality of fine centring, that is how close the group stays to the centre, more than the ability to group, and it varies between archers more than chance would produce. Two archers with the same average can therefore differ consistently in their share of Xs because they differ in fine tuning, not necessarily in spread. At high levels the score saturates and loses sensitivity to centring, while the X keeps telling it apart; and tuning is a job separate from the shot. The alternative is that the X is simply a consequence of grouping.
The quiet eye foreshadows the arrow (P-QE)
The duration of the final fixation on the aiming point, that is how long the gaze stays still there just before the release, grows with level. Within the same archer, moreover, arrows preceded by a shorter fixation produce worse impacts, and under pressure the fixation tends to shorten. The proposed reasons: the motor programme uses a stable visual reference to set the last parameters of the action, and a long fixation is the visible sign of attention directed outwards. The three parts stand together: the prediction fails if any one of them fails.
Eye dominance leaves a horizontal signature (P-EYE)
Cross-dominant archers (dominant hand and dominant eye on opposite sides) who do not correct for it show a specific excess of horizontal offset and spread. Those who remove the conflict by closing or covering the dominant eye that is not aiming are no different, at the same level, from archers who are not cross-dominant. The dominant eye carries more weight in locating the target: when it is not the aiming eye, perceived alignment can slide sideways and leave a signature mainly on the horizontal axis.
Level carries over from indoor to outdoor, regularity does not (P-TRANSFER)
Moving between indoor and outdoor, general level carries over to a large extent, regularity much less. Level depends mainly on the technical quality of the shot, which stays the same in both settings; a large share of outdoor regularity depends instead on being able to read and handle the wind, which indoor shooting neither trains nor measures. The alternative is a symmetrical transfer: an archer who is regular indoors is regular outdoors to the same extent as they keep their level.
A round has a profile over time (P-TIME)
A round is not uniform over time: it has an entry cost at the start and, beyond an individual load threshold, a progressive decline. The profile is predicted to be smaller at the top and increasingly marked further down the levels. In the first minutes neuromuscular activation can improve fine performance, while with load come tremor and lapses of attention; and the threshold of decline can be trained, so stronger archers should have a flatter profile and a more distant threshold. The alternative is a round that stays flat from start to finish.
A breakdown leaves a tail of disturbance (P-REC)
After an arrow outside the group, a measurable part of the disturbance carries over into the next end instead of ending with the shot that produced it. The size of this tail defines a personal recovery coefficient, and the residual disturbance decreases with experience: a glaring error raises activation and shifts attention onto the outcome just produced, and the routine, which experience builds and consolidates, is there precisely to absorb it. The alternative is pure independence even across breakdowns.
Form has a short memory (P-PERS)
Form on the day can last a few competitions, but not long enough to become a stable trait on which to build long-term forecasts. Being in form is real, but its predictive value is much shorter than everyday language suggests: sleep, neuromuscular tone and activation fluctuate over hours or days, while what stays stable for months belongs to level. The resemblance between one day and the next fades within about 2–3 competitions; the book declares this figure as an assumption. The alternative is long, readable cycles of form.
Trainability is almost never a stable trait (P-TRAIN)
In the great majority of groups, the apparent difference in response to training remains compatible with the hypothesis that everyone responds in the same way. What the coach reads as 'he responds, he doesn't' comes mainly from three effects: regression to the mean, when archers are chosen or judged from a partly noisy starting point; selective dropout, because those who respond little, or believe they do, leave more readily; and the meeting between a coach and a person at a particular moment in their life, a real effect but a different thing from a stable trait.
Growth is overestimated (P-DEV)
Growth observed over short windows tends to be larger than real long-term growth, and the bulk of the technical gain comes in the early stages, while later improvements become steadily smaller. Regression to the mean and the selection of those who stay on the path inflate curves read from raw data; and once the shot is consolidated and automatized, every step forward costs more work and yields less. The alternative is linear growth, readable directly from the observed curves.
The first end pays an entry cost (P-WARMUP)
The first end pays an almost universal entry cost, which a good warm-up should reduce until it disappears: fine neuromuscular performance improves in the first minutes of activity, and the eye needs the first arrows to adapt fully to the task. The alternative is a profile already flat from the first end, as you would expect of a fully automatized shot that is available straight away.
The day can be read early, a little (P-EARLY)
The first arrows say something real about the day, beyond the points they are worth: not much, because the floor of six arrows is high, but more than nothing. If the day sets the width of the group, every window of the round is a sample of it. The alternative is independent windows, in which the first end says nothing beyond the points it is worth. The signature is a correlation between the first end and the rest of the round above that of pure sampling.
