Core stability in young archers: Pratiwi 2018 study

The study develops and tests a core stability circuit dressed up as a game, for children aged 10 to 12 who shoot. The final product is called TAAMAN1-10 and has ten stations: abdominal crunch, bridge, side plank, modified plank, plank, quadruped, superman, bicycle crunch and segmental rotation, turned from static holds into dynamic movements, with durations starting at 15 seconds and rising to 30. A child completes the activity on passing through all the stations in sequence.

The validation route is made entirely of approval percentages. The multilateral physical training experts give the model 86% and the archery coaches 88%. In the small-group trial, ten children from Selabora Panahan FIK UNY, the children's questionnaire gives 82%. In the large-group trial, 36 children from two settings in Yogyakarta, the questionnaire gives 97.77% and the two coaches 95% and 95% in the table.

The effectiveness test is the only objective measure and consists of the shooting score at 15 metres, taken before and after eight sessions. In both groups the score afterwards comes out higher than before, with two-tailed significance of 0.001 in the Selabora group and 0.002 in the SD Muhammadiyah Sapen group, seventeen degrees of freedom each. The paper reports no scores, no means and no measure of how large the improvement is.

Research and development following the Borg and Gall stages, from October to December 2017. The sequence stated is: preliminary study with field data collection and needs analysis, planning, development with the gathering of relevant theory, expert validation, first revision, small-scale trial, second revision, large-scale trial, final product and dissemination. The product was delivered as a handbook and a DVD recording.

The case settings are Selabora Panahan at the faculty of sport sciences in Yogyakarta and SD Muhammadiyah Sapen primary school; the sample was chosen on criteria decided in advance. The small group had ten children, the large one 36 plus two coaches.

There are four instruments. A questionnaire on a 1 to 5 scale, from not good to very good, put to experts and coaches to decide whether the game model was usable. A direct observation sheet to follow how the model was applied in the field. A coach's sheet on how workable the model was in real conditions. A product appraisal form with ten yes-or-no items, filled in by the children. The percentages are read off a five-band norm table, where below 20% the product is cancelled, between 20% and 40% revised, between 40% and 70% used with reservations and above 70% used.

The effectiveness test on the large group involved a first recording of the score at 15 metres, eight treatment sessions and a second recording. Normality was checked with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, with significance of 0.173 for the Selabora pre-test and 0.200 for the other three, and the before-and-after comparison was made with a t test.

Of its only objective outcome the study publishes just two p values. No scores, no means, no standard deviations: there is no telling by how many points the 15-metre score rose, and a p of 0.001 on eighteen children can accompany an improvement of any size. The shooting test is not described either, so the number of arrows, the target face and the equipment used are all missing.

There is no control group. The children carried on with their archery training during the eight sessions, and over those weeks they also grow: the effect of the circuit cannot be separated from that of ordinary training, from familiarity with the test, or from growth. Nor are the eight sessions placed in time: how many weeks they spanned is not stated.

Everything else in the work measures approval rather than effect. The figures of 86%, 88%, 82% and 97.77% come from questionnaires about how much the model is liked and how suitable it seems, and within those percentages the coaches' numbers do not agree with each other: the table gives 95% and 95%, the text speaks of 92% for the Sapen coach, and the abstract states 95% and 92%. The methods section describes the analysis as qualitative descriptive and then applies a t test.

The minimum requirements of an experiment are missing as well: no random allocation, no blinding of the assessors, two groups of eighteen children, and a conference proceedings paper.

For anyone coaching children the concrete part is the product, not the finding. The study describes how core stability work, usually made of static holds, was rewritten as a ten-station game with holds of 15 to 30 seconds, designed for the age at which a child stops doing an exercise the moment it gets dull. The nine movements are named one by one and the progression in duration is stated, so the circuit can be rebuilt.

What the study does not say is whether it helps the score. That the 15-metre score is higher after eight sessions than before can only be read as statistical significance, with no figures at all, and with children who were training normally and growing in the meantime. There is therefore no way to know whether the circuit added anything over simply shooting.

For the registry it remains a source on the line about trunk stability work in archers, with the youngest population of the lot: beginners aged 10 to 12 in a school setting, a long way from the competitive archer.