High heart rate and archery score: Acikada 2019 study

Thirteen elite archers from the Turkish national team (7 women and 6 men) shot at 18 metres first at rest and then four times immediately after three minutes of shuttle running, with the whole protocol repeated twice three days apart. The question was whether a high heart rate spoils the score.

The protocol did what it was meant to do: mean heart rate while shooting at rest was 119 beats per minute in the first test and 112 in the second, while shooting after the run it rose to 168 and 166 (during the running itself, 182 and 177). Blood lactate went from 1.72 and 1.65 millimoles per litre to 4.21 and 3.44. The archers had a mean maximum heart rate of about 195 beats, so they were shooting at around eighty-five per cent of maximum.

The score did not change. Over three arrows, the resting ends gave 28.23 points in the first test and 27.85 in the second; the mean of the four ends after running was 27.50 and 27.23. The comparison between the resting end and the four subsequent ends gave no difference in either test, and no end differed from another. The authors conclude that in archers at this level, in a setting that simulates indoor competition, a high heart rate does not lower the score at the short distance.

The tests were run indoors in the afternoon, with the running on a synthetic surface. All the volunteer archers from the national team were included, with no exclusion criteria. After ten minutes seated, resting heart rate and lactate were taken, then five minutes of warm-up of the archer's own choosing, then three arrows in one minute at 18 metres on a regulation face, at the archer's own pace, from a shooting line three metres beyond the end of the running course. One minute seated followed, with a blood sample from the ear lobe for lactate.

Then the cycle began: four sets of three minutes of shuttle running over a twenty-metre course at a steady pace set by an electronic pacer (10 kilometres per hour for the men, 8 for the women), each set followed by one minute to shoot three arrows and one minute of recovery with a blood sample. The running pace corresponds to the velocity at the 4 millimoles per litre threshold, established in a pilot study on six men and seven women from the same squad: 10.69 kilometres per hour for the men and 8.27 for the women.

Heart rate was recorded every five seconds with telemetric Polar monitors, and the archers marked the transitions themselves so that running, shooting and recovery could be told apart; the running value is the last minute of the three. Lactate was measured with a portable Accusport analyser. Scores were recorded as in an indoor competition. The analysis uses non-parametric tests: Friedman for resting against post-exercise shooting, Wilcoxon between ends.

Tremor, which is the mechanism by which a high heart rate is supposed to disturb aiming, was not measured: the authors say so, explaining that the instruments available could not follow it, and settled for a heart rate monitor sampling every five seconds. So the study says that the score does not change, not why it does not change.

The design has no control condition and no randomisation: the resting end always comes first, so the effect of running is added to the effects of order, of warming up and of progressing through the session. The arrows are few, three per end, and the scores start very high: 28.23 out of 30 is just under 9.4 points per arrow, with a standard deviation of about a point and a half. With thirteen archers and twelve arrows per session, a small difference would not have shown up.

The paper's most repeated sentence, no influence of high heart rate on performance (27.50 against 27.23), compares the means of the two sessions with each other rather than rest against exercise: the figures to set beside 27.50 and 27.23 are the resting values of 28.23 and 27.85. The comparison that matters is the Friedman test between the resting end and the four subsequent ends, which is not significant in either session. The authors then acknowledge that a simulated setting does not reproduce the emotional tension of real competition, where the heart rates reported in the literature are lower than those reached here by running, and that real competition remains to be studied. Everything takes place at 18 metres indoors: nothing says the result carries to 70 metres, where wind and flight time matter.

For an archer, the concrete finding is this: thirteen archers of international level, with their heart rate driven to around 167 beats per minute and lactate above 4 millimoles, went on scoring the same average over three arrows at 18 metres. The score was high before and high afterwards. It is not an invitation to go running before shooting, nor an argument against warming up: it is an indication that at that level postural control holds even with the heart at that rate, as the authors put it.

The implication for training is indirect. If heart rate alone does not explain the score, then a high heart rate measured in competition is not enough to explain a poor end, and looking there for the cause leads nowhere. The authors cite different results in other precision sports, where pistol shooting deteriorated immediately after running and in biathlon only the standing position suffered: the comparison is theirs, not this record's, and it serves as a reminder that standing posture and the type of movement change things.

The limits of distance and arrow count stand. In the registry this study carries weight as direct evidence on elite archers for the claim that a high heart rate costs points, and it weakens that claim; it says nothing about tremor, which was not measured, and nothing about what happens at 70 metres in competition.