Balance training in novice archers: Artiuh 2018

Twenty-two beginner archers aged 18 to 20, young men and women from a Ukrainian regional federation, were split at random into two groups of eleven and followed for two months. The control group trained in the usual way. The other group did the same programme, with less time for regular practice and two extra exercises: shooting while standing on a balance board, and shooting with a level on the sight, releasing only with the bubble centred.

The score out of 600 rose in both groups, but more in the experimental group: from 251.64 to 340.27 points, against a rise from 247.36 to 298.18 in the controls, and by the end the difference between the groups was significant. Holding time with the right hand also grew more in the experimental group (from 56.55 to 74.73 seconds, against 51.09 to 61.45), while with the left hand the final difference was not significant. Push-ups and squats in one minute improved in both groups, squats significantly only in the experimental group (from 34.55 to 46.45). The attention tests using number tables did not change in either group. The point the authors stress most is the number of significant correlations between the attention tests and the physical and technical tests, which went from 5 to 10 in the experimental group and stayed at 5 in the controls.

The balance board was used in three stages: first finding and holding balance, then shooting while staying balanced, and finally shooting without losing balance even after the release while hitting the target at short range. The level on the sight was meant to keep the bow upright, without canting it, and to keep the sight on the centre during the draw. The paper does not say how many sessions, arrows or minutes went into these exercises.

Before and after the two months the archers did Schulte tables (finding the numbers from 1 to 25 in order, from which indices of efficiency, warm-up and mental stamina are derived) and the Gorbov red and black table (searching for red and black numbers in alternating order, counting errors and the time taken to switch from one series to the other). The technical tests were holding time at full draw in seconds with the left and the right hand, which the paper does not describe, and a score out of 600 for which the distance, target face and type of bow are not stated; the physical tests were push-ups and squats in one minute. The groups were compared with Student's t test, before and after and against each other, and for each group correlations were calculated between all the tests.

The groups are small and beginners improve quickly anyway, as the control group shows with a rise of more than 50 points. The experimental group received two new exercises at once, so the advantage cannot be credited to balance rather than the level, nor can the novelty of the work be ruled out; it is not known whether total training time was the same, or whether whoever recorded the scores knew which group each archer was in. The distance, target face, bow type and a description of the holding test are all missing, and the paper does not say how many young men and women were in each group.

The argument about correlations is weak: with 11 archers and 55 pairs of tests some significant correlations will turn up by chance, and counting them does not measure better organisation of the nervous system, as the authors claim. The correlation table also marks values of 0.44 and 0.50 as significant, which with 11 people they are not, and leaves a value of 0.92 without an asterisk. In the baseline table for the Gorbov test the standard deviations do not match the standard errors given beside them, and the experimental group's starting value changes from one table to another (70.36 and 80.36). The journal is a regional publication.

For anyone teaching beginners the study gives a weak indication that fits common practice: adding a few exercises that force the archer to keep the bow upright and the body steady did not slow progress, and in two months the group that did them gained about 89 points out of 600 against about 51 for the control group. Which of the two exercises mattered, and why, cannot be said.

A level on the sight is a common accessory precisely because canting the bow is easy to miss for someone starting out; the balance board is more unusual, and here there is no way to separate its effect. In the registry the study counts as a small experiment on beginners, with an interesting result on score and many missing details, while the part on correlations adds no useful information.