Young archers before and during Covid: Ravena 2021

Nine young archers from the student sports training centre (PPLP) in East Java, Indonesia, 6 girls and 3 boys aged up to 18, were compared before and during the Covid-19 pandemic on three tests: push-ups in one minute, a scoring test and heart rate. Push-ups stayed almost the same (32.33 before, 31.11 during, p = 0.662). The score fell on average from 302.39 to 280.72, a drop of 21.67 points (confidence interval 6.04 to 37.29, p = 0.013). Heart rate rose from 141.48 to 157.78 beats per minute (p = 0.024).

The authors put the drop down to shorter and less intense training during the pandemic, but the amount of training was not measured.

The nine archers shot in three different divisions: 4 recurve, 4 compound and one in the Indonesian national standard bow division, each at their own distance. During a training session they counted their pulse for one minute before starting, then did push-ups for one minute and finally the scoring test: 36 arrows in 6 ends of 6, with 4 minutes per end, repeated over two sessions, counting their pulse again after each session and at the end.

Measurements from before and during the pandemic were compared with a paired t-test. The paper does not explain where the pre-pandemic values came from, or on what dates either set of measurements was taken.

The design is weak for the question it asks: nine archers from three divisions, with different bows and distances, combined into a single mean score, and no comparison group. In the time between the two sets of measurements young archers grow and change equipment or distance, and without knowing when and how the earlier measurements were taken the difference cannot be put down to the pandemic. It is not even clear which of the pulse counts is the one reported, or whether the score is from one session or the mean of both.

The text has many inconsistencies: the difference in push-ups is given once as -0.800 and elsewhere as 1.22, and is called first non-significant and then significant; the before-during correlations differ between table and text (0.898 and 0.709 for score, 0.651 and 0.709 for pulse); at one point the participants become 10. It is a conference paper, and it is unclear whether it was peer reviewed.

For anyone who shoots, the study describes something many coaches will have seen: after a spell of reduced training, a small group of young archers scored about twenty points less on average, with a higher heart rate during the session, while endurance measured by push-ups had not changed. With nine archers from three divisions, and no account of how the earlier measurements were collected, it remains a report on a single group rather than a measure of how much the pandemic affected shooting. It says nothing about how to regain the lost level, and the authors' closing advice on diet and training does not come from the data.