Archers' mental preparation: Lutsenko 2021 review

This is a narrative review in Ukrainian asking how psychological preparation fits into archers' long-term development in different countries. The authors searched Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar and Google for papers and coaching materials in seven languages (Ukrainian, English, Korean, Italian, Russian, German and French) and found 90, of which they judged 65 relevant.

The first finding concerns Ukraine. Comparing the official sports school curricula for eight Olympic disciplines with complex coordination demands (shooting, sailing, diving, rhythmic and artistic gymnastics, trampoline, equestrian sport and archery), archery is the only one in which psychological preparation does not appear: the 2010 curriculum leaves it out entirely. In the countries that reached the podium at Rio 2016, and in Italy, the authors find it built in, in different ways: in Russia the federal standard gives it, together with tactical and theoretical preparation, from 4% of hours in youth groups to 12% in the top-level groups; in the United States it is part of coach certification, through the MM101 and MM102 courses; in Italy and Germany it comes through seminars and sport psychologists working with the athletes.

The second part gathers themes: the difficulties specific to archery (small, slow movements, no physical outlet for tension, monotony, target panic), the qualities to develop (the 4C model of control, challenge, commitment and confidence, coping skills, several kinds of attention) and the interventions described in the literature, from imagery to biofeedback and from hypnosis to sensory deprivation. The authors conclude that building psychological preparation into every stage of development could help the Ukrainian teams, which have not won an Olympic medal since 2008.

This is not a systematic review: the authors name the databases, the two search terms ("archery" and "psychological preparation") and the languages, but not the criteria by which they kept 65 of the 90 sources, and the quality of the studies is not assessed. The sources are very mixed: scientific papers, Ukrainian ministry curricula, a Russian federal standard, federation documents, the web pages of training companies, interviews and popular books.

The comparison between countries is descriptive and rests on what these documents state, summarised in two tables, one for the Ukrainian disciplines and one for the countries. The thematic sections summarise individual studies, some cited second-hand through an archery manual from 2006.

The link between psychological preparation and medals is a connection drawn by the authors, not a finding: the strong countries also have more money, more athletes, more coaches and more developed technical programmes, and the review makes no attempt to separate these factors. Some of the material comes from weak or anecdotal sources, such as a well-known coach's remark that at the top level success is 90% mental, or the extreme practices of the Korean national team (bungee jumping, visits to a morgue) taken from a single article. The figure that 86% of high-level archers have experienced target panic comes from a survey of 163 archers in which one of the authors took part, and the review does not describe how it was done.

On target panic the review reports the reading of a qualitative study, according to which it arises from too much focus on the outcome and a need for control that ends up taking control of the shot away. It is one of the explanations on offer, and none has yet been demonstrated. For Italy the source cited is a federation document from 2002, so the picture may not reflect the current situation. The text is in Ukrainian, with an English summary.

For archers the review brings no new data: it is a map of how different federations organise mental preparation, useful mainly to coaches or club organisers who want to see where they stand. The most concrete part is the comparison of models: according to the authors, in Asia the work is centralised around the national team psychologists, in Europe it more often comes through courses for coaches and individual consultations, and in the United States through a coach certification run by a private company.

The techniques listed (imagery, relaxation, biofeedback, managing arousal through heart rate) are taken from studies that need to be read one by one; the review does not establish which work best or for whom. The idea of building in psychological work from the first years of shooting is likewise the authors' position, reasonable but not tested in this paper.