Injury prevention in archery: Asy-Syahidah 2024

A narrative review presented at an Indonesian seminar on public health and sport sets out what 20 papers say about injuries in archery and about models for preventing them. It brings no data of its own and does not pool any figures, so its conclusions are descriptive. The injuries mentioned most often involve the upper body: the shoulder (the rotator cuff in particular), the fingers and the hand, with the neck, chest and back also listed as areas that can hurt. The conditions named include tendinitis, strains, sprains, abrasions and calluses. Causes are split into internal factors, meaning errors of technique and movement, and external ones such as the environment or bad weather, with overload and poor recovery running through both.

The second half of the paper lists general prevention models developed elsewhere: the sequence of prevention, the dynamic and recursive model of injury causation, the Haddon matrix (before, during and after the event), the TRIPP model, a decision-based model for return to play and the TIP cycle from team sports. Bone density and range of motion appear alongside them, presented as models although they are variables. The authors conclude that integrated programmes are needed, combining biomechanical assessment, strength, mobility, technique, recovery and mental preparation; none of these programmes was tested on archers in this paper.

The authors say they followed the literature review procedure of Machi and McEvoy, in four steps: choosing the topic, building the argument, searching and selecting, then reading and synthesising. The databases named change from one part of the text to another (PubMed, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar in the table of steps, Scopus and Google Scholar later on), with search terms such as "archery injury" and "types of archery injury". The inclusion criteria are vague: relevance to the topic, year of publication, method, and a web address so that the paper can be traced. The result is 20 papers, national and international, published between 1987 and 2024 and read using content analysis.

There is no selection flow chart, no list of the included studies with their design and sample, and no assessment of their quality. The reference list has 47 entries, more than the 20 papers declared, and it is not clear which ones were analysed.

This is a narrative review in the loosest sense: we do not know how many papers were found and discarded, or why. The references include Indonesian archery manuals, a book on archery in the Islamic tradition, one on the aesthetics of archery, a study on fencing and one on using ice for soft tissue injuries, alongside a handful of epidemiological studies of archers. Injury frequencies are never quantified, so the paper cannot tell us how common the listed problems are, or in which archers.

The prevention models come from public health and team sports and are reported in general terms: none has been adapted to archery with data or tested on a group of archers. The practical advice scattered through the text (stretching before and after shooting, rest and ice, raising draw weight gradually) does not come from studies that tested it on archers and remains generic. The venue is a regional seminar proceedings, and it is not stated whether the contributions were peer reviewed.

For anyone who shoots, the paper adds nothing measured. It repeats that problems in archery cluster around the shoulder, fingers, hand and back, which the epidemiological studies of archers in its own reference list show with their own figures. Anyone who wants to know how frequent these injuries are, or which habits make them more likely, needs to go to those studies.

The models it lists, such as the Haddon matrix, can give a coach or a club a framework for thinking about the athlete, the equipment and the environment before, during and after training. The review does not say which prevention programme works for archers, though, or that one works better than another. In the registry it counts as context, and pain that does not settle remains a matter for a doctor or physiotherapist.