Imagery and relaxation in archers: Wattimena 2025

Thirty-four sports science students at Universitas Negeri Jakarta, all beginners in archery, were split into two groups of 17: one did four weeks of mental imagery of the shot, the other four weeks of progressive muscle relaxation, each session followed by the same shooting practice for everyone. The test was 15 arrows at 20 metres, five ends of three, with a maximum of 150 points.

In the body of the paper both groups improved by about 20 points: from 83.24 to 107.47 with imagery (t = 5.100) and from 86.76 to 106.23 with relaxation (t = 5.442). At the end the two groups were almost level, 107.47 against 106.23, and the difference was not significant. Spread narrowed too: in the imagery group the standard deviation fell from 23.54 to 12.27.

Other parts of the same paper say something else. The abstract gives final means of 32.36 and 28.95 and concludes that imagery works better; one table reports a test on 5 people with means of around 3.40 and no improvement in either group (t = 0.000 with p = 1.000, and t = 0.323 with p = 0.763).

Both groups trained three times a week for four weeks. Imagery meant seeing and feeling oneself perform the shot from the inside, with attention to bodily sensation; relaxation was Jacobson's technique of tensing and releasing one muscle group after another, working up from the feet. Each mental session was followed by the same shooting practice for all, and the authors say they controlled other training and the participants' physical condition, without explaining how. The 15-arrow test at 20 metres was repeated before and after the period.

The Movement Imagery Questionnaire-Revised and a relaxation skills inventory are listed as instruments, but their results never appear. Each group was analysed with a paired t-test, and the two groups were compared with an independent-samples t-test.

The authors acknowledge the main limitation themselves: there is no control group without mental training. The methods describe a design with a control group, the discussion says there was none, and the data bear out the second version. Without a control, a 20-point gain in four weeks among beginners who were shooting in the meantime is what practice alone would be expected to produce, and the study gives no way of assigning any part of it to imagery or relaxation. The paper does not say how the groups were formed or what bows the participants used.

The internal inconsistencies weigh even more: final means in the abstract that are less than a third of those in the text, a table on 5 subjects that contradicts the others, an abstract conclusion (one method better than the other) opposite to the results, a final comparison given as 0.553 in the text and 0.384 in the table, and a normality test described first as failed and then as passed. The journal is flagged in the registry for questionable editorial standards.

For a beginner or their coach, the readable part of the study says that four weeks of relaxation or imagery, combined with shooting, led to similar results at 20 metres. It does not say whether the mental work added anything to practice, because nobody trained without it. Nothing in the consistent data points to one technique being better than the other, contrary to what the abstract states. Anyone looking for evidence on imagery in archery will find better-built studies in the registry; this one, given its contradictions, stays on the margins.