Dave IRL Shooting Training Diary

Killing Demons

2011-07-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

For a while now, my prone shooting has gone to hell, and over the past few days, I've figured it out. Turns out you can't lose 35 lb and still shoot the same position. I'd previously had a fairly high left knee to allow room to breathe and to help control the rifle under recoil. However, analysis over the past few days illustrated that that was forcing me over onto the right hip. Consequently, and because I have a low right shoulder due to the long reach I use, that shoulder was going over and pulling the elbow with it, resulting in the drag to the right I was observing.

The answer, as I found it, was to drop the left knee right down. The left heel is relatively close to the right ankle now, so there's relatively little body behind the rifle. It's a little unconventional, but my hold is very solid now and the zero isn't moving around the place as I'm watching. I've also moved to the older Anschutz style rounded hook buttplate and found its simplicity excellent and its coverage more than satisfactory. In fact, in a couple of ways, it indexes better than the System Gemini I had been using, so I've already arranged a trade for an Anschutz one and some cash. It's a far better fit for me in kneeling than anything I have as well, so I might pick up a second one if I spot it for that.

I'm also playing around with sight raising blocks at 8mm. This is a rather nostalgic look at the feeling I had shooting a wooden stock. I kinda miss that. I wouldn't mind going back to one in the future either I must say. I like the raised, comfortable head position and the width of the stock in the hand is far more comfortable than what I'm using now. Ah well, all thoughts for the future. Right now, I've got a solid position, if a little eccentric, I'm comfortable, relaxed and confident. The releases are assured and very clean and consistent. There's work to be done but it'll largely look after itself as time goes on and I'll deal with problems as they arise.

I only fired twenty shots today, had all the information and reinforcement I needed. Fired about four or five shots on one diagram to confirm zero and sight settings, all tens, moved over one and fired five more, resulting in this group. The squeaky one at five o'clock was me, shading. Turns out the wind was doing feck all as that's exactly where I pointed it.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j111/David_Franklin/Image0083.jpg?t=1309703820

The prone is going nicely now. I'm going to spend another while just reinforcing the good prone stuff, then move onto kneeling for a while, doing the odd day of prone, then more standing with a little bit of prone and kneeling and proceed like that. I'm going to be changing my club at the end of the summer as well in order to make shooting more 3P a realistically feasible proposition, and once I'm back to college I'm going to shoot more 10m stuff as well. Looking forward to further progress.

Pause for Thought

2011-06-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

When I first started writing this, and its previous incarnation, I envisioned it as more than simply an overview of my training and progress. Now, obviously, over the time period I've been writing it, enormous change and progress is visible, and of course, equally visible are the elements which are constantly deficient, probably due to not having a coach to iron out the silly stuff early on. We're getting there though.

This brings me onto this: Part of all good training is spending time reflecting on training as a process in order to plan future training, and part of training is finding your motivation to progress. On that thought, I've been away from the range for a week now, as I've been in Munich at a world cup, helping out with the Irish team. The trip has been all the kick I could ask for in terms of motivation to get back to training and to really direct myself. There's nothing like spending quality time with athletes above your own level to learn about the game on a level you can't experience yourself. I couldn't have spent the time so productively if I'd lived on the range here in a sleeping bag. The trip reaffirmed that I want to shoot internationally. I want to be part of that team. It also taught me a few valuable, practical lessons about shooting.

Probably the single biggest problem anyone who's largely self-taught has is that they can find themselves just shooting to improve, instead of concentrating on the elements which are deficient with a few to improving them. Certainly, this is an issue that plagued me for a long time. There is the other side of it, however, where you get obsesssed with details and while trying to improve individual elements, you can lose sight of the basic mechanics of shooting good shots, or worse, focus only on elements and forget that each shot is unique and distinct from what comes before and what comes after. In short, you just shoot strings of shots on autopilot while watching whatever your focus is for the day. I've been doing that so long, focusing on so many things, that my conception of shooting has switched from a series of processes to a single change of state: From not shooting to shooting, in short, rather than shooting each shot individually, distinctly and perfectly.

This results in psychological fatigue to an extent which prevents good shooting over the period of time necessary to complete any ISSF rifle course of fire. Rather than relaxing, then increasing concentration to fire a shot, then relaxing mentally before firing the next shot, you go from not-shooting to shooting, increasing your concentration level without any rest in sight and subsequently fail to notice as it trails off gradually and the standard of the shooting process goes down. This is why we have a shot routine which comprises phases of low and high concentration, or so we think, at least. If I'm being honest, my application of my shot routine might be excellent for a few shots, but I certainly slip into the habit of throwing shot after shot down the barrel without proper attention to the process as I fatigue physically and mentally. This is the single most important thing I have to change. Initially, this shot routine will have to be comparatively simple until the habit is ironed in. It is quite apparent to me, however, that finding a way to consider shots individually is the single most important thing to allow me to develop coping mechanisms for stress and to achieve consistent results.

My focuses for the next while have to be some of the following:

-Relaxing and feeling for the inner position. Time must be devoted to this at every session, just feeling for balance, feeling the heart rate slow and soften. This must be consistent, shot to shot, and will help to conceive shots individually as well.

-Long follow through to help separate shots mentally.

-Mentally thinking through shot routine before physical performance of each shot. If necessary, talking through the shot routine as I go through it (I want to develop "triggers" as detailed in Mental Training for Shooting in order to define the sections of the shot routine for evaluation and consistent performance.

I'll be meeting with my coach next week in order to compose a training plan leading up towards my one year aim, which is to attend the world cups in Milan and Munich next year if exams allow. Certainly, Munich should be perfectly achievable as it's later, starting on the 20th of May. My goal is to qualify for that and to perform well at it. This means I have to greatly improve my consistency from shot to shot and concurrently develop coping strategies for stress and dealing with unexpected results. I'm optimistic, as ever, but perhaps there's more substance to this plan.

General Update at 13th June 2011

2011-06-13T07:36:00.001-07:00

Lots going on lately. I was having conspicuous zero position errors in terms of drifting across the target. I couldn't get balanced, obviously, as the sight picture would slowly move across the target from left to right. I spent quite a bit of time trying to mitigate against this (I say mitigate because I suspect the combination of an ill fitting jacket and a sling that doesn't locate usefully on the arm and the consequent drag and twist down and around the arm to be the source). Ultimately, I've lowered the sling keeper on my arm, which seems to result in less drag and a firmer pull direct to the handstop. I've bought a MEC handstop which is more comfortable on the hand and can be offset to bring the rifle further onto my hand. More contact with the hand spreads the weight and pressure around more of the support area and makes it considerably more comfortable. I was still struggling however, and felt that I was subconsciously holding on target rather than staying deliberately relaxed.

One of the sensations I perceived was a turning effect from the buttplate in the shoulder however, resulting in the rifle not sitting comfortably and steadily in the forward hand and turning in it instead. To this end, I rotated the top of the buttplate towards me and turned the hook in towards my side. This has let the rifle sit right down into my hand, while the sling pulls strongly and directly from my arm and shoulder pressure is maintained strongly by properly positioning my elbow on the mat and carefully placing my hand high on the pistol grip. Triggering is improved, position feels solid and supportive, it drags slightly less overall and it feels positive. If there's a downside it's that there's now a rather strong cant, though it's consistent due to the reduced twisting through the stock. The comfortable head position and consistency should mitigate against any issues that arise, however, and recoil should be solid. I should get to live fire tomorrow and will know more then.

Another issue is that while I have typically raised and lowered the buttplate to compensate for angle changes from range to range, due to the rotation of the buttplate, any changes will have to be tiny, and augmented with handstop alterations. I don't mind this though as long as it sits still for me now. It feels much more balanced in any case and will hopefully yield big results. There's been a lot of fiddling done to get to this point however, so there now needs to be a huge amount of dry-firing and live shooting to reinforce the goodness.

Today I conducted an interesting experiment. We all know that there's no such thing as "the prone position." If you look at ten world class prone shooters, they'll have ten completely individual positions and methodologies. I decided to try replicate the positions of two world class prone shooters at opposite ends of the spectrum of positions to get a feel for what makes each work. I looked at Matt Emmons (High, flat, relatively straight on, lot of tension) and Warren Potent (Low, canted, less tension). As I suspected, the Emmons alteration suited me a lot more, as I've always preferred high positions for the stability benefits, though my left shoulder is considerably higher and my right somewhat lower than his corresponding shoulders. I couldn't get any proper stability from the very low position at all, but obviously they do work for Potent and others like him. This only served to reinforce that the way I shoot suits me better than the other end of the spectrum and that anything I choose to do will work, provided I train at it properly and take care to be consistent. Above all, it reminds us that a well practised mistake is better than the best position and methodology in the world enacted poorly and inconsistently.

I'm not updating regularly these days as daily updates will get information heavy and won't be particularly useful. It's easiest to just review progress intermittently and compare with previous updates. My daily notes in my training diary provide the substance for subsequent training sessions in any case. For now, just lots and lots of shooting to reinforce progress and get the method down pat. That's a fun short term training plan.

Hard at Work - Progress Report

2011-05-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

I've been working away since I finished my exams on the 12th of May. I've been working on solidity of position and some finesses in my trigger control, my follow through, my reading of conditions and being consciously relaxed throughout the shot. It's been productive. It's a process that's far from done, but I know what I've got work done on and I know what's important but is yet to do.

I'm being somewhat guarded, I know, because I don't want to try evaluate the proportion of individual chunks of work which are completed and what's left to do, lest I underestimate the latter. It feels good though. I'm much more consistent, relaxed and proficient. However, part of the result of that is that I have a much better understanding of the deficiencies of my technique and my process, which is a negative aspect. It's now important to focus on the good work done and to be proactive about fixing what's left to do.

Now, to that end, it's important to take the good first. My prone position is very solid, very comfortable, well balanced and efficient. My aiming process is excellent. I've adopted a good relaxation technique and blended it into my shot routine so that my point of aim is very natural and relaxed, meaning smaller groups. I read conditions better than ever. My triggering and follow-through are improving all the time. The former in particular is getting very good, while the latter needs good work.

