Body measures of Indian archers: Mazumder 2023 study

The author measured 33 high-level Indian archers, 17 men and 16 women selected for the 2016 Asia Cup trials, 22 of them at international level and 11 at national level. Mean age was 18.3, height 167.2 cm and weight 63.1 kg, with six years of shooting on average. From 15 anthropometric measurements she calculated 11 proportion indices and compared them with competition score and bow draw weight.

The strongest link was between score and draw weight (r = 0.608): archers shooting heavier bows tended to have higher scores. Draw weight was in turn linked to the hand index (0.42), the foot index (0.37) and, negatively, to the robusticity index (-0.379), which falls as the body gets heavier relative to height. The paper reports no body index linked directly to score, and height and weight were not.

Descriptively, all 33 had an arm span greater than their height (mean index 104.79, minimum 100.12), a long forearm relative to the upper arm and a narrow chest on the thoracic index. From this the author concludes that long arms and a narrow chest are an advantage in archery.

Measurements were taken the day before competition, through the Sports Authority of India regional centre in Rohtak, following the ISAK protocol: stadiometer, electronic scales, Harpenden skinfold calliper, anthropometric tape and sliding calliper for bone breadths. The indices compare body segments with one another: arm span to height, forearm to upper arm, breadth to length of the hand and foot, depth to breadth of the chest, hips to shoulders, sitting height to standing height and others. Body fat was estimated from skinfolds with the Durnin and Womersley method.

The score is the competition score at 70 metres for recurve and at 50 metres for compound, and draw weight is that of each archer's own bow. Links were calculated with Pearson correlation on all 33 together.

The most serious limitation is that recurve and compound are pooled. Scores at 70 metres with recurve and at 50 metres with compound are not comparable, and the two bows usually have different draw weights, so the correlation between draw weight and score may mostly reflect which bow each archer used. The paper does not say how many shot each. The comparison between indices and draw weight also mixes men and women, who differ on both.

The idea that long arms and a narrow chest help comes from the fact that every archer measured had them, but without a comparison group (non-archers, or lower-level archers) it cannot be said whether these are traits of archery or of the population the archers come from. Some readings of the indices do not match the formulas: the hand index is breadth divided by length, so a higher value means a broader hand, not a longer one as the author writes, and the same applies to the foot. The body fat figures reported (4.2% in the men and 6.6% in the women) are unusually low, especially for the women, and the text marks significant results with p > 0.05 rather than p < 0.05. The data date from 2016 and the paper appeared in 2023.

For anyone who shoots, the study describes the build of a group of strong Indian archers: long arms relative to height, a long forearm and a narrow chest. It does not show that these traits add points, since no body index was linked to score, and it does not show that an archer with shorter arms starts at a disadvantage.

The link between draw weight and score, the most quoted result, needs caution because it mixes recurve and compound, and it gives no grounds for thinking that going up in draw weight makes anyone more accurate. For those selecting young archers, using these indices as a selection criterion remains the author's proposal, which the study did not put to the test.