The Assessment of Postural Control Mechanisms in Three Archery Disciplines: A Preliminary Study

Archery is described as a static sport requiring fine motor skill, proper endurance and strength of the upper body and overall balance ability. The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of the sway of centre of pressure (COP) with eyes open (EO), eyes closed (EC), dominant and non-dominant eyes open during quiet stance in three Archery disciplines. Fifteen archers (Group I: The Recurve Archery (RA): n=5, Group II: Compound Archery (CA): n=5, Group III: Traditional Archery (TA): n=5) participated voluntarily in the study. A 9281EA BioKistler Force Plate system was used to obtain objective measurements for sway of COP in medio-lateral (Ay) and anterio-posterior (Ax) directions during the experimentations. As a result, sway of COP in CA group was smaller than the RA and TA group. Compound archers have better static balance ability than the other groups during quiet stance. Therefore, different archery disciplines, equipment, muscular strategies and skill have some effect on postural control performance measurements.

___

  • Carlson NJ. (1984). Sports Vision Guidebook. The American Optometric Association: Sports Vision Section, 1: 1-11.
  • Day. B. L., Steiger. M. J., Thompson. P. D., & Marsden. C. D. (1993). EVect of vision and stance width on human body motion when standing: implications for afferent control of lateral sway. Journal of Physiology. 469. 479–499.
  • Dominant Versus Non-dominant Vision in Postural Control. Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine; 35: 427-431.
  • Dornan J., Fernie GR., Holliday PJ. (1978). Visual input: Its importance in the control of postural sway. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation; 59: 586-591.
  • Gatev. P., Thomas. S., Kepple. T., & Hallett. M. (1999). Feedforward ankle strategy of balance during quiet stance in adults. Journal of Physiology, 514(Pt. 3). 915–928.
  • Gardner JJ., Sherman A. (1995). Vision requirements in sport. In: DFC Loran and CJ MacEwen, Eds. Sports Vision, London: Butterworth-Heinemann, pp22-36.
  • Hrysomallis. C. (2011). Balance ability and athletic performance. Sports Medicine, 41(3). 221- 32.
  • Loran. DFC., MacEwan. CJ. (1995). Sports Vision. London: Butterworth and Heineman.
  • Long, WS., Haywood KS. (1990). The optical characteristics of aiming scopes in archery. Journal of the American Optometric Association, 61. 777-781.
  • Mason BR., Pelgrim PP. (1986). Body Stability and Performance in Archery, Excel. 3 17-20.
  • Strydom, B., and Ferreira. JT. (2010). The role of vision and visual skills in archer, South African Optometric Association, 69(1) 21-28.
  • Park. R.Y., Kee. H.S., Kang. J.H., Lee. S.J., Yoon. S.R., Jung. K.I. (2011). Effect of Dominant Versus Non-dominant Vision in Postural Control. Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine; 2011 Jun;35(3):427-31.
  • Umphred DA (2001). Neurological rehabilitation, 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby, 616-660.
  • Winter. D. A., Patla. A. E., Ishac. M., & Gage. W. H. (2003). Motor mechanisms of balance during quiet standing, Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, 13(1). 49–56.
  • Winter. D. A., Prince. F., Frank. J. S., Powell. C., & Zabjek. K. F. (1996). UniWed theory regarding A/P and M/L balance in quiet stance, Journal of Neurophysiology, 75(6). 2334–2343.