Visualisation or relaxation in archery: Wattimena 2020

Thirty-four sports science students at the State University of Jakarta, beginners with the bow, were split into two groups of seventeen: one did visualisation, the other progressive muscle relaxation. The test was fifteen arrows at 10 metres, five ends of three, with a maximum of 150 points.

Both groups improved. In the visualisation group the mean went from 83.24 to 107.47, with the lowest score rising from 35 to 82 and the highest from 125 to 130; the spread almost halved, from a standard deviation of 23.54 to 12.27. In the relaxation group the mean went from 86.76 to 106.23, with the lowest rising from 54 to 78 and the highest moving from 116 to 127; the standard deviation went from 15.91 to 12.52. The two before-and-after comparisons give t values of 5.100 and 5.442 against a critical value of 2.119 on sixteen degrees of freedom, so both methods are associated with an improvement.

The comparison between the two methods, on the other hand, shows no difference: t of 0.553 against a critical value of 2.036 on thirty-two degrees of freedom, and in the discussion a significance of 0.584. A final gap of 1.24 points out of 150, with standard deviations around 12, is exactly the kind of difference a sample this size cannot tell apart from chance.

The design is a pre-post study on two groups: all thirty-four take the initial test, then one group receives visualisation and the other relaxation, then the test is repeated. The participants are students at the sports science faculty rather than club athletes, and the title calls them beginner-level archers.

The scoring test is described precisely: three arrows over five ends at 10 metres, 150 points maximum. The results are reported with means, medians, modes, standard deviations, minima, maxima and five-class frequency tables for each of the four tests. The analysis is a paired-samples t-test within each group and a t-test between the two groups on the final scores, with the critical value read from the tables.

On the two treatments the text explains at length what they are. Visualisation is described as picturing in the mind the object, the event or the correct movement, to be done in a quiet setting, with verbal guidance and preferably with the eyes closed. Relaxation is Jacobson's progressive technique, in two stages: tensing a muscle group and then letting it go, working systematically from the upper muscles down. What is missing is the application: nothing is said about how many sessions were held, how long they lasted, over how many weeks, who ran them, or how much the two groups shot in the meantime.

The limit that weighs most is the missing third group. Thirty-four beginners who shoot an initial test, train for an unspecified period and then shoot a final test will improve by the mere fact of having shot: without a group receiving neither visualisation nor relaxation, the two gains of roughly twenty points cannot be credited to the mental methods. The treatment protocol is not described, so the study is not even repeatable.

The gap between the abstract and the body of the paper is the larger problem. For the comparison between the two methods the abstract reports a critical value of 0.203, concludes that the computed t exceeds the critical one and states that visualisation is more effective than relaxation; in the body the critical value is 2.036, t is 0.553, the comparison is not significant, and the discussion says so with a significance of 0.584. The abstract also reports final means of 32.36 and 28.95, figures that match neither the values in the body nor the gains. The body, in turn, prints the inequality reversed, with 0.553 greater than 2.036, while still drawing the sound conclusion, and then its third concluding point declares visualisation better anyway on the basis of the means alone, against the result of its own test.

The questions of population and measurement remain. These are university sports science students, nearly all new to the bow, and the test is at 10 metres over fifteen arrows: a distance and an arrow count that say nothing about what happens at a competition. The first group's initial standard deviation, 23.54 against 15.91, shows two groups that did not start level, and the fall in spread in both is what is always seen when beginners stop missing their worst shots.

Anyone looking here for a comparison between visualisation and relaxation finds one answer, and it is not the abstract's: between the two methods the study found no difference. What remains is a group of beginners who went at 10 metres from about 85 points out of 150 to about 107, over a training period the paper does not describe and without a comparison against anyone doing no mental work at all.

For an archer the interesting figure is not the mean but the spread. In both groups it fell sharply, in the first from 23.5 to 12.3, because the worst shots disappeared: the visualisation group's lowest score rises from 35 to 82 points, while the highest barely moves, from 125 to 130. In beginners, points are won by removing the arrows that miss the target, not by raising the ceiling.

In the registry the source counts as a sign that two widespread mental methods did not separate from each other in this group, with all the reservations an uncontrolled design brings. It does not count as guidance on which method to choose, and the conclusion that visualisation is better is not supported by the study's own figures.