Training Plan

Wadi14

I'm looking for some help, if anyone can point me in the right direction, started some .22 shooting last year sporting rifle and pistol, mostly Gallery and some prone 50m but with sporting rifle, I don't shoot ISSF style shooting, would really love to give it a go sometime mind you.
I want to try and improve on my first years shooting,as it was more of a learning the competitions year, and have been looking at the usashooting.org site to try and come up with some training shooting and mental and a training plan. I def believe I can incorporate ISSF skills and training into my shooting.
Have any of you got any advice or info or books or web sites where I can download from or read, so that I can set myself up a training plan.
Thanks

IRLConor

Ways of the Rifle is about as close to a "standard text" as you'll get. It's written entirely with ISSF shooting in mind but I'm sure that plenty of it will translate to non-ISSF shooting. On the mental side of things, I'd look at Lanny Bassham's stuff. With Winning in Mind is pretty solid and while Lanny was an ISSF shooter the material is pretty broadly applicable.

Apart from that, some things I've found useful:

• You can't dry fire too much.
• Position, Aim, Hold, Trigger Control, Follow Through - Attack each one of them individually and make sure you work on all of them.
• For working on position: Consistency is key. You won't spot your inconsistencies unless you get in and out of your shooting position often. Get out of position after each shot and then start from scratch. Use this process to build a routine of mental checklists for getting into position on the firing point. Do it the same way every time.
• For working on aim: Spend the session concentrating on natural point of aim/zeroing exercises. These are really more about position rather than aim, but the finer details of aiming are quite hard to train for directly.
• For working on your hold, well this breaks down into a few parts:
  • Hold errors due to a fault in position. Your basic position should have you comfortably pointed at the target. Again, this is kinda NPA/zeroing work but if you're pointed even slightly off-centre you'll fight the rifle and the little pushes/pulls/lifts will induce an oscillation that you'll fight more.
  • Hold errors due to pulse. Better cardiovascular fitness helps a lot here, but if you're shooting with a sling you can reduce the effect of the pulse quite a bit by carefully positioning where it touches the back of your arm. This will be different for every shooter, so all I can say is "experiment".
  • Hold errors due to natural tremor. Some of this is stuff you just can't get rid of but a good chunk of it will be due to a lack of stamina. A lot of shooting positions either use muscles you don't use very often or use them in combinations you're not used to. You can reduce this by shooting or dry firing for longer than the course of fire you're training for. My rule of thumb on this is that you should be able to shoot your course of fire (in my case 60 shots), then take a short break (say 5 mins) then shoot another full course of fire without any significant loss of performance. For shorter courses of fire, just shoot multiple courses back to back with no break.
• For working on your trigger control: Dry fire. A lot. Then spend some of your live fire sessions concentrating just on correct triggering. Then go back and dry fire some more.
• For working on your follow through: Watch your sights through the recoil pattern (you can find many problems in your position from this path), mentally record where the sights come to rest (useful data for checking your zero) and only then may you consider the shot to be over. I've seen a lot of people throw away buckets of points on poor follow through.
• Almost all of the above can be done as "dry" exercises, so save your ammo and petrol and work on them at home. Again, you can't dry fire too much.
• Write down everything you learn and be sure to reinforce the lessons. There's nothing worse than figuring something out, fixing it and then finding you're doing it the same wrong way a year later.

I'm an ISSF shooter, so the above might be a little bit too much from the ISSF point of view but you may get some value out of it. I'm also not particularly good at coaching so listen to any others who come along!

Wadi14

Thanks very much IRLConor for the information, I'm looking forward to working on the mental side of shooting as I think its one thing a lot of us leave out of training, I have to agree with you that heading to a range and shooting all day is not really beneficial training.

IRLConor

Wadi14 wrote: »

I'm looking forward to working on the mental side of shooting as I think its one thing a lot of us leave out of training

Definitely. Not enough people put the effort into it.

That said, one of the best tools in your mental toolbox is to be confident that you've got the technical and physical side of the game under control. If you don't trust your position/hold/gun/ammunition/whatever it's easier to make excuses for poor shots and that feeds back into worse mental performance.

