Arm strength and shooting accuracy: Novian 2025

Ten archers from West Java, in Indonesia (5 boys and 5 girls, mean age 16.63, with two to three years of training), took an arm strength test with a pull dynamometer and an accuracy test at 10 metres. Mean strength was 20.46 kg (range 5 to 47) and mean accuracy score 7.51 points (range 4.16 to 9.43).

Between the two measures the authors report a Spearman correlation of 0.363 with p = 0.003, which they describe as a weak but significant link. They conclude that arm strength should be trained to achieve higher accuracy.

The study is descriptive and correlational, with a single measurement session. Strength was measured with a handheld pull dynamometer, and the paper does not say which movement or position was used. Accuracy was measured with a 10-metre shooting test taken from another paper, without stating the number of arrows, the target face or the type of bow; the score looks like a mean per arrow, but the text does not make this clear. Since the Shapiro-Wilk test showed the data were not normal, the authors used Spearman's rank correlation (SPSS 29).

The central result does not fit the sample: with 10 archers, a Spearman correlation of 0.363 is nowhere near significance (the expected p is around 0.3), yet the paper reports 0.003. Either the coefficient or the p-value has been misreported, and the published data do not show which. Even taking the coefficient at face value, 0.363 across ten people cannot separate a real link from chance.

The sample mixes boys and girls, with strength ranging from 5 to 47 kg: a spread that wide carries differences in age, sex and maturity that the analysis ignores. Basic details of the shooting test, the bow and the draw weight are missing, and a 10-metre test says little about accuracy at competition distances. The paper has no discussion of its limitations, and the advice to train strength does not come from any intervention. The DOI printed in the paper's own citation (v7i1) also differs from the registered one (v7i2).

For anyone who shoots, the study adds nothing usable: ten archers, an incompletely described shooting test and a statistical result that does not fit the number of participants. It does not show that arm strength training improves accuracy, since nobody followed a training programme, and it does not even allow the conclusion that stronger archers shoot better. In the registry it counts as very weak evidence, to be kept apart from studies that measured strength and score in larger samples with the shooting fully described.