The ideal level of arousal for shooting well differs from archer to archer

The summary today

On archers the idea rests on little: three people measured over a season, alongside eight who describe themselves. Three top Brazilian archers, followed for a whole season, have optimal zones that differ from one another: at 70 metres, on an arousal scale from 1 to 9, the first sits between 4.7 and 5.9, the second between 5.0 and 6.6 and the third between 6.1 and 7.15, and in none of the three do the extreme values go with the best ends. The zone guarantees nothing, though: even inside it, each archer goes on shooting mediocre ends, and the zone itself changes from one distance to another. The archers' own words point the same way: interviewed before Atlanta 1996, the eight Italian Olympians describe opposite ideal states, since one looks for calm, knowing that if he shoots aggressively his arrows go everywhere, and another gets himself charged by taking on a duel with the target. These are self-descriptions, though, with no score. The rest is background: single-archer cases, an experiment that looked for a level suiting everyone and did not find one, and group tendencies that say only that more energy does not mean a better shot. Nobody has yet tested whether deliberately getting back into one's own zone raises the score.

Also phrased as: "optimal arousal zone"; "being in the zone"; "ideal level of activation"; "arousal and performance"; "too calm or too tense"

Evidence

• 1992
  Context Archers Published later

  An Olympic archer recorded in competition in 1987: when the intervals between heartbeats lengthened and respiratory sinus arrhythmia rose, the archer reported having relaxed too much and making basic errors. A qualitative observation, without counts, within a paper developing a monitoring device.

  Development of an Apparatus for Monitoring Degree of Mental Tension · Mieko Ohsuga, Futomi Shimono, Chie Akashi

• 1994
  Context Kyudo archers Published later

  5 university kyudo archers followed in practice and in matches: the link between heart rate, somatic anxiety and hit percentage is described as curvilinear, an inverted U, on the basis of each participant's graphs and without a dedicated statistical test.

  Changes of Heart Rate, Somatic Anxiety, and Performance of Japanese Archers during Practices and Matches · Masakazu Miyamoto

• 1997
  Context Archers Published later

  28 archers from a Japanese university club, three arrows at 50 metres under four combinations of serious or playful state and low or high arousal: means out of 30 of 18.8, 19.4, 18.4 and 19.6, with no differences. Leaving out the novices, the conditions in which arousal matches the level preferred in the state of the moment give 20.9 points against 19.0 (t = 1.56, p = 0.06, one-tailed), not significant. It looks for a level that suits everyone and does not compare the ideal levels of different archers.

  Effects on Archery Performance of Manipulating Metamotivational State and Felt Arousal · J. H. Kerr, H. Yoshida, C. Hirata, K. Takai, F. Yamazaki

• 1998
  Context Archers Published later

  Interviews with the 8 archers of the Italian Olympic team for Atlanta 1996: the ideal states they describe point in opposite directions. One archer says that if he shoots aggressively his arrows go everywhere and he has to stay calm; another gets himself charged by taking on a duel with the target and has found that he shoots better charged than calm; two feel no need to control their heart rate. These are self-descriptions, not linked to any score, and many themes come from a single archer.

  Mental Preparation Strategies of Olympic Archers During Competition: an exploratory investigation · Claudio Robazza, Laura Bortoli

• 2005
  Context Review Published later

  A review chapter reporting at second hand the 1997 study of 28 archers at a university club and presenting it as supportive: better performance with low arousal in the goal-oriented state and high arousal in the activity-oriented state. In the original article, which is in the registry, that difference is not significant (p = 0.06, one-tailed).

  Psychological Aspects of Archery · Kathleen M. Haywood

• 2005
  Context Review Published later

  The same chapter reports the case of an archer with six years in the Italian national squad: measured fifteen minutes before two practice rounds and five competition rounds at a world championship, her emotions resembled those she remembered from poor performances, her heart rate sat outside the pattern considered optimal for her, and the competition went badly. A single case, reported second hand.

  Psychological Aspects of Archery · Kathleen M. Haywood

• 2007
  Context Archers Published later

  A 25-year-old Brazilian archer, second in the national ranking, followed in competition with her activation reported after each end on a scale from 1 to 9 and her heart rate recorded: at 18 metres a good end is most likely between 5.0 and 7.7, peaking at 6.3, while below 3.7 and above 7.7 a poor end becomes more likely, an inverted U. The zone changes with distance (5.7-7.4 at 30 metres, 3.9-5.1 at 50, 4.1-4.6 at 60, 5.0-6.6 at 70), and reported activation and pleasantness predict a good end better than heart rate (at 70 metres 67.0 and 62.9 per cent against 52.2, with no test). A single person, who rated herself already knowing the result of the end: it does not compare different archers.

