Analysis of biological and mechanical related performance parameters of Malaysian senior youth archers

Abstract

Background: Archery is a close skill sport in which the archer interacts with body and equipment. The interaction between the archer's body and the equipment could influence archery shooting scores. It is vital for an archer to be cognisance with any movements during these interactions process. Objectives: This study investigates the various biomechanical interactions and their association with archery performance. A total of 32 archers drawn from different programmes participated in the study. Materials and Methods: A sum of four shimmer sensors were used to examine, compare and differentiate the postural sway, movement of the bow, muscular activations of the muscle flexor digitorum superficial, muscle extensor digitorum and resting heart rate of the archers. The archers shoot six arrows at a distance of 50 m, and the selected parameters were streamed during the aiming, stance and the releasing phases of the arrows in real time at a sampling rate of 51.2 Hz using an Android phone. Results: Cluster analysis classified the archers into two groups, namely, high-performance archers (HPA) and low-performance archers (LPA). Standard, step-wise backward and step-wise discriminant analysis differentiated the two groups with three and two dependents variables with an acceptable accuracy of 83.38% and 90.63%. Pairwise t-test comparisons revealed that HPA shows higher muscular extensor activations and lower postural sway with greater shooting scores while LPA recorded higher postural sway and corresponding lower shooting scores. Conclusions: Some biological and biomechanical related parameters such as muscle extensor activation and postural sway could determine shooting accuracy in archery sport.