Imagery in national-level archers: Thepfukolie 2025

Thirty national-level Indian archers aged 16 to 21 were randomly allocated to three groups of ten: one followed a mental imagery programme, one a self-regulation programme, and the third continued normal training. After twelve weeks, with three 50 to 60-minute sessions a week, the authors compared imagery use measured with the Sport Imagery Questionnaire, adjusting for baseline values.

The multivariate analysis shows an overall difference between the groups (Wilks' lambda 0.159, p < 0.001). Taking the five scales one at a time, the differences are significant only for the two cognitive types: imagery of the movement (5.47 in the imagery group, 4.96 in the self-regulation group, 4.71 in the controls, out of a maximum of 7; p = 0.008) and imagery of strategy (5.06, 5.34 and 4.13; p < 0.001). The three motivational types do not differ, although in the imagery group motivational specific imagery reaches 5.96 against 4.90 in the controls. The abstract also speaks of improved shooting scores, but this result does not appear anywhere in the body of the paper.

The archers came from the Sports Authority of India's national centres of excellence and from the Guwahati regional centre of the Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education, with at least three years of competition behind them; the paper says they were men and women but not how many of each, nor what bow they shot. Testing took place one week before and immediately after the programme.

The imagery questionnaire has 30 items on a scale from 1 (rarely) to 7 (often) and measures how often the athlete uses five types of imagery: of the movement, of strategy, of goals, of arousal and of mastery. The analysis is a multivariate analysis of covariance with baseline values as covariates, followed by scale-by-scale analyses. Of the content of the two programmes, that is what the archers actually did in the 36 sessions, the paper says nothing beyond their names.

The most serious weakness is the gap between the abstract and the paper. The abstract reports an analysis of covariance on shooting scores, with F(2, 26) = 17.89 and a partial eta squared of 0.579, and says imagery produced the largest gains; the text contains no measure of shooting, no table and no score data, and the discussion speaks of performance improvements without showing them. This record considers only what the paper documents, which is the questionnaire.

Even so, problems remain. Baseline values are not reported, so it is impossible to see how much each group changed. The questionnaire measures how often archers say they use imagery, not how well they use it: that people who have done twelve weeks of imagery training report using it more is almost a given, and respondents knew which group they were in. The control group received no equivalent attention, and the randomisation procedure is not described. The discussion attributes 70 to 80% of archery performance to psychological preparation, a figure the study does not measure.

For an archer or coach the study adds little: twelve weeks of imagery work lead archers to report that they imagine the movement and their competition strategy more often, and a self-regulation programme has a similar effect on strategy. That this turns into points on the target the paper claims in its abstract but does not demonstrate.

Anyone looking for evidence on how imagery affects score will find more in other studies in the registry that measure shooting and describe their protocol. What can be taken from this paper is only that, in young national-level archers, the use of imagery is something a dedicated programme can increase.