Do Archery Stabilizers Make Any Difference?

How much of a difference do stabilizers make in archery? Are stabilizers a worthy upgrade on your bow? Will stabilizers make you a better archer? In this video I shoot with and without stabilizers and show you how much of a difference they can make on my recurve when shooting 70 meters.

Products used in this video;
122cm Target Face: 3050053

Chapters:
00:00-1:05 Intro
1:05-2:09 The Test
2:09-4:27 Stabilizers-1
4:27-9:09 No Stabilizers-1
9:09-11:33 Stabilizers-2
11:33-14:16 No Stabilizers-2
14:16-18:52 Summary

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[octaviogarcia]

Hello Jake, I am always amazed at your precision at 70 mt even though you are no longer competing and training as a full time athlete. I think you departed from the competition too early!!!

[Andy-sjhl]

This video gives a clearer sense of the disrance that Olympians shoot at better than any Olympics TV coverage I’ve ever seen.

[RichardCrookes-rife]

Hi Jake my name is Richard, I’m a traditional bare bow archer from Australia & although I only shoot traditional bows I’m interested in all forms of archery & found your video on stabilisers very interesting.
I hope you look at this in more depth, maybe by having 2 identical or similar bows tuned respectively, I think also spending time with each bow set up would help your findings. Perhaps even shooting in separate sessions.
Thanks Jake I love watching your videos.

[glenrutten]

Would be interesting to add a 3rd option....sights with barebow weight to see how much simply adding weight affects accuracy.

[phantomcruizer]

The overwhelming answer is “Yes”, stabilizers make a difference.
Great video 😎

[cavetroll]

This is something I love. Experimentation to see why the system acts the way it does

[grasscla]

Great video!
During this winter break having some free time I’ve been studying a lot about archery and coach Lee’s shot cycle, trying to get better at the sport I love.

No joke, I’ve watched every single form-related video on your channel, putting in hours and hours, taking pages and pages of notes on important things I need to know.

I’ve been shooting for just above one year, but thanks to your amazing videos I’ve just competed in my first youth national championship!
I’ll never be able to thank you enough. The archery community is so lucky to have such high level athlete putting in the time to teach others to be better!

[TheHadMatters]

Appreciate alternating the setups, that's a bunch of extra work but really useful for providing reliable insight.

[LuqmanHM]

Jake can you compare the scores of high end stabilizers vs lower/mid end stabilizers?

[BlakeGoddard]

Thanks so much for your content.
I’ve just started up recurve archery and falling in love with the sport. I’ve been shooting really consistently now after only 3 weeks, at 20meters, all gold, some red. But really starting to understand why stabilisers are used, so this video was super helpful.

[UrsulaWiezel]

Hello Jake
I wish you and your family only the best for the coming year!
Stay healthy and sunny at heart.
Also thank you very much for all the numerous and extremely informative videos!
Happy greetings
Ursula

[ceshelfer]

I'd like to see you break down arrow location and the FORM failure that causes them. For example, when the right handed archer see an arrow hit left what FORM issues should they think about? I would first think I'd plucked and I'd focus on anchor and follow thru. Next I would think about rotation etc. Thanks

[jeffvanne]

Hi Jake. Interesting question in this video, nicely illustrated as usual. According to me, the most important use of the stabilizer is the preservation of the elbow, and the rest of the bow arm, from vibrations. My archer life changed when I switched for a more a stabilizer more adapted to my bow, my elbow pain went away right after the change.

[rodphillips]

Hi Jake thanks for your commitment to the community this video was very informative I have recently watched a couple of your older videos about spt’s I needed the video demos of each to help me understand the drills I found a good app called archery timers spt it’s fantastic and I’m now ready to go so thank you again for what you do.

[michaltwarowski]

Hey Jake great video thanks for taking time to share this content. If I could suggest something then I would like to see you shoot with a bare bow style weight that weights the same as your stabiliser set with weights. This would prove that it’s not the overall bow weight but its distribution provided by the stabilising system that makes the bow stable during the shot cycle.

[Brainhoneywalker]

Thank you for this analysis! I’m considering other weights for my stabilizer system. I would be interested to see what would have happened if you had adjusted your sight after the first three shots, to make your shots land nearer the center.

[colingregory]

Would be interested to see the same with a sighted "barebow" setup

How much is mass and how much is distributed mass ?

[dekimilicic]

Why you didn't try with Barebow weights, will be interesting is it necessary to put all those bars or we can use smaller and heavy weights. Much more confortable.

[Barx]

Very interesting. Like others I would like to see a further teset with the bow weighted up so it has the same mass weight, but no rods. For beginners that I coach/teach, I always explain that the stabiliser have a few effects. Increased mass weight belps stabilise your aiming pattern, mass weight along with placing the weight on a rod reduces vibration and "shock" that makes a bow less tiring to shoot and can help in reducing anticipation of the shot, while placing weight at end of rods reduces the amount of torque of the bow when the shot breaks. Having an additional test would isolate what the effects of weight versus rods is.

[thecarrot]

Looks like you're having fun with all sorts of things. In my experience arrows will act dynamically stiffer without the stabiliser. I think it is a combination of more inertia in the bow allowing the limbs a little more time to drive the arrow before the bow moves forward, and that target recurves are top heavy on average so the stabilisers centre the push a bit better from your bow hand. Remove those and the arrow just gets a little less energy I think. Stack some weight in the lower bushing so it wants to sit a bit more level and try it again!