The small fly in the ointment however is inconsistent reconstruction of my position from shot to shot and throughout strings. Part of this is an equipment issue. My jacket is too big and drags around at the shoulders, the sling slides down the arm as a consequence. This results in a position that sags and disturbs the balance of tensions. However, this can be mitigated against by repositioning the sling on the arm regularly. This can be done without totally breaking the position, by dropping the rifle out of the shoulder and twitching the sling up the arm with the trigger hand, before replacing the buttplate in the shoulder. The second aspect is twofold; a buttplate to shoulder fit that isn't immediately obviously perfect and a lack of a methodology to reposition the elbow and grip the pistol grip in order to establish a consistently natural and relaxed point of aim from shot to shot. Currently, the NPA can deviate relatively substantially from shot to shot, requiring constant rebuilding and re-zeroing. I may try a different buttplate to provide more uniform contact with the shoulder which will be more easily identifiable. The methodology will have to be developed in training.

So I'm not going to think about how much is yet to be done for sunday. It won't be perfect, I know that, but it'll be better than it would have been a month ago, certainly. My next programme of work on the technical side consists of the following:

Shot routine:

-Methodology of elbow placement and generation of tensions

-Assessment of position from shot to shot to determine the necessity of small alterations in sling position.

Technique:

-Better follow-through

-Consistent triggering and relaxation and NPA

Match tactics and routine:

-Greater self-awareness and ongoing self-evaluation to determine the need for alterations to sling position and tension as indicated in my plans for my shot routine

-Ongoing reinforcement of good shots and good technique.

Mental game:

-I really need to develop this, to be better at positively reinforcing good things that are done in training, feel them out better and make more of their identification.

-Mental programme to coincide with my shot routine. I worked one out, but now I need to improve my focus to make it consistent and apply myself to it.

-I need to practise my routine mentally more often and to set aside time to sit and feel my way through a competition programme.

I feel things are good now, but I'd like to get some more hands-on coaching, to get some time with an electronic trainer and to refine my process. The first step is to develop my shot routine, with the focus on the methodology of elbow placement after I load the rifle. I need to pay more attention to my mental routine also and to focus on developing that when the physical shot routine is more clearly delineated.

I intend to acquire a new sling and handstop. Might shop for those in Munich. I'd love to get a new shooting suit which would be a tidier fit around the chest and shoulders for prone and around the midsection for standing, but I need more physical work and, funnily enough, more money. That might be more viable at the end of the summer. I might also look into a new glove to better support my wrist and pad my hand, but it's not a priority. I can look into all those options while I'm in Munich anyway. For now, let's just say the outlook is positive, and I'm thinking of the current deficiencies more in terms of their representing a clear workload for me, which is distinctly conquerable. Will hopefully have something of use to say after sunday. I feel good about my shooting, so will be a question of my application of my hard work.

Two Matches and Significant Gains

2011-05-08T15:13:00.000-07:00

I never got around to posting an update after the nationals, which I should have done, but nevertheless, I'll deal with the subject matter from that now as well as a match from today. Between the two of them they represent a significant advance in my competitive performance.

The nationals last week, I felt reasonably good, the position was solid and my hold and release was good. The primary problem I found in my main match, which I only diagnosed in the sighters for the final, was a tendency to roll my head ever so slightly onto the point of the cheekbone, which compromised my sight picture a lot. Scores weren't all predictable as a result. However, I eventually settled and got stuck into the match, and despite the problems with my sight picture, I managed a 580, enough to make the final in joint third place on the day (though some notable absences would have left me rather further down the list had they been around. The result will be better next time).

In the sighters for the final I realised the issue which would cause my sight picture to blur and distort and which would give the impression, likely from the edge of the lower eyelid, of a straight line through the centre, and made distinct sight pictures difficult to achieve and consequently, I shot a lot of perfectly executed nines, which is about as much use as the proverbial underwater hair dryer. Calls in the final were much more reliable, and though I wasn't perfectly sighted in early in it, with a group around the bottom of the ten ring, I eventually managed a 102.3 and took the bronze. I was happy enough, but there's a lot more to be done.

And now onto the match today, which shows further interesting developments.

I had specifically intended not to go to this match, as I'm in the middle of exams, but I made the decision on friday, and having shot a brutally difficult match in awful switching light conditions and winds that would pick up and back off gradually so that changes were difficult to spot, but large in magnitude. Essentially, it's hard to imagine more difficult conditions to get the hang of. However, I sat down and observed the wind and light patterns for some time before the match and developed my plan.

Starting the first card, I was reasonably comfortable, but the conditions were quite tough to spot accurately as the wind blowing hard from right to left would back off slowly until the first you saw of it was a bullet dropping in the nine to the right of the ten. It was genuinely hard to spot on the flags as they were blowing flat out and let offs were near invisible. There was also an angle change that threw shots quite a chunk along the axis from 1 o'clock to 7 o'clock. I mean to bad nines. This was something I never managed to spot as the match went on. the first card turned out a 190. Inner tens were rare, as conditions were so mobile that I tended to catch the ten loosely as they moved.

The second card, I was about as comfortable physically, but stronger from the point of view of my condition understanding, and I began to shade slightly to better grab the shifting conditions. The light got harder here as well, but I played with the iris and remained comfortable and consistent, not losing any points to it. Eventually, it finished with a 193. The shots that went out were my fault, either holding badly or in one case, overholding and letting off a shot I really should have abandoned.

The third card, I was not comfortable. I wasted a lot of time adjusting things to settle in the sighters, eventually taking my sling in an extra notch (The downhill angle seems to mean that the position slackens and stretches out the longer I shoot) and was pressed for time to finish the card. It finished a 189, all but one of the diagrams having a tight group, though I was starting to find it hard to keep up with constantly flickering conditions, with groups either slightly low or to one side and losing points as a result. The other diagram presented an eight at 7 o'clock which I called a good shot and seems to have represented a violent condition I didn't see on the flags (I had a seven in my sighters in the exact same direction which I also thought was a good shot)

So 572, in truly difficult conditions. I came second in the match, only two points behind the leader, and I know I should have won it as there was so much left in me in terms of my technical shooting. I was focused on the conditions and just wasn't as clean and strong and tidy as I might have been. I'll have to work on the subconscious skill level so that I can devote that much mental energy to condition reading without coming off the boil technically. However, I've always considered my ability to read conditions, interpret them and adjust accordingly to be a personal strength, and to beat Conor, who I consider a technically much better shooter (for now), by four points and to have held it together better leaves me pretty happy with my own performance. The focus on the academic stuff meant my shooting wasn't that great. Had I had my head in the technique to my customary level, I could have shot 580+ today, which would have been a good achievement.

In any case, the next match is the DURC 50m Open in MNSCI on the 29th of May, and it's a qualifier for my big goal for the year, the European Championships in Belgrade, Serbia. I'm finished my exams on thursday so will have had two weeks and sixty-odd hours of solid training time between now and then. I think I can pull myself up to a comfort level significantly above that I felt today, particularly on the better and more comfortable range. I'm happy with my condition reading and my shading and tactics. The technique is great when I can focus on it, but that's not always easy in conditions like today, so provides a useful focus over the next while to increase it to subconscious perfection and consistency. I'm optimistic about coming at least very close to the qualifying score on the 29th, and I expect to achieve it in time to qualify if not then. I'm going to earn it. For now, two weekends, a bronze and a silver. It's getting better and better.

Nice Confidence Session Before the Nationals

2011-04-27T13:31:00.001-07:00

Always good to finish feeling in control before a competition. I've been listening to the Bassham stuff on mental management a good bit and the result is that I'm feeling my shot routine better in terms of a process and accompanying series of images. I've also been experimenting with a sling position on my forward arm, coming around the wrist rather than the back of the hand, and the results are very positive. The changes now are that I feel my head sitting better on top of the rifle, much more vertical sense of support, and my comfort levels are much better, from shot to shot and after finishing. Recovery time for comfort levels is greatly improved. My condition wasn't the best for shooting this evening. A long day hunched over a desk, staring at paper and screens wasn't doing much good for either muscles or eyes (I couldn't hold a sight picture for more than about three seconds) but the process was good, and it was consistent. Trigger control is greatly improved, though consistency still needs to be better. A couple of shots broke unexpectedly today for loose tens, but most were well controlled. It's an element of the process that's still developing. When my eyesight was proving troublesome, I trusted to the inner position and the hold, and shot well. I sighted in and shot two groups of ten, for a 197, and all the bad shots were well known. This is the final group. The 9.9 wasn't something I saw, but with my dodgy eyes, who knows... I'm happy that it felt controlled anyway. There were some looser tens where I might have overheld or was a little rough on the trigger, but it's all coming together.

Mental Training and Approach to Training for Next Three Months

2011-04-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

I've finally gotten hold of the Lanny Bassham materials on mental training for shooters from a Friend after quite a long time of meaning to get them and never getting around to it. I listened to all of Mental Management for Shooting Sports yesterday, and far from feeling bored and lectured at, it was fascinating. I intend listening to this often to reaffirm my approach, but most importantly, I've taken his points on progressive training and have set myself a timeframe within which to work, over the next three months, on significantly improving the process of my shooting.

He advocates training in three stages: Dry-firing, group-shooting and live shooting, on both an individual session basis and on a larger scale, over a season. What this means is that the process becomes much, much more important than the result, as, ignoring groups, which merely provide a reference for the observer, perhaps only ten to twenty shots will be individually observed and remarked on out of perhaps a hundred processes. I am going to make this a feature of all of my training sessions from now on, and am going to condense a season's worth of progressive training into the next three months, focusing heavily on dry-fire for the next month or so (and moving the rifle home at the weekend to dry-fire against the wall, since it will help me avoid temptation to train in college before the exams), then shifting the emphasis towards group-shooting, and then live fire for the last month or so. I hope to see a significant improvement in my performance by then, and hopefully in time to qualify for the European Championships, the qualifications for which I expect will begin in May or June.

