Arm endurance for archers: Yachsie 2024 study

Here too no archer carried out the programme. Seven experts, using the Delphi technique and a scale of one to five, judged a six-week body-weight programme for arm endurance, put together by the authors from books, e-books and articles.

Across the eight dosage indicators the content validity ratio (CVR) is 1.00 on four and 0.71 on the other four, which means that on half the indicators one of the seven does not consider the item essential. Agreement between the judges stays low: an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.187 for a single measure, with a confidence interval of 0.028 to 0.498, and 0.342 for the average measure, 0.332 to 0.786. The authors quote the 0.75 threshold and conclude that the values meet it. Cronbach's alpha is announced in the abstract and among the steps of the method, but it appears nowhere in the results.

The content of the programme, on the other hand, is worth reading: eighteen sessions over six weeks, one block of seven pull-up variations and one block of seven push-up variations, with intensity from 60 to 75% of maximum, four to eight repetitions, a frequency of three to five and recovery of three to five minutes.

The scheme is the same as in an earlier paper by the same group on balance: reading the literature to build the programme, a Delphi assessment by seven experts until consensus, calculation of content validity with the CVR formula, calculation of reliability with Cronbach's alpha and inter-rater agreement in SPSS 23. The experts are strength and conditioning specialists and nationally licensed archery coaches, chosen by purposive sampling from those with qualifications, knowledge of training programmes, coaching experience and a background as archers. The research was carried out in Indonesia.

The eight indicators all concern dosage: intensity, number of repetitions, frequency, rhythm, number of sets, intervals, recovery and how easy the exercises are for the athlete. The discussion also reports some of the questions put to the experts, phrased as checks along the lines of "does the intensity applied follow the goal for arm muscle endurance training?".

The programme being judged runs six weeks for eighteen sessions. It opens with jogging and static and dynamic stretching for five to ten minutes. The first block is pull-ups: reverse grip, hanging knee pull-up, behind the neck, standard, side to side, wide grip rear and bench pull-ups. The second block is push-ups: kneeling, pike, Hindu, delt tab, sidekick, archery push-up and forearm push-up. Slow or moderate rhythm, intensity from 60 to 75% of maximum, four to eight repetitions, a frequency of three to five, recovery of three to five minutes. It closes with five to seven minutes of cool-down. The equipment listed is mats, body support boards, hanging bars and benches.

The underlying limitation is the same as in the twin paper on balance: the source measures seven people's judgement of a text, not the effect of training on an archer. It is the authors who write that a six-week trial is needed before the programme can be shown to be reliable.

On top of that, the article does not hold to its own criteria. Agreement of 0.187 and 0.342 is declared to meet a threshold of 0.75 that the authors themselves quote in the preceding line. The discussion states that all the indicators received the maximum score of 1.00, while the table shows four of them at 0.71. The Cronbach's alpha announced in the abstract never appears in the results. An F ratio of 1.876 with 7 and 42 degrees of freedom does not match the p = 0.000 printed in the table: the same group's 2022 paper reports a p of 0.086 for the same F ratio, which is the consistent value.

Pieces of the text belong to the earlier paper. The results announce "an archery balance training programme", the methods section says the literature was reviewed to build a balance programme, and the conclusion declares the balance training programme valid, in an article about arm endurance. In the participants section the number is missing in front of "physical conditioning experts", and the recommended level shifts between beginner in the conclusion and beginner to early intermediate in the 2022 paper. The number of Delphi rounds is not stated and the sources read to build the programme are not listed.

What an archer can take from this is a list, not an effect. The programme brings together seven ways of doing pull-ups and seven ways of doing push-ups, with a stated dosage, and so describes how a group of Indonesian coaches organises six weeks of body-weight work for the arms. The archery push-up appears on the list, but the specificity stops at the name of the exercise: no part of the programme happens on the bow.

That seven experts find it coherently written says nothing about the arm endurance of whoever does it, and still less about scores. In the registry the source documents a practice and keeps a question open.