Shoulder sense in recurve archers: Athavale 2022

Two physiotherapists in Pune, India, compared shoulder position sense in 22 competitive recurve archers aged 15 to 19 and 22 people of the same age who played sport only recreationally (tennis, table tennis, football, swimming). With the eyes closed, the arm was taken into external rotation at 30 and then at 60 degrees, and the participant had to find the same position again unaided; for the archers the bow shoulder was tested, for the others the non-dominant one.

The main table gives, at 30 degrees, a mean of 25.21 for the archers and 33.98 for the others (t = -4.514, p < 0.001); at 60 degrees, 45.61 against 51.71 (t = -2.534, p = 0.015). The authors read the lower values as smaller errors and conclude that archers have better position sense, especially at 30 degrees. The paper, however, does not say what that column contains, and the numbers look more like the angles reached than like errors: read that way, at 30 degrees the archers stop about 5 degrees short of the target and the others overshoot it by 4, while at 60 degrees it is the non-archers who end up closer. The error charts that follow, split between those who fell short and those who went past the angle, do not make clear which bar belongs to which group.

It is a cross-sectional study with a convenience sample, drawn from an archery academy and a gym in Pune. The archers had to have trained for at least four years and for at least 7 hours a week; in the discussion the authors write that they actually trained 7 to 8 hours a day, while the others did no more than 7 hours of sport a week. Shoulder injuries, surgery or pain in the previous six months were exclusions.

The test was done lying face down, with the shoulder abducted to 90 degrees and the arm hanging off the edge of the couch. A goniometer strapped to the forearm was used to move the arm passively to 30 and to 60 degrees of external rotation, held for 10 seconds; the participant then had three attempts to find each position again, and the mean of the three was used. The groups were compared with an independent-samples t-test.

The weak point is what the numbers mean: if the table reports the angles reached and not the absolute errors, the archers' lower values show only that they tended to stop short, and the conclusion does not follow from the data. A hand-held goniometer is also a coarse tool for differences of a few degrees. The position tested, external rotation with the shoulder abducted while lying face down, is far from that of the bow shoulder while aiming, and the authors' reference to 60 degrees during the draw concerns the draw arm, if anything, which was not measured.

The two groups differ in much more than archery, starting with training hours and type of sport, and the sample is small, which the authors put down to COVID-19 restrictions. The registry flags the journal as having questionable editorial standards.

For archers the idea remains plausible that years of repeating the same movement sharpen the sense of where the shoulder is, but this study is not enough to support it. The authors' suggestion of adding proprioceptive drills to archers' training may make sense for other reasons; these data say nothing about whether it would help anyone shoot better, since nobody measured scores or the movement while aiming.