Archer's shoulder, massage and stretching: Kohar 2025

Fifteen archers from an Indonesian club shooting the national standard bow, 6 men and 9 women with shoulder pain, received a single session of about 25 minutes of massage followed by 5 minutes of active stretching. Before and after the session, pain was rated on a 0 to 10 numeric scale and shoulder range of motion was measured with a goniometer. Mean pain fell from 6.40 to 3.20, by half. Every range of motion increased: flexion from 153.67 to 177.33 degrees, extension from 52.00 to 69.67, adduction from 39.00 to 60.33, abduction from 148.67 to 177.33, internal rotation from 56.00 to 83.00 and external rotation from 71.27 to 86.40. All the differences were significant (p = 0.000 on the t-tests, 0.001 on the Wilcoxon tests), and the authors conclude that the combination of massage and stretching is effective.

The design has a single group, measured before and after, with no comparison group. Participants were chosen purposively from the athletes of the Blaburan Archery Club, in Magelang Regency, between 15 February and 15 March 2024; the sample size comes from Slovin's formula, which gave 13.6, rounded up to 15. The treatment combined effleurage and friction, traction and "repositioning" of the shoulder, done seated, followed by active stretching performed by the athlete with the therapist alongside. Pain was recorded on the numeric scale and range of motion with the goniometer across six movements. For normally distributed data (flexion and the rotations) the authors used a paired t-test, and for the rest (pain, extension, adduction and abduction) the Wilcoxon test.

Without a control group there is no way to separate the effect of the treatment from that of time, expectation and simply repeating the measurement: a second range-of-motion reading taken soon after the first, by the people who have just treated the athlete, tends to rise anyway through warm-up and familiarity with the movement. The paper does not say who took the measurements or whether they knew about the treatment, nor how long after the session the second reading was taken, and there is no follow-up in the days after.

Above all, there is no diagnosis. The authors list dislocations, tendinitis and spasms as common complaints in the club and mention acute, subacute and chronic phases, but do not say how each athlete's problem was assessed, or by whom. Some post-treatment values, such as 177 degrees of flexion and abduction, are close to the anatomical maximum. The abstract gives a final adduction value of 148.67, which is in fact the starting abduction: the table gives 60.33, and this record uses the table. The journal is flagged in the registry as having doubtful editorial standards.

For an archer with a sore shoulder, the study shows only that after a single session of massage and stretching, fifteen athletes reported less pain and moved the shoulder further. That is a common result after hands-on treatment, and it says little about how long the effect lasts or what happens to the shoulder in the following weeks. Nothing about shooting was measured: no score, no return to training, no recurrences.

The treatment includes traction and repositioning manoeuvres, which the authors present as a way of putting the joint back in place. For shoulder pain that does not settle, assessment by a doctor or physiotherapist remains the first step, and this study gives no grounds for replacing it with a massage session.