Rust is tuning (P-RUST)
Short breaks cost almost nothing; after long ones the main problem is getting the system back in tune rather than recovering a lost shot. Consolidated motor skills are tenacious memories, while the fine match between equipment, eye and aim deteriorates faster: it is the difference between forgetting how to ride a bicycle and finding it again with flat tyres. The alternative is a technical loss in the strict sense, growing with the length of the break.
The seasonal wave is almost all composition (P-SEASON)
The rise and fall of scores over the year depends mainly on the calendar, the type of competition and the weather. The share due to a real periodisation of the archer's state, comparing them with themselves under comparable conditions, should be small: many important causes change along with the season and get mixed up with it. The alternative is an annual wave that stays visible even with the same competition and conditions.
Pressure is a vector (P-PRESS)
Pressure does not change a single quantity: it can shift the centre of the group, widen it, increase breakdowns or alter shot timing, and different people show different combinations. The final score adds these effects together and can hide very different mechanisms. The three routes proposed are the classic explanations of performance under pressure: excessive activation widens the group through tremor; conscious monitoring of an automatized shot increases breakdowns; distraction changes timing and centre. There is no reason for the same person to show all three. The alternative is a single mechanism, the same for everyone.
The favourite erodes through composition, not psychology (P-LEVEL)
Round after round, the advantage of the higher-ranked archer shrinks, but only to the same extent as the gap between the contenders narrows: the bracket concentrates increasingly similar archers, and when the gap is small any format discriminates less. With the gap held fixed, the erosion must disappear. The alternative is a psychological effect of the stakes, whereby the favourite loses ground in the later rounds even against opponents just as far behind.
The deciding set is not of higher quality (P-DECIDE)
In the sets that decide a match, the average quality of shooting does not rise compared with the personal average of the two contenders. Reaching the fifth set means the two stayed close in the previous sets, and two weak archers can be as evenly matched as two strong ones; selection acted on the sets already shot, not on the deciding one. In the model the expected difference is zero, and with a different make-up of the population it can even turn negative. The alternatives are a real rise, from moderate activation helping the automatized shot, or a real fall, from cracking under pressure.
In a shoot-off the group decides, not character (P-TIE)
The share of shoot-offs an archer wins is explained by the width of their group and by specific practice of the single high-stakes arrow; once these components are accounted for, no stable residue remains that could be put down to a general trait of holding up under pressure. The book states it conditionally: for the same number of shoot-offs shot and the same level of opponents, the share of shoot-offs won rises with the archer's level, and once that level is properly included, it explains all of the rise.
After a disaster comes a rebound above average (P-BOUNCE)
After an end much worse than one's own average, the next end scores above the personal average, not merely at the average. The distinction matters: if arrows are independent, after an extreme end the next one returns to the average through regression alone, and that is not a rebound but an absence of memory. The rebound is the excess above that expected return, and the proposed reason is attentional: a glaring error narrows attention onto the shot for a few minutes and reduces the ordinary spread.
The rebound is earned (P-RESIL)
Recovery after a disastrous end is not handed out at random: it appears above a certain threshold of automatization and grows with level. Below that threshold, after the disaster an archer stays close to the low level just shown, or gets worse still. The routine that absorbs activation and detaches attention from the outcome is a product of technical development, and an archer who has not yet automatized the shot pays twice: first the error, then the cost of having to manage it. The alternative is that resilience is mainly a trait of character, independent of technical level.
Clutch is small (P-CLUTCH)
Once level, opponent and selection are taken out, the stable part of over-performance in high-stakes moments is small compared with the noise of the few occasions available. Truly weighty occasions are few and already heavily selected, ideal ground for building reputations out of noise; and the known theories of pressure explain at most who loses less, not who improves beyond their usual level. The alternative is a real, stable talent for performing better when the stakes rise.
Release times have two humps (P-PANIC)
In a competitive population, with nothing at stake, the distribution of the time between the sight entering the gold and the release has two humps instead of one: some archers release with a very short and barely variable latency, others with longer and far more scattered times, with a sparsely populated zone in between. The proposed reason is associative learning: a stimulus that reliably precedes a response ends up calling it up, and the gold can become the trigger. The prediction concerns only the shape of the distribution: the effectiveness of treatments and health questions are left out.
