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Archery disciplines, rounds and formats

The disciplines that make up archery, from Olympic recurve and compound to barebow, field, 3D and clout, each with the distances and formats it is shot over.

The bow decides the division

Archery's competitive divisions are built around the bow. Olympic recurve is the sighted, finger-drawn take-down bow of the Games; compound is the scoped, release-aided precision bow; barebow strips the sight away and aims off the arrow. Each is a separate division with its own records.

The same bow can be shot in more than one discipline. A recurve target archer and a recurve field archer draw the same kind of bow, and the setup and fit questions are common to both.

Target, field, 3D and clout

Beyond the bow, the disciplines differ in where and what they shoot. Target archery uses a coloured ten-ring face on a flat range; field archery walks a course through the woods; 3D shoots foam animals at judged distances; clout lofts arrows at a distant flag.

Each format asks something different of the archer, from judging an unmarked distance to lofting a long clout shot, but all of them are shot with a bow that has to be set up and fitted correctly first.

Rounds and formats

A round is a defined number of arrows at set distances, and a format is how the shooting is scored into a result. Olympic recurve uses the set system, where winning three-arrow sets earns points; compound uses a cumulative total. Outdoor rounds run from 90 metres down to 30, and indoor archery is shot at 18 metres.

National bodies add their own rounds, including the imperial York, Hereford and Portsmouth measured in yards. Whichever round is shot, a reliable sight mark for each distance is what turns a good shot into a good score.

From discipline to setup

Knowing the discipline is the first step to setting the bow up for it: the sight and rest a compound target archer needs differ from a barebow field archer's, even when the riser is similar.

The thread through all of it is that the accessories have to fit the bow. That is the question the fit checker answers, discipline by discipline.

Get the right part

Open the SightRestFit fitment toolGet the exact fitment for your setup

Olympic recurveRecurve is the discipline of the Olympic Games, shot with a Compound targetCompound target archery is shot with a scoped, release-aided BarebowBarebow is shot with a bare riser and no sight, aimed by loo Field archeryField archery is shot around a course set in woodland and ro Target archeryTarget archery is the core discipline of the sport, shot at 3D archery3D archery is shot at life-size foam animal targets set arou Clout archeryClout archery shoots arrows in a high arc at a flag planted Para archeryPara archery is the Paralympic form of the sport, shot by ar Aiming and techniqueHow the bow is aimed and tuned

Sources: World Archery: disciplines · World Archery rulebook · Wikipedia: Archery