In competition, experienced archers show more parasympathetic activity than novices

The summary today

There is only one direct comparison: seventeen adolescent male archers, ten experienced ones with about four years of practice and seven novices, monitored beat by beat during an indoor competition at 18 metres. Over the twenty seconds before each release the experienced archers have higher RMSSD and pNN50, and compared with their own resting values pNN50 rises by 10.2 points in the experienced archers and falls by 2.6 in the novices; at rest, before the start, the two groups could not be told apart. Three things stop the claim going further. The first is that the effects are small, with eta squared between 0.005 and 0.1, and the thousand arrows are treated as independent observations. The second is that experience goes together with age, 16.5 years against 14, so part of the difference may simply be growing up. The third is that parasympathetic activity is inferred from heart rate variability rather than measured, and its link to shooting is not straightforward: in the experienced archers the high frequency index rises between the first and second arrow of the end while the score falls, and what is most closely tied to the score is not the heart but shot time, 28.1 seconds per arrow against 20.2. A 2020 Turkish study of thirty-nine novices complicates the picture: from rest to shooting the parasympathetic index rises in them too, but only in the better-shooting half. The 2022 systematic review reads the literature the same way as the claim, but for the comparison between experienced archers and novices it relies on the 2011 study.

Also phrased as: "heart rate variability in experienced archers"; "hrv during competition"; "the expert's calm heart"; "vagal tone and experience"; "slower heart rate in experienced archers"

Evidence

• 2011
  For Archers Published later

  10 experienced archers and 7 novices, adolescent boys, in an indoor competition under FITA rules at 18 metres: over the 20 seconds before each release the experienced archers have higher RMSSD (p<0.001, eta squared 0.04), pNN50 (p<0.001, eta squared 0.06) and low frequency power (p=0.046, eta squared 0.005). The effects are small, and the arrows of seventeen archers are treated as independent observations.

  Autonomic nervous system modulation during an archery competition in novice and experienced adolescent archers · Andres E. Carrillo, Vasilios X. Christodoulou, Yiannis Koutedakis, Andreas D. Flouris

• 2011
  For Archers Published later

  In the same study, compared with the five minutes of rest before the competition: pNN50 rises by 10.2 points in the experienced archers and falls by 2.6 in the novices, low frequency power drops by 18.4 normalised units against 4.0, and RMSSD rises by 109.8 on average against 1.1, with a very wide spread in the experienced group (standard deviation 363.0). All the differences have p<0.0001.

  Autonomic nervous system modulation during an archery competition in novice and experienced adolescent archers · Andres E. Carrillo, Vasilios X. Christodoulou, Yiannis Koutedakis, Andreas D. Flouris

• 2011
  Context Archers Published later

  At rest, before the competition, the two groups cannot be told apart (p>0.05): RMSSD 29.0 ms in the experienced archers against 26.0 in the novices, pNN50 5.4 against 7.2 per cent, high frequency power 11.3 against 16.6 normalised units. The difference only appears once shooting starts.

  Autonomic nervous system modulation during an archery competition in novice and experienced adolescent archers · Andres E. Carrillo, Vasilios X. Christodoulou, Yiannis Koutedakis, Andreas D. Flouris

• 2011
  Context Archers Published later

  Within the end the two groups move in opposite directions: in the experienced archers high frequency power rises from the first to the third arrow and low frequency power falls, while in the novices the reverse happens (interactions p=0.008 and p=0.03, eta squared 0.01 and 0.008). In the experienced archers the rise in high frequency power between the first and second arrow, from 15.7 to 21.3 normalised units, comes with a drop in score.

  Autonomic nervous system modulation during an archery competition in novice and experienced adolescent archers · Andres E. Carrillo, Vasilios X. Christodoulou, Yiannis Koutedakis, Andreas D. Flouris

• 2011
  Context Archers Published later

  Shot time separates the groups more than the heart does: 28.1 seconds per arrow in the experienced archers against 20.2 in the novices (eta squared 0.24), and it is the strongest predictor of the score of a single arrow (beta 0.311). The model holding shot time and the cardiac indices accounts for about 12 per cent of the variation in score.

  Autonomic nervous system modulation during an archery competition in novice and experienced adolescent archers · Andres E. Carrillo, Vasilios X. Christodoulou, Yiannis Koutedakis, Andreas D. Flouris

• 2020
  Context Archers Published later

  Thirty-nine university novices, twelve of them women, at the end of a fourteen-week course, ten arrows in four minutes at 18 metres: the high frequency band, the parasympathetic index, rises from rest to shooting (F(2, 76) = 6.90, p = 0.002), while the low frequency band and the ratio between the two do not change. Split at the median score, 76 out of 100, the change appears only in the better-shooting half (high frequency band p = 0.007), and in the other half no index moves (p between 0.28 and 0.75). There are no experienced archers in the sample, so it does not test the comparison in the claim.

  Autonomic Cardiac Activity Among Novice Archers During Baseline, Shooting, and Recovery · Serdar Tok, Nihal Dal, Aylin Zekioğlu, Fatih Çatıkkaş, İlker Balıkçı, Erman Doğan

• 2022
  Context Review Published later

  A systematic review of 41 studies on performance assessment: it reports more parasympathetic activity in experienced archers than in novices, relying on the 2011 study for this comparison; among novices the parasympathetic rise is seen only in those with the better scores, and in another study experienced archers have a lower heart rate with only a weak correlation with performance.

  Performance assessment in archery: a systematic review · Eleonora Vendrame, Valeria Belluscio, Luigi Truppa, Lorenzo Rum, Aldo Lazich, Elena Bergamini, Andrea Mannini

Status history

1. 2011 Reported The first and so far only direct comparison arrives. Seventeen adolescent male archers, ten experienced ones with about four years of practice and seven novices, are monitored beat by beat during an indoor competition at 18 metres: over the twenty seconds before each release the experienced archers have higher RMSSD and pNN50, and compared with rest the parasympathetic indices rise only in them, with pNN50 up 10.2 points against down 2.6. At rest, before the start, the two groups could not be told apart, so the difference appears in competition. The effects are small, though, age goes together with experience and parasympathetic activity is inferred from heart rate variability: one cross-sectional study of seventeen boys stays reported.
2. 2020 Reported A Turkish study looks only at novices, thirty-nine university students at the end of a fourteen-week course: from rest to shooting the parasympathetic index rises, but only in the better-shooting half, while in the other half nothing moves. There are no experienced archers to compare them with, so the direct comparison is still the 2011 study. It does add an awkward detail for the claim: the parasympathetic rise while shooting, which in 2011 appeared only in the experienced archers, shows up here in people who have been shooting for a few months, as long as they shoot well. The status stays reported.
3. 2022 Reported A systematic review of forty-one studies on performance assessment in archery reads the comparisons between levels the same way: more parasympathetic activity in experienced archers, and among novices a parasympathetic rise only in those who shoot better, which is the 2020 Turkish study. For the comparison between experienced archers and novices, though, the review relies on the 2011 study, and another piece of research it cites finds a lower heart rate in experienced archers with only a weak correlation with performance. The direct evidence is still a single study: the status does not change.

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Research lines

• 48 studiesThe heartbeat and the shot: heart rate and HRV since 1981
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