A multivariate analysis of cardiopulmonary parameters in archery performance

Purpose. The aim of this investigation was to determine the most significant cardiopulmonary parameters bound with high archery scores and to assess their relationship with successful performance in archery. Methods. The total of 32 archers with mean age of 17 ± 0.56 years were gathered from dissimilar archery programmes. Cardiopulmonary parameters were measured prior to shooting tests. Multivariate techniques of principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis (HACA), and discriminant analysis (DA) were used to analyse the data collected. Results. The initial PCA identified 4 parameters with a higher eigenvalue (> 1). However, PCA after varimax rotation indicated 4 varifactors with high positive loadings, containing 3 respiratory parameters: forced vital capacity (FVC; 0.83), maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV; 0.83), and peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR; 0.87); 2 pressure parameters: resting diastolic blood pressure (RDbP; 0.78) and resting systolic blood pressure (RSbP; 0.88); 1 volume parameter: inspiratory reserve volume (IRV; 0.86); and 1 rate parameter: resting respiratory rate (RRR; 0.87). HACA divided the archers into 2 categories on the basis of their performance on the most needed parameters; these were high-optimum pulmonary capacity archers (HOCA) and low-optimum pulmonary capacity archers (LOCA). Standard, backward stepwise, and forward stepwise DA discriminated the classes from the 7 parameters with remarkable accuracy (90.63%, 93.75%, and 96.88%, respectively) for each method, confirming the classification provided by HACA. Conclusions. It is obvious from the current outcomes that such cardiopulmonary parameters as good FVC, MVV, PEFR, IRV, RRR, and optimal RSbP and RDbP are necessary for better archery performance.