Wind has a shared part and a personal one (P-WIND)
A large share of drift in the wind is common to the whole shooting line; what remains is individual and behaves as a relatively stable parameter of the archer. The average wind mainly shifts the centre of the group, while gusts widen it. Slower and lighter arrows pay more, which accounts for part of the differences between divisions; and reading the wind, choosing when to shoot and how much to correct is a skill that can differ consistently between archers. The alternative is that wind produces only individual noise, with no recognisable common component along the line.
There is a wind you cannot feel that still moves the group (P-GUST)
There is a band of wind the archer does not perceive but which is already enough to shift the centre of the group measurably: the damage starts before the wind is felt. On the line, wind is judged mainly through the skin and through visual cues such as flags, and the threshold at which these cues become obvious can be higher than the force needed to move an arrow a few centimetres at 70 metres. The alternative is that the threshold of perception and the threshold of effect coincide, with no blind band at all.
Cold costs, and it costs below a threshold (P-COLD)
Below a certain temperature performance gets worse, and the drop increases as the temperature falls; above that threshold the effect is negligible. The mechanism is physiological: fine finger dexterity deteriorates as the hand cools, and the release is one of the most exposed components, hence the expected signature mainly on the vertical axis. The alternative is a continuous effect, growing gradually as the temperature falls, with no threshold.
Rain does not matter (P-RAIN)
At equal visibility, rain produces no measurable drop in performance. Neither modern equipment nor the shot is affected to any relevant degree, and most of what is put down to rain would depend on factors that often come with it: poor visibility, wind and cold. It is a bet that openly goes against common sense. The alternative is a real effect of rain, mediated mainly by visibility or grip.
The heartbeat window (P-HR)
The slowing of the heartbeat just before the release distinguishes levels, and within the same archer arrows shot without that slowing tend to produce worse impacts. The slowing may be a sign of attention directed outwards; and each heartbeat causes small movements of the chest, so lowering the rate in the decisive window removes a source of disturbance. The alternative is that it reflects only general physical condition, with no predictive value for the single arrow. The book registers it for completeness, without developing it in the text.
Breathing writes in the vertical (P-BREATH)
When breathing departs from its usual pattern, the first expected effect is an increase in vertical spread, before horizontal spread. The chain running from the diaphragm through the chest and shoulder to the bow acts mainly in the vertical plane, and many aiming disciplines converge on releasing during the pause after breathing out. The alternative is that a sufficiently expert shot fully compensates for changes in breathing, leaving no trace on the impact. Registered for completeness, not developed in the text.
Balance is projected onto the target face (P-SWAY)
Body sway while aiming grows together with spread, and part of the decline caused by fatigue and pressure passes through balance control. If the relation is causal, specific balance work must carry over to shooting as well. Sway introduces an angular component that distance amplifies, like a beam of light that moves further the further away it is projected. The alternative is that the bow arm and the rest of the chain compensate for the sway before it reaches the target. Registered for completeness, not developed in the text.
Short sleep widens the group and leaves the centre where it was (P-SLEEP)
After a sleepless night the group widens without its centre moving. It is a different signature from that of a tuning problem, which shifts the centre while leaving the width more stable. Sleeping little degrades fine motor control and sustained attention, two components needed to repeat the release well. The alternative is that short sleep produces only a generic bad day, with no signature distinguishable from other sources of variability. Registered for completeness, not developed in the text.
An everyday dose of caffeine widens the group (P-CAF)
In a rested archer, an ordinary dose of caffeine widens the group without shifting its centre, with a signature consistent with increased tremor, rather than improving the shooting. With the dose both alertness and tremor rise, but in a slow, fine and already automatized shot the second should weigh more than the first. The alternatives are no effect, through habituation to caffeine, or a positive effect in sleep-deprived archers, in whom the extra alertness has something to make up. Registered for completeness, not developed in the text.
Mixed practice pays off in competition (P-CI)
For the same volume, mixed practice (alternating distances, faces and tasks, never two identical blocks in a row) gives worse scores during training but better ones in competition than blocked practice. Blocked work lets the archer reuse a solution still held in memory, mixed work forces them to rebuild it each time, and that is the ability competition calls for. The serious alternative is that in the archer's single, highly consolidated shot mixing adds nothing, because classic interference arises mainly from switching between different skills.
The gap between training and competition is a personal parameter (P-SPEC)
The gap between training average and competition average, corrected for the floors of both, behaves as a stable personal parameter. Its size depends on how much training and competition differ for that archer, and making the two settings more alike reduces it: what is learnt transfers better the more conditions, rhythm and inner state resemble each other. The part of the gap left once that resemblance is accounted for is the component of holding up in competition. The alternative is that the gap is explained entirely by sampling, because competitions are few and therefore noisier than training sessions.
