In competition archers and their coach communicate mostly without words

The summary today

There are two readings by the same author of the Tokyo 2020 Games, both of videos of the Korean women's team and both in regional journals, and they do not say the same thing. In the individual final the signs coded between archer and coach number ten: two purely verbal, four purely gestural and four mixed, and on the shooting line there is no exchange made of words alone; the high five appears both on and off the line. In the team final, read with the same method, there are nineteen signs and the proportions even out: seven gestural only, six verbal only, six mixed, even though the author concludes that gesture prevails here too. What shows there is a division of tasks rather than a predominance: every instruction goes through the voice, the high five and encouragement through gesture, in a regular alternation of instruction before the shot and high five after it. Counted the same way, more than half of the signs contain words in both finals, six out of ten and twelve out of nineteen: gesture dominates encouragement, but there is no overall predominance of wordless exchanges, and that is why the status is "Not studied". And the method matters: it is a semiotic reading of one video by one person, with no second observer and no count of all the exchanges, on a single team.

Also phrased as: "the coach says little in competition"; "high fives in competition"; "coach and archer communication"; "coach gestures on the shooting line"; "signals between archer and coach"

Evidence

• 2023
  Context Archers Published later

  Semiotic analysis of the video of the women's individual final at Tokyo 2020, won by the Korean archer: ten signs coded between archer and coach, two purely verbal, four purely non-verbal and four verbal and non-verbal together; on the shooting line only non-verbal or mixed signs appear, and the author reports the high five both on and off the line. Counted as in the team final, six signs out of ten contain words: gesture appears in more signs, but there is no predominance of wordless exchanges. A single video, read by a single author, in a regional journal.

  Archer and Coach Communication at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics · Teguh Dwi Putranto

• 2025
  Context Archers Published later

  Same method applied to the women's team final at Tokyo 2020 (three Korean archers and their coach): 19 signs, 7 non-verbal only, 6 verbal only and 6 mixed. All six purely verbal signs are instructions and the seven purely non-verbal ones are all high fives, one of them with shouting; the mixed signs include support, discussion, praise and hugs. Here words and gestures are level: the author concludes that non-verbal communication prevails in this final too, but his own counts do not show it.

  Communication of the South Korean women's archery team at the 2020 Tokyo olympics · Teguh Dwi Putranto

• 2025
  Context Archers Published later

  On the shooting line the sequence is the same in both passages: a spoken instruction before the shot and a high five after it, repeated three times, and the high five appears in 8 of the 19 signs. Support is the only sign at the start off the line, explicit praise appears only at the end of the match, and in the middle phases there is no sign of praise at all.

  Communication of the South Korean women's archery team at the 2020 Tokyo olympics · Teguh Dwi Putranto

Status history

1. 2023 Not studied The first coding arrives, of a women's individual Olympic final at Tokyo 2020: ten signs between archer and coach, two purely verbal, four purely gestural and four mixed, and on the shooting line no exchange made of words alone, with the high five both on and off the line. Gesture appears in more signs, but six out of ten contain words, so the coding does not show archer and coach communicating mostly without words; and it is a single video, read by a single author in a regional journal. It points no clear way: not studied.
2. 2025 Not studied The same author applies the same method to the team final and finds nineteen signs with words and gestures in similar proportion: seven gestural only, six verbal only, six mixed, so twelve out of nineteen with words. It adds the division of tasks, with instructions going only through the voice and a high five after every shot, but not a predominance of gesture, which the author nonetheless restates in his conclusions. It is not an independent replication, and the two codings together give the claim no direction: the status stays not studied.

Related

Related articles

• The archery coach: how much they matter and what they do on the shooting lineWhat the studies say about archer and coach, and how they communicate in competition: when to step in, when to keep quiet and how much gestures count.

Research lines

• 16 studiesCoach and athlete: communication, relationship and the shooting line

Other claims in this domain

• CorroboratedAbout 150 points on a FITA round separate a club archer from a national-team archer13 studies · 492 archers measuredStatus since 2003
• CorroboratedAn archer's arousal rises with what is at stake, and keeps rising as the competition goes on3 studies · 23 archers measuredStatus since 2011
• CorroboratedArchers are more aroused in competition than in training5 studies · 50 archers measuredStatus since 2025
• CorroboratedAt 70 metres a top archer averages about nine points per arrow7 studies · 72 archers measuredStatus since 2012
• CorroboratedEven in competition at the highest level, most arrows are not tens4 studies · 3,212 archers measuredStatus since 2024

See all claims on competition and scoring