The other element I took from the lecture was the correlation of a mental programme with the physical shot routine. I've since sketched out my shot routine again and noted the stages in the mental programme of visualisation and positive reinforcement against their corresponding points on the shot routine. This is proving extremely interesting for my mental visualisation (What Bassham calls rehearsal) as I can see everything so clearly in my head now, while focusing on the process. As I'm loading the rifle I'm visualising the sight picture, the little hope of the foresight and the settling down on point of aim again, feeling the little thud of recoil. As I'm settling I'm noting the wind flags and the mirage and picturing them exactly as they will be when I break the shot. As I'm checking my natural point of aim and inner position I'm imagining dead calm, silence and the flat, even feeling of the trigger against the second stage. As I'm on aim, I'm visualising the ten as my finger sits on the trigger (An issue I've had is I've found myself taking a neutral approach to the shot. "Let's see what happens if I pull now" sort of thinking, rather than being dead certain and expecting the ten. This is what I want to change here.), imagining I'm teasing the aiming mark back through the foresight as I release the shot.

I also liked his ideas on rehearsing the whole shot process mentally before beginning. I'm going to make a point of starting every training session kneeling on the mat, feeling my way through the whole process mentally at least ten times before I get down to shoot at all. I'm going to be positive, relaxed and focused. I'm more than capable of the 587 for Belgrade. I'm capable of 600. I shoot good, deliberate shots. Shooting good shots is what I do. It's my routine. Shooting good shot after good shot is just exactly what I do. I'll update later.

Following On...

2011-04-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

... from the last update, where I mentioned issues with trigger control which had gone unnoticed during a match and which had been commented on by others afterwards, I was determined tonight to make good on that and to drill the bad habits out. What I wanted to do was to underline the stage in my shot routine at which I sit on the first stage of the trigger, check my inner position and sight picture, and then squeeze through the trigger slowly.

It was rough at first, very rough, with the routine difficult to make consistent, but it got smoother as I went along. I started with the intention of a forty shot match, but the difficulties in the routine mandated that I ignore everything except the technique issues and drills. At first, there were issues with inner position and zero, which meant that even when the release was good for a string of shots, they weren't as tidy as they should have been. I also discovered that any slightly long hold would cause me to flinch at the shot, which threw strange fliers in unpredictable directions. After some time and a few breaks, I got the feeling for the position solid enough that I could focus on the shot release and group tightly. It still wasn't perfect, as subsequent group photos will show, but it was an improvement.

After that, I shot some sighters and four groups of ten, with the intention of scoring it out of 400 in the back of my mind, and a focus on good shots and strong mental focus at the forefront of it. Initially I thought the score worked out at 392 or 393 ex. 400. However, on closer examination it appears to be 391. It's not amazing but it could be a lot worse. Particularly at the end, I shot a nice, round group of ten shots with good control of inner position and a good shot release. Slightly rough releases earned me 10.1s and 10.0s, good releases earned consistent 10Xs and one quite poor release earned me a shot that could be either a 9.9 or a 10.0. I'm inclined to think it's a 9, but it's trickier to call looking dead on it than it seems in the photos. I feel the control is improving. The forty shots I scored feature plenty of tens, and some bad shots, which were, barring one sight picture error, universally down to sloppy trigger control. This shows how good things could be if I perfect this, which makes it my project for the next while.

First Group

I scored this as 97, and it features the shifting inner position problem hanging over it, with small sight changes not overcoming the strange shift from ten o'clock to four. Releases were okay, with the looser shot at five o'clock the only issue, and the other shot out at four down to the shifting zero and inner position problem.

Second Group

As we can see, the inner position tightened up and stayed on the right hand side. The elongated group shape isn't a major problem as far as I'm concerned as it's within the ten ring. A problem for another day. Judicious use of the sights got the last few shots comfortably in the ten ring and a few clicks at the end meant a good start to the next group. I scored this as 98.

Third Group

This highlights the flinch issue I mentioned, accounting for the eight at eight o'clock. This was in the middle of a good string of tens, and as you can see, the group is developing nice and roundly. I make this another 97, but something of a tragedy. The two shots were down to trigger control and over-holding, with the eight on a flinch.

Fourth Group

Here we see it's coming together. The group is nice and roundly formed, the shots are good, with even the slightly noticeably rough trigger control shots going in the ten, and the roughest of all the ambiguous shot at six o'clock. I make this either 99 or 100 and it's tougher to call in the flesh than on the card. This is where I think it's all coming together, as the position set up well each time, the correct tensions were generated, and I was reading each shot perfectly. Hopefully further training sessions will build more on this last group and we might yet be on track for Belgrade and the European Championships.

A quick note worth mentioning is that all my training lately has been with Eley Sport. I'm finding I'm comfortable to know when a shot was bad and when it was the ammo and the price allows me more trigger time, which is the most important thing to me at the moment. I think I'll probably buy two or three thousand of it to last me over the summer and it won't break the bank too badly. Quality is certainly good enough to be readable, and if there's the odd weird shot, so be it.

Match Report to Coach

2011-04-04T04:46:00.001-07:00

Just going to copy this from an email I sent my coach regarding a match yesterday, as it has all the data in it.

Hi Geoff, just firing you off an update on progress from yesterday as I think there's a lot of good data from it.

I had a couple of intentions going into the match, some based on my observations on the day before the shoot and some which I'd intended beforehand.

The objectives were as follows:

-Consistent construction of position

-Confident releases on good sight pictures

-Shade strongly and break shots determinedly (This was determined on the day as conditions were switching very fast)

-Consistent, strong shot rhythm and good pace

The shot rhythm and pace was excellent. Finished in about 55 minutes, having fired thirty sighters on top of my match shots as conditions were very hard to get a proper handle on. Quite happy with this as I maintained focus throughout the match and finished comfortable, without strain or pain.

The position was good. It had the proper tensions and balances, the hold was good and while I only broke position twice, once in my sighters and once after twenty shots in the match, I was able to get down in exactly the same way each time and immediately begin shooting tens. My routine for establishing the position is good.

The second and third objectives I'd like to deal with together, as I think this is where the work needs to go in. I was focused on getting shots off quickly due to the switching conditions and to a certain extent, this compromised my delicacy on the trigger. It was remarked on by those watching that (Probably due to the extra pressure on my mind from the competition) I was neglecting the part of my shot routine where I sit on the first stage, and was going through the trigger in one movement, and not at a consistent pace, resulting in wider nines, typically but not exclusively low. I'll be using a camera to monitor my consistency of trigger release in training over the next while and will be focusing on the first stage in order to develop a more consistent, gentle release which doesn't compromise my ability to get shots off quickly where required by sitting on the first stage with some weight applied to it and relaxing, repeating to get a good feel for it and to add it to my muscle memory.

A note on conditions and how I managed them:

Conditions were tricky, with fast changing winds which regularly switched direction at an instant. This made me focus on shading and breaking shots quickly, and this was quite a success. While I got caught out several times where the condition would change as I'd break the shot, the shades themselves were always perfect, exactly where they needed to be, and I got a lot of them perfectly. The tube has been a big help in getting the clarity of sight picture to give me real confidence in that.

At one point, the wind changed magnitude without showing up on the flags and resulted in a group of five or six nines out at 3 o'clock. A spotting scope might have shown something in the mirage which wasn't visible on the flags. They were a limited resource yesterday with so many DURC shooters or I would have used one, but this is one possible explanation.

Subtle oscillations of light levels meant that on occasion the top or bottom edge of the bull would become indistinct and quite a lot of shots dropped low into the nine ring as this phenomenon occurred. Judicious use of the iris and filters allowed me to correct for this, but the effects were so subtle that typically the first indication I'd see would be a couple of uncalled nines low. In other words, I was responding to results rather than anticipating them. This is something I'd like to improve on, but I've no idea how to combat those switches in light levels. Personally I intend to focus on stronger shooting so that perhaps the warning shots are low tens at 6 o'clock rather than mid nines.

Extra focus will definitely win me more tens. When I spent more time focusing, I almost inevitably shot tens unless conditions changed quickly, so the extra focus and attention to shot routine will allow more good shots, but the compromise is to get those shots off without compromising attention to switching conditions on a day like yesterday. More shot routine drills focusing on the first stage of my trigger release, follow through and maintenance of good inner position form the basis for my technical training over the next while, coupled with as much time spent reading wind, light and mirage on the outdoor range as possible.

On a positive note, I was quite disciplined about taking good shots (compromised technique aside). There were only two shots which I over-held and was disappointed at having taken. I would hope that in future I could avoid these altogether, and it's a lot better than the half dozen or so which used to characterise my matches.

Training - DURC - Air Rifle

2011-03-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

Further progress with the air rifle tonight. Still throwing weird shots, but the methodology of creating good shots is getting more consistent and consistently tighter. Strange shots tend towards vertical, but are all visible. It seems to be an inner position and elbow position combination which causes sudden relaxations to drop the shot low or twitch it high, more often the former. I expect a few hundred more repetitions of good shots will drill out the inconsistencies. Another training session or two between now and the nationals and a decent score should be possible, though not hoping for anything particularly special. I won't pretend these groups are representative of my shooting but they do show how the good shots tightened up over the night, while the fliers remained bad. The first one was shot relatively early on, while the second one was the last ten shots of the match. Both are ten shot groups. It's getting there. I'm more concerned with getting the shot release and follow through down than anything else. That'll eliminate weird shots and get more deep tens and less scratchy nines all in one go. Most productive thing for now is to go ahead, focusing on getting good shots consistently.

Training - DURC - Kneeling and Peashooter

2011-03-28T16:00:00.001-07:00

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.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j111/David_Franklin/Image0047.jpg?t=1301354233

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.

General Update at 14th March 2011

2011-03-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

I've left this alone because due to academic commitments and lack of consistent training opportunities my shooting results have not been usefully progressive lately. Since I've had a bit over a week of solid training sessions now though, I feel justified in doing some writing up.

In the first place, the new position I've been developing so long has been battle tested and has come through with flying colours. It's solid, stable and comfortable for the length of a match, which is something I've never had before. I played around with a couple of variations on it over the last while to refine it and the following are the results.