Wadi14 wrote: »

I have to agree with you that heading to a range and shooting all day is not really beneficial training.

Well, it can be beneficial training if you carefully target the items you work on. Earlier this year I had a couple of days off between jobs and I live fired six or seven hundred rounds over an intensive few days of shooting. I needed to work on a few small issues with my position that were obvious in the recoil pattern and the longer sessions are always useful for building stamina so it made sense to do it.

Wadi14

I probably worded wrong re- heading to the range, of course you are correct if your firing rounds down range for a purpose, most of us head to the range and fire off rounds for the craic with no purpose lol Purpose and enjoyment I believe would be a far better mix.

I need a lot of work on my standing position for gallery shooting, 2 mins to fire 12 rounds using a semi-auto , I'm going to try and work of the ISSF position or silhouette position replacing the sports shooter position that I'm using at the mo, as its unstable for precision. For the quicker 2 and 3 sec exposures I can use the sports shooting style. That's my main positional project.

Then there's pistol shooting replaced the ambidextrous grip on my Hammerli x-esse with their target grip and custom fitted it to my hand grip taped the smooth left side of the grip as I mostly shoot 2 handed, I find the sports grip a good job. It helps me to relax my right hand on the grip as I think I was gripping way too tight.

I'm looking forward to the next few months trying to perfect the skills, and hopefully adding a few points to the scores here and there next year lol

IRLConor

Wadi14 wrote: »

most of us head to the range and fire off rounds for the craic with no purpose lol

Yeah, I'm as guilty of that as anyone.

Wadi14 wrote: »

I need a lot of work on my standing position for gallery shooting, 2 mins to fire 12 rounds using a semi-auto , I'm going to try and work of the ISSF position or silhouette position replacing the sports shooter position that I'm using at the mo, as its unstable for precision. For the quicker 2 and 3 sec exposures I can use the sports shooting style. That's my main positional project.

Sounds like an interesting plan. Just beware that a classic ISSF standing position is designed to both deal with the heavier weight of the rifle and to take advantage of the jacket and trousers. With a shorter, lighter gallery rifle you have a few more options in terms of position but the lack of weight makes it easier for small deviations in your hold to flick the rifle around.

Wadi14

Funny that you mention the weight of the rifle, I have a light stock and a heavy Kidd barrel from Lother Walther, the rifle is a little nose heavy, I was wondering if I added weight to the butt would it be beneficial to handling? I am going to check handling with the original light ruger barrel fitted as well.This will be another experiment down the road.

IRLConor

Wadi14 wrote: »

Funny that you mention the weight of the rifle, I have a light stock and a heavy Kidd barrel from Lother Walther, the rifle is a little nose heavy, I was wondering if I added weight to the butt would it be beneficial to handling? I am going to check handling with the original light ruger barrel fitted as well.This will be another experiment down the road.

It depends on the rest of your position really. I'm still playing with the weight balance of my air rifle but I think it's a little too nose heavy. I'm probably going to add weight to the rear rather than remove weight from the front though. You might want to experiment with doing similarly. Keep your good barrel but add some weight to the rear to counter-balance it a little. It may not be as handy for the rapid stages though, since I presume a nose heavy rifle could be helpful for keeping it pointed in the same place.

I've attached a photo of the contents of the standing section of Ways of the Rifle, just so you get an idea of the kind of stuff they cover.

Wadi14

I wonder if Santa checks this site, that book would make a nice present lol, def covers everything in detail,
the nose heavy barrel def helps in point ability in the timed practices but its the standing when I have more time where I'm loosing my points, so it's off out the back I go now to work on a solid position.

IRLConor

More material that's free: A podcast by Ryan Anderson who's a shooter on the USAS National Team. I've only skimmed a few episodes but I plan to listen in detail when I have the time. I can't vouch for the content because I haven't listened to it all, but he's a world class shooter and a nice guy so it's unlikely to be far wrong.

You can listen on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgT7XXClERWQrhg630OLsfQ
Or subscribe using iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ryans-shooting-podcast/id1028909743

Wadi14

I have seen his podcast on youtube, I must take time and go through them, The training plan was the only one I have listened to so far,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5aBlAtTP34 this is what I was listening to last night,