Overcorrection is widespread (P-CORR)
A sizeable share of archers correct more than the optimal correction calculated by the book's model allows, and pay for this overreaction with more spread, mainly on the vertical axis. The error just seen is vivid and the noise is abstract, so the mind tends to treat every deviation as a signal to correct; and archers are not usually given an explicit measure of the optimal correction, so experience gets close to it only by chance. The alternative is that experience alone is enough to calibrate the correction.
The favourite's erosion in real brackets (P-FINAL)
In real brackets the favourite's advantage shrinks round after round to the same extent as the gap between the contenders narrows: it is an effect of composition, not necessarily of pressure. As the bracket advances, the archers left are ever closer in level, and the expected advantage of the better one shrinks. The alternative is a psychological finals erosion, which would bring the favourite down even when the gap between the two stays constant.
The set system acts as a shield in real matches too (P-SHIELD)
In real matches between known profiles, the set system protects against the effect of the occasional breakdown in the way the book's model predicts: the set confines the catastrophic arrow to a single set, instead of letting it weigh on the whole match as in cumulative scoring. The shield benefits the archer who has some breakdowns, so the signature is that, at the same expected value, the more regular archer wins less than 50 per cent of the time, and even less under the set system than in cumulative scoring; in the model the figures are 45.4 per cent with sets and 48.5 per cent cumulative. The alternative is that this protection does not appear in real matches.
Full text
Book in preparation, with no publication date yet. Predictions registered on 16 October 2026.
What the book does
For years I read scores the way almost everyone in this sport reads them, as verdicts. An archer drops ten points and we look for the fault in the shot; another puts together two competitions above their average and we talk of a step up; two young archers are three points apart in the rankings and one of them stays at home. Il pavimento (The floor) grows out of the question underneath all these readings: how much of that number is the archer, and how much is chance.
The book has a single thesis: the score is not the performance. It is a compressed, noisy and rule-bound measurement of a performance that cannot be seen, and the book treats it the way one treats a measuring instrument. It follows the chain that runs from the position of the arrow to the scoring ring, from the ring to the total, from the total to the ranking and from the ranking to the decision, and calculates how much each step loses along the way. This is where the floor comes from: how much the total of a round swings from chance alone when nothing about the archer has changed. At 630 over 72 arrows it lies between 8.1 and 8.8 points depending on the scenario, and it falls as level rises. It is a lower bound: real competition scores always swing more, because the day and the conditions on the field add to the chance of the arrows.
The rest of the book uses this calibrated instrument to read the rules (the set system, the shoot-off, the bracket, the season), then bends the model to see which conclusions hold and which do not, and finally comes back to the archer: the shape of a performance, pressure, wind, sight correction. It uses no archive of competition results. It starts from what is public and can be checked, namely the geometry of the target, the rules, the mathematics of noisy measurement and the mechanics of the bow and the body, and anyone can redo its calculations.
Five labels for every claim
Every quantitative statement in the book carries a label saying where it comes from, and next to it the criterion that would refute it. Proven means it follows from the declared premises, like a theorem. Calculated means it is an exact calculation within the declared model, and an error in the calculation would refute it. Simulated means it comes from simulations over a declared family of models, and holds on that family. Bounded means the result is a band of values compatible with the data, not a point estimate. Predicted means it is a statement about the world that the book has not measured.
The labels state the kind of derivation, not that a statement has been verified, and I assigned them myself: no external reviewer has checked them one by one. Their job is to stop the consequence of a model being read as a measured fact, which is also why the book has no 'observed' label.
Why the predictions are registered here
There are 48 predicted statements. They are convictions that twenty years on the range have left me with, about breakdowns, the day, wind, pressure and training, each recast as a bet. Every one carries the mechanism behind it, the alternative that would say the opposite, the observable signature that separates the two and the procedure that would decide it. A phrase such as 'experience suggests' risks nothing, whereas a prediction written down with a date and with the criterion that would bring it down puts itself on the line.
That is why I am registering them here before the book comes out, in the same form as the Lab's other predictions: the text and the test criterion no longer change, and when an outcome comes in I record it alongside, whether it confirms or refutes. In the book every entry points to one of the seven field protocols it describes; here, since the protocols are not published on the site, I have written in plain words what it would take to decide each one.
