Draw strength and compound accuracy: Yudho 2025

Twenty-seven compound archers from Jakarta, fifteen men and twelve women, measured on four things: drawing force, bow arm stability on the horizontal and on the vertical axis, arrow speed and score at fifty metres. The four measures go into a path model, to see which act on the score directly and which by way of speed.

In the body of the article the results are these. None of the three technical variables acts directly on the score: drawing force gives a coefficient of -0.12 with p equal to 0.483, horizontal stability -0.089 with p equal to 0.568, vertical stability 0.056 with p equal to 0.714. Only two paths come out significant, and they are in series: drawing force on arrow speed, with a coefficient of 0.634 and p below 0.001, and speed on score, with 0.706 and p below 0.001. The indirect path joining them, from force to score by way of speed, is 0.448 with p equal to 0.003, while the total effect of force on score is 0.386 with p equal to 0.033. Arrow speed therefore works as a full mediator: force counts, but only because it sends the arrow faster.

Bow arm stability does nothing anywhere: it does not act on the score, it does not act on speed, and its indirect paths stop at p equal to 0.501. Nor does drawing force relate to stability, with p equal to 0.266 on the horizontal axis and 0.167 on the vertical.

The abstract and the discussion of the same article, however, say the opposite. Both state that all three technical variables have a significant direct effect on the score, with coefficients of 0.396 for force, 0.356 for horizontal stability and 0.349 for vertical stability, and p-values of 0.025, 0.042 and 0.045. Those six numbers appear in no table in the article. In the tables the same three effects are -0.12, -0.089 and 0.056, all non-significant.

In the descriptive figures, the men draw with 318 newtons against the women's 206, with faster arrows (265 against 248 kilometres per hour), with better stability (0.55 against 1.09 on the horizontal axis) and with almost equal scores: 327 against 320.

A quantitative, non-experimental study, with an associative causal design and path analysis. The sample is twenty-seven compound archers from the Jakarta region, chosen by purposive sampling on a single criterion, belonging to the compound division in that region. Fifteen men with a mean age of 19.2 years, between 13 and 37, and twelve women of 16.8 years, between 13 and 29. Mean weight 66.7 and 56.1 kilograms, height 169 and 157 centimetres, body mass index 23.1 and 22.8.

On the measurements the article says only that existing instruments were used, adapted to the needs of the research, then discussed and assessed by experts in testing and measurement and in archery. No instrument is described, no protocol and no unit: it is not known how drawing force was measured, with what bow arm stability was recorded, with which device arrow speed, nor over how many arrows and on what face the score was computed.

The values allow some inference. Force is in newtons, 318 on average in the men and 206 in the women, that is about 71 and 46 pounds: the first figure sits above the sixty-pound limit the rules allow for compound, so either it is a measure of the athlete's strength rather than the bow's draw weight, or it is a draw weight outside the rules. The text does not settle it. Speed is given in kilometres per hour, and 265 kilometres per hour is 73.6 metres per second; the reported minimum, 182 kilometres per hour, works out at 50.6 metres per second, which is low for a compound, so either the unit or that value should be treated with caution. Stability is a unitless number in which lower means steadier. The score runs between 275 and 352, consistent with thirty-six arrows out of a maximum of 360, but the article does not say so.

The Shapiro and Wilk test finds most variables not normally distributed, including stability on both axes and the score in the men; hence the choice of a generalised linear model for the path analysis, in Jamovi. Which distribution and which link function were used is not reported. A linearity table declares all seven relationships linear, with the same tabulated F value, 4.260, for all seven.

The analysis comprises descriptive statistics, assumption checks, an initial regression and the path analysis, with direct effects, indirect effects and serial mediations, to answer nine research questions. Sex enters the model at no point, although every descriptive table is split by sex. Received on 5 August 2025, revised three times, accepted on 15 November and published on the 23rd. A regional venue.

The abstract and the discussion contradict the tables of the same article. Both state that drawing force, horizontal stability and vertical stability have a significant direct effect on the score, and give the numbers: 0.396 with p equal to 0.025, 0.356 with 0.042 and 0.349 with 0.045. In the results tables the same three effects are -0.12 with p equal to 0.483, -0.089 with 0.568 and 0.056 with 0.714, and each one's conclusion column reads non-significant. The discussion goes as far as repeating the coefficient 0.396 as though it came from the data, and arguing that both forms of stability contribute significantly to accuracy, which its own table denies. Anyone reading only the abstract, which is how this study will be cited, takes away the opposite of what it found.

