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Champions hold more consistent aiming times than their opponents

6 studies · 57 archers measured

ForContextAgainst20102015202020252009, for, n = 162009, against, n = 162009, context, n = 162018, context, n = 152019, context, n = 102020, context, n = 82008, context, n = 62016, for, n = 2
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.

Nearly all the material sits in a single piece of work, which timed the four phases of the shot for the two 2007 world champions and their fourteen opponents, seven matches each. That is where the most quoted result comes from: the men's champion held a steadier aiming time than his opponent in six matches out of seven. From the same study, though, comes the opposite as well: the women's champion aimed for a second or a little more against her opponents' two to four seconds, and her timing was less steady than theirs in all seven matches. What the two cases share is not consistency, it is that aiming is the only phase of the shot the round of the tournament does not move, while setting up and drawing stretch and shrink from one match to the next. The rest of the bibliography fits the idea that there is no single aiming time of the winners, but it does not put it to the test: two university archers, fifteen secondary-school kyudo students and eight national-squad archers, where the same person's aiming time runs from a few tenths of a second to more than six.

Also phrased as: "consistent aiming time"; "how long to hold at aim"; "champions always aim for the same time"; "aiming duration and score"; "timing of the shot phases in competition"

In practice

Archers are taught to find their own aiming time and then hold to it on every arrow, and that anyone who stretches or shortens it depending on how the score is going is already losing.

Evidence

Status history

  1. 2008 Not studied In the registry's bibliography the competition shot is not yet timed phase by phase: aiming is discussed as a recommended duration, never as a consistency measured and compared between those who win and those who lose. The question enters sideways, inside the report on the psychological work with the Taiwanese national squad towards Athens 2004: for one archer followed at a national event and at an Asian Championship the time between draw and release stays similar on the arrows scoring ten down to six and departs from it on the worst arrow. It is a graph on a single athlete, with no figures in the text and in a piece of work written for another purpose: it counts as context, not as evidence, and the status stays not studied.
  2. 2009 Contested The one study that really makes the comparison arrives. The four phases of the shot are timed over twelve arrows per match, seven matches from the round of 64 to the final, for the two individual winners of the 2007 World Championships in Leipzig and for their fourteen opponents. The men's champion holds a steadier aiming time than his opponent in six matches out of seven; the women's champion holds a less steady one than her opponents in all seven. Within the same piece of work the two cases point in opposite directions: a single study giving one yes and one no, which is contested. The result that holds for both, and for all sixteen archers, is a different one: aiming is the only phase the round of the tournament does not move.
  3. 2016 Reported Two university archers separate duration from consistency for the first time: the mean aiming time tells the low-scoring arrows from all the others, while between middling and high arrows the duration is almost the same and only its spread from arrow to arrow changes. It is the right distinction, on two people and with no statistical test, but it is a second study in favour against one contrary: the status moves from contested to reported.
  4. 2018 Reported Fifteen secondary-school kyudo students bring the same question to the duration of the whole sequence, and add a detail worth keeping: the more experienced ones hold kai for two seconds, always the same, while in the first year the time runs from two to eleven. Steadier, though, does not mean as prescribed: two seconds is less than the five their coach asked for, and the authors call it an early release. Few practitioners, no statistical test, a different discipline: the status does not move.
  5. 2019 Reported In ten female compound archers the time from draw to release sits at around six seconds and does not change with the phase of the menstrual cycle. It serves as a reference value from a different discipline and a different question, and it comes from a journal with doubtful editorial standards: it does not move the status.
  6. 2020 Reported Eight national-level archers show how unstable the aiming time is even at that level: on their best arrow it runs from two tenths of a second to three and a half, on their worst from a second and a half to more than six. Consistency is not a property of the level, and the status stays reported while we wait for a comparison between winners and losers on many more athletes.

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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). Champions hold more consistent aiming times than their opponents (Version 1). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/consistent-aiming-time

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_costanzatempomira,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Champions hold more consistent aiming times than their opponents},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/technique/consistent-aiming-time},
  note = {Version 1; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

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