The theory is in the articles, and some tools are free. Here is the real work: reports and analyses for real archers, and the ideas and formats I am experimenting with. Anonymized cases but complete in method, theories to put to the test, extracts from the manuals.
The system · Performance & Health Intelligence
ARCOS · Archery Reliability & Consistency Operating System
It takes archery from data to evidence, across an entire federation. If you shoot, it is a Passport that follows you through your career and shows you your weak points from real competition data. If you coach, it reads the shot and the load and turns the numbers into corrections that work. If you run an organization, it puts the whole ecosystem in front of you at a glance: defensible selection, talent, and dropout rates by category, age and region. One engine, from a single shot to a nation's trend, adaptable to other precision sports too. It begins with one truth: consistency is not repeating the same movement, but governing your own variations.
ARCHEON is a faster, more tactical challenge format: two athletes or two teams, short rounds, a 10-second shot clock per arrow, and three mechanics that turn every round into a decision, Trap Call, Pressure Ring and Power Shot.
It does not try to replace archery: it adds a way of experiencing it, now and then, that is fun to shoot and easy to follow from the outside. There is a target/indoor version and a field/3D one.
"Shooting well is not enough: you also have to decide when to apply pressure, when to gamble, when to protect yourself."
It is an experimental, unofficial format. If you try it at your club, tell me how it went: info@matteocampagna.com.
The Pressure Ring
A ring off-centre, worth 13. Do you go for it, or protect the round?
Technical-functional report · 15 sections
Pre-anchor block and premature string release
AthleteAnonymized
DisciplineArchery · recurve
TypeFunctional assessment + return-to-shooting plan
The string slips off the fingers before reaching the anchor. Out of roughly two hundred shots, the archer completes the anchor about ten times. The problem appears at all distances and in the movement itself, not only when aiming at the center.
The finding that changes everything
With a simple cord looped through the fingers, the archer can reach the anchor. This is the pivot of the entire analysis: it means the shoulder-back chain still holds the draw, and that the weak point is the fine-motor control of fingers on string, which is where the brain must maintain the hook as the movement approaches the moment it perceives as critical.
The priority is not to make him shoot better right away. It is to stop consolidating the pattern in which the string escapes.
How I read it
Not a simple technical fault, but a multifactorial picture: a task-specific psychomotor core (yips / pre-anchor target panic, with a possible dystonic component), an overload of the finger flexors, in a body that at that moment had less reserve, also due to general stress. Every escaped arrow reinforces the circuit; every light, successful shot reinforces the solution.
What the report contains
Fifteen sections covering everything from the problem analysis to the operational plan, including the two possible return paths (rebuilding the shot with low-load fingers, or switching to a mechanical release) with the decision logic for choosing between them, and a weekly monitoring grid with clear progression and regression criteria.
Real case, anonymized, shared for demonstration purposes. This is not a medical document: it is a functional assessment by a coach, which in cases like this proceeds only alongside a medical evaluation. Personal and clinical details have been reduced to the minimum necessary to illustrate the method.
Essay · Working hypothesis
Target panic as the de-automatization of a ballistic act
An expert archer reaches full draw and the last movement, the one they master better than any other, suddenly will not come. I developed my own theory of what is really happening. I call it de-automatization: I argue that nothing breaks, neither a muscle nor a nerve, and that the release that fails is the same one that succeeds, only run in the wrong control mode. A ballistic movement, which the body should let go on its own, regresses under attention and pressure to a stiff, watchful control it is too fast to use, and from there it can only fall apart. It is a theory I built from the existing explanations, and it reconciles the two historical hypotheses of the disorder. I offer it for what it is: a hypothesis of mine, with seven predictions that could refute it and its limits stated openly.
More coming.
Reports and analyses, theories, extracts from the manuals, papers, other formats to try. I add them here as I go, so the lab grows with the work.
Your shot
Want this kind of reading for your own shooting?
This is the depth at which I read a shot. If you need it for yours, we start with a video: you send it, I send back a thorough reading with the data and a plan.
