Release in young archers: Yachsie 2023 study

The study used an observation checklist to rate the release of 14 teenage archers at an Indonesian club, the Taurus Archery School in Banyumas: 7 boys and 7 girls, chosen from the 28 members. Each archer was given a percentage across nine items, grouped into three phases (set-up, release and follow-through), which was then converted into four categories: very good (85-100%), good (65-84%), poor (45-64%) and very poor (25-44%).

Among the boys the overall rating was "good" for 2 and "poor" for 5; for the set-up phase alone it was 1 good and 6 poor, and for the release and the follow-through 2 and 5 again. All 7 girls were rated "poor" overall, as they were for the set-up phase, while for the release and the follow-through the tables give 2 good and 5 poor. No archer fell into either of the extreme categories.

The faults the author describes will be familiar to any coach: fingers gripping the string during the draw, leaving the drawing hand tense; the drawing hand dropping at the release and losing contact under the chin; tension remaining after the shot; and the bow arm coming down before the arrow reaches the target.

The data were collected in June 2021, during the pandemic, from shots at 10 metres filmed at the moment of release. Each archer shot one session of 6 ends; the paper does not say how many arrows per end or what kind of bow. The nine checklist items are: standing facing the target, body position, nocking, full draw, aiming, fingers not gripping the string, a smooth and relaxed release, the hand moving back along the chin, and holding the position until the arrow lands.

The checklist was adapted from an earlier study; validity was checked with a Pearson correlation and reliability with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.896. The text is inconsistent about the raters: at one point it mentions three club judges, at another a nationally licensed coach. The analysis goes no further than percentages, that is, how many archers fall into each category, for boys and girls separately.

It is a snapshot of 14 youngsters from a single club, chosen for convenience, rated by people from their own setting and not compared with any other group. The category thresholds are not justified, and the checklist rewards conformity to one model of technique (the hand sliding along the chin, the bow arm staying up) without measuring whether those who follow it shoot better: there are no scores, groups or arrow data. Shooting at 10 metres is also different from shooting at competition distances.

Some of the data do not add up. The girls' tables for the release and the follow-through are identical, figure for figure, to the boys', and show two girls as "good" although the overall rating puts all of them in the poor category. The collection date is given as "17-14 June 2021", the checklist has three phases while the discussion has four, and part of the literature cited in support of the technique is about something else entirely (antennas, smartphone dependence, running apps). The author's surname is printed "Yacshie" in the paper. The journal is a regional one.

For anyone who shoots, the study says little. It lists the release faults a coach often sees in club youngsters (fingers gripping the string, the drawing hand coming away from the face and dropping, lingering tension, the bow arm falling early) and shows that, with a checklist of this kind, most of them are rated poor. It does not say whether correcting those faults improves the score, because the score was not measured, nor which release works best.

The author suggests working on technique at short range, to spare the arrows and get more repetitions: this is an opinion resting on other work, not something this study put to the test. As an example of an observation checklist for a club it may be a starting point, but the paper does not measure how far two different raters would agree.