New Conditioning Evaluation Method Using Heart Autonomic Function In Competitive Archery Athletes

PURPOSE: Archery is mainly an outdoor sport that involves shooting arrows from a standing position at a target 70 meters away. It is a relatively static sport that requires less physical activity than most other sports, but extremely fine control over movements. In the present study we investigated a new method of evaluating the condition of athletes in target sports, such as archery, for improving performance from the perspective of autonomic function, i.e., heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). METHODS: The participants were members of the Japanese women’s national archery team (athlete A: age, 30 years, height, 180.0 cm, weight, 69.0 kg; athlete B: age, 18 years, height, 157.5 cm, weight, 50.0 kg). HRV was measured 1) at rest in the supine position for 5-min, 2) at rest in the supine position for 3-min, after having five deep breaths, then, 3) in the standing position for 3-min and finished the measurement with five deep breaths. The ECG data were derived from the chest II leads using the Biopac MP36 data acquisition system (Santa Barbara, CA, USA) and input at a sampling frequency of 1 kHz, and heart rate and HRV were measured from the R-R interval. RESULTS: The HRV results for athletes A and B are shown in Table 1. In the present study, athletes A and B were both asked about their subjective feelings of fatigue and their archery performance (scores) at the time of the HRV measurements. Athlete A reported subjective feelings of fatigue at the time of the measurement. Athlete B had no subjective feelings of fatigue, but the inability to achieve high scores. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that even when there are no subjective feelings of fatigue, but the heart rate is high, LF/HF is high, HF is low, or RSA is low, in that case, cardiac sympathetic nervous function will be predominant, and poorer performance may be expected.