Body stability and archery shooting: Santos 2025 review

A systematic review of sixteen studies relating body stability to the quality of the shot. The most frequently used measure is the centre of pressure, collected on force platforms in eleven of the sixteen.

Three studies found that greater centre of pressure displacement accompanies poorer shots, and three comparisons between levels found the less experienced archers with greater displacement, while another found no difference between groups. On the velocity of the centre of pressure, two studies found that the lower it is the better the shooting; one found no correlation; one found no difference between levels. On the ellipse area, one study found it smaller in better shots and one found it larger in the lower-level group.

Bow sway appears in five studies: three link less sway to better shooting, two find no difference between levels. Sensors on anatomical landmarks appear in three studies, with results that do not converge: pelvic sway was lower in the stronger group, sternum sway greater where accuracy was lower, and head sway did not separate elite from non-elite archers. The centre of gravity, which in theory would be the most relevant measure, has been studied by nobody.

Some figures from the individual papers. In 39 elite archers, the maximum velocity of the centre of pressure after release correlated with the score at minus 0.80. In eight participants, centre of pressure velocity correlated at 0.80 (p equal to 0.009) with an index of precision in self-triggered release. A comparison of nine elite archers (above 1150 FITA points), nine at intermediate level (between 1100 and 1150) and nine beginners (below 1100) found less sway in the elite group. The review's conclusion is that the literature does not say which of these parameters best predicts the quality of a shot.

The review follows PRISMA and is registered in PROSPERO (CRD42024620566). Four databases were searched for work published up to 12 July 2024, with no restriction on language or date: MEDLINE Complete and CINAHL Complete, plus SportDiscus and Cochrane Reviews. That gave 217 results (125 from MEDLINE, 55 from SportDiscus, 20 from Cochrane, 17 from CINAHL), 188 after duplicates, 27 read in full, 10 included. Hand-searching reference lists brought in another 18 texts, 6 of which were included, for a total of sixteen.

Eligible studies were those relating shot quality to the centre of gravity (optoelectronic systems or inertial sensors), the centre of pressure (force or pressure platforms) or bow sway, collected during shooting, plus comparisons between groups of different level. Excluded were populations with disabilities, because of differences in neuromuscular control mechanisms, along with single cases, reviews and dissertations.

Two reviewers selected independently, with a third resolving disagreements; agreement between them was 0.76 on titles and abstracts, 0.82 on full texts and 0.67 on the quality assessment. Methodological quality was judged with the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies across six components: selection, design, confounders, blinding, data collection method, withdrawals. A paper is rated strong if no component is weak, moderate with one weak component, weak with two or more. The result: ten moderate, five weak, one strong. All sixteen are cross-sectional, so the design component is moderate for every one of them; blinding is weak in fifteen of the sixteen; data collection is strong throughout. No meta-analysis: designs, instruments and outcome measures are too different.

The problem is the samples. Of the eleven studies that correlated stability with result, only three exceed twenty archers and most sit below ten; of the six that compare levels, the groups run from four to sixteen people. One of the included studies does not report how many participants it had at all, nor their age, nor their sex.

All sixteen are cross-sectional, so they describe who sways less, not what makes anyone sway less: nobody trained anybody. The direction of the relationship stays open, and that is worth saying plainly. It may be that a steadier archer shoots better, and it may be that a shot going well is steadier; data collected during the shot do not separate the two.

The instruments are not comparable with each other: distances from 6 to 70 metres, from three to a hundred arrows per archer, platforms sampling from 250 to 1,000 hertz, and shot quality defined sometimes by the score of a single arrow, sometimes by the archer's and the coach's judgement, sometimes by a FITA total or a handicap. Lining those results up is a choice made by the review, not a finding.

The contrary results are numerous enough to count: one comparison of elite and sub-elite archers found no difference in sway amplitude or velocity, one found no correlation between displacement and level, two found no difference in bow sway between levels, and one concluded that postural stability did not separate elite from non-elite archers at all.

The authors state their main limitation as the use of only four databases, and note that most of the included studies are of moderate quality and that blinding is almost always missing. The review's practical paragraph, recommending stability exercises, proprioception and biofeedback, does not come from the studies reviewed: not one of the sixteen tested a training programme.

For anyone who shoots, the sentence this review supports is a narrow one: in better shots, and in higher-level archers, the centre of pressure moves less, moves more slowly and covers a smaller area. The result repeats across different parameters in different laboratories, and in that sense it is solid. What the review does not support is that training stability raises the score, because none of the included studies trained anything: they are all photographs, not interventions.

The difference matters in practice, because it decides how a force platform is read. A platform tells you whether an archer sways more or less today than yesterday; it does not tell you that reducing the sway will bring points. The direction could run the other way: a shot that is working may produce less sway, rather than arising from less sway.

On bow sway the picture is less clear than it is usually made out to be. Three studies of five link it to better shooting, two find no difference between archers of different levels. One of the two used an inertial sensor on the bow hand, the other markers on the head, elbow and bow, and neither saw what the other three saw.

The most useful note for anyone reading stability data is that the parameter with the strongest relationship, across the sixteen studies, is not sway during aiming but the maximum velocity of the centre of pressure after the release, with a correlation of minus 0.80 against the score in 39 elite archers. What the body does once the arrow has gone, in those data, says more than what it does while aiming.