Fun circuit training for archers: Prastyawan 2026 study

Thirty-eight competitive Indonesian archers aged between 18 and 25, recruited from clubs in Central Java, were randomly assigned to two groups of nineteen. The experimental group did twelve weeks of «fun-based» circuit training, three sixty-minute sessions a week; the control group continued its usual training, which at the club already combined technical shooting with general strength exercises. The measures, taken one week before and one week after, were grip strength on a dynamometer, a one-repetition maximum for the upper body, plank hold, press-ups to failure, shooting score and shooting consistency, calculated as the standard deviation of individual arrow scores.

In the experimental group all six measures improve, at p < 0.01: grip from 35.2 ± 5.1 to 40.7 ± 5.2 kg (+15.6%), the maximum from 55.3 ± 6.3 to 63.1 ± 6.5 kg (+14.1%), plank from 78.5 ± 15.2 to 102.3 ± 18.4 seconds (+30.3%), press-ups from 22.4 ± 5.6 to 28.7 ± 6.1 repetitions (+28.1%), score from 7.1 ± 1.2 to 8.6 ± 1.3 (+21.1%) and the standard deviation of the scores from 2.4 ± 0.6 to 1.8 ± 0.4 (−25.0%).

In the control group no measure changes significantly, and the variations all sit between +0.6% and +1.6%, with consistency alone at −4.0%. The two groups started practically level on age (21.3 against 21.1 years), years of practice (3.2 against 3.1) and weekly sessions (4.1 against 4.0).

The design is experimental, with a pre-test and post-test and a control group. Allocation was carried out with a computer-generated randomisation procedure. Entry required at least one year of competitive experience, regular participation in a structured programme and no musculoskeletal injury in the previous six months; excluded were those with current pain, those following other strength programmes outside the study and those with incomplete attendance. Ethical approval comes from the faculty of sport science at Yogyakarta State University.

Each experimental-group session lasted about sixty minutes: ten minutes of dynamic warm-up, forty minutes of circuit across ten stations, about four minutes per station with minimal rest between transitions, and ten minutes of cool-down with static stretching and breathing. The stations mixed resistance exercises (resistance band pulls, medicine ball slams, press-ups, plank holds, squat jumps, battle ropes) with balance tasks and with archery-specific game stations, in which participants shot at fixed and moving targets. Sessions were supervised by certified coaches. Loads, sets, repetitions and the circuit's progression are not reported.

Among the measures, grip was taken with the dominant hand, keeping the highest value from repeated trials. The upper-body maximum comes from bench press and seated row, reported as a single number. The plank is to failure, timed; the press-ups are to failure, counted. The shooting score is the total over a series of arrows at a fixed distance on official target faces, and consistency is the standard deviation of individual arrow scores, where a lower value indicates greater stability. The distance, the number of arrows and the target face are not stated.

The analysis is in SPSS 26: Shapiro-Wilk for normality, Levene's test for homogeneity of variances, paired-sample t-tests for the before-and-after comparison within each group and independent-sample t-tests for the comparison between groups after the intervention, with the threshold at p < 0.05.

The limitation that weighs most is not declared by the authors: the circuit included game stations in which participants shot, at fixed and moving targets. The experimental group therefore shot more arrows than the control group, three times a week for twelve weeks. An improvement in score in that group cannot be attributed to physical conditioning, because the intervention also contained extra shooting practice. The study is built to compare conditioning, and in fact compares conditioning plus shooting against shooting alone.

The main outcome has no protocol. Of the score it is known that it comes from «a series of arrows at a fixed distance»: the distance is not there, the number of arrows is not there, the diameter of the target face is not there. Without these the move from 7.1 to 8.6 points per arrow cannot be placed: over a 72-arrow competition it would be more than a hundred points in twelve weeks, in athletes with three years of practice. It is a very large gain for this kind of intervention, and there is no way to check it.

The between-group comparison after the intervention is announced in the methods and does not appear in the results. Every p-value in the tables belongs to the before-and-after comparison within each group; the independent-sample t-test is reported nowhere, so the difference between the two groups, which is the result the design should produce, has no number. There are no effect sizes and no confidence intervals.

Two measures out of six depend on how hard a person decides to push: the plank to failure and the press-ups to failure. Nobody was blinded, and those who knew they were in the new group had reason to hold the plank longer. The 30.3% rise in the plank has to be read with that in mind. The plank hold and the press-ups are also not measures of strength in the sense of a maximum, but of endurance against body weight.

The control group's figures are remarkably uniform: six measures, twelve weeks, and variations of +0.6%, +1.1%, +1.6%, +1.4%, +1.4% and −4.0%. A group that by the authors' own account went on doing strength exercises at the club as well moves none of the six measures in three months. The two groups' starting values also coincide to within a minimal margin on every variable. This is not something a reader can resolve from the paper, but it is a reason not to take the percentages at face value.

More ordinary points remain. The sample is 38 people in a single region, and the authors acknowledge both. Actual attendance is not reported, although absence was an exclusion criterion, and no dropouts are given. The upper-body maximum combines bench press and seated row into a single value without saying how. Tables 3, 4, 5 and 6 repeat the same data four times, and Table 6 is titled for the paired t-tests while containing the shooting measures. The authors list the failure to measure motivation and enjoyment as a limitation, which is precisely what the name of the method puts at its centre.

What this study shows with confidence is that twelve weeks of circuit work with body weight and small equipment, three times a week, raise the physical measures of young competitive archers: grip up 15.6%, upper-body maximum up 14.1%, plank up 30.3%, press-ups up 28.1%. These are ordinary gains for people starting structured conditioning, and they say that these archers, with three years of practice, had room on that front.

On the shooting, however, what the title suggests cannot be concluded. The circuit contained stations in which they shot, so the group whose score improved is also the group that shot more arrows. Reading this study as evidence that physical conditioning raises the score credits the gym with an effect that may come from the extra arrows. Separating the two would need a control group shooting the same number of arrows without the circuit.

There is, though, a practical idea worth more than the figures: the consistency measure used here. Taking the standard deviation of individual arrow scores, rather than the total alone, is a simple way to see whether an archer is becoming steadier or merely luckier, and it can be worked out from any recorded end. In this group it fell from 2.4 to 1.8 points per arrow. It is the kind of number anyone can keep in their own log, whatever they make of this study.

One last point for anyone coaching at a club with little equipment: the programme described uses resistance bands, a medicine ball, a rope, body weight and the shooting range, across ten four-minute stations. Loads and progression are not reported, so it is not a programme that can be copied as written; the format, not the dose, is the transferable part.