Imagery and self-talk in archery: Tiwari 2026 study

Thirty Indian archers aged 18 to 30, fifteen men and fifteen women, were allocated at random to three groups of ten: guided imagery, self-talk, or ordinary training only. Those in the two active groups worked for fifteen minutes, three times a week, for four weeks.

On the state anxiety inventory the imagery group went from 45.3 to 33.0 and the self-talk group from 46.1 to 35.3, while the control group moved from 44.5 to 43.3. On the score of what the authors call a standardised archery performance test, imagery went from 85.1 to 100.5 and self-talk from 84.0 to 97.2, against 83.5 becoming 84.3 in the control group. The before-and-after comparisons within groups give p below 0.001 in the two active groups and no difference in the control group, with effect sizes between 1.1 and 1.5. No difference emerges between imagery and self-talk; both separate from the control group.

These are large, tidy numbers, and the way they are reported does not allow them to be taken at face value. The shooting test is nowhere described: the distance, the number of arrows and the target face are not given, nor what a score of 85 or 100 represents. The tables, moreover, do not agree with each other, as set out under limits.

Participants were recruited at the archery ground of the SMS Stadium in Jaipur, with at least one year of competitive experience and a mean age of 23.1 years (standard deviation 3.4), and were assigned at random to one of three groups, ten per group. The paper does not say how the allocation was drawn, who drew it, or whether those taking the measurements knew which group an athlete was in.

Before the intervention all of them completed the state anxiety inventory and took the shooting test, alongside a collection of demographic and training-history data. The imagery group did guided fifteen minute sessions built around a successful performance, with scripts including visual, kinaesthetic and emotional components. The self-talk group practised, for fifteen minutes, phrases designed to support focus, confidence and relaxation. The control group carried on with its usual training and did nothing extra, so there was no comparison activity taking up the same time and attention. At the end of the four weeks the two measures were repeated and qualitative interviews were collected.

The stated analyses are a repeated measures analysis of variance, paired t-tests within each group, effect sizes with Cohen's d and post-hoc comparisons. The shooting test remains the undocumented part: it is called standardised, but which standard is never stated, and no detail would allow anyone to repeat it.

This page is short because the paper offers little to work with. The main outcome is a shooting score nobody can interpret: without a distance, a number of arrows and a target face, a move from 85 to 100 does not translate into anything observable on the shooting line.

The figures do not add up. The analysis of variance table reports degrees of freedom for a comparison of three groups at a single time point (2 and 27, total 29), while the text quotes effects of time and time-by-group interactions that would require a different analysis: with thirty people measured twice, there should be sixty rows. In the control group the t-test gives p of 0.59 and, on the same line, a d of 0.3, values that cannot both hold. The post-hoc comparisons are attributed to a table that does not contain them. A careful review would have asked for these points to be put right.

The editorial context matters. The journal is a humanities title, with a commercial impact indicator printed on its cover, and the paper was received on 16 July 2026 and accepted on 27 July, eleven days later. In this registry that venue carries the warning about doubtful editorial standards.

The design limits remain: thirty people split into three groups of ten, four weeks, no active control, no stated blinding, no follow-up, no protocol registered in advance. The authors list only sample size and duration as limitations.

For someone who shoots, this study changes nothing. It says that two groups of ten archers reported less anxiety after a month of imagery or self-talk, and that their score on an undescribed test went up; with a control group that did nothing in particular, the expectations of the people taking part remain as good an explanation as the mental training.

In this registry the source serves as an example of an open question rather than an answer. Mental work on competitive anxiety in archers is little studied, and nearly always studied like this: small samples, a few weeks, scores reported without the detail that would let anyone repeat the measurement. Anyone who wants to know whether imagery moves points needs studies that at least state the distance and the number of arrows shot.