Got called down to the range tonight to help out as another range officer was going to be late. Figured I'd get some kneeling training done while I was there using the mirror. Had been ages since I'd shot any so needed to spend a while tweaking a setup for myself. Got fairly comfortable with a thicker kneeling roll. My old one was causing immense discomfort for some reason and generating no push into the front foot. Grabbed a big, thick club roll and the pain subsided to normal kneeling discomfort. It still feels balanced with the tube on the end, which is nice, and if I get a live fire session or two in now it'll be pretty well good to go for the 3P nationals once I've ironed out any faults that show up. Will try get three or four sessions shot before the thirtieth of April and should be in good stead then. Would like to average over 92 kneeling, with the intent of getting it up past 95 over the summer. Lots of work, but I'm well capable of that.
Standing training went particularly well. Never have managed to crack air rifle, despite feeling like I have on a number of occasions, so I'm hesitant to say I've done so tonight, but I have a workable system which merits a few notes.
In the beginning, I had two distinct problems. The shot would drop dramatically as I squeezed it off and it would veer left or right as I let it off. The first issue pointed to an inconsistent and inefficient elbow position on the hip. This I solved by making a point of pulling the elbow around to the front of my hip, with the index being that the outside of my elbow would be touching the inside of my hip, holding the arm in place.
The rifle sits on the front of the palm of my hand, which is turned back, so the backs of the fingers face me. This is slightly more uncomfortable long term than using a fist to support the rifle, but serves the dual purpose of getting the rifle very close in and providing superb, stable support for the gun. I shot for over an hour like that tonight without feeling real strain, just the soreness which is typical of match-length shooting in standing. I can feel a real difference in the strain on my legs, due to the physical training I've been doing, though feet were certainly sore at the end of it. Need better socks. May look into the compression fabric ones, see how those feel.
The horizontal issue stemmed from two things, slightly poor balance indexing and awful trigger control and follow through. The follow through is still terrible. Lots of work needed there anyway. The improvement there came from very slightly raising the left elbow until the hand had a better position on the trigger and until the position balanced consistently. The horizontal movement died down a lot, the trigger releases were smoother (They still need work, little bit more aggressive than they might be) and the shots were not unpredictable. Shot a few groups at the end which were nice and tidy. The rifle came down, the foresight buzzed around the aiming mark, the trigger was taken up and squeezed through and the shots went into a nice tight group, culminating in a final three shot group that looks like this.
Now, considering how rarely I shoot standing or air rifle, I'm happy to think that's a good few problems ironed out. Obviously need to spend a lot more time actually shooting it, get some groups and some cards in, but that looks good to me.
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