The underlying problem with the design is that the two measures everything depends on are also markers of sex. The men have more force (318 against 206 newtons), faster arrows (265 against 248), better stability (0.55 against 1.09) and slightly higher scores (327 against 320). Sex enters the model at no point, although every descriptive table is split by sex: the correlation of 0.634 between force and speed, in a mixed sample, is in good part the difference between men and women, and the same holds for the 0.706 between speed and score. The model does not separate "the fast arrow flies straighter" from "the stronger, bigger, more experienced archer uses a more powerful bow and shoots better". Age belongs to the same family, running from 13 to 37 years in the men and from 13 to 29 in the women: in twenty-seven people, with a five-variable model, mixing a thirteen-year-old with a thirty-seven-year-old leaves no margin.

The measurements are not described. From the single passage given to the instruments one learns that they already existed and that they were assessed by experts, and nothing else: nothing on how drawing force is measured, nothing on the device recording bow arm stability, nothing on the chronograph, nothing on how many arrows make up the score. Without those lines nobody can repeat the study, and two numbers stay ambiguous: 318 newtons is about seventy-one pounds, above the sixty-pound limit the compound rules allow, so either that measure is the athlete's strength rather than the bow's draw weight, or the figure does not add up; and the speed given in kilometres per hour has a minimum corresponding to fifty metres per second, low for a compound.

The null result on stability should be taken for what it is, and not as evidence that stability does not matter. In the men, horizontal stability has a mean of 0.553 but a median of 0.240, a standard deviation of 1.04 and a maximum of 4.25: a mean more than twice the median, a deviation larger than the mean, that is a measure dominated by one or two archers. The normality test confirms it with p below 0.001. A variable distributed that way, across fifteen people, does not have the shape needed for a relationship to emerge, so its zero is an absence of information rather than information.

On the statistical side three things remain. The generalised linear model is the right answer to non-normal variables, but which distribution and which link function were used is not stated, so the coefficients cannot be interpreted. The linearity table reports the same tabulated F value, 4.260, for all seven relationships, although the degrees of freedom change. And the 73.4 per cent of variance explained, cited in the discussion as evidence of the model's quality, appears in no results table.

Finally the sampling is purposive, on a single inclusion criterion, and the study is cross-sectional: nobody shot with two different draw weights, nobody was followed over time, and the score is measured once.

What this study lines up, and what will sound familiar to a compound archer, is a chain: more drawing force, a faster arrow, a higher score, with speed as the only step between. The direct effect of force on the score is nil; take speed away and force explains nothing. It fits the reason a draw weight is chosen in the first place: not because force as such hits the gold, but because a faster arrow arrives on a flatter trajectory and spends less time in the wind.

What cannot be drawn from here, though, is a reason to raise the draw weight. The study is cross-sectional and the sample mixes fifteen men and twelve women, with a fifty per cent difference in force between the groups and almost equal scores: that very comparison, in their own numbers, shows that force alone does not make points. Nobody shot with two different bows, and sex never enters the model. The chain remains an association within a mixed group, not guidance on what to change in one's own bow.

The second thing concerns bow arm stability, which in these data relates to nothing: not to the score, not to speed, and not to force either. It is better not to take that as a refutation: the measure is dominated by one or two archers, with a median of 0.24 and a maximum of 4.25 among the fifteen men, so its zero says more about the instrument than about the shooting. Interesting, on the other hand, is the null between force and stability: in this sample being stronger does not mean holding the bow steadier.

There is finally one thing to know before citing this study, and it matters more than all the rest. The abstract, the discussion and the conclusions state that force, horizontal stability and vertical stability all three act directly on the score, with three coefficients and three p-values. The article's tables say that none of the three effects is significant, and give different numbers. Whoever cites the abstract cites the opposite of the data.

The registry keeps this work as a cross-sectional association on twenty-seven regional compound archers, for the force-speed-score chain as read in the tables rather than in the abstract, and with the warning that stability, here, was not measured in a usable way.