Now, it's a fairly demanding list, and it's easy enough to always have a lot of it in a given position, but it's taken me until now to finally get it all in, and I'm very happy. As with any position, there's going to be a teething period while I learn its subtleties and get the various elements developed into a routine, with reference points for inner and outer position, but over time, it will settle, and hopefully I'll soon be shooting as well as I was before I made the change. Initial groups are quite promising, while cards are not quite so, but I've never liked or shot well on the NSRA ten-bull cards, averaging about 97 or 97.5, which is less than I would average in ten-shot groups. Unfortunately, recent matches have been awful, so we'll have to see what happens over the next while. The next match I can see on my calendar is in February, so there's a long time to train in that position before I have to compete in it. I expect that to yield very strong results.
Now, it's time for a very blunt appraisal of the successes and failings of my training over the last while and an honest assessment of what I need to work on over the next while. In all honesty, the last few months have not been as good as I would have hoped. A massive workload meant that there were quite a few weeks where I got no range time in, and the fact that I'm commuting over three hours every day and working three nights a week meant that actual physical training time was extremely limited, and as a result, fitness and toning suffered. I'm going to have to suck it up in the next term and find a way to make it all work better. My shooting training, I managed to make as much of as possible, but though scores improved strongly over the course of the few months, with forty-shot strings on high 580s and low 590s pace, too much time was devoted to position work which should not have been an issue.
I feel there are some conspicuous shortcomings in my shooting technique at the moment which I intend to confront and improve on over the next several months. My main priorities are to focus on inner position (through improved fitness and muscle toning and careful documentation of references and markers), trigger control (through dry-firing exercises and lots of live-fire, focusing on grip strength and inner position) and follow through (as my recoil is not as consistent as I would like, and I tend not to follow through strongly enough). I'm hoping a combination of the above elements will yield higher results and increase my ability to deal with match stresses in order to achieve match scores in line with my training results.
in truth, I'm somewhat behind on what I'd like to be doing to qualify for the World Cup in Munich, qualification shoots for which should be announced over the next while, likely to begin in March. Now, I'm going to make a big push to achieve the 590-odd score which will be required, but in the event that my scores don't improve in line with that in time to qualify for Munich, I'll focus on the European Championships in Belgrade, which give me an extra two months of training time over the summer to reach the level I need. A decision will have to be reached soon enough, as if I'm to qualify for Munich, I intend to get a batch of ammunition tested in the new year. I'll update as I have more training results. If I can average in the mid to high 580s outdoors in training, the ammunition will be a good investment and I should hopefully qualify alright.
Hopefully I'll have more news soon.
