Mindfulness for Hong Kong archers: Lo 2024 study

Twelve archers from the Hong Kong team followed a 12-week mindfulness programme built around archery: eleven 60-minute sessions on Zoom and one 120-minute in-person session with a simulated competition. The main aim was to see whether the programme was workable, and on that the figures are clear: everyone attended every session, the mean enjoyment rating was 7.9 out of 10 (8.8 for the simulated competition, the favourite session) and the archers reported practising mindfulness on average 3.1 times a week.

The 72-arrow score at a Hong Kong competition went from 626.83 to 638.17 in the programme group, while in twelve matched control archers it fell from 625.67 to 622.67; the group by time interaction was significant (F(1, 22) = 5.861, p = 0.024, partial eta squared 0.21). In the programme group alone, the only one to fill in questionnaires, total mindfulness rose (from 125.92 to 136.83), as did the subscale for not judging inner experience (from 23.67 to 29.92); cognitive anxiety fell (from 19.83 to 13.25), as did somatic anxiety (from 16.92 to 12.25); self-confidence rose (from 19.50 to 27.00) and the flow score went from 33.75 to 35.92. Mindfulness was correlated with flow (r = 0.437) but not with the shooting score.

The study is quasi-experimental, without random allocation. Of the 48 Hong Kong team archers who met the criteria (at least a year of practice, at least two hours of training a week, no previous mindfulness experience), 34 did not reply or showed no interest and 2 were excluded, leaving 12 volunteers, 8 men and 4 women, with a mean age of 22.1, 8.9 years of practice and 2.9 hours of training a week. For the control group the authors picked twelve archers from the Hong Kong association's database, matched for sex, similar ranking and entry in the same competitions; they carried on with their usual activities and filled in no questionnaires.

The programme, adapted from the mPEAK protocol and led by a certified teacher, combined breathing, body scan, sitting and walking meditation and archery-specific movement with teaching on mindfulness, flow, stress and self-criticism, plus homework and guided recordings. Shooting was measured as the 72-arrow score at Hong Kong competitions in the week before and the week after the programme, following the World Archery qualification format; the paper gives neither the bow division nor the distance. After the competition, on the same day, the programme group completed the Chinese versions of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, the CSAI-2 and the Short Dispositional Flow Scale. The shooting score was analysed with a two-way analysis of variance and the questionnaires with paired t-tests.

The authors themselves urge caution: the groups were not randomised, the sample is small and the controls received no activity in place of the programme. The twelve in the programme volunteered out of 48, so they were probably the most motivated, and the comparison rests on a single competition before and a single one after, under conditions (wind, venue, importance) the paper does not describe. A gain of about 11 points out of 720 in the programme group is the kind of difference that can appear from one competition to the next; the controls dropped 3.

All the psychological results come from one group, with no comparison, and from archers who knew they had taken part in the programme. Competition anxiety, moreover, was measured once the competition was over, when the score was already known. In the text, the flow result mistakenly repeats the mindfulness figures (136.83 and 125.92, with the same t value): the table gives 33.75 and 35.92, and this record uses those. The discussion quotes an effect on shooting of d = 0.88 without saying how it was calculated. Finally, 2.9 hours of training a week is little for a national team, and the paper does not say whether the archers shot recurve or compound.

For archers, the most solid result concerns feasibility: a mindfulness programme run almost entirely online, with a single in-person session, was completed in full by archers from a national team, who rated the simulated competition as the part they liked most. The other results point the expected way (less anxiety, more confidence, a few more points in competition), but the design does not allow them to be attributed to the programme: the attention the archers received, the motivation of those who volunteered or a favourable competition could produce the same pattern.

So the study does not show that mindfulness gains points. It shows that a course of this kind can be offered to a team with only one in-person session, and that a randomised trial would be the next step. The part of the programme closest to shooting is the simulated competition, with a personal task for each archer discussed straight afterwards with the teacher.