1. A straight wrist, at the expense of some hand contact (it sits slightly more into the V of the thumb and forefinger than along the base of the thumb is much more solid, and doesn't compromise the comfort enough to make it a bad idea as I can still comfortably get twenty or more shots off quickly with no numbness or discomfort.

2. The left shoulder is slightly cocked. This allows for very strong contact between the trigger hand elbow and the mat, allowing freedom of movement and grip strength from the elbow down.

3. A slight cant allows a comfortable head position and a good attack on the trigger with a strong grip.

4. A high left knee gives plenty of pressure behind the rifle in the left shoulder, good ability to breathe and locks the right hip solidly in place, which seems to give a distinct feeling in the right elbow and leads to the left elbow dropping comfortably and consistently into place and locking the structure together.

5. A head position which is solid without being forceful complements the other elements of the position to give a firm clamp around the rifle, leading to small recoil and tight groups. A firm clamp around the rifle also makes good trigger control easy.

There are some tricks to this new position, which I'll outline now for future reference and to give voice to the process.

When I get down on the mat, I pull the corner of the right side of the jacket under me down towards the groin, then let it slacken very slightly as I settle on it.

I clip into the handstop and push my right elbow forward in a straight line until it rests naturally on the back of the elbow. There must be no tension in the tricep and the position should feel relatively high at this point.

I make sure the right side of me runs straight to the foot by extending the leg so I can feel the straight extension of the spine. I then turn the heel of the foot outwards which digs in the edge of the foot and locks that element of the position in place.

I raise the left knee until the sensation of the right hip digging into the mat is experienced and breathe deeply to confirm that the ribcage is limited in contact. The knee remains in place and the leg from the knee down can be used to very slightly tweak zero position.

When placing the rifle in the shoulder, the top of the buttplate should be drawn in until the hook cannot be felt contacting under the arm. When the rifle is loaded, the cheek is located on the cheekpiece, the shoulder is rotated until the buttplate sits without tension, the cocked shoulder is flattened slightly and the left elbow is leaned into, with the final check being a relaxation to feel the delicate pressure balances between the shoulder, the elbow and the pistol grip. A breath will confirm that the zero position is good and if not, this last step is the most likely source of issue and can be easily repeated until satisfied.

While delicacy is required to construct the geometry from the left shoulder to the hand and to ensure proper placement of the buttplate and hook, when achieved, fast shooting with an extremely good hold, good recoil and an easy follow through is readily achieved. This can only be built on, so I'm happy.

Scores have fluctuated quite unpredictably lately, but I'm beginning to get to grips with my consistency and comfort and expect good things in future. I shot fifteen quick shots tonight, and dropped two I called and one I didn't, which could be something I didn't see or might be the cheap ammo. It's not important in any case. Far more significant is that I buried almost all of the rest in the inner ten, including those I shot rapid, without a scope, to check the flexibility of the position under pressure.

I hesitate to be too optimistic when the position still needs a successful match to advocate it, but I do feel I'm on the brink of a useful step forward. There's a match in Midlands on the 3rd of April which will hopefully verify this.

Match and Coaching Update

2011-01-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

Had that club match today, which wasn't too bad. Had the highest overall score at 386/400, and the second card was a 197, with a very nice 100 to start, which looks like it would score 105 or very close, in decimals. The first card was obviously quite poor, but for a first return to live fire after so much dry-firing over Christmas, I'm happy enough with it. What I take from it is to have faith in technique and not to stress over relatively easy shooting, and in physical terms, that I have a minor consistency problem with left elbow placement, which is easily solved by taking the pistol grip, straightening my forearm to the elbow, and dropping it straight. I'm also finding that a less tight grip provides more consistent results. While it is not slack, it is far from tight. It gives better release and makes the follow through and recoil more consistent.

My coaching session with Geoff today was extremely positive. While I didn't learn anything new I should be focusing on in terms of expected results, we did discuss the methodology and I now have a clearly laid out path towards improvement, which will provide solid foundations to enable me to tolerate the stresses of larger competition. My current workload is to draw up a shot routine and break it down into its component parts, then to focus training sessions on each individual miniscule aspect of the routine in order to perfect it and develop a feeling for it, then write out how each aspect is achieved, in order to provide that information in textual form for revision. This saves that sensation of making it up as soon as I hit the floor in an important match. I'm looking forward to the results. While aspects of the process will certainly be dull, its benefits should be conspicuous. Since I'm looking for a ten to twelve point improvement over the course of a match, I'll be hard pressed in the next four or five months, but it's well doable.

Training Update

2011-01-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

It's been relatively quiet on the training front here the last while. The extreme cold precluded outdoor training until now. One session in the cold weather left me quite disheartened. Constant spasming of muscles initially prevented the establishment of a strong and useful zero position, made clean trigger control impossible and eventually led to the deterioration of focus and follow-through. After this, when I couldn't live-fire, I spent a lot of time dry-firing onto a dot in front of a mirror. The outer position was constant, solidly composed and comfortable, though there's some minor refining to do around the trigger hand arm in terms of elbow positioning, but it felt alright. The problem was that after that live fire session, any time spent dry-firing created doubts with regard to the inner position and its consistency, and I'm certain that it was a counter-productive experience in terms of creating self-doubt, with no possibility of reassurance in the form of the feedback live fire provides. I managed to fit in a live fire session at the range this afternoon however, only a handful of shots, but enough to reassure myself that the inner position wasn't a huge issue and that provided I could get a good sight picture, the hold and zero would be solid enough to deliver good shots. I have a club match on sunday, an informal event which will hopefully provide solid reaffirmation. Following that, I have a training session with my new coach, with whom I intend to discuss my plans for the year and my current approach. I'll update with the results of that meeting. I expect it will be very interesting. There is one dramatic failing in the technical aspect of my shooting at the moment and it's in the aim. What I think of as a good sight picture still delivers nines and I'd like to see the movement more clearly. To this end, I'm going to order a sight extension tube as soon as I get a micrometer to measure the barrel. I'll be ordering it from Eric Upragrafft. His are low-profile and don't require sight raising blocks and are lightweight. I'm looking forward to seeing the results it brings. The extra small weight at the muzzle might also be beneficial in terms of controlling recoil movement. Hopefully this is going to be a good year now.

Update After a Week of Good Training

2010-12-18T07:49:00.000-08:00

Well, having been absolutely swamped for several weeks with work, I finally got back onto the range on monday and had a hell of a week. I'd spent quite some time thinking about solutions to the positional issues I'd been having and I eventually sat down for several hours to hammer out a position I've been chasing for a very long time. This is a medium height position, high enough that it doesn't slide down over time, while being low enough to have good ground contact, with a strongly bedded trigger hand elbow and slightly raised shoulder, a relaxed head and neck position, minimal cant and buttplate offset, a reasonably high left knee, lots of pressure in the shoulder and cheek, elbows taking enough weight that the hand doesn't suffer too badly and a firm grip on the pistol grip.

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.

General Update as of 10th November 2010

2010-11-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

I've been terrible for updating this lately as I've felt more as though I'm slogging along rather than actually achieving anything for quite some time. However, I'd just like to confirm where I am at the moment, as I feel things are finally making some solid progress.

I've been spending a lot more time on my prone shooting, as I've put in an Expression of Interest for the World Cup in Munich next June. Qualifiers should be between February and April and the score should be 590, give or take a point. This is achievable, and the work I'm doing at the moment will certainly get me there, even if it doesn't do so in time to qualify. Things are promising however. Though I'm still very much getting the feel for the new rifle and trying to figure out the most comfortable way to shoot with it, my training scores are good. I shot a 391 ex 400 in a session on saturday, which was marked by several inexplicable bad shots, including two eights. However, since eliminating those eights would have given 395, I'm happy enough to carry on trying to wipe them out. Certainly, the number of nines I'm shooting is dwindling rapidly, though fliers tend to be quite bad, still. I'm hoping this is just a symptom of the new rifle though and will disappear as I settle in.

I shot a match on the sunday as well. Both the good and the bad were strongly in evidence. My first twenty shots were a 194, and that was sloppy, as there are at least two, and probably three shots that were the result of poor attention to sight picture on my part. I settled down then and was happy enough with the 98 that followed, as the fliers were minor and called, due to bad trigger release and bad sight picture. While this is obviously not acceptable, the fact that they were easily called and not bad fliers is heartening. Following this, I had a string of nines in the fourth string, the cause of which I could not ascertain, resulting in a 92. I then got it together again, shooting another 97, though dropping two through being clumsy and rushed, and one to a minor trigger release error, and, due to being completely rushed to finish, dropping another 92 at the end, for 573 overall.

One of the major problems I have is that every time I get down to shoot, with the new rifle, I spend quite some time feeling out the subtleties of the position. As such, I start the match with only forty or forty-five minutes to go, unnecessarily handicapping myself. I have a simplified position in mind which should be much easier to get in and out of quickly and much easier to keep consistent. Hopefully, with training, the results will be at least as good. It's also much more comfortable, providing more balanced support, less pressure on the chest and a more elevated front hand, head and neck. As such, fast shooting should be much easier and more comfortable, and a strong rhythm simple to establish and maintain. The majority of my scores are falling towards the mid-580s mark, hampered by poor strings, so hopefully before too long that will have smoothed out and I can start considering Munich in earnest.

In the new year, I intend sending off for a batch of tested ammunition for my rifle. This will have the twofold effect of ensuring a consistent supply of ammunition which is a known quantity and giving me a more competitively accurate gun and ammunition combination, hopefully. In any case, the new rifle is well and truly run in, so it will be very interesting to see what sort of groups it is capable of in testing. Hopefully I'll have more to report in two weeks, following another match, in which I hope to do significantly better than the 573 I managed on sunday. I would hope for 585+, as this would be a useful platform from which to train towards the Munich qualification score.

