Where do archers hurt? Epidemiology of injuries during archery practice

ABSTRACT

Background

The risk of injury in archery is supposedly low. However, relations between pain, shooting phases and types of bow have not been studied.

Objective

Understanding the biomechanical mechanisms of archery-related injuries.

Methods

Online survey for archers from all types of bow. Variables were analyzed using contingency tables and chi-squared tests.

Results

396 surveys were completed. 36.9% of the archers had practiced archery for more than 10 years, 23.3% between 5 and 10 years. Olympic recurve bow was the most commonly used (38.2%), followed by traditional (23.3%) and compound (22.0%). 57.3% of the archers suffered some kind of injury during archery practice. Drawing shoulder (28.2%) and neck/back injuries (19.9%) were the most prevalent, preventing 50.3% of those who suffered them from continuing archery practice. There was a moderate association between drawing arm injuries and symptomatology in the drawing phase, especially in the shoulder region (0.55), elbow (0.20), and hand (0.13), and to a lesser extent in the neck/back (0.28).

Conclusions

Our results show that injury chronicity is frequent on archery. Correlations between types of bow, phases of the shoot and areas of pain could be a starting point for future studies on the repercussions of different types of injuries in archery practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Archery
• pain
• drawing
• shoulder
• elbow

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge and express their gratitude to all the archers, clubs, and federations who participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.