The role of vision and visual skills in archery*

Abstract

The main purpose of this study were firstly to determine the most important visual  skills applicable to archery and secondly to determine the norms for these visual skills necessary for an archer to perform at an elite level. Another goal was to compare our results with previous results for elite athletes, (determined by Buys in 2002). Twenty eight archers from different archery styles such as compound bow archery, recurve bow archery and traditional bow archery were used. Their visual skill norms were categorized as Superior, Above average, Average,  Ineffective and Needs immediate attention.The results indicated that visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, stereopsis, eye-hand coordination, eye-body coordination and visual response time may be the most important skills in archery.  Other factors such as distance judging and the choice of monocular or binocular aiming has also been tested and discussed and norms for these tests were also established. (S Afr Optom 2010 69(1) 21-28)