Hand grip strength in young archers: Sezer 2017 study

Sixteen boys aged 16 to 19 (17.88 on average), with one to three years of shooting, had the grip strength of both hands measured just before and just after a training session of about two hours: warm-up, 200 arrows at the target and cool-down, as planned by their coach. The test was repeated over three sessions.

After training the grip was slightly stronger. In the first session the right hand went from 41.43 to 42.29 kg and the left from 39.21 to 39.39; in the second the right from 43.32 to 45.14 and the left from 40.31 to 41.36; in the third the right from 44.52 to 45.18 and the left from 40.91 to 41.39. All the differences are reported as significant. The authors put the increase down to muscles being warmed up and to the coordination encouraged by moderate-intensity training.

Grip strength was measured with a Jamar hydraulic dynamometer, standing, with the arm straight by the side and not touching the body, three times per hand, keeping the best value. Age, height, weight and years of practice were also recorded. Values before and after were compared with a paired t-test. There is no control group, and the paper gives neither the type of bow nor the draw weight.

The text contains contradictions that make it hard to read. The sample is described in the abstract as the archery team of the Elazığ provincial sports directorate, but in the methods as the arm-wrestling team of Fırat University, and the measurements are also said to have been taken in the arm-wrestling gym: it looks like text carried over from a paper by the same group on athletes in that sport.

The standard deviations in the tables with the tests are around 2.2, while those in the descriptive tables for the same data range from 2.5 to 6.9, and the value 2.24892 recurs identically in several places. In the third session the right hand before training is 44.52 in one table and 45.52 in the other, where it would be stronger before than after, yet the difference is reported as significant; in the text the increase in the first session becomes a "negative decrease". A difference of 0.18 kg in the left hand with p = 0.000 is hard to believe on a hydraulic dynamometer.

The paper states that it has no ethics committee approval, the corresponding author is not among the listed authors, and the DOI printed on the paper ends in 3.1, not the one on record. Finally, without a control group, simply getting used to a repeated test could explain a small increase.

If there is one thing to keep, it is that a 200-arrow session did not leave these boys with weaker grip immediately afterwards. The rest, namely the idea that shooting practice increases grip strength and that grip strength matters for the score, finds no support in these data, which do not measure shooting and contain too many inconsistencies to be read with confidence.