In competition archers read their coach's behaviour, and what they see changes their confidence
1 study · 8 archers measured
The summary today
The question has a single study, and it comes from the right place: eight archers from the South Korean Olympic team, interviewed two years before Tokyo. They say they read their coach's behaviour while they shoot: for one of them a coach watching the scores in silence looks worried and costs him his confidence, for another a coach's anxiety is catching, more catching than calm, and a technical correction in the middle of a match makes things worse; and in competition they ask for emotional support and concrete information together, not one without the other. One adds a detail that runs against the most common idea: confidence, this archer says, does not come from being reassured but from the habit of winning built up in the small things of every day. It is all accounts, sorted into themes by the two authors with high agreement (kappa 0.89): no scores, no measure of confidence, and the coaches were not asked anything.
Also phrased as: "coach poker face"; "coach athlete communication in archery competition"; "coach anxiety is contagious"; "what to say to an archer during competition"; "coach behind the shooting line"
In practice
Coaches are told to keep a poker face behind the line, because after every end the archer turns round to look at them and reads everything from how they hold their arms or from a spotting scope they never take their eye from.
Evidence
-
2020
For Archers Published later
8 South Korean Olympic archers (4 men and 4 women, 27.5 ± 4.03 years), semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis: they say they read their coach's non-verbal behaviour in competition, and a coach watching the scores in silence is read as worried and makes them lose confidence. Agreement between the two authors' analyses kappa = 0.89. Within the same theme, on where confidence comes from, the archers say it does not come from the coach's reassuring words but from the habit of winning built up in small everyday things.
"Coach Really Knew What I Needed and Understood Me Well as a Person": Effective Communication Acts in Coach-Athlete Interactions among Korean Olympic Archers · Youngsook Kim, Inchon Park
-
2020
For Archers Published later
In the same study the archers report that the coach's anxiety is contagious, the negative state more so than the positive one, and that correcting technique in the middle of a competition makes the situation worse. It is a theme from the interviews, with no measurements.
"Coach Really Knew What I Needed and Understood Me Well as a Person": Effective Communication Acts in Coach-Athlete Interactions among Korean Olympic Archers · Youngsook Kim, Inchon Park
-
2020
For Archers Published later
In moments of crisis during competition the archers say they want emotional support and concrete information about their performance together, not one without the other. One archer who was getting neither advice on what to correct nor words of motivation recalls that a line of encouragement repeated over and over from behind did not help and broke their concentration.
"Coach Really Knew What I Needed and Understood Me Well as a Person": Effective Communication Acts in Coach-Athlete Interactions among Korean Olympic Archers · Youngsook Kim, Inchon Park
Status history
- 2020 Reported The only study on the question arrives: eight archers from the South Korean Olympic team, four men and four women, interviewed for about forty minutes each. They say they read their coach's non-verbal behaviour while they shoot, and that a coach watching the scores in silence is read as worried and makes them lose confidence; they say the coach's anxiety is contagious and that correcting technique in the middle of a competition makes things worse; and they want emotional support and concrete information together. For them confidence comes from the habit of winning in small everyday things, not from reassuring words. One qualitative study of eight people, with no scores: reported.
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.
- Self-confidence and score: what goes together and what comes firstSelf-confidence and score in archers: what the studies measured, how strong the link is, and why nobody knows whether confidence comes before the points.
Research lines
Cite
Campagna, M. (2026). In competition archers read their coach's behaviour, and what they see changes their confidence (Version 1). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/coach-behaviour-confidence-in-competition
@misc{campagna2026_allenatoregarafiducia,
author = {Campagna, Matteo},
title = {In competition archers read their coach's behaviour, and what they see changes their confidence},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/coach-behaviour-confidence-in-competition},
note = {Version 1; accessed 2026-10-16}
}
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