Update on Recent Progress

2010-09-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

This is just an update on this weekend, as it's been fairly eventful. Shot a three-positions match on the saturday, which was conspicuous for a terrible prone and standing. The prone was a 181, which is about thirteen points off my usual standard, and the standing wasn't even worth mentioning. The kneeling was noteworthy for having far more tens than I expected, and more properly bad shots as well. Overall, I can't say why the prone went so badly. There's no real reason for it. However, hopefully it'll never be so bad again. The standing had some decent moments when I remembered to hang onto it and keep myself from leaning into the gun, which collapsed my position. I really need sight raising blocks to allow me to keep my head upright. I think I'll get a set of adjustable ones so I can use them on a low setting of about four or six millimetres for kneeling and a considerably higher setting for standing. While not absolutely necessary for kneeling, I think the extra bit of height will give me the option to keep my head more upright and put more downward pressure on the stock. The next result should be much better though, more consistent and more in keeping with my progress.

There was a prone match today, and again, there were problems settling. I could not buy a ten for the life of me in the sighters. I spent over half an hour and forty shots to get remotely settled and consistent. I opened shakily, with a 95, then took a break. After the break, the first shot was an eight, but then I got comfortable and shot a good string of about fifteen tens in a row. The string was broken by a 9.8, which was entirely my fault, but after that, while reasonably good, it wasn't nearly as clean or obvious. However, I take a lot of heart from that kind of progress. I was pushed for time towards the end, but managed to finish with four tens inside thirty seconds. That demonstrates a solid and consistent position and set up and clean technique.

I need to spend a lot more time and effort on both kneeling and standing, once I get equipment to help me, and my prone is a long way from where it needs to be, but nothing is too stagnant at the moment. I dropped quite a few points unnecessarily when I was forced to speed up towards the end, but I came out with a 576. It could easily have been about six points better, and really should have, but there'll be a next time.

Tweaking and Dry-Fire - 24th August 2010

2010-08-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

Made an effort to resolve a few issues I'd been having today. The top button of my jacket was not properly placed, and would undo itself as it wasn't sufficiently tight. I moved it about half to three quarters of an inch and moved the second button about a third of an inch and the fit is much nicer. I prefer to use only these two for shooting prone, finding it gives me improved space for breathing and comfort, as well as reducing the feeling of contact along both sides. This also had the effect of preventing the sling from dragging, as had been a conspicuous problem, with a well built and comfortable, stable position deteriorating after perhaps twelve to fifteen minutes. This also had the follow-on effect of reducing the truly awful pressure in my forward hand. The rifle sits deeper into the hand now with less suffering. While this has forced me to adopt a mild cant, the pressure on the cheekpiece and solidity in the shoulder is still good. Live fire will, I am sure, reveal strong and consistent recoil patterns. I'd like to invest in a spirit level for the foresight, but funds are prohibitively tight at the moment. I also need to invest in another carrier for the second buttplate, and to develop a system for changing it quickly from standing to kneeling. I don't need raiser blocks for either prone or kneeling, but may well do so when I get around to shooting more standing (probably next week sometime. I want to focus on polishing the prone and improving the kneeling for this week and weekend). I had some photos taken of the position and I'm very happy with how it's composed and oriented, so I'm pressing on with things as they are, keeping the prone skills good and just improving kneeling for this week. I expect I'll shoot both on thursday, and perhaps one each day saturday and sunday. I'd like to shoot a full prone match under improved circumstances to check out the current setup. Also going to shoot it as quickly as possible, breaking shots quickly on first good sight pictures. I must also look into a new set of frames or repairing mine, as the nose-piece has fallen off, and this was causing all sorts of interesting parallax effects at the weekend as they wouldn't stay steadily positioned behind the rearsight.

The kit list for the next while (five months or so) is as follows:
Jacket altered once I reach the weight I'm happy to stay at
Trousers made at the same time (Hopefully after the 50m Nationals in October)
Extra buttplate carrier
Extension tube (I just can't see any wobble in my hold. It will also help with my sight picture as my foresight is of a larger size)
Variable sight raising blocks

There are one or two other little bits. A new sling would be nice, I need a decent visor, wouldn't mind new and better shooting frames with more adjustability for the positioning of the lens. These are all relatively minor however, with the above far more important. Unfortunately, the cost required for the above is fairly substantial. Add in the batch testing in Lapua next spring and the cost of the ammunition itself, as well as hopefully a trip to Munich, and there's a good reason I can't afford a flat for this year. Hopefully it won't affect my training much, as the rifle will be stored in the college. I'll be attempting to get two mid-week sessions and two mid-week physical training sessions in, with a bare minimum of one weekend session at the 50m range as well. Still hoping for 585+ in the Nationals. It's very, very doable. If I can start moving upwards then towards the 590+ mark for next spring, a trip abroad is definitely on the cards. Even if I put in around 588-589 in the qualification I might be invited to go for the experience, which is the most valuable part of all. Here's hoping, anyway.

Training and Matches - Prone - Last Week

2010-08-23T04:52:00.000-07:00

Going to do a general update on the training sessions running up to the weekend of matches and then the weekend itself.

The couple of training sessions before saturday were not satisfactory. I wasn't shooting for anything except groups and responses, but I wasn't happy. Groups weren't round and weren't tight, and the sensory feedback didn't perfectly match up with the evidence in the paper. I thought it might be the ammo, but I discounted this. The ammo was good quality and had been an accurate reflection before. Now, it wasn't great and I've had better ammo (A leftover hundred Eley Match I had in the safe shot very well for me when I first got it) but it was definitely good enough that the results were not the ammo's fault. This was apparent over both training sessions in the week from monday to thursday.

So I went into the match off the back of some very modest results in training, but with my head cleared and my focus on good technique. Started off with the 50m 60-shot match. Sighters were good. Wind and mirage was a little tricky, but I was getting shots off in good time in conditions like those I'd observed, so while there were one or two in the sighters I didn't get right, it wasn't bad. I started off with three solid tens in a row, then dropped an eight due to poor focus and something not quite right that I was too lazy to correct (more fool me) and dropped the last shot in that diagram, probably in annoyance and lack of focus over the previous shot. Things continued fairly normally for a while, though with a few more nines than I would like and would be usual for me. Then a pulse developed and, like a fool, I thought I could shoot through it by timing it right. The result was, of course, a seven and a red face for me. After this, the match went on with me shooting nine after nine. I couldn't identify why, as they weren't consistent. The position felt good, inner and outer, the hold was excellent, the sight picture was excellent, recoil was good, trigger control was good, and yet, no tens. This was extremely disheartening, obviously enough, and I never got hold of the match again, despite several breaks to try and sort the problem. The result was a 555, which I just can not understand.

I won't go into the hundred yard stuff from the weekend here, as it's not what I'm training for, bar later, in part of an anecdotal note for one of my biggest problems and my next big block of training material. Suffice to say, it's extremely challenging, and I didn't get into it at all this weekend.

I went home after work on sunday and spent an hour or so trying to sort out what might be the issue. Everything felt fairly alright and I couldn't think of any reason for it not having worked, so out of desperation, I reverted to the absolute basic setup I'd had when I first got the rifle. (Going to have to start taking better and more useful notes on changes I make however, or it's all going to get a bit confusing soon) It didn't really feel noticeably better, but I decided to run with it for sunday anyway after some dry-firing. The buttplate needs more work for the best fit, but I'll manage that either later today or tomorrow with some dry-fire training (maelstrom outside, not a range day) and I need to find some way to place my forward hand to take pressure off it. The stock is much narrower than my old one and is absolutely agonising after about fifteen or twenty minutes. Comfort being all-important, that's got to get sorted soon.

So, setup having been revised, I got down for the 40-shot match on sunday. Conditions were definitely easier. There were no excuses now. Sight picture was still good, trigger was still good, hold was still good, and ten after ten fell right into the middle, with a good few of the bad shots being called, and one or two wind errors, also called. There was no excuse in this one and while the shooting didn't really feel better, the result was a 384 (dropped a couple of points unnecessarily when a wasp landed on my hand as I was about to take the shot and cost me an eight and broke one or two shots before I was perfectly happy with them for nines). Really should have been about a 388 or better, but it's definitely my fault, nothing else going on there, with the range nicely readable and the shooting predictable. Since I'd have been happy with that standard (576) on saturday, I'm calling that a qualified success and going back to the drawing board with more work now.

The weekend's anecdotal evidence for my head problems is the hundred yard card I shot when I was running out of time and just rattled the shots through the target without even checking them in the spotting scope. The result was a 96 or a 97, I don't recall, but the group was very tight, and it was certainly the best hundred yard shooting I did all weekend. The annoying thing about this is that the shots didn't look great and nor did the responses. I was not expecting much from it as from a technical standpoint, the shooting was not good. There's definitely a problem with my mind and how it perceives the information being fed to it. The empirical evidence tells us here that the shooting was better than my eyes and my head were telling me. It's this lack of proper correspondence between the perception of the shot and the empirical evidence of the target that's confusing me. As illustrated by the 50m section, sometimes it's there (and, notably, the results are almost always distinctly unremarkable) but other times it's not, and it may be either very very good, or awful. There's a problem with getting myself wrapped up in it and somehow I've to get my own head out of the game and develop a set of automatic responses to conditions to let me shoot to the best of my abilities all the time. I don't know how to do it, but I'm going to acquire and consult some material on psychological training to try and make inroads into the problem.

A small note is that there is currently no way to guarantee a consistent supply of quality ammo. I have to get this fixed by importing a good quantity from Intershoot, as buying mixed batches from day to day is ridiculous, as it prevents proper training which, for me, is that which will lead to the exact correspondence, all the time, between my perceptions and reality. Having ammo as an untested variable in the equation makes this significantly more difficult.

I'm going to spend some of this week trying to make the position more comfortable and revisit my stock setup with this in mind. I'm also going to look to acquire ammo of a known quality in sufficient supply that I'm not wasting my time. After that, it's all mental, as my technique is solid. Unfortunately, this is far and away the most difficult thing I've got to get over. I'll be shooting some kneeling and possibly some standing later on in the week as well, but for the psychological aspects, my focus is going to remain firmly in prone, where it's most important to me and where I'm most familiar.

