The objective of this study is to examine the impact of experience on movement smoothness in traditional archery. Ten expert archers (six males and four females; 32.42 ± 4.3 years) and ten novice archers (five males and five females; 28.62 ± 2.6 years) participated in the study. Activity monitors equipped with tri-axial accelerometers were affixed to the dorsal surfaces of the participants’ draw hand, bow hand, and torso. Movement smoothness was assessed during both the drawing and aiming phases via logarithmic dimensionless jerk. Data preprocessing involved zero-phase low-pass filtering at 12 Hz before smoothness calculations. Statistical analysis employed independent samples t-tests to compare the novice and expert groups, whereas repeated measures analysis of variance and Pearson’s correlation analyses were used to examine the effects of repeated shooting trials on movement smoothness and quantify the relationships between repetition frequency and smoothness metrics. Expert archers exhibited significantly greater movement smoothness in hand kinematics during the drawing phase and in both hand and torso kinematics during the aiming phase (p < 0.05). Novice archers demonstrated progressive deterioration in movement smoothness with increasing number of shot repetitions, with statistically significant differences (p < 0.05). These findings establish that movement smoothness analysis provides a sensitive measure for detecting experience-dependent variations in archery motor patterns.
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