Yoga and archery accuracy: Arisman 2021 study

Eighteen male archers from the university archery club of Universitas Mitra Karya in Bekasi, Indonesia, did a period of yoga and were tested before and after on a target accuracy test. The mean went from 6.00 to 8.50, with t = 4.94 against a critical value of 1.740; the paper does not say what the mean refers to, whether points per arrow, hits or something else.

The authors also sort the archers into three score bands: before the yoga 4 were in the high band, 8 in the middle and 6 in the low, and afterwards 11, 5 and 2. They conclude that yoga improves concentration and therefore accuracy. Concentration, however, was never measured: the title and the conclusion name it, but the only outcome collected is the score on the target.

The club had 28 archers, 18 men and 10 women; the 18 men were chosen by purposive sampling, all in one group and all given the yoga, with no control. The paper does not describe the programme: there is nothing on the number of sessions, the number of weeks, or which postures or breathing exercises were used. Nor does it describe the accuracy test: distance, number of arrows, type of bow and target face are all missing, as is the way the three bands were defined. The data were compared with a paired t-test after a check for normality.

With a single group and an undescribed intervention, the gain could come from the yoga just as well as from the shooting practice the archers kept doing, or from taking the test a second time. The figures have some inconsistencies too: the normality table gives 26 participants instead of 18, and the degrees of freedom are given as 18 when 18 people should give 17 (and the critical value of 1.740 is indeed the one-tailed value for 17). The title speaks of "resistance" and concentration, but neither appears among the measures.

For archers the study adds nothing they can use: without knowing what yoga was done, for how long and with which shooting test, nobody can even try to repeat it. Archers who practise yoga for mobility or general wellbeing have no reason to stop, but they cannot cite this paper as evidence that it improves concentration or scores.