Training - Prone - DRC - 16th August 2010

2010-08-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

I'm still tweaking, very subtly, the new rifle setup, and keeping primarily focused on prone for the time being, with the other positions as supplementary. The results from the session were that I lengthened the butt somewhat, providing very solid pressure in the shoulder, which requires me to open the shoulder deliberately, insert the butt of the rifle and close it up again. The other beneficial side effects are that the handstop does not bite into my hand so much, and my trigger hand is extended straight and solid from elbow to grip. It feels excellent, allows my head to sit comfortably and naturally, applying plenty of pressure, and the improved feeling between elbow and hand allows a firm grip, which enables good, solid shots to be released in good time. Recoil is small and while not yet perfectly consistent, is improving dramatically.

I shot a practice match, resulting in 574, with two of the cards being fairly disappointing, the first and third, a 190 and a 189, and the middle card a 195. I'd like to keep my 50m cards above 193 as a minimum, and am typically able to with the new rifle, so it's just a case of spending more time in position and getting plenty of shots down. The wind was a bit tricky during the match. I had one flag set up fairly close in, but couldn't set one up further down, and this was telling, as there were some uncalled nines where you'd expect to find them from wind errors. My own typical errors were vertical, usually from holding on target too long or visual defects. I'd taken a smack to the head that day, which may account for vision issues. I was testing some RWS R50 I'd bought as well, and while I'm not a hundred per cent convinced of its usefulness, it seems fine for now. I'll test it some more tomorrow and thursday, with thursday being indoors. Hopefully it will be good as I may use it for the weekend aggregate matches.

I'd like to shoot 580+ in the full 50m match and 388+ in the forty-shot one on sunday. I know it's achievable, but I'm still very much getting back into shooting after the break, so hopefully my stamina and muscle memory won't hold me back. I'm going to try shoot fast and take a two-minute break in position every ten shots to rest my support hand to prevent fatigue as much as possible. I'd expect that over the next month or so, I'll happily get up into the 580s for 50m prone, and hopefully by the end of the year be averaging in the high 580s. Just a case of building on stamina and spending time in position now. I'll post again before the weekend after I've done some more training and after it with match results and observations.

ISSF World Championships - Munich

2010-08-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Well I said I'd do a post on this trip, so here goes. It won't be a long one, just a short bit to state things which for the most part I've said elsewhere but which are the key elements for the trip.

I went out to the World Championships as a spectator for a number of reasons. On the one hand, I had some spare money and quite wanted to take a holiday for myself. On the other I wanted to go out and support the Irish shooters competing out there and help out with the team where possible. On a more personal note, I wanted to see the place, because obviously this is somewhere I want to compete and an environment I want to be immersed in on a continuous basis.

It has to be stated outright: An ISSF World Championship is the single biggest shooting event on the planet, many times the scale of the Olympics, and with a host of events not featured in the Olympics, such as the centrefire pistol and rifle events. While an Olympic Games has a pressure and an aura all its own which distinguishes it, it does not compete in terms of sheer scale. Now, that having been said, and knowing the size of event it was, it's still mind-bogglingly huge. The complex of ranges is just bafflingly large, from the cartridge rifle range, which comprises nearly a hundred firing points for 50m rifle and forty for 300m rifle, along with crossbow facilities, to an airgun hall which features nearly a hundred firing points back to back, either half of which is difficult to appreciate on its own as an Irish shooter, who sees UCD's fourteen firing points as huge. It's a magnificent atmosphere, with no personalities interfering with reverence for the competition, which creates a truly electric atmosphere. I fell in love with it, frankly. All I wanted was to go home and start training. While I was there, I started feeling that I was wasting time and should start jogging laps of the compound to get started! Anyone who's thought about trying to compete internationally *needs* to see something like this in order to appreciate what it's really all about. It's just not possible to comprehend unless you've done so. Since I've come home I've been full of renewed vigour. I've been making notes, dry-firing and live-training regularly, developing my prone position and kneeling position, with standing yet to go. I genuinely feel like shooting has gotten better, easier and more enjoyable since I got home. There's been something more obvious about it. Perhaps it's a personal breakthrough, but it's all seemed more simple since.

Congratulations to the Irish team who went out, who acquitted themselves admirably to a man. It made me very proud to see, and I hope the next time I see Munich's hallowed hall, it'll be with kit in tow and as a competitor. If you're reading this and curious at all, or have ambitions of your own, please take the opportunity to travel next June for the World Cup there. It will change how you shoot and how you think about shooting.

Training - Kneeling - DURC - 12th August 2010

2010-08-12T19:51:00.000-07:00

Spent the evening shooting kneeling in the college range. That was the first time I'd shot kneeling with that rifle and since I have a 3x20 in just over a month I'd like to spend a good bit more time shooting it and getting used to the position.

There's a good bit of work still to be done to sort out the kneeling position. It's not stable enough to begin with. The heel of the shoe does not locate solidly in the seat of the trousers and so slips. Thr trousers, being right handed, are a hindrance in that the zip is on the wrong side, so the left leg is dragged inward, narrowing the base of support. The jacket is sitting nicely, feels good. The buttplate may need to be offset to sit better in the shoulder however. The right leg does not locate in such a way that it stays solid. A solution must be found for this. In additon, the rifle is not tight enough in the shoulder for my own liking.

The hold is inconsistent. One shot it will be solid, sitting on the ten ring. The next shot, it will be moving, either vertically or horizontally. Trigger technique with this much movement is an issue, causing shots to go wider than they otherwise might. This is compounded of course by the looseness of the position, which exaccerbates the effects of recoil on shot dispersion. While new trousers are definitely necessary, I will have to persevere for the time being with what I have until I reach my target figure, at which point my jacket will also require adjustment.

The following are the points to note for improvement of kneeling shooting.

1. Better location of heel, slight increase in filling of kneeling roll and consistent stability of lower half of position, from waist down. This is the core focus as all else depends on it.

2. Consistent, solid location of forward leg in such a way that it does not move from side to side but rests comfortably and vertically, providing maximum support for elbow.

3. Increased tension of setup. Experiment with increased butt length, tighter sling and handstop adjustment to increase pressure in the shoulder for better control of recoil. In conjunction with improved core stability of the position, this will also improve the hold and enable better trigger control.

I must say, I like shooting kneeling. It's despicably uncomfortable, but I like the challenges it presents. I like the coordination between the two halves of the position it demands and I like the psychological element of it which demands strong focus and the exercise of good technique in spite of the physical discomfort. I can see kneeling being a strength of mine once I overcome the current technical obstacles. However, once I have worked through the issues listed above, and acquired a properly fitting set of trousers, I expect respectable kneeling scores. Along with my decent prone, standing is the last major obstacle, and one I expect to start tackling shortly.

Currently, my goal is to average over 90 in kneeling by that match on the 18th of September. Depending on my progress, I will revise that upwards and will hopefully improve significantly on that by the end of the year. I would like to shoot 1050+ in October. Assuming a prone score of about 385 (fairly pessimistic) and a kneeling score of about 365 (optimistic but readily achievable) a standing average of 75/100 would see me through. This is certainly achievable by October. So my 3P training is off to a decent start anyway. The path to decent kneeling scores is pretty clear, so wrap up with a decent standing position and I'll be doing alright. Medium term goal is to be hitting 1100 comfortably enough by next year and to work towards 1140 thereafter.

On the kit front, interestingly enough, I may be okay without sight raisers for kneeling, and am definitely okay without them for prone (until I add a tube). I'll see how my head position and pressure develops in kneeling, but for now I'm happy enough not to use them. The current kit list is a new pair of trousers (once I'm down to the weight I want) and my jacket altered at the same point. A tube would be nice to play with for prone but I'm still not certain I could make good use of one yet. I'll need a decent fore-end raiser for standing and possible a set of sight raising blocks. I'll know that once I start working on the position. Apart from that, I don't think there's anything I can't get from the club for the time being. Unfortunately, I need a big stack of ammo over the next while, so while some money is going to be squirrelled away, there won't be that much to spare. Need to get back doing more running and cycling, then I'll be buying those trousers and having the jacket altered and that will be the big buying done.

Training - Prone - DRC - 8th August 2010

2010-08-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of live fire at 50m. I'd just done a preliminary setup with the rifle and some dry-firing to get comfortable. Since the last update I'd also figured out how to attach the System Gemini buttplate to the Anschutz Precise carrier. There's some more fine tuning to do of that relationship, but it's not bad for the time being. I'll have time to work on it the next day I'm out and should shoot better as a result.

My impressions from the shooting are as follows. The stock, being narrow, sits hard on the forward hand and causes numbness faster than old stock. The answer to this is going to be a faster tempo to avoid discomfort. In addition, the forward hand seems to rotate to the left slightly when completely numb, causing wild and unpredictable shots. This is something to watch out for, and when that numb, take short breaks and massage the hand.

Rifle is sitting nice and vertically, allowing for plenty of head pressure, easy trigger control and nice, vertical recoil. I want to try and add a bit more strength in the grip as time goes on, but that needs to be developed around a system for maintaining my current pressures at the same time.

As time went on, things seemed to feel a little looser. This may indicate dragging of the sling and jacket shoulder, or may be a result of the kinking of the right wrist as it goes numb, offering less straight resistance. In any case, this needs to be monitored, as when the position loosened, the results were not predictable.

In the end, the first two cards were good, showing 97, 98, 97, 95 (with the issue being a slight wind change dropping three through the one hole on the last diagram, along with one wild shot, which was called, and another, which wasn't) for 387/40, and which could have been as high as 390 with ease. Not a bad return to shooting! Unfortunately, the third card was a disaster. It took a long time to sight in and then the shooting was just poor, whether through slight loss of focus or through the combination of the looser position and the loss of the straightened wrist over time. It went 93, 91, leaving me with 571 for the 60 shots, and which should have been a good ten points better. I'll have to pay attention to that hand and to the solidity of the position. The buttplate needs to be addressed for better fit in the shoulder. May have to enlist someone for that. The first forty shots are very positive however. Hopefully as time goes on I'll get that 585 I want in the 50m national championships. A medal would be quite nice.

New Rifle

2010-08-06T07:12:00.001-07:00

So, my new rifle has arrived, and over the course of a couple of sessions of tweaking and dry-firing, I've got it set up now. While it's a fairly complicated beasty, I've kept everything simple enough for the time being, and to be honest, having spent a good session with it today, I don't reckon I'll be making any major changes. I'll just throw up a few comments, since there aren't many people blogging about this stuff and I figure a few first impressions might be valuable for people. I'll detail the rifle first and then talk about it.

