Specific physical training in archery: Fauzan 2024

Twelve archers from the West Sumbawa district in Indonesia were split into two groups of six: one followed a programme of archery-specific physical training based on Kisik Lee's SPT (Specific Physical Training) method, the other carried on with the district training centre's usual programme. The outcome was the score over 36 arrows at 30 metres.

In the specific training group the mean went from 288.00 to 296.66 points (group totals from 1,728 to 1,780), in the control group from 278.50 to 278.66 (from 1,671 to 1,672). The before-and-after comparison within each group gives p = 0.01 for specific training and p = 0.96 for the controls. The direct comparison between the two groups after the intervention, the one needed to say whether one programme did better than the other, showed no significant difference (p = 0.63 according to the paper). The author nonetheless concludes that specific training improves shooting and that the district programme does not.

Of the district's 24 archers, 12 met the criteria: being registered, agreeing to the programme and being able to shoot both recurve and the Indonesian "standard" bow. How they were allocated to the two groups is not stated. The abstract mentions 18 sessions, the text one hour a day of specific training added to the usual programme, which consisted of two sessions a week with about 300 arrows; the exercises are not described, and the reader is referred to the book the method comes from. The score is the total of 36 arrows in 6 ends at 30 metres, each archer using their own bow. The analysis uses a paired t-test within groups and an independent-samples t-test between groups.

The comparison that matters, between the two groups, shows no difference. The gain of 8.66 points over 36 arrows in the experimental group, with six archers, could come from many things other than the programme, not least because the groups started almost ten points apart and the paper does not say how they were formed.

The paper's figures contain several inconsistencies. The abstract gives a before-and-after difference of 25 points, while the totals reported give 52, and it presents a t value of 1.0886 as greater than the critical value of 2.015. In the text the control group's minimum score before the intervention is 316, the same as the maximum, while the table gives 250; the homogeneity test reports degrees of freedom (1 and 22) that do not match 12 archers. The p = 0.63 for the between-group comparison also sits next to an F value in the table, as if it came from the test of variances; recalculating the t-test from the published means and standard deviations gives p of about 0.24, still far from significance. The exercises are not described, and it is not known which bow each archer used: the entry criterion asks for both recurve and "standard" bow skills. The journal is flagged in the registry for questionable editorial standards.

The idea that physical training done with the bow can help an archer is widespread and sensible, but this study does not support it: with six archers per group, at the end those who had done specific training did not shoot significantly better than those on the usual programme. Nothing changes for anyone who shoots. In the registry this page mainly shows why the abstract's conclusion does not stand as written: an improvement within one group is not enough if the comparison with the other group does not confirm it.