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Muscle fatigue increases bow sway while aiming

3 studies · 27 archers measured

ForContextAgainst19952000200520102015202020251994, for, n = 122015, context, n = 81993, for, n = 7
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.

Two studies, a year apart, measured the two halves of the same chain. The first took seven university archers and had them hold the shooting position to exhaustion: the frequency of the posterior deltoid's electrical signal falls in all seven, and the tremor that appears between eight and twelve hertz shows up in the oscillation of the bow limb, with a coherence between 0.81 and 0.96. Fatigue, in other words, reaches the bow. The second applied a fatigue protocol to twelve Italian archers and found the sideways sway of the bow increased in all twelve, by six to thirty-nine per cent and twenty per cent on average, while the centre of pressure under the feet did not shift: fatigue moves the bow, not the base. Two small studies, neither with a control group, and one detail to bear in mind, because the same signal also contains a slow oscillation between two and five hertz that fatigue does not change and that depends on movement control. On the target the two are indistinguishable. Twenty years later a thesis on eight elite recurve archers saw the wrists, elbows and shoulder move faster and the score drop when the aim was stretched to two and three times the usual time, but without measuring either fatigue or the bow.

Also phrased as: "tiredness and a wandering aim"; "fatigue tremor in archery"; "a tired shoulder cannot hold the aim"; "fatigue and bow stability"

In practice

When the bow starts to wander while aiming, tiredness gets the blame, and that is where the advice to end the session before the shoulder goes comes from, on the grounds that a tired shoulder no longer holds the aim still.

Evidence

  • 1993
    For Archers Published later

    7 male university archers hold the shooting position at about 40 to 50% of maximal force to exhaustion: the mean frequency of the posterior deltoid's electromyographic signal falls steadily in all seven (p < 0.05), by 0.72% a second over about 52 seconds, and the tremor peak between 8 and 12 hertz is coherent with the oscillation of the bow limb, with coherence between 0.81 and 0.96. The same displacement signal also contains a power peak below 5 hertz, in the 2 to 5 band, which the effort does not change and which depends on movement control: these are two distinct oscillations. The protocol is an isometric hold rather than a series of arrows, and aiming is not measured.

    Biomechanical Study of the Final Push-Pull in Archery · P. Leroyer, J. Van Hoecke, J.N. Helal

  • 1994
    For Archers Published later

    12 archers of intermediate and high level from the Italian federation, a fatigue protocol of six sets of ten twenty-second holds at full draw, a Kistler force plate at 1000 Hz, no control group: sideways bow sway while aiming increases significantly in all 12 archers, by 6% to 39% with a mean of 20%. The centre of pressure under the feet does not change in displacement on either axis, in individuals or in groups, while the length of its path in the last second before release lengthens only in some archers, with no correlation to technical level.

    Fatigue effects on shooting archery performance · Roberto Squadrone, Renato Rodano, C. Gallozzi

  • 2015
    Context Archers Published later

    A master's thesis on 8 elite recurve archers from the British programme, six arrows at 70 m in each of three conditions, with release cued by a sound at 100, 200 and 300% of their usual holding time, always in that order; video at 150 frames a second in the frontal plane over the last second before release. Lengthening the hold raises movement velocity at five landmarks out of six, for example the bow-arm wrist from 3.21 to 3.58 and 3.87 cm/s (F = 10.97, p < 0.001) and the drawing-hand wrist from 3.51 to 4.15 and 4.60 cm/s (p < 0.001), and the mean score per arrow falls from 8.60 to 8.13 and 7.75 (p = 0.02; the difference is significant only between the normal and the tripled hold). The author reads it as acute fatigue, but fatigue is not measured, the bow is not tracked and the fixed order confounds the longer hold with the arrows already shot; the degrees of freedom, 2 and 94, show that the analysis treats single arrows as independent observations. It is not evidence about fatigue: it remains context.

    Stability of alignment during extended hold times in the aiming phase of elite archers · Lewis Marsden

Status history

  1. 1990 Not studied No study in the registry's bibliography had yet put a fatigue protocol next to a measurement of bow sway while aiming.
  2. 1993 Reported The first piece of mechanism arrives in seven university archers holding the shooting position to exhaustion: the frequency of the posterior deltoid's electrical signal falls in all seven, by 0.72 per cent a second over about fifty-two seconds, and the tremor appearing between eight and twelve hertz shows up in the oscillation of the bow limb, with a coherence between 0.81 and 0.96. Fatigue therefore reaches the bow, but the protocol is an isometric hold with no arrow and sway while actually aiming at a target was not measured: a single study, on seven people, so reported.
  3. 1994 Reported The second study closes the chain from the other end. After six sets of ten twenty-second holds at full draw, the sideways sway of the bow increases in all twelve Italian archers, by six to thirty-nine per cent and twenty per cent on average, while the centre of pressure under the feet does not shift on either axis: fatigue moves the bow rather than the base, and only in some archers does it lengthen the centre-of-pressure path in the last second before release. It remains a before-and-after design with no control group, so the status does not rise.
  4. 2015 Reported Twenty years on, related figures arrive from a master's thesis on eight elite British recurve archers: holding the aim two and three times longer than usual, the wrists, elbows and shoulder move faster in the last second before release and the score per arrow falls from 8.6 to 7.8. The author speaks of fatigue but does not measure it, the bow is not tracked and the conditions always come in the same order, so the longer hold coincides with the arrows already shot: a hint consistent with the claim rather than evidence for it, and the status stays reported on the two studies from the nineties.

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Research lines

Studies describe groups of archers, and your own numbers show how far the finding applies to your shooting.

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Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). Muscle fatigue increases bow sway while aiming (Version 2). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/physical-training/fatigue-and-bow-sway

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_faticaoscillazionearco,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Muscle fatigue increases bow sway while aiming},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/physical-training/fatigue-and-bow-sway},
  note = {Version 2; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

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