Anschutz selected 1913 barrel and action
Anschutz 1918 Precise stock
Centra Duo Glass foresight (larger size as I intend using a tube in future)
Centra 10-50 left hand rearsight
Gehmann 565 rear iris with colour filters, polariser and iris
System Gemini Aktiv Free Rifle buttplate
Anschutz 4765 buttplate (to be used for standing and kneeling)

I've only a few remarks really.

First thing I noticed is the fore-end, being so much narrower than my old wooden stock, puts more pressure on the hand. This will take a while to get used to. However, not being as broad, it sits flatter, and I have significantly less cant as a result. This is something I'm quite pleased about, as I'd like to keep my cant absolutely minimal. The extra pressure will just be a case of learning to deal with it. On the whole I'm quite happy with this.

The second point is that the Centra 10-50 is an absolutely marvellous rearsight. Since the iris hangs suspended from the cross bar, there's no rearsight body impeding your view of the wind flags. Since I've got a personal dislike of the tiny rearsight units which are currently emerging, since I think they allow too much light at the eye, this is great. The cross bar shelters the eye somewhat, while still allowing a complete view of all flags. I can thoroughly recommend this bit of kit. It's also significantly smaller than one might imagine from catalogue photos. It's certainly much smaller and much lower in profile than any of the various rifle manufacturers' proprietary rearsights, and smaller and lower profile than the majority of the rest of the market too.

One more point is that the System Gemini buttplate does not come with a carrier and adaptor for the Precise stock, as this has thicker pins than the older Anschutz aluminium stock. I'm hoping they change this policy, and I'll certainly be investing one, as I can't for the life of me figure out how to attach it to the Precise carrier as HPS suggest. I also wanted the plug and play buttplate setup to save changeover time from prone to standing. This is my only real gripe about the setup. I had no intention of using the 4765 buttplate for prone, as I just do not like it much as a unit having had one before, but until I can figure out how to attach the Gemini, that's what I'm going to be obliged to do. Something of a pain, but I'll spend some more time with the dismantled buttplates and see what I can come up with.

So, having achieved a decent setup, and spent some time dry-firing to get the feel for the rifle, position and trigger (which is sufficiently good from the factory that I'm not going to play with it for a while), it's time for some live fire. Hopefully I'll get two sessions in at the range this weekend and I'll have something to report back. For now though, I'm off for a 5k run. Munich has put serious drive behind me to make a go for the world cup there next June. I'll post an update about the trip later on or whenever I find time.

Another Update

2010-07-04T05:18:00.000-07:00

Well, the new rifle has arrived in Northern Ireland, my dealer down here is just waiting for the import paperwork and I got the grant letter for my licence, which I'll be paying tomorrow. So I'll be up and running properly as soon as I get back from Germany. Can't wait, to be honest. I did capitulate and change the stock I ordered to the very nice new Anschutz Precise. To be honest, I just couldn't justify not getting it over the 2213 for an extra £21 as it's just an infinitely better piece of engineering. I do thoroughly dislike the pistol grip material, and I'm not crazy about the cheekpiece either, but I'm going to alter both for myself by building them from some wood. For the time being I'll just have to smooth out the grip with some plastic wood to take the knobbly texture out of it and smooth the surface slightly, and I'll probably put duct tape on the cheekpiece for the tactile aspect. The full summary of the new rifle is as follows:

Selected 1913 action
Precise stock
Centra 10-50 rearsight
Gehmann 565 rear iris (colour filters and polariser)
Centra 22mm front iris (3.8-5.8 aperture)
System Gemini Aktiv Free Rifle Buttplate
Anschutz buttplate

The second buttplate is to facilitate standing and kneeling better, with the Gemini dedicated for prone. I expect I'll add another buttplate as funds allow, and probably an extension tube, and possibly sight raising blocks for standing and kneeling, but I'll address these concerns as they crop up.

I haven't been idle however, though I haven't been shooting. I've been doing a lot of physical training, runs of 5km and cycles of up to 45km, as well as core strength work, some upper body weights training and a small bit of swimming. Weight is falling off and strength and fitness are going up rapidly. Once the weight gets down to where I want it, I'll get measured again and have my jacket altered and a pair of trousers made. I expect that'll be some time in October, after the 50m Nationals. I'm hesitant to set goals for that until I see how easily I slip back into shooting, but I'll be shooting the prone and the 3P, so once I'm training again, I'll do another update. For now, I'm just really looking forward to getting back to shooting full time. Will post again when I have news.

General Update

2010-05-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

I can't remember the last time I got some shooting done. The new structure of the year in Trinity meant I spent the last six to eight weeks of the term working on assorted projects and assignments to tidy things up, then the following six weeks were spent studying for and taking exams, which meant that I took a rather extended hiatus. There's also been a lot going on at home, both family stuff and things I had to do around the house. As such I never had more than an hour and a half or so to do anything, and never got to the range, but did a lot of physical training instead. Been doing a lot of ten-mile cycles and shorter sprints of about four miles each, which have been doing a lot to clear out the cobwebs. Since I've been out of action for so long, and though it looks like I'll be free sometime soon, and since I came into some money during the exams, I thought I'd order a new rifle to upgrade my own since the time waiting for it and the new licence would be spent working around here anyway. As such, I've a new setup on the way, and will post again when it arrives about setting it up and starting from scratch there. It's a selected 1913 in a 2213 stock, with updated sights and buttplate. Meanwhile, I'll keep snatching my interludes of physical work where possible, and I'll post any updates as they transpire.

Revision of Progress and Restatement of Training Plan for Coming Months

2010-04-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

For the last while, my primary intention has been an improvement in basic fundamental skills and their consistent application. I would say that this has been a qualified success. I have been paying more attention to my position and the way in which I orient my firing point each time. I have been more keenly observing a consistent positioning of my support hand and arm and the relationship of the sling to them. I've been much better with regard to my head positioning and my right elbow. Currently, my physical position feels good, solid and tight. What I'm currently experimenting with is grip pressure. From an academic point of view, my understanding of wind conditions has improved greatly, and while I won't claim I don't get caught out, I've gotten much better at it.

Where I am currently failing is in my mental game. The physical skills exist to take good shots, consistently. What I am lacking is the mental wherewithal to consistently execute them. I am releasing shots on insufficiently good sight pictures, failing to focus strongly enough on trigger control and not following through as well as I want to. The issue is that, having built the technical skills to shoot well, and having learned the ability to read wind conditions, I am still taking sloppy shots for some reason, and I don't know why. I know it too. It's not as though I'm surprised after a lot of the shots. Even when I shoot well, however, there are conditions I cannot as yet fathom, being mirage and intense light (light changes I have largely been able to deal with). Having gone over my score sheet from yesterday and highlighting demonstrable effects of intense light and mirage in the placement of shots, I found eighteen points I could have had otherwise. Now, fifteen shots is still too many to lose sloppily, but it would tie roughly with my own assessment of my diligent application of technique yesterday. Had I been less focused, the result might have been significantly worse!

From here, I intend to further my improvements on position and fundamental technique. I want to develop my trigger control and attention to sight picture better, and particularly the relationship between the two. I want to pay more attention to my follow through and to calling the shots as I take them and observing the recoil patterns, the standardisation of which I also intend to pursue over the summer. The trick for me is going to be the mental isolation of shots, which is very hit and miss for me at the moment. The problem is that I might achieve it, and then get the shot, and then I might get the next one, and I might start to associate the two and then I get a few more, but eventually I start to think of the group, or the string, rather than the shot, and then I lose some from the group or the string. Sometimes this doesn't happen and I put in six or seven good shots in a row, but then I drop one, and then suddenly it becomes about the string. So the problem occurs from different causes, but the results are the same. The issue is similar with regard to the lack of due diligence to sight picture. There's something telling me that I can always make up for a sub-standard shot later, when really I can't, and it's not the point one way or another. It's something I have to drill out and I'm not sure how best to do so.

The other plan for the summer is to get some running and physical training going and then spend some range time and dry-firing time working on standing and kneeling, and shooting a few 3P matches. This will be a new development for me. While I shot a few sessions kneeling and did some work on a standing setup for my rifle this year, I never got to shoot that much as I have been very much focused on my prone shooting. I intend for this to remain the case, but to include some supplemental 3P stuff, as ultimately, more shooting is just going to reinforce the same techniques and fundamentals.

I'm hesitant to state where I want to be over the next while, but I'd really quite like to average 580+ over the summer. However, since I'm not able to train at the moment with exams and the like, I'd happily settly for 580+ over the last few matches by the end of the summer. I am improving, and I'm still seeing my flaws, vividly, so the work is still all ahead of me.

Match - Prone - ECSC - 11th April 2010

2010-04-11T14:19:00.000-07:00

Remember where this was supposed to be child's play? Yeah, that didn't happen. I arrived at the range this morning, saw still flags and a beautiful, clear day, not a cloud in the sky, steady light levels, and thought "Awesome, may as well book the flight to Munich now!". Oh, this was not the case. :p

I started the day with the intention of keeping some very simple principles in mind. These were:
Obtain a good sight picture
Pay religious attention to trigger control and hand position
Follow through strongly.

Now, the trigger control was excellent, and the follow through was good, if not as good as I'd like, but the sight picture was massively problematic. The light and heat caused two problems. In the first place, its direct effect on me was to seriously affect my vision, burnt the sight right out of me. Not sure whether a bigger rearsight unit which shields the eye somewhat might be a better idea. The second is the mirage effect on the target. Now there was nothing bad enough to cause more than perhaps an eight, but it became bloody hard to keep the shots in the ten. This was a phenomenon visible across the board, with various patterns appearing on people's targets, from arcs where getting the foresight visibly centred in the rearsight has become difficult and the shooter is straining to try and achieve this in spite of the optical illusory effects the light was causing to vertical stringing and groups appearing at various points along the arc of shots. The wind was absolutely negligible. I can't think of a single shot today that the wind cost me for definite. Might have been one or two, but it really wasn't an issue.