Two caveats are needed to read them. The first is that they are not 48 independent tests: some say almost the same thing (P-LEVEL and P-FINAL are decided by the same archive of brackets), and others depend on the outcome of a single one (P-REC, P-BOUNCE and P-BLACK have the pure form of P-IID as their alternative). Where an entry has several parts, the parts stand together, and the entry fails if any one of them fails. The second is that almost all of them rest on three assumptions of the model: that arrows are independent, that the archer's state does not move within a round and that the group has the declared shape. If one of these falls, the yardsticks against which many entries are measured change. The book also sets a deadline for each entry, of three, five or ten years depending on how costly its protocol is: if nobody puts it to the test within that time, the entry is neither confirmed nor refuted, it has expired.
The site's tools that come from the book
Some of the calculated parts of the book are already on the site as free tools, using its definitions and tables:
- the floor calculator, which tells you how much your score moves when nothing has changed;
- Did I really improve?, which compares two rounds starting from the ring counts;
- the change detector, which shows the round at which an improvement becomes visible;
- the score gap calculator, which tells you how many points it takes to show you have improved;
- the printable archer assessment sheet, with the floor table by level.
Three studies in the Lab came out of the same work and can already be read in full: the set system, the shoot-off and ties, the competition and the season.
Articles about it
- How many points does it take to tell two archers apart?Two identical top archers finish five points apart on average over 72 arrows, by chance alone. How big a gap you need, and how many competitions prove a gain.
- I scored more and lost: how the set system worksSince 2010 a match has been decided by sets, not by adding up arrows. How it works, how often the lower total wins, and why it happens mostly between equals.
- Does the score drop in the second half of a competition? Fatigue and the scorecard comparedIn the studies that split a round into two halves, reported fatigue rises and the score does not. What they measured, how firm it is and where they stop.
- Do archers shoot worse in competition than in training? The body and the target, measuredIn competition the heart beats faster, yet measured accuracy does not drop: what studies comparing competition and training show, and where they stop.
Claims this study informs
- Not studiedThe set system rewards the more consistent archerIn the registry since February 2026
- ReportedThe shoot-off arrow rewards the better archer3 studies · 182 archers measuredStatus since 2020
- ReportedAn archer's accuracy varies a great deal from one day to the next1 study · 15 archers measuredStatus since 2024
- ContestedAfter a good end it is easier to shoot another good one3 studies · 3,648 archers measuredStatus since 2024
- ReportedStronger archers are also the most consistent ones4 studies · 230 archers measuredStatus since 1986
- TransferredAfter an end it pays to move the sight by only part of the error you see1 study · archers measuredStatus since 2020
- ReportedArrow groups widen more than in proportion to distance9 studies · 183 archers measuredStatus since 2014
- ReportedA longer quiet eye improves shooting accuracy3 studies · 58 archers measuredStatus since 2017
- ContestedCross-dominance between eye and hand worsens accuracy8 studies · 1,467 archers measuredStatus since 2009
- ReportedThe more wind there is, the lower the score, independently of temperature4 studies · 3,196 archers measuredStatus since 2014
- ContestedModerate cold does not lower competition scores1 study · 3,196 archers measuredStatus since 2021
- ContestedRain, humidity and temperature make no measurable difference to the score4 studies · 3,207 archers measuredStatus since 2021
- ContestedA lower heart rate at the moment of the shot improves the score22 studies · 347 archers measuredStatus since 1994
- ReportedThe less the body sways while aiming, the better the shot30 studies · 423 archers measuredStatus since 2017
- ReportedLittle sleep the night before does not worsen accuracy2 studies · 21 archers measuredStatus since 2017
- ContestedCaffeine improves accuracy in archery4 studies · 26 archers measuredStatus since 2026
- ContestedTraining at varied distances raises the score more than always shooting at the same one3 studies · 50 archers measuredStatus since 2024
Data availability
No competition data: the book is a theory of measurement built from the geometry of the target, the rules and a declared model, and its 48 predictions have not yet been put to the test. The book is not yet published, so there is no PDF or package to download.
If you want your own scores read this way
The tools above do the main calculations on their own. If you want a full reading of your competition scores, with the floor, the threshold for an improvement and video of your shot in a single report, the place to start is the full assessment.
See the full assessmentCite
Campagna, M. (2026). Il pavimento (The floor): how much of archery is real. The Lab, matteocampagna.com. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/laboratorio/the-floor
@techreport{campagna2026_ilpavimento,
author = {Campagna, Matteo},
title = {Il pavimento (The floor): how much of archery is real},
year = {2026},
institution = {matteocampagna.com},
type = {The Lab},
url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/laboratorio/the-floor},
note = {accessed 2026-10-16}
}
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