Flexibility training in archers: Humaid 2025 study

Thirty Indonesian archers with limited posterior chain flexibility followed twelve weeks of progressive stretching, myofascial release and mobility work, three sessions a week. The only thing measured is the sit-and-reach, the test in which you sit with legs extended and push a slider forward with your hands. At baseline the mean was 13.2 cm, with values from 4 to 20; at six weeks it was 18.9 (from 9.4 to 25.3) and at twelve 22.6 (from 15.2 to 33.1).

Repeated measures analysis of variance gives a large effect of time: F with 2 and 58 degrees of freedom equal to 48.73, p below 0.001, eta squared 0.632. Pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni correction give a gain of 5.7 cm over the first six weeks (Cohen's d 1.32), a further 3.7 over the second six (p = 0.004, d = 0.78) and 9.4 in all (d = 2.01). The authors read the difference between the two halves of the period as the sign of two separate mechanisms, first a fall in tissue tension and then a structural adaptation, but that is an interpretation: no tissue measurement was taken. The text also reports that gains were similar between men and women and across age and body mass index bands, with slower progress above an index of 30, without presenting any of those analyses.

A single-group design, measured before, halfway and at the end, with no control. The participants, 15 men and 15 women competing at regional and national level, were chosen deliberately from those whose initial screening gave a sit-and-reach of no more than 25 cm, with at least two years of practice, no acute musculoskeletal injury in the previous three months and no structured flexibility programme in the previous six. Mean age was 20.4 years, height 165.2 cm, weight 65.1 kg and body mass index 23.8.

The test followed the American College of Sports Medicine protocol, with a box graduated from 0 to 50 cm, three repetitions and the highest value recorded; the stated reliability is an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.89. The programme, supervised by a certified trainer, ran in three four-week blocks, with perceived intensity rising from 4-5 to 7 out of 10 and volume from 15-20 to 30-40 minutes per session. The first block comprised a dynamic warm-up, foam rolling of the hamstrings and latissimus dorsi, progressive static stretches and band shoulder mobility; the second added work on the lower back and glutes, dynamic stretches and a band simulation of the draw; the third moved on to contract-relax stretching, band drawing exercises and a yoga cool-down. Height, weight and body mass index were collected as control variables.

The biggest limit is stated by the authors: there is no control group, so the gain cannot be separated from a general rise in training, from the effect of repeating the same test three times, or from ordinary variation over time. On top of that comes the way the sample was chosen. Only archers with a low sit-and-reach were included, and of three attempts the best was recorded: anyone starting from an extreme value tends to drift back towards the mean even without doing anything, and the design cannot say how much of the 9.4 cm this accounts for.

Then the sit-and-reach is a single measure, of a single thing: the posterior chain. The authors acknowledge this and note that it is not sensitive to shoulder mobility, which is what matters in the draw. No shooting data were collected, although the introduction announces an examination of the relationship between flexibility, accuracy and injury, and although the discussion speaks of greater consistency of scores reported by coaches and of reduced motor compensation: this study contains neither scores nor movement measurements.

The text is inconsistent on several points. Participant age is 17-43 years in the abstract and methods, 14-43 in the table and the discussion. The level is "elite" in the title and abstract, "regional to national" in the methods and "regional" among the limitations. Session duration is 45 minutes in the methods and 15 to 40 minutes in the programme table. The analyses by sex, age and body mass index are cited in the results and not reported.

The result is what twelve weeks of stretching by people who were not stretching would be expected to give: the sit-and-reach improves, and improves more in the first half of the period. For an archer the useful content is the programme, set out week by week with intensities, sets and hold times, rather than the finding, because the finding is a few centimetres on one test with no measured link to shooting.

What the study does not say is whether a higher sit-and-reach is of any use to an archer. The flexibility measured here concerns the hamstrings and lower back, while the draw depends on the shoulder and the chest, which the test does not see and the study did not assess. Anyone thinking about mobility for shooting will find an example of progressive programming here, not a reason to chase a number on the sit-and-reach.