Fast shooting in traditional archery: Ariffin 2024

Ten traditional archers, in a study carried out in Malaysia, using the Mameluke technique (the string held with the thumb) shot in two ways: one arrow at a time with a 30-second pause between shots, or ten shots in a row followed by three minutes of rest. For each mode the authors reconstructed the flexion and extension angles of the shoulder, elbow and wrist of both arms across the whole shot cycle, and compared the mean curve for single shooting with the mean curve for fast shooting.

The curves are very alike. For the bow arm the correlation is 0.97 at the shoulder and 0.95 at the elbow and wrist; the Sprague and Geers indices lie between 0.06 and 0.14 for magnitude and between 0.03 and 0.1 for phase, with combined errors of 0.07, 0.15 and 0.14. For the drawing arm the shoulder reaches 0.99, the wrist 0.85 and the elbow only 0.70; magnitude lies between 0.03 and 0.07, phase between 0.03 and 0.16, and the combined errors are 0.06, 0.06 and 0.17. In fast shooting the bow arm angles were slightly larger, while on the drawing arm the differences sit at the start of the preparation, in the elbow and wrist, where one shot runs into the next.

The tests took place in a laboratory, at an indoor target 6 metres away. The archers (mean height 168.9 cm, body mass 79.3 kg, draw weight 41.5 lb) had all competed in at least one national tournament, and the authors describe them as elite. Each wore 39 reflective markers, tracked by five Vicon infrared cameras at 100 Hz, after a 5 to 10 minute warm-up.

For each mode the five best attempts per archer were kept, 100 shots in all, 50 single and 50 fast; the paper does not say how a shot was judged best, nor how long the fast series took. The angle curves were normalised to 100 points, smoothed with splines and aligned with functional data analysis (first on landmarks, then continuously), so that the six phases of the cycle (stance, nocking, pre-draw, full draw, release, follow-through) fell at the same moments. The final comparison is between just two mean curves, one per mode, using Pearson's correlation and the Sprague and Geers magnitude, phase and combined error indices, where zero means identical curves.

The finding concerns the average shape of the movement, not its consistency. Pooling 50 shots into a single curve per mode hides the differences between archers and between one shot and the next, which is exactly what might change when shooting quickly. There is no statistical test: similarity is judged against thresholds taken from other studies (a combined error of around 0.2), and a high correlation between two curves that rise and fall at the same points in the cycle is almost guaranteed. Only flexion and extension were measured, not rotations or movement in the other planes.

Where the arrows landed and what they scored are not reported at all, and 6 metres is far from any competition distance. Keeping each archer's five best shots may have removed precisely the worst shots of the fast series. There is also a small inconsistency: the text says the shoulder and wrist of the drawing arm share the same combined error, whereas in the table it is the shoulder and elbow that both have 0.06; this record follows the table.

For traditional archers who shoot timed events, the study says something limited: in experienced thumb-draw archers, shooting ten arrows in a row does not visibly change the average shape of shoulder, elbow and wrist movement compared with shooting at leisure. The clearest difference is on the drawing arm, at the start of each cycle, where one shot joins onto the previous one.

It does not show that fast shooting is as accurate as slow shooting, since accuracy was not measured, and it says nothing about consistency from one arrow to the next. It covers the Mameluke technique at 6 metres; it offers no data on Olympic recurve or on barebow with a Mediterranean draw.