Winter 2002 - National Rifle Association

WHAHAT ABOUTTRAININGRAINING?by Bob Maddison, National Coach, Moving Target ShootingAfter the July Meeting, Bisley suddenly goes dead! Yes,there is a minor revival for the August small-boremeeting and then a few club matches in the Autumn,but after that there is a sudden absence of fullboreshooters. So what happened to all those resolutions todo better next year? Can action really be postponed untilJune? The stark answer is no. If you want to see a realimprovement in your shooting, then you must considerit to be a year round activity. Just turning up at Bisleyand shooting a few matches, hoping to win the Queen’sor the Grand, simply is not good enough for a seriousshooter. So what must be done to improve things?Training is not just about shooting matchesTraining is all about trying to sort out those problemsthat you experience in a match. Training is not aboutjust shooting another match course of fire. This meansputting a lot of effort into your sport between matches.I come to Bisley regularly throughout the year and find,during the winter months, an absence of shooters onCentury and Stickledown. Yet the Pistol Galleries, theSporting Rifle complex and the Bisley Field Target airrifle ranges are in full use every weekend throughoutthe year. Where are the match and target rifle shooters?Yes, I know the excuses: “I can’t use my caravan”; “It isexpensive to hire a firing point/marker”; “It is cold, wet,windy”; “I don’t want to wear out my barrel”.These are but excuses, not reasons, for not shootingregularly throughout the year. Most members livewithin three hours drive of Bisley, many much closer,so the first excuse is gone. The cost of a firing point,even including the marker fee, is still not that high inrelation to the other costs of shooting. The weather isoften as good for shooting as it is sometimes in July.Training does not require you to use that pristine barrel;you can use your worn out spare rifle!Your first task is to set yourself an achievable objectivefor the coming year. This must not be to win a particularmatch or aggregate. In shooting we share with golf anadvantage over most other sports in that our personalperformance has its own indicator which is totallyindependent of our fellow competitors. Just as acompetent novice golfer can have a round with TigerWoods, and both can enjoy it and benefit from theexperience, any competent novice can shoot alongsidethe Queen’s Prize Winner and enjoy it. Scores, as such,do not matter. Yet it is also perhaps too easy to set scoreobjectives that are unrealistic. In match and target rifleshooting, the match is short and the highest possiblescore is numerically low. Thus it is tempting to set anHPS as an objective for the season. Unless you arealready scoring HPSs, this would be foolish. One squallyrain shower during the match and your objective isblown. Much better to say that you will average 73 (ex75) or you will not shoot below 72 or that you willaverage 50% V bulls. Beware of such average figuresbecause these could lead you to going absent whenmatch conditions are not perfect!Likewise, you must set yourself an objective for eachtraining session. It is best to break down the act of firinga shot into its component parts and choose to concentrateon one of these. The typical actions are: “get intoposition”; “read the wind”; “set up a stable sightpicture”; “release the shot”; “follow through”. Youmight also add to this: “maintain concentrationthroughout the session”. You might think of otheractions to add to this list. If you start a training sessionwith the principle objective to improve on one of these,you will do well.So how do you train? Obviously you will have someopportunity to prepare for a match with your club. Thiscan legitimately be in the form of a competitive match.But for informal training, the last thing you should lookfor is the score.Train regularly on the range at BisleyDuring the winter months you can have an entire rangeto yourself. There are many fine days when shootingcan be a real pleasure; there are many days whenshooting is a real challenge. So why not shoot during agale? No, you might not be putting every shot into theV, but if you are learning to read the wind, this can onlybe of benefit to you on a calmer day. There is no realreason why you should not shoot alone without even amarker. The only real disadvantage is that you will notget any feedback from the target to help you read thewind. But think about it. Fire 60 shots (or more) thenwalk down (Century of course!) to examine and patchyour target. What does your group look like? If it iselongated horizontally, then you are not coping withthe wind and so, even without a marker, you havelearned something. Of course, if you have a marker, orif there are group of say four shooters, things can bemuch better. Two shooters on the firing point, onemarking and one walking down to the butts is near idealand minimises the cost to the individual. Four of youcan get in a lot of shooting in one day like that.In accordance with the principle that for informaltraining, scores are irrelevant, you must learn toconcentrate solely on technique (this presupposes thatyour sights are adjusted to put every shot somewherenear the centre of the target). By making the scoreirrelevant, it is easier to concentrate on the trigger, holdor whatever. This also raises the more general problemof concentration. In shooting sports, momentary loss ofconcentration is the major cause of loose shots: those outin the white, or worse! Thus you must make yourselffire more shots during a training session than you wouldin any match. This is the only way to improve yourability to concentrate. Just think about the small-boreshooters. Their typical match is 60 shots not 15. So whynot emulate them?Take up small-bore shootingThere can be few people in Britain who live more than20 minutes drive from a small-bore club. If you need74