Archery Balance Trainer

26/01/2024

Still going strong; 70 years old two time Olympian Jeannot Robitaille visiting LABOTAQ 2.0 and testing out their technologies to analyze the athletes' physical and psychological behavior on the shooting line'...
..and (at 59 seconds in the video) the Archery Balance Trainer force platform, a system I developed 15 years ago, still claiming its place in the cutting-edge technology used nowadays.

LABOTAQ 2.0 is the technological playground for archery professionals in the Fédération de Tir à l'arc du Québec. The laboratory is equipped with a host of cutting-edge technologies, including high-speed cameras, monitoring cameras, heartrate monitoring, bow-motion detection, headsets for reading encephalogram/EEG, lighting system with variable intensity and colour temperature, wind systems and off-course the archery balance trainer.

Projet Synergique de la Fédération de tir à l'arc du Québec 2020 - 2024

14/05/2018

The Archery Balance Trainer user manual is now also available in Italian. Thanks to Danilo Cruciani for the translation!

http://artemis.vapeldoorn.net/artemis/attachments/article/180/ABT_Manual_2_1_ITA.pdf

29/12/2017

An update of the BalanceTrainer system (v2-1) can be found at http://artemis.vapeldoorn.net/artemis/index.php/abt

If you need help updating your system, please PM or mail me.

23/11/2017

Ook de heeft nu een balance trainer systeem. Veel succes met de trainingen!

15/09/2017

Version 1.1 is available and it includes a nice User Manual!

http://vapeldoorn.net/artemis/attachments/article/180/manual.pdf

17/08/2017

01/10/2015

Work in progress...

22/11/2014

New improvements in the archery balance training software makes it even more easier to use it in daily practice.

19/11/2014

A short explanation on different application areas for force-plates and Wii balanceboard systems in Archery.

Standing, also referred to as orthostasis, is a human position in which the body is held in an upright position and supported only by the feet. This position looks static, but in reality is not. The body is moving (body sway) forward and backwards. Archers use visual, proprioceptic and vestibular feedback loops to control their (inherent unstable) position. There are also both external (wind gusts etc.) and internal perturbations (breathing and other internal movement) or disturbances that add to this instability as well.

A force-plate can be used to measure CoG movement in this state of relative equilibrium (e.g. the normal body sway) and in perturbated states. By applying a disturbing force (e.g. wind gust), one can measure how quickly someone responds to this force and how to get back to the original state.

Another application area for using force-plates is body sway and the relation with footwear. The force-plate can be used to try to find a relation between force distribution changes and different kinds of footwear (shoes with soft "air" soles or shoes with very stiff wide soles). Which shoe provides the most stable platform for the archer to use?

The Wii balance board is not capable of detecting force distributions under the feet. It can detect accurate CoG movements as has been demonstrated in several scientific publications. Although not as accurate as the 50x more expensive force plate, still accurate enough to get valuable feedback for the archer.

What the Wii balance board can do (in combination with my software) is provide the archer with a set of training exercises tailored for archery. Balance exercises while you are shooting with audio feedback will let you train keeping and correcting your balance and learn your muscles and central nervous system how to quickly and efficiently react to external disturbances.

The Wii balanceboard (in combination with my software) can also be used to assess the repeatability of the CoG of an archer from one shot to the other.

The Wii balanceboard can be operated stand-alone, by the archers him or herself. No technician needs to be around to operate the system.

So in fact, the force-plate and the Wii balanceboard system supplement each other perfectly. Where the Wii balanceboard can be used in daily training, the force-plate can be used for equipment and footwear tuning and measuring (balance) training effectiveness.

27/01/2014

Added extra feature; sight tracking. The Wiimote has a small infrared camera in front, able to track an Infrared lightsource. With a small stationary I/R LED in front of the bow I was able to track the bow-movement (i.e. sight pin movement).