  Linking affect and performance of an international level archer incorporating an idiosyncratic probabilistic method · Michael B. Johnson, William A. Edmonds, Luiz Carlos Moraes, Edson S. Medeiros Filho, Gershon Tenenbaum

• 2008
  For Archers Published later

  3 top Brazilian archers, aged 24 to 57, followed for a season: the optimal arousal zones at 70 metres, on the 1 to 9 scale, are 4.7-5.9, 5.0-6.6 and 6.1-7.15, and the heart rate zones are individual too. Values from 1 to 3 and from 8 to 9 never go with the best ends in any of the three.

  Affective and Physiological States during Archery Competitions: Adopting and Enhancing the Probabilistic Methodology of Individual Affect-Related Performance Zones (IAPZs) · Edson Soares Medeiros Filho, Luiz Carlos Moraes, Gershon Tenenbaum

• 2008
  Context Archers Published later

  In the same study no probability curve reaches a hundred per cent inside the optimal zone: even there, the chances of mediocre and poor ends remain, and they differ between the three archers. For one of the three the pleasure zone linked to the best ends was almost the same at 30, 50, 70 and 90 metres, while for the other two it changed at every distance.

  Affective and Physiological States during Archery Competitions: Adopting and Enhancing the Probabilistic Methodology of Individual Affect-Related Performance Zones (IAPZs) · Edson Soares Medeiros Filho, Luiz Carlos Moraes, Gershon Tenenbaum

• 2015
  For Archers Published later

  3 Malaysian Olympic recurve archers at London 2012: the one who stayed in their optimal emotional zone shoots 669 in qualification (twentieth) and gets through the first round, while the other two, outside their zones, shoot 658 (forty-fifth) and 654 (forty-eighth) and are knocked out in the first round. Venue with questionable editorial standards.

  Archery: Emotion Intensity Regulation to Stay in the Zone during Olympic Competition Questionable venue · Jolly Roy, Edin Suwarganda

• 2024
  Context Kyudo archers Published later

  15 university kyudo archers, comparing days with more and fewer hits within the same archer: POMS2 vigour before shooting is 46.8 on the better days against 50.8 on the worse ones (t = 1.83, p = 0.09, d = 0.53), and the link between sleep and better days (total sleep F = 6.57, p = 0.02) no longer holds once vigour is accounted for (F = 3.11, p = 0.10).

  Relationship between mood and sleep status with performance accuracy in university kyudo athletes · Masaki Yoshioka, Misato Takada, Makinori Matsuo, Seiji Maeda, Keisei Kosaki

• 2025
  Context Archers Published later

  32 Indian archers, a machine learning model trained on one session and tested on the second: in the individual plots the factors that explain the score carry different weights in two elite compound archers from the same group and in two non-elite recurve archers. Four archers illustrated, no measure of an optimal zone.

  Can we predict archery performance using shooting heart rate and other biophysical parameters? A machine learning approach · Chandra Sekara Guru, Uma Mahajan, Anup Krishnan, Karuna Datta, Deep Sharma

