Weights and score in archers: Mohd Faridz 2024

Twelve Malaysian recurve archers between 18 and 23, all men and all with the national SUKMA games behind them, were randomly split into two groups of six: one did six weeks of strength-oriented weight training, the other six weeks oriented towards muscular endurance, two sessions a week for twelve sessions in all. Before and after, each shot 36 arrows at 70 metres with their own competition bow, in ends of six with four minutes per end.

Both groups improved. The strength group went from 279.17 ± 9.15 to 285.33 ± 8.41 points out of 360, a gain of 6.17 ± 1.72 points; the endurance group from 287.17 ± 9.54 to 299.17 ± 5.49, a gain of 12.00 ± 4.38 points. The authors report both differences as significant within each group.

The comparison between the two groups, however, is never made: there is no test between the 6.17-point gain and the 12.00-point gain, nor on the starting difference, which was eight points in the endurance group's favour. There is no control group, and the authors list this among their limitations. No measure of strength or of muscular endurance was taken, before or after: what is known about the two programmes is what they prescribed, not what effect they had on the muscles.

Participants were selected by purposive sampling at the Majlis Sukan Negeri Kedah, all free from injury, and signed a consent form and completed the PAR-Q questionnaire before testing. Assignment to the two groups is described as random, with no further detail on the procedure.

The programme was five exercises for both groups, three sets each, with the weeks grouped in pairs: dumbbell bench press, dumbbell frontal press, EZ-bar upright row, TRX reverse pull-up and weight-plate squat. The difference between the two programmes lies in the repetitions of the two dumbbell exercises: in the strength group 5, then 8, then 3 repetitions with 5 kg and finally 7.5 kg in the last two weeks; in the endurance group 10, then 15, then 20 repetitions with 5 kg. The other three exercises follow the same progression in both groups, or differ minimally: the upright row goes from 10 kg for 10 repetitions to 15 kg for 12, the TRX pull-ups from 10 to 15 repetitions at body weight, the squat from 5 kg for 10 repetitions to 10 kg for 10 or 12.

The shooting test is the same before and after: 36 arrows at 70 metres under the international scoring system, in ends of six arrows with four minutes per end and breaks between ends. Each archer used their own Olympic recurve competition bow, both in training and in the tests. The analysis is a before-and-after comparison within each group; the values are means and standard deviations, and the results are presented in a bar chart rather than a table.

The limitation that governs everything else is the absence of a control group, which the authors state. Over the six weeks these archers went on with their shooting practice, and the final test is the same test they had already taken once: the gain in points may come from the weights, from the weeks of shooting or from repeating a familiar test, and the design cannot separate them.

The comparison announced in the title, between two kinds of training, was not carried out. The authors test before against after within each group, never one group against the other, so the difference between a 6.17-point and a 12.00-point gain rests on no test at all. The starting level is not compared either, and the two groups began at 279.17 and 287.17 points: with six archers per group, eight points of initial difference and a standard deviation of about nine, the two samples are not interchangeable.

The two programmes, moreover, resemble each other far more than the strength-against-endurance framing suggests. In the first two weeks the only difference is the repetitions of two exercises with 5 kg dumbbells, 5 against 10; three exercises out of five follow the same progression in both groups. A load of 5 or 7.5 kg for three sets is a light load for national-level athletes, and in the «strength» group the repetitions rise from 5 to 8 before dropping to 3: the progression is not the one typical of maximal strength work. With no measure of strength or endurance before and after, there is no way to know whether the two programmes produced different adaptations, and the mechanism proposed in the discussion remains a hypothesis.

What is left is a sample of twelve people, men only, no blinding, no detail on how the random assignment was done and no effect sizes. The level is that of the Malaysian national games: 279 and 287 points out of 360 work out at 7.8 to 8.0 points per arrow, a good national standard rather than that of the world's best. The p-value notation is impossible as written, «p = .000» in the abstract and «p < .000» in the results, where a p-value can be neither zero nor less than zero; the sense is that the probability is very small, but the exact number cannot be read. The results appear only in a bar chart, so beyond the means and standard deviations quoted in the text there is nothing further to check. The journal is a local university publication, marked as regional in the register.

The study adds a small but concrete piece of information: twelve national-level archers put two weight sessions a week alongside their shooting practice for six weeks, and their score at 70 metres rose in both groups, by 6 and by 12 points over 36 arrows. It is not a comparison between two methods, because the two groups were never set against each other, and it is not evidence that the weights raised the score, because the control group is missing. What remains is that light-load work twice a week sat alongside shooting without scores falling.

The loads say something useful about how light the work in question was: 5 and 7.5 kg dumbbells, an upright row of 10 to 15 kg, body-weight reverse pull-ups and a squat with a 5 to 10 kg plate, three sets per exercise. Anyone expecting «weights for archers» to mean demanding sessions finds the opposite extreme here, in athletes competing at national level.

The group that gained more points is the one with more repetitions and lighter loads, twelve points against six, and this points towards the idea that archery depends more on the capacity to repeat an effort than on maximal strength. With six archers per group, no comparison between groups and eight points of difference before they started, it is a hint rather than a conclusion. Reading it as a ranking of strength against endurance is reading more than the study measures.

One last figure that applies to anyone comparing their own progress: the test was 36 arrows at 70 metres, half a competition, and gains of 6 and 12 points out of 360 are 1.7% and 3.3% respectively. Shifts of that order, over six weeks and on a single test, sit inside an archer's normal variation from one day to the next.