Yoga for young female archers: Kaur 2026 study

Twenty-five Indian female archers aged 15 to 17 from the Patiala area followed eight weeks of yoga, asanas and pranayama, with no control group. Six measures were repeated before and after.

Two changed. Coordination goes from 3.68 (standard deviation 1.22) to 4.32 (1.41), with t of 2.486, and balance from 32.11 (1.92) to 32.84 (2.41), with t of 3.247: both above the tabulated value of 2.064 for twenty-four degrees of freedom, and so significant at 5%.

Four did not change. Height goes from 161.96 to 161.98 cm (t of 0.022), weight stays at 58.88 kg (t of 0.949), body mass index stays at 22.68 (t of 0.956) and visual hand reaction time goes from 0.703 to 0.702 seconds (t of 1.000): all below the threshold.

The authors conclude that yoga is an effective additional training method for improving female archers' coordination and balance, and put the absence of any effect on height, weight and body mass index down to the short duration of the intervention. The shooting score was not measured, and the paper says neither which asanas the programme contained nor how coordination, balance and reaction time were measured.

A before-and-after design on a single group, with no comparison. The twenty-five participants were chosen on a criterion set by the researchers from among the female archers of the Patiala area, in Punjab. The variables stated are the anthropometric ones, that is height, weight and body mass index, plus coordination, balance and reaction ability measured as visual hand reaction time.

The programme is described in one line: eight weeks of yoga, made up of asanas and pranayama. The postures used are not given, nor the weekly frequency, the length of the sessions, who led them, or whether the archers carried on with their normal shooting training over the same period.

The tests are left undescribed too. The paper names coordination, balance and visual hand reaction time, but does not say which test recorded them, with what instrument, in what units or over how many attempts. All that can be made out from the values is that reaction time is in seconds; coordination around 4 and balance around 32 remain numbers without a scale.

The analysis is a paired t test on each variable, with the threshold at 5% and the calculated t compared with the tabulated value of 2.064 at twenty-four degrees of freedom. The results are presented in four tables with mean, standard deviation and t, each accompanied by a chart.

The paper's own details are inconsistent in several places. The sentence introducing the sample says twenty female archers and then, in brackets, N equals 25; the age is given as 15 to 17 in the abstract and the methods and as 15 to 18 in the delimitations. Weight and body mass index come out identical to the second decimal before and after, while still carrying non-zero t values.

With no control group, other things sit inside the two significant results: eight weeks of growth in girls aged 15 to 17, eight weeks of shooting training that nobody suspended, and familiarity with tests taken twice. Nobody was blinded, and the change in balance, 0.73 on a scale that is never named, is small.

The heaviest limitation is that there is no knowing what was done or what was measured. A yoga programme described as asanas and pranayama over eight weeks cannot be replicated; coordination and balance tests with no name, instrument or units cannot be compared with any other study. The shooting score does not appear, so this work measures nothing about archery itself.

The authors in turn list as limitations the small sample, the eight-week duration, the fact that only female archers took part, and the lack of control over diet, daily activity, lifestyle, motivation and environmental conditions. In the registry the journal is flagged as a venue with doubtful editorial standards, and its front page displays an RJIF index, which is not a measure of quality.

One last difference concerns the record itself: the paper carries three authors, Kamalpreet Kaur, Paramvir Singh and Kuldip Singh, while the registry lists two and spells the second name as Parmveer Singh.

For someone who shoots, this study says nothing about the score, because the score was not measured. It says that in twenty-five girls, after eight weeks of yoga, two motor tests shifted a little and four measures did not shift at all. With no control group and no description of either the yoga or the tests, even that little cannot be put down to the yoga.

The number worth remembering is the one that did not change: visual reaction time stays at 0.703 seconds before and 0.702 after. Anyone claiming that yoga makes an archer quicker finds no support here, and the authors themselves write that quickness probably depends more on sport-specific drills than on general yoga practice.

What remains is the frame, which matters to a coach rather than to a training session: yoga is studied as additional work alongside shooting, at an age when balance and coordination are maturing on their own anyway. In the registry this source is a weak signal within a line of research, not a reason to add anything to how someone shoots, or to take anything away.