Status history

1. 1992 Not studied The first hint comes from a single case, recorded in competition in 1987 and published five years later: an Olympic archer reported relaxing too much, and making basic errors, at exactly the moments when heart rate slowed and respiratory sinus arrhythmia rose. It suggests that low arousal has a cost too, meaning the good window has two edges, but it is one person and says nothing about differences between archers: nobody has asked the question yet.
2. 1994 Not studied Five university kyudo archers followed through practice and matches: according to the author the link between heart rate, somatic anxiety and hit percentage takes the shape of an inverted U, with an intermediate level better than the extremes. The reading comes from each archer's graphs, without a dedicated test, and does not compare one person's window with another's: the status does not change.
3. 1997 Not studied The first group experiment looks for a level that suits everyone and does not find one. Twenty-eight archers from a Japanese university club shoot three arrows at 50 metres under four combinations of frame of mind, serious or playful, and arousal, low or high: the means, out of 30, run from 18.4 to 19.6 and cannot be told apart. The authors then check whether archers do better when they are as aroused as their state of the moment prefers, 20.9 against 19.0, but the difference is not significant even on a one-tailed test. Nobody has yet measured whether the ideal level differs from one archer to another: the status does not change.
4. 1998 Not studied The first words placing different archers side by side come from interviews with the eight members of the Italian Olympic team for Atlanta 1996. The states they describe as ideal point in opposite directions: one knows that if he shoots aggressively his arrows go everywhere and looks for calm, another gets himself charged by taking on a duel with the target and has found that he shoots better that way. These are self-descriptions, though, with no score and no measure of arousal: they point to the question, but nobody has yet measured whether the level that works differs from one archer to another, and the status does not change.
5. 2005 Not studied A review of the psychology of archery describes the 1997 Japanese experiment as a supporting result, namely that archers shoot better when arousal matches their state of the moment, whereas in the original data that difference was not significant. It also reports the case of an Italian national squad archer whose emotions before the rounds of a world championship resembled those of her worst performances, and who shot poorly. These are reported results, without figures, and a single case: they add no measurement, and the question still has no direct evidence.
6. 2007 Not studied The first measured zone arrives, on a single person: a Brazilian archer, second in the national ranking, followed in competition with her arousal reported after each end. At 18 metres a good end is most likely between 5.0 and 7.7 on a scale from 1 to 9, and below 3.7 or above 7.7 a poor end becomes more likely, an inverted U; but the zone changes with distance, from 5.7-7.4 at 30 metres to 4.1-4.6 at 60. It is the method that a year later will be used on three archers, applied here to just one, who rated herself already knowing the result of the end: it says nothing about differences between archers, and the status does not change.
7. 2008 Reported The first direct measurement arrives: three top Brazilian archers followed for a whole season, with arousal reported straight after every end, with the score already known, on a scale from 1 to 9. At 70 metres the optimal zones differ, from 4.7 to 5.9, from 5.0 to 6.6 and from 6.1 to 7.15, and the heart rate zones are individual too. Values from 1 to 3 and from 8 to 9 never go with the best ends, but mediocre ends remain possible inside the zone, and each archer's zone changed from one distance to another. It is the first measurement comparing the zones of different archers, and it points the same way as the 1998 interviews; but it is a single study, on three people: reported.
8. 2015 Reported At London 2012 the only one of three Malaysian archers who stayed in their optimal emotional zone shoots the best qualification, 669 points and twentieth place, and gets through the first round, while the two outside their zones finish on 658 and 654 and are knocked out. Three athletes and a single competition, in a journal with questionable editorial standards: the observation points the way of the claim, but a questionable venue never decides a status, which stays reported.
9. 2024 Reported Fifteen university kyudo archers followed day by day: on the days with more hits, the vigour reported before shooting tends to be lower, 46.8 against 50.8 (p = 0.09), and the link between short sleep and better days disappears once that vigour is accounted for. It is a group tendency at the edge of significance, not an individual zone, and it says only that more energy does not mean a better shot: the status stays reported.
10. 2025 Reported A machine learning model built on thirty-two Indian archers, with shooting heart rate among the predictors, makes it possible to look at one archer at a time: two elite compound archers from the same group have different profiles, and so do two non-elite recurve archers. It is an observation inside a model, on four archers illustrated, and it does not measure an arousal zone: the status stays reported, on the only study that measures the zones of different archers, the 2008 one on three people.

Related

Related articles

• How fired up you need to be to shoot well: individual bands, distance and relaxationIs there a right level of arousal for shooting well? What the studies say about individual bands, shooting distance and relaxing before an end.
• Mental skills training in archery: what the measurements on archers showWhat has been measured on archers' mental training: score, confidence, anxiety, programme length, mock competitions and each of the tools in turn.
• HRV in archery: what it says about recovery and training loadHRV in archery: which index to use, why the weekly average matters and what research says about recovery, training load and heart rate in competition.

Research lines

• 19 studiesArousal, relaxation and individual zones
• 56 studiesAnxiety and confidence in archery competition since 1986

Other claims in this domain

• ReportedA larger working memory does not make an archer more accurate3 studies · 79 archers measuredStatus since 2012
• ReportedA longer quiet eye improves shooting accuracy3 studies · 58 archers measuredStatus since 2017
• ReportedA mental profile tells archers apart from athletes in other sports only in part5 studies · 550 archers measuredStatus since 2018
• ReportedA mental training programme improves the elite archer's mood1 study · 16 archers measuredStatus since 2023
• ReportedA mental training programme reduces burnout in elite archers1 study · 16 archers measuredStatus since 2023

See all claims on mind and attention