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

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• Force plate, Center of pressure, Balance, Visual skills

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