Fitness in young archers: Wahyuningtias 2025 study

At a club in Surabaya, Indonesia, the authors measured five physical qualities in 20 young archers in the under-13 category and related them to a shooting accuracy score. The tests were balance on one leg (the stork stand), hand-eye coordination (throwing and catching a ball against a wall), grip strength on a dynamometer, push-ups and the beep test for aerobic endurance. The mean accuracy score was 506.6, with a standard deviation of 90.86.

When the tests were combined into a single fitness index, 9 of the 20 children (45%) fell in the "sufficient" band, 6 (30%) in the "poor" band, 3 (15%) in the "good" band and 2 (10%) in the "very good" band. The bands are built on the group's own mean and standard deviation, so they show where each child stands against the other 19, not against any external norm.

In the regression with all five tests together, none was related to the score, with p values ranging from 0.111 for push-ups to 0.925 for grip strength. The multiple correlation coefficient was 0.516, which the authors read as a moderate relationship; R squared was 0.267, but once adjusted for the number of variables it fell to 0.005. With five predictors and 20 children, almost all of the apparent relationship disappears.

The study is cross-sectional: a single round of measurements on all the under-13 archers at the Fast Archery Club in Surabaya, who shot bows in the category known in Indonesia as standard bow. The abstract describes total sampling and the methods section purposive sampling; in practice these were the 20 children available. For each physical test the authors quote reliability figures from other studies on children and adolescents, not measured in their own group.

Each test was turned into a five-level category according to its distance from the group mean (from more than 1.5 standard deviations above to more than 1.5 below), and the results were pooled into an overall index. The link with accuracy was estimated with multiple linear regression. The paper does not describe how the accuracy score was obtained: the distance, target face, number of arrows and number of sessions are all missing, so the figure of 506.6 does not by itself show what scale it is on.

The most serious limitation is that we do not know how the main variable was measured. Without the distance, target face and number of arrows, the score cannot be compared with any other data, nor can we tell how stable it was from one attempt to the next. Twenty children are few for a regression with five predictors, as the authors themselves acknowledge, and the adjusted R squared close to zero makes the point clearly: a non-significant result in this sample does not show that fitness is irrelevant, but the coefficient of 0.516 is not enough to argue that it matters either.

There are also inconsistencies in the analysis. The normality table shows that balance, coordination and the score are not normally distributed (p of 0.004, 0.018 and below 0.001), yet the text explains this with a p greater than 0.05, and the regression is used regardless. In the overall index the lower bound of the "poor" band is a negative number (-32.10), a sign that the bands were calculated mechanically. Age, sex, years of shooting, draw weight and technique are not reported and play no part in the analysis.

For anyone coaching under-13s the study changes little. These data show no clear link between balance, coordination, grip strength, push-ups or aerobic endurance and the score, but the accuracy measure is too thinly described and the group too small to rule one out. The authors' conclusion, which calls for more structured physical preparation at this age, comes from their starting idea and the literature they cite, not from the numbers collected here.

There is a methodological point for anyone considering a similar assessment at their own club: the physical tests used are simple and cheap, but comparing them with shooting only makes sense if the score is collected with a stated, repeatable protocol and if there are enough children for the number of variables being compared.