Body measures and recurve scores: Poonam 2025 study

The study relates the body measurements of a small group of Indian international-level recurve archers, training at the SAI centre in Sonipat, to marks given for their technique. The measurements were arm span, height, weight, body mass index, fat mass and muscle mass, total and for each limb, estimated by bioimpedance, sitting height as a proportion of stature, and waist-to-hip ratio. The marks covered six elements: anchor, draw, release, follow-through, T-stance and "reasoning", with means between 4.17 and 5.00 and values from 3 to 6.

The author reports very high correlations among the body measurements, for example between height and left-arm muscle mass (r 0.939) and between the two legs (r 0.998), which mostly show that bigger people carry more muscle. Between body and technique, two significant correlations are given: skeletal muscle mass with the release mark (r 0.816) and arm span with the release (r 0.896). Waist-to-hip ratio ran in the opposite direction to the T-stance mark (r -0.707), but below the significance threshold the paper gives. The author concludes that arm span, muscle mass and a lean build matter for performance, and recommends attention to strength and body composition.

The archers, chosen by purposive sampling, were men with FITA scores between 650 and 720 who had competed between 2018 and 2024. Arm span was measured with a tape against a wall, height with a stadiometer to the nearest millimetre and weight to the nearest tenth of a kilo; fat mass and muscle masses come from a bioimpedance device, which estimates them from the body's electrical resistance.

For technique, the paper says only that the trials were assessed according to the international federation's procedures, after three attempts per athlete. It does not say who gave the marks, on what scale, or what "reasoning" refers to. The relationships are calculated with Pearson's correlation, one for each pair of variables, with the significance threshold given as r 0.811.

The sample is too small for dependable correlations: with five or six people a single archer can create or erase a correlation, and with dozens of pairs tested some will come out significant by chance. The number itself does not add up. The paper says five archers, but in the tables the sums divided by the means give six (1051.40 over 175.23 for arm span, 30 over 5.00 for anchor), and the 0.811 threshold corresponds to six people. The description also departs from the tables: the text speaks of a height of around six feet, while the table runs from 159.4 to 176.2 cm.

The technique marks, on an undescribed scale and nearly all between 4 and 5, barely vary, and there is no link to competition scores. The idea that a leaner build helps accuracy does not rest on any reported correlation between fat mass and the marks. Some references do not match the original publications: Ertan's study of the forearm muscles, for example, is cited in a different journal from the one it appeared in.

For anyone who shoots, the study offers nothing to rely on. That archers with longer arms and more muscle received higher release marks, in a group of five or six people assessed by undescribed criteria, may come down to one or two athletes. Nor does the paper say anything about how arm span translates into draw length, draw weight or choice of spine, which is how arm length actually enters shooting.

How much strength and body composition matter for an archer is a fair question, but this paper does not address it usefully: the author's conclusion goes beyond her data.