Balance equipment for young archers: Gulich 2024

Twenty-three young archers aged 13 and 14 at the KOMUNAR Olympic reserve school in Kharkiv added two months of work on unstable equipment, three times a week. The only outcome measured is a ten-question survey with three possible answers, yes, no and I do not know, given before and after.

On the first question, whether improving balance matters for shooting well, the yes answers go from 6 to 17 archers, that is from 26.1% to 73.9%, the no answers from 6 to 3 and the I do not know answers from 11 to 3; Pearson's chi-square is 10.83 with p of 0.04. On the third question, the usefulness of work on a BOSU platform, the yes answers go from 7 (30.4%) to 16 (69.6%), with chi-square 8.94. On the fifth, exercises with an elastic band, from 9 (39.1%) to 19 (82.6%), with chi-square 9.14. On the seventh, the trampoline, from 5 (21.7%) to 13 (56.5%), with chi-square 5.87 and p of 0.05. On the tenth, whether it is worth using balance equipment regularly, the yes answers go from 17 (73.9%) to 23, that is all of them, with Pearson's chi-square 6.90 and asymptotic p of 0.09.

The text also states that the before-and-after comparison gives no significant differences for questions 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9. The author's conclusion concerns psychological state: the special exercises are said to have a positive effect on these young athletes' mood and self-confidence. No shooting score, no balance test and no instrumented measure appear anywhere in the study.

A single-group before-and-after study with no comparison. The twenty-three archers attend the KOMUNAR specialised youth school of Olympic reserve in Kharkiv; all gave consent and the ethics committee of H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University approved the protocol.

The exercises were done three times a week in the preparatory part of training, with a stated progression: light work with fitness balls, balance cushions and boards first; then trampolines and unstable platforms; towards the end, shooting stances at full draw with eyes open and closed, and actual shooting while standing on the unstable equipment. The full list covers single-leg lunges and squats, elastic band pulls with the eyes closed, exercises on unstable equipment with a ball, trampoline work, single-leg standing at full draw, a balance board, a BOSU platform and other unstable surfaces. Duration and difficulty rose gradually.

The questionnaire, which carries the same title as the study, was given through a Google form at the start and at the end. The ten questions ask whether the archer thinks balance matters for shooting well, whether they use balance boards, whether they find BOSU work, single-leg lunges, elastic bands, ball exercises on unstable equipment, the trampoline and balance exercises in general effective, whether the Romberg test is administered at the start of the season, and whether they think it necessary to use sets of exercises on various equipment regularly. Means were calculated in Excel and the before-and-after answers compared with chi-square in SPSS 26, on contingency tables.

Nothing is measured in this study: not balance, not score, not a single physical variable. The ninth question asks whether the Romberg test is administered at the start of the season, but the test was not given to these archers. All the conclusions about shot stability, accuracy and injury prevention come from the discussion of the literature, not from these data.

What the questionnaire does measure is hard to separate from the intervention itself. The archers knew what the questionnaire was for and had just spent two months doing those exercises with their coach: that they judge them useful at the end is an expected result, not an independent check. With no control group and a single group of twenty-three youngsters from one school, no comparison is possible.

The statistical analysis treats the answers as though they came from two independent groups, building contingency tables between before and after. In fact these are the same twenty-three people measured twice, and a paired comparison calls for a different test. The text also contradicts itself: the fifth question is listed among those with no significant difference and then presented a little later as a significant improvement; the tenth is presented as a significant improvement although Pearson's chi-square gives an asymptotic p of 0.09. In the tables of statistics, the 99% confidence intervals have a lower limit above the upper limit in several places.

Two smaller but telling details remain: the period of the experiment is given as August to October 2024 in the abstract and August to September 2024 in the methods, and the bow discipline is never stated.

For someone who shoots, this paper says nothing about score, because score was not measured, and nothing about balance, because balance was not measured either. It documents two things: the content of a two-month programme with unstable equipment at a youth school, and the fact that after those two months the archers consider it useful, whereas at the start most of them did not know what to think of it.

The reusable part is the list of exercises, with a progression described clearly enough to follow: from light work on cushions and boards through to single-leg standing at full draw and shooting while on unstable platforms, with eyes open and closed. These are drills several coaches already use, set down here with a sequence and a frequency.

Whether any of it changes anything in competition lies outside the study. The only effect the author is prepared to state concerns the youngsters' motivation, mood and confidence, and that in turn rests on a questionnaire of opinions.