Psychological factors significantly affect the performance during archery compared with other sports. Many skilled archers are not able to perform as well as they usually can owing to tension, anxiety, and stress caused by the actual game¹. Generally, stress activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympatho-adrenal medullary (SAM) system. The activity of the HPA axis increases cortisol levels while the activity of the SAM system increases catecholamine levels². The measurement of stress levels is generally conducted by measuring blood cortisol and catecholamine levels. In addition, the level of stress can be also measured by simply taking saliva samples from athletes while they compete in sports games³. However, it is known that while blood catecholamines do not reflect the concentration of salivary catecholamines, salivary alpha amylase (sAA) reflects blood catecholamines^4-7. Indeed, sAA secreted into the saliva to digest starch increases when sympathetic nerves are activated during physical and mental stress situations^8,9. It is also known that sAA increases owing to stress, anxiety, and stressful stimuli^10-12, and that it responds faster than salivary cortisol⁵.

It has been previously reported that competitive stress caused by Taekwondo competitions increases sAA levels^13-15. Since sAA is sensitive to psychological stress, it is used as a marker to evaluate anxiety, tension, and stress levels in sports^16,17. To date, no research has been conducted on psychologically sensitive sports, such as shooting and archery, and field studies investigating a link between the psychological and physiological factors and the performance during actual sporting events are still lacking. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the link between psychological and physiological changes and performance in archery, which is strongly influenced by psychological factors, such as concentration, tension, anxiety, and stress. For this purpose, sAA, anxiety, and game records were evaluated in an actual archery competition and the relationships between these parameters were analyzed.

During the actual archery competition, the individual records of 19 participants showed high scores ranging between 355 and 352 points and medium scores ranging between 349 and 341 points. For the anxiety levels, pre-1 and post-10 values were significantly higher than pre-10 values. Interestingly, anxiety levels tended to be maintained even after the end of the game, and the anxiety levels of the athletes with middle scores were significantly higher than those of athletes achieving high scores. This result indicates that the level of cognitive anxiety directly affected the performance. In a related study, it has been found that as the athletes were under higher pressure during a competition, performance decreased^10,12. Parnabas et al.¹ analyzed the levels of cognitive anxiety of 106 athletes and reported a strong negative correlation between athletic performance and anxiety.

Previously, it has been reported that high sAA levels were found in patients with chronic stress^10,19, and acute stress resulted in elevated sAA levels^20,21. Nater et al.¹⁰ reported that when the scenes of corneal transplantation surgery were shown to adults as a stimulus source of stress, sAA concentrations were observed to increase rapidly. In line with these previous findings, we also found that archery competition increased the level of anxiety and sAA concentrations. In other words, a significant increase in sAA levels was found in the pre-3 and post-10 values compared with the pre-10 values in an archery competition. These results may suggest that stress activates the HPA axis and SAM system, thereby increasing blood catecholamine concentrations, which in turn is reflected by sAA concentrations. In this study, the increased sAA concentrations were maintained for a while after the game ended. Moreover, these levels were significantly higher in participants with middle scores than in participants with high scores. These results indicate that as the level of sAA increased, the performance decreased. In a related study, Edmonds et al.²² reported that swimmers showed an increase in sAA levels during the international swimming meet season. Capranica et al.¹⁵ reported that sAA increased as the competitive stress caused by the Taekwondo competition increased. Therefore, sAA can be used as a parameter to evaluate anxiety in actual sports events, and as a marker for evaluating athletic performance. Thus, it is suggested that anxiety decreases athletic performance in sportive competitions and that this association between anxiety and performance is related to an increase in sAA concentrations. These results suggest that in order to improve athletic performances, it may help to organize a training program taking into account the changes in sAA concentrations during actual sports competitions of archery or shooting.

In this study, sAA, anxiety, and game records were analyzed and evaluated in an archery competition where athletic performance was greatly affected by psychological factors, such as concentration, tension, anxiety, and stress. The study results showed that as the level of cognitive anxiety increased during the archery competition, performance decreased and the sAA concentrations became elevated. In sports competitions, anxiety lowers performance and this study suggests that this correlation is related to the increase in sAA levels. In sports competitions, the level of sAA can be used as an effective marker for assessing the anxiety level and performance.