Reaction speed and score in archers: Çelikel 2020

Twenty male archers aged 15 to 17 from a Turkish provincial squad were split into two groups of ten: one did eight weeks of gym strength work, the other did nothing extra. In the group that trained, score, reaction times and grip strength all improved; in the other nothing moved.

The score over twelve indoor arrows rose from 93.5 to 105.5 points (t = minus 6.828, p < 0.001), while in the control group it went from 94.1 to 95.4 without significance (p = 0.070).

Simple reaction times, measured by a finger press in response to a light or a sound, fell by four or five hundredths of a second in all four tests in the trained group: auditory reaction of the right hand from 0.397 to 0.343 seconds (p = 0.002), auditory of the left from 0.366 to 0.316 (p = 0.001), visual of the right from 0.407 to 0.352 (p = 0.002) and visual of the left from 0.382 to 0.343 (p < 0.001). In the controls none of the four changed.

The trained group's grip strength grew from 35.31 to 37.68 kilograms on the right and from 34.32 to 36.55 on the left (p < 0.001 in both); in the controls it stayed flat, though starting from higher values (40.38 and 38.33 kilograms). Resting heart rate did not change in either group, sitting around 77 beats per minute.

The link between reaction and score was sought through correlations, and of eight coefficients only one is significant: in the trained group, after the eight weeks, the auditory reaction of the right hand correlates with the score at minus 0.729 (p = 0.019). Before the training the same link stood at minus 0.586 without significance, and the other three tests give nothing. In the control group the correlations are positive and all non-significant.

The archers came from the squad of the Elâzığ provincial directorate in the 2016-2017 season, which had twenty-one athletes, all male. Twenty entered the study, split into a group that trained and a group that did not; ambidextrous archers were excluded, as were those with orthopaedic, hearing or sight problems, and on the day before testing participants were asked not to take any medication affecting performance. Allocation to the groups is not described as random.

The programme ran for eight weeks, three days a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday), one hour a day. Each session had a warm-up of 5 to 10 minutes, a main part of 30 to 40 minutes and a cool-down of 5 to 10; the main part was lengthened by ten minutes at the start of the fourth and the seventh week. Intensity was set with the Karvonen formula at 80% of heart rate reserve. The central part was gym work: shoulder press, chest press, leg extension, dumbbell overhead press, dips, biceps curl, overhead triceps extension, seated row and lat pull down and leg raises, all at three sets of six repetitions, plus grip and wrist devices, sit-ups, pull-ups and push-ups. One minute of recovery between sets and two between exercises. The control group did nothing extra and was measured on the same day as the other.

The shooting test took place indoors at 18 metres under federation rules: four ends of three arrows, twelve arrows in all, with a maximum of 124 seconds per end and the scores collected in front of a judge, an arrow touching the line between two zones taking the higher value.

Reaction times were measured with a two-part device in which the examiner, seated opposite, sends a light or sound stimulus at random intervals and the subject responds with a finger press. Each participant did three practice attempts and then three repetitions of each of the four conditions, with the best result taken. Grip strength was measured with a hydraulic hand dynamometer, standing, with the arm extended and away from the body, three times per side, keeping the highest value. Sit-ups, pull-ups and push-ups over thirty seconds were also included, and resting heart rate was counted with a stethoscope over fifteen seconds. The analysis used paired samples t-tests and correlations, threshold 0.05.

The comparison that matters was not made. The paper presents only paired tests within each group, before and after, and never compares the trained group's gain with the control group's. That the first rose by twelve points and the second by one and three tenths can be read from the tables, but the difference between the two gains was not tested, and with ten people per group that is not a formality.

Allocation was not random and the groups did not start level: the control group's grip was about five kilograms stronger, which points to a difference in build or in previous training. Nobody was blinded, and the assessors knew which group each athlete belonged to.

Title and design do not match. The study presents itself as an investigation of the effect of reaction speed on the score, but what it manipulates is a gym strength programme; the section on the research model speaks of eight weeks of training to develop reaction, while the description of the programme lists strength exercises. A strength intervention that improves grip, reaction and score together does not allow the three to be separated, and says nothing about which of them produced the others.

The shooting test is described twice and inconsistently: first with target faces 40 centimetres across, then with an 80 centimetre face at 18 metres scoring down to 6. Twelve arrows are few for a stable score, and the scale is hard to reconstruct from these descriptions.

The correlations are computed on ten people, where a coefficient swings a great deal, and they were sought across eight combinations: that only one comes out significant, the auditory reaction of the right hand after training, is a fragile result. In the tables the coefficients are printed without a decimal point (minus 729 for minus 0.729). Finally, the paper does not say whether the two groups shot the same number of arrows over the eight weeks, which is the most obvious variable behind a rising score.

What an archer can take from here is that two months of gym work, three times a week, went with a score twelve points higher over twelve arrows at 18 metres in boys aged 15 to 17, while the teammates who did not do it stayed where they were. It is a comparison against a control group, and that counts; but allocation was not random, the two groups did not start level and the difference between their gains was not tested, so the size of the effect remains uncertain.

On the subject of its own title, reaction, the study does not get where it would like to. Reaction times fell by four or five hundredths of a second in the trained group, and that is a fact; that faster reaction is the reason for the higher score is not, since the only significant link is one out of eight, sought in a group of ten people. Archery, besides, is not a sport of reacting to an external stimulus: the clicker announces to the archer a moment the archer has built.

What the programme clearly changed is grip strength, by about two and a half kilograms per hand in eight weeks, and the score. This study does not say how much of the gain comes from the strength, how much from the arrows shot over the same period and how much from one group following a programme while the other did not. In the registry it counts as youth evidence on strength training, with the limit of a between-group comparison left unfinished.