A mental training programme reduces burnout in elite archers

1 study · 16 archers measured

There is a single study, the same Chinese national team study that tracked mood, and the drop it finds is small. Sixteen archers among the best in the country filled in a burnout questionnaire every month, combining physical and emotional exhaustion, a reduced sense of accomplishment and devaluation of the sport, on a score that the authors give as running from 5 to 25. After two months of baseline at 13.1, the score falls to 12.2 during the five months of weekly sessions (p = 0.009) and stays at 12.0 in the two months after (p = 0.009): unlike mood, here the drop shows already during the intervention. It amounts to little more than one point, though, in athletes who were already below the middle of the scale at the start. There is no control group, and the intervention months are those at the start of the pandemic, so without a comparison the effect of the programme cannot be separated from that of the season.

Also phrased as: "mental training and burnout"; "exhaustion in archers"; "preventing burnout in archery"; "psychological preparation and mental fatigue"

In practice

It is often said that mental training helps archers avoid burning out, because it teaches them to switch off and to carry the pressure of the season without being worn down by it.

Evidence

2023
For Archers Published later

16 archers from the Chinese national team, a single-case design with two months of baseline, five months of weekly sessions and two months after the end; Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ, 15 items scored 1 to 5) completed once a month. Phase effect F(1, 15) = 6.80, p = 0.004, η² = 0.31; baseline 13.13 ± 2.01, intervention 12.22 ± 1.84 (p = 0.009, 95% CI 0.26 to 1.56), after the intervention 12.02 ± 1.84 (p = 0.009, 95% CI 0.31 to 1.20). By the non-overlap indices the effect is strong in 15 archers and absent in one.

Applying skill-oriented and spirit-oriented psychological training to Chinese national archery team athletes: a single-case mixed-methods study · Na Xu, Weihua Yan, Mingyu Sun, Rui Li, Yingchun Wang, Lizhong Chi

Status history

1990 Not studied No one in the registry's bibliography had yet measured burnout in elite archers before and after a mental training programme: the question had no data.
2023 Reported The first data arrive. In the same sixteen Chinese national team archers tracked for mood, burnout falls from 13.1 to 12.2 already during the five months of intervention (p = 0.009) and stays at 12.0 in the following phase. The drop is little more than one point, in athletes who started below the middle of the scale, and there is no control group: a single supporting study, hence reported.

Research lines

52 studiesMental training: what has been tested on archers since 1979

Cite

APA

Campagna, M. (2026). A mental training programme reduces burnout in elite archers (Version 1). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-burnout

BibTeX

@misc{campagna2026_allenamentomentaleburnout,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {A mental training programme reduces burnout in elite archers},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-training-burnout},
  note = {Version 1; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

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