Matteo Campagna
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In kyudo, nearly two archers in three have had at least one kind of release problem

1 study · 65 archers measured

ForContextAgainst20202022202420262021, for, n = 652021, context, n = 65
Each circle is a study: its position gives the year, its row whether it is for, against or context, its size how many participants it measured. Light circles are studies on other populations or without archers.

The figure comes from a single Japanese questionnaire: seventy members of the kyudo clubs of two medical schools, sixty-five replies, and forty-one say they have had at least one of the four problems kyudo has names for, 63%; leaving out the seven who could not say whether they had had them, it is 41 of 58, or 71%. The commonest is hayake, the early release, present in 35 of the 41; next come arm tremor (yusuri) and a jerk while aiming (biku), seven cases each, and the block that stops the archer releasing (motare), three cases and never alongside the others. The limit lies in how the counting is done: it is enough for practitioners to recognise the problem in themselves, the recall covers their whole time in the sport, and the sample is made up of students around twenty with four years of kyudo behind them. The figure includes episodes that were overcome, does not say how many had to stop, and should not be carried over to recurve or compound, where the release is a different movement.

Also phrased as: "how common are yips in kyudo"; "how many kyudo archers have hayake"; "prevalence of yips in kyudo"; "target panic in kyudo"

In practice

Among kyudo practitioners it is said that hayake, the early release, catches up with almost everyone sooner or later.

Evidence

  • 2021
    For Kyudo archers Published later

    A questionnaire in December 2018, analysed anonymously, to the 70 members of the kyudo clubs of the Gifu and Kumamoto medical schools, 65 replies (92.9%), aged 20.7 ± 2.0 with 4.0 ± 2.4 years of practice: 41 of 65 (63.1%) report at least one of hayake, motare, biku and yusuri, which is 41 of 58 (70.7%) once the 7 who could not answer are left out. The problem counts as present if the practitioners recognise it in themselves, with no outside assessment.

    Yips in Kyudo (Japanese archery): prevalence, classification, and aggravating factors · Seiichiro Nishio, Yuichi Hayashi, Shinei Kato, Yoya Ono, Masahiro Waza, Yoichiro Nagao, Akihiro Mukaino, Shunya Nakane, Takayoshi Shimohata

  • 2021
    Context Kyudo archers Published later

    Among the 41, hayake appears in 35 (85.3%): 26 hayake only, 5 hayake with biku, 3 hayake with yusuri, 1 all three. Then come 3 cases of motare only, which never occurs with the other problems, 2 of yusuri only and 1 of biku with yusuri; biku never appears on its own.

    Yips in Kyudo (Japanese archery): prevalence, classification, and aggravating factors · Seiichiro Nishio, Yuichi Hayashi, Shinei Kato, Yoya Ono, Masahiro Waza, Yoichiro Nagao, Akihiro Mukaino, Shunya Nakane, Takayoshi Shimohata

Status history

  1. 1984 Not studied Nobody in the registry's bibliography had counted how many kyudo practitioners had had a release problem: the four names had long existed in practice, but there was no figure.
  2. 2021 Reported The first figure on the question arrives: sixty-five university kyudo practitioners in Japan, and forty-one of them, 63%, say they have had at least one kind of yips, nearly always hayake, the early release. Kyudo practitioners count as archers, but one study and a prevalence based on self-diagnosis in a university setting keep the status at reported.

Related

Related articles

Research lines

Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). In kyudo, nearly two archers in three have had at least one kind of release problem (Version 1). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/how-common-yips-are-in-kyudo

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_yipsdiffusionekyudo,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {In kyudo, nearly two archers in three have had at least one kind of release problem},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/how-common-yips-are-in-kyudo},
  note = {Version 1; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

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