A personal issue I noticed was something my focus on trigger control made quite visible. Firstly, my sight picture tends to move slightly low and left as I apply pressure to the second stage of the trigger. This may be due to excessive pressure on the grip. I'm going to have to experiment with this somewhat and see what I can come up with. I'll do this as part of my tweaking in the early summer, which will be designed to improve my recoil patterns. The second is that whatever way my trigger is set up since the repair, it's got a bit of creep in it. Not being a fan of this, I'm going to fix it as soon as I have time.

The match was not good, at 567. I'd like to say there were a lot of mistakes which made it that, but it was just sheer inability to deal with the light and mirage. I still haven't found a useful way to keep in control when the light has my eyes messed up. Having largely gotten a solid handle on the wind, I think this is going to be the big challenge over the next few months, along with overall consistency improvements.

IoM - 3rd and 4th April 2010

2010-04-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

Operation NotMakeTitofSelf was a comprehensive failure. My rifle was borked, and would only fire about one time in three. This is extremely debilitating, as you effectively have to shoot three matches to get one in paper. In fact, I only got fifty match shots on paper on sunday. It really was a disaster. I spent monday on the range though, and the rifle is fixed. Shot a match to confirm, and in very tricky winds, and with not much concentration and shooting quickly, I managed a 567. I fluffed a good few shots there, so it should have been a good few points better, and that ammo cost me some points as well (I hate using Eley outdoors. It has never performed for me in such a way that I didn't think it cost me points unnecessarily. Lapua and RWS all the way from now on), so in retrospect I was very disappointed with the weekend's results. I suppose focus was the big killer, since I could have happily focused for the duration of a match, but couldn't have done so for three matches a day. The first day was very, very easy, and I don't understand how that wasn't a mid 570s score (I wasn't that comfortable, but it should still have made a decent score, really wasn't a tough day at all). The second day was an unmitigated disaster and there's nothing useful to be drawn from it beyond making sure the rifle works flawlessly before travelling abroad with it. Not the first and not the last time this will happen to someone though, so it's a learning experience. Given the lack of training days available, I'd have been happy to post two scores in the 570s, and monday's training tells me that was only too easy to have done, with a better score possible on the saturday, but now I just have to go home and train and train to hopefully make a better show of myself next time. Since the exams look like falling around the time of the Easter shoot for the next year or two, I may be finished college before I make it back. I'll then be shooting the 3x40 and possibly the air rifle matches as well if that's the case, and making a damn sight better show of myself at the same time. Next week in ECSC should be child's play after the weekend in Sinclair. Now to see whether that turns out to be true...

Match - Prone - ECSC - 21st March 2010

2010-03-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

Today was a selection shoot for the World Championships in Munich this year. Qualification score is expected to be about 589. I'm not there, and won't make it, but would like to keep most matches above a 580, with a view to hovering around 590 next year, and possibly attending a world cup.

Since it was a while since I'd shot outdoors for more than a few brief training sessions (brevity due to insane cold) I wasn't expecting too much, was hoping for a 580+, but wasn't immensely confident. In the end I had a 570, which just wasn't good enough, to be honest. The range was tricky enough, but I had a very good handle on the wind conditions, and the light conditions weren't too difficult while I was shooting. It cost me some points, but not enough to have prevented me making the 580 fairly comfortably had my preparation been adequate.

The big issue I suffered from was that my cheekpiece wasn't locked securely enough, and slid very slowly down into the stock. This wasn't noticeable until about fifteen shots into my match, and so I was very reluctant to adjust it on the fly. As a result, my head was floating slightly, which led to fairly uniform dispersion of shots in all dimensions, and massive discomfort, to which I at least partially attribute some of my eights. In the end, I was forced to make several on the fly adjustments, as the discomfort was too much, and I more or less salvaged the shoot for myself, though there were some very poor periods within the match.

In terms of my technical shooting, I was very happy. Poor attention to sight picture cost a few points, probably between eight and ten, which isn't forgiveable, but it's something definite and obvious to work on. My sight picture was impeccable, really couldn't have hoped for better. Position was very solid and comfortable. Trigger control was very good. Follow-through could have been better; this is something I need to work on in conjunction with watching the uniformity of my recoil patterns for the next while. There seems to be a pronounced horizontal characteristic to the recoil at the moment which I've been noting for the past while. I'd like to eliminate that. My reading of the conditions and response to them was very good. There were very few wind calls I got wrong, and I shot good tens easily. The light caused some random scatter towards the end as a combination of its interference with my eyes and the discomfort in my neck caused focus to wane. I think I could have handled either on their own, however. The equipment issue is one to bear strongly in mind, as I completely feel that 585 is achievable for me this summer, if not better, and 580+ in the next match. Time to eliminate costly faults!

Incidentally, I was using a sample of R50 I hadn't tried before today as I don't like using Eley ammunition outdoors and it shot extremely well. I must pick up five hundred for further testing when I get back from the Isle of Man, with the view to buying a few thousand if it works as well as today indicates.

Training Update as of 19th March 2010

2010-03-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

Training lately has been disastrous. Really not sure why it's going so wrong. Groups have opened up, sight picture is very unclear (may need to revisit my current lens prescription). The technical shooting feels great. position is very stable, consistent and solid, hold is excellent, trigger control is excellent, sight picture is difficult but not so bad I shouldn't be able to hold the ten-ring, and yet the results are woeful, with tight groups punctuated by wild flyers. My head position is extremely consistent, my zero is very good, and my recoil is nice and tight, and I just can't see where these shots are coming from. To tell the truth, I'm a little worried about sunday. I'll be using my own rifle for safety's sake. I don't trust the sights on the club rifle, since I was getting phantom clicks last night, where all of a sudden it would start grouping, tightly, a centimetre or more from where it had been grouping previously. I really hope some pillock hasn't dropped those at some point, as I never had that problem before. Hopefully sunday will be considerably better.

Match - Prone - RRPC - 7th March 2010

2010-03-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

Today was hampered by a lack of sleep and a night out last night, so I wasn't expecting great things. The results were alright however. I had a 576, which I figure is about ten points less than I'd have had if I'd had a decent night's sleep and not been drinking last night, so I'm happy.
Had eyesight issues thanks to the aforementioned problems, but lots of blinking and resting my eyes let me complete the match with no major disasters.

The new experimentation with fast, aggressive shooting was a good result. It felt strong and clean. There were a multitude more nines than there should have been, but I don't attribute that to the technique, but to exhaustion and poor vision. Likewise, the firm grip on the pistol grip reduced recoil effect considerably and enabled the directness of the shooting.

I expect results will improve substantially with the improved comfort offered by the reduced duration of the shooting and the new technical solidity.

Training - Prone - DRC - 4th March 2010

2010-03-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

I've been snowed under with work for college this last while, so I haven't had a chance to do any training in about a month. Got to do my first bit of shooting since my last match tonight though. I suppose the first thing should be a report on that match, then I'll go through tonight's training.

The match was a new personal best of 584. My sighters took a long time to settle down and I just wasn't as comfortable and confident about the shots as I should have been. Once I figured out the rifle was sighted, however, I went to the match. The first shot was an 8, low and right. Horrible swearing and proclamations that it was going to be one of those bloody days ensued. However, the next few shots were decent tens and I dropped one more in that card. I followed it up with two very good 99s, good and tight groups with a nine each just sneaking out to the side. The second 99 was a 104.5, with two 10.9s in it. At this point, I should have stopped, but was very pushed for time after my hesitant start. As such, I persevered, and dropped four points in my fourth card. I decided to take a break at this point, rather than drop a shedload more points. When I got back down, nothing worked quite as well and my last two cards were a 96 and a 97. The 97 had a very tight group of central tens and three looser nines than I was happy with and the 96 was just stringy and frankly dodgy. So a 584, and 295 at the halfway point, with an 8 in it. Clearly there's the potential for far better, but I can't help feeling like that was just a golden day where I picked up on a lot of karma shots. I suppose the coming sunday's match will tell me much more, but I really wonder whether I'll be able to repeat my performance.

On now to tonight's training. I was experimenting in two areas; one physical and one psychological. From a psychological perspective, I was forcing myself to be direct and aggressive with shots, not holding on target for a long time. From a physical perspective, I was trying a new grip tension. From speaking with a far more proficient shooter at an air rifle match last week, I gathered that a lot of shooters would use a reasonably firm grip in their trigger hand. Now, I personally have always used a very loose grip, more or less just sitting it on the stock and operating the trigger that way. Tonight I was firm, holding the rifle solid, and the results were very good. The shooter in question had explained that it decreased the effect of recoil on the displacement of the shot from the centre. This was certainly my experience, and the first ten-bull card I've shot in over a month was a 98. The trade-off with the firm grip is that I have to relearn how to sensitively apply trigger control, as the tighter grip complicates this. Still, it's an excellent addition to my technical knowledge, and hopefully sunday will be the better for it. Hoping for a 585 plus, but I expect I'll really have to fight for that. With a more aggressive, direct approach however, I think there'll be a lot more tens for me.

Training - Prone - DRC - 30th January 2010

2010-01-30T06:51:00.000-08:00

Today's the first day I've been able to shoot outdoors in a while, so have been looking forward to it. The original intention was to shoot a match, but it was too cold and I've got a cold at the moment, so couldn't put in a long session. Will hopefully get a chance to put in a full match tomorrow in Midlands however.

Started out well, got settled and grouped nicely in my sighters. First string of the card was a nice 98, though the tens in the first diagram were too loose for my liking, 10.1s and 10.2s; the second diagram was nice and tight however, with everything except one called duff shot going nice and tight to the centre.

Developed optical problems in the second half of the card however. DRC is unfortunately located in that the sun tends to shine on the shooters from high and right. This is immensely distracting and plays tricks on the right eye, causing the sight picture in the left to warp and distort. Despite this, I managed to hold the second string almost together, though there were some fluffy shots. I need to find a way to properly and consistently occlude light from the non-aiming eye. For prefernce, I try to avoid using a blind outdoors, as it allows observation of