Balance and archery score: Kesilmiş 2024 study

Eighteen archers from a Turkish club shot 18 arrows at 50 metres and then took two single-leg balance tests: the Y-Balance test, in which the free leg reaches as far as possible in three directions, and the flamingo test, in which the athlete stands on a narrow beam for a minute while the number of losses of balance is counted. Reach distance on the Y-Balance test goes with the score: r = 0.592 standing on the right leg (p = 0.010) and r = 0.670 on the left. Normalising that distance to leg length leaves the link only on the left (r = 0.537, p = 0.022), while on the right it falls to 0.402 and no longer reaches significance. Static balance, by contrast, has no relation to the score at all: r = -0.197 on the right (p = 0.434) and -0.020 on the left (p = 0.938). The two tests are related to each other, though, with correlations between -0.55 and -0.74, the negative sign coming from the fact that the flamingo test counts errors rather than centimetres.

The means say what kind of group this is: the total score over 18 arrows is 39.89 with a standard deviation of 14.32, Y-Balance reach is 69.57 cm on the right and 68.85 on the left, and losses of balance in the flamingo test are 18.33 and 16.78 in one minute. The authors read the result as an almost linear relation between dynamic balance and score, and suggest that static balance acts indirectly, being linked to the dynamic kind.

The measurements were taken outdoors, on the field where the group trains, with a mean wind of 6.7 km/h and a mean air temperature of 27 degrees. Everyone shot with their own competition recurve bow and arrows, using a clicker, at 50 metres, after their usual warm-up and after setting the sight; preparation took about a quarter of an hour, foot position was kept for all shots, and an arrow off the face was recorded as zero. The score is the total of three ends of six arrows, on faces of 60 by 60 and 80 by 80 centimetres.

The Y-Balance test was done barefoot on the platform: balancing on one leg, the athlete reaches as far as possible with the other one forward, back and inward, and back and outward, with six practice trials for each leg in each direction and then three measured trials, of which the best is kept. Absolute reach is the sum of the three directions divided by three; the normalised value divides the sum by three times leg length and multiplies by a hundred. Leg length was measured twice lying down, from the anterior superior iliac spine to the medial malleolus. The flamingo test is done on a wooden beam 50 centimetres long, 4 high and 3 wide, counting how many times in one minute the athlete steps down or puts the other foot on the ground.

The group was nine women and nine men belonging to an archery club, with at least two years of regular practice and four two-hour training sessions a week. Relations between the measures are Pearson correlations with the threshold at 5%, after checking normality with Shapiro-Wilk and with skewness and kurtosis values.

The study is cross-sectional: it measures everything in one afternoon and changes nothing, so it cannot show that training balance raises the score, which is nonetheless what the paper's conclusion suggests. The group is eighteen people, nine women and nine men analysed together without distinction: when a single set contains two subgroups that differ both in reach and in score, part of the correlation can come from that difference rather than from the relation between the two measures.

The score carries little weight: eighteen arrows, with those off the face recorded as zero and a mean of 39.89 out of a possible 180. At that level the total mainly separates archers who hit the face from those who miss it, not a nine from a ten, and the use of two face sizes, 60 by 60 and 80 by 80 centimetres, without saying who shot which, makes the totals not comparable with each other.

The descriptive figures do not add up either: a mean age of 17.33 years with a standard deviation of 11.44 does not fit a club group with at least two years of practice, and the paper gives neither the age range nor the draw weights. Normalised reach on the right leg does not reach significance and the asymmetry between the two legs goes without comment; many correlations are computed and none is corrected for the number of comparisons. Balance of the upper body, which would matter in a movement made with the arms, was not measured: the authors name this as the main limitation, along with the fact that the group consists of licensed members of a single club with no injury history.

What is left is an association, not a mechanism: among these eighteen club archers, those who reach further with the free leg while standing on one foot also tend to have a higher total at 50 metres, while those who stay steadier on a beam do not shoot any better for it. The distinction has a practical point, because the two tests ask for different things: the flamingo test asks for stillness, the Y-Balance test asks for control of the body while part of it moves, which is a little closer to what happens between raising the bow and the release.

Here, though, nobody trained anything. The study does not show that dynamic balance improves the score, does not say by how much, and does not indicate which way the relation runs: it may equally be that archers with more years behind them have both better body control and better scores, without either one producing the other. And the score the whole thing rests on, eighteen arrows with a low mean and two face sizes, is a coarse measure of accuracy.

For anyone coaching there is a finding of a different kind: a static balance test, with this group and at this distance, said nothing about the score, so it is of no use as a selection criterion. On dynamic balance, this record holds an association from a single study and nothing more.