Heart rate biofeedback in archers: Hong 2011 study

Three young women on the Korean national squad shortlist followed 24 weeks of arousal control training with heart rate biofeedback. On the competitive anxiety questionnaire, given four times on a 1 to 4 scale, mean cognitive anxiety fell from 2.68 to 2.26, somatic anxiety from 2.67 to 1.92, and confidence rose from 1.85 to 2.85. The change is not gradual: up to week 21 the three indices shift by hundredths, then all move together at the last measurement, the one taken after the phase in which the method was used under competition conditions.

The scores describe a whole season. In the February winter camp tests the single round, out of 1440, ran between 1315 and 1332; in late March, back with their clubs, between 1320 and 1338. At the first national competition in late April, shot in cold, rain and wind, the three dropped to 1320, 1303 and 1295, placing from thirteenth to thirty-fourth. At the late July event they went back up to 1354, 1340 and 1336, and in early August to 1359, 1371 and 1340: the means for the two final competitions are 1343 and 1357. Their best placings of the season come there too, a fifth and a ninth in the single round for one of them, a fourth in the single round and third place in the individual event for another. At 70 metres, out of 360, the average goes from around 314 points in winter to 331, 332 and 337 in August.

The programme was built from a literature review and two meetings of four experts, the author plus three coaches. It runs 24 weeks, from February to July 2011, in four phases: theory and breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and perception of one's own heart rate, use of the monitor to find a workable level of arousal, and finally shooting routine, cognitive restructuring and use in competition. The first three weeks fall within the winter camp in Gwangju, with six sessions over two weeks on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 17:00 to 18:30; the work then continued at the athletes' clubs twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 14:00 to 15:30.

The biofeedback tool is a commercial system with a chest belt, a wrist unit and a radio transmitter, which sends heart rate live to a computer and allows the value during practice arrows to be compared with the value during scored arrows and in competition.

There are three measures. The competitive state anxiety questionnaire, 27 items on three factors with a four-point scale, given four times. Scores and placings at three national competitions, read off the qualification single round and the 70 metre distance, set against scored arrows in training. Observation by the author and the club coaches, plus semi-structured interviews of about fifty minutes, recorded and analysed inductively. The three final athletes come out of a list of twenty candidates: ten excluded by age or because they had already done similar work in the previous six months, four for lack of availability, three because the programme was not in the end delivered at their club.

Three athletes, no control group, no statistical test: means and graphs only. With a design like this, the season and the programme cannot be separated. Three months of ordinary training pass between the late April competition and those in late July, and the author notes himself that the two final events were shot with little wind while the April one was cold and wet: part of the jump in score lies in the weather and in seasonal form.

The person who delivered the programme is also the one who observed the athletes, interviewed them and interpreted their answers, with no independent assessment. The athletes knew what was being tested, and the questionnaire is self-reported. The reliability quoted for the questionnaire (alpha between 0.80 and 0.87) is computed on the initial twenty candidates, and the author accepts that with a sample that small it carries little statistical meaning.

Two points of documentation. The schedule of the four questionnaire measurements is described one way in the programme table and another way in the text, so the exact weeks remain uncertain. In the reference list, several entries are signed with a placeholder name, the Korean equivalent of John Smith: an anonymisation for review left in the published version. The paper is in Korean with an English abstract, in a Korean content studies journal rather than a sport science one.

For an archer, the value of this work lies in the description of the route, not in the result. The programme is set out week by week: first learning to breathe and to feel tension, then watching one's own heart rate while shooting for score and in simulated competition, then taking that heart rate into the shooting routine. It is a sequence a coach and an archer can recognise and argue about.

What the study does not say is whether it works. Three athletes with nothing to compare them against, in a season that rises by itself, do not allow either the twenty extra points on the single round or the fall in anxiety scores to be put down to the biofeedback. The one thing worth noting is when the change happens: the questionnaires move only after the phase in which the method was used in competition, not during the months of dry exercises. It is an observation on three people, and should be read as one.