Shooting distance and concentration: Handayani 2024

Forty recurve archers aged 14 to 20 at the East Java provincial training centre followed four programmes for twelve weeks, differing in shooting distance: twenty, fifty and seventy metres, plus a control group carrying on with its usual training at seventy metres. The volume was the same for everyone, three sets of 36 arrows a session, three sessions a week, and in the three experimental groups every arrow had to be released within ten seconds. Two outcomes were measured, and neither of them is accuracy.

On anaerobic endurance, measured as the fatigue index of the RAST, the value falls significantly in the fifty-metre group (from 3.29 to 1.68) and the seventy-metre group (from 4.84 to 2.95); it does not change at twenty metres (from 3.58 to 3.07) or in the control group (from 3.47 to 3.71). A lower index means losing less power from one sprint to the next. In the comparison between groups, the difference is significant between the control group and the fifty-metre group and between the control group and the seventy-metre group.

On concentration, measured as the time taken to complete a mirror drawing task, all four groups improve: from 74.10 to 62.20 seconds at twenty metres, from 73.20 to 60.10 at fifty, from 74.00 to 54.80 at seventy and from 74.50 to 47.00 in the control group. The largest improvement is therefore the control group's. Errors in the drawing task fall in every group, significantly only at twenty metres (from 5.80 to 2.50) and in the control group (from 5.30 to 1.70), and the comparison across the four groups on that outcome shows no difference.

The authors conclude that longer distances improve concentration more than the others. The between-group comparison on time is significant between the control group and seventy metres and between twenty and seventy metres, but the means run the other way from the conclusion, because the shortest time at the end belongs to the control group.

Participants were recruited on explicit criteria: active training, age 14 to 20, at least five years of competitive experience, residence in East Java, no current injury and willingness to see the study through. The authors define as sub-elite the young archers with national-level results who have entered the provincial centre. Twenty males and twenty females, ten per group. At the start the four groups were similar in age (between 17.40 and 17.70 years), years of practice (between 9.30 and 9.60), years of competition (between 7.40 and 7.80), height, weight, body mass index and arm length. The split between males and females, however, is uneven: seven males and three females at twenty metres, two and eight at fifty, five and five at seventy, six and four in the control group.

The programme ran for twelve weeks, with three sessions a week of three sets of 36 arrows with the recurve bow. In the three experimental groups the shot cycle, from set-up to release, had to fit inside ten seconds; if the arrow went later the excess time was noted, and if it went sooner the margin was recorded in the archer's favour. The control group shot at seventy metres as usual, without the time constraint.

Concentration was measured with a mirror drawing apparatus: the archer sits down and traces the outline of a star with a pencil while looking only at its reflection, and the tester records the time taken and the errors of line. Anaerobic endurance was measured with the RAST, six maximal 35-metre sprints with ten seconds of recovery, from which maximum power, mean power and the fatigue index are derived. All measures were repeated before and after the twelve weeks. The analysis uses paired-samples t-tests, analysis of variance and post hoc LSD comparisons, in SPSS 25 and Excel.

The paper has no limitations section, and the first thing missing is the outcome an archer would expect: in twelve weeks of training at different distances nobody measured accuracy, score or arrow spread. The outcomes are a mirror drawing task and six running sprints, and this study provides no evidence that either says anything about how the archers shot.

The comparison does not isolate distance. The seventy-metre group and the control group shot at the same distance, and the only difference between them was the ten-second limit per arrow: so any difference between those two groups concerns the time constraint, not the distance. And since the two groups whose fatigue index fell most were those at fifty and seventy metres, that is, the ones who walked furthest to collect their arrows, part of the effect may come from the walking rather than the shooting.

On concentration the figures do not match the conclusion. The text states that longer distances improve concentration more than the control condition, but the control group is the one that improves most, going from 74.50 to 47.00 seconds against the 74.00 and 54.80 of the seventy-metre group. It is not stated what the analysis of variance was run on, the final values or the differences, and the direction of the significant difference is never given: as written, the comparison between the control group and seventy metres could favour the control group. It is worth adding that mirror drawing is a task that improves a great deal on repetition, and that every participant had already done it once.

Left out are training intensity, the draw weights used, what the control group actually did in its sessions, whether the testers knew which group each archer was in, and any follow-up over time. The groups are ten people each, and the male to female split differs sharply from group to group, with the fifty-metre group eight-tenths female: on a measure like the RAST, which depends on sprint power, that matters. The text describes the allocation as random and as purposive sampling on the same page, so it is not clear how the four groups were formed.

An archer will find an interesting question here and an answer that never arrives. The question is whether training far out, where every mistake shows up magnified and every arrow costs more effort, prepares you better than training close in. Answering it would have required counting the points, and in this study the points were not counted: what is measured is fatigue in a shuttle-running test and the time taken on a mirror drawing task.

On those two outcomes the firmest result is that twelve weeks of shooting at fifty or seventy metres, with a maximum of ten seconds per arrow, leave the archer less fatigued in a repeated-sprint test, while shooting at twenty metres does not. On the rest the picture is less tidy than the paper's conclusion suggests, because in the mirror drawing task the group that improved most was the one training as it always had.

For the registry the detail about the time constraint also counts. All the experimental training had a ceiling of ten seconds per arrow, which is a specific condition and a different thing from shooting at your own pace: what this study compares is not three distances, but three distances against the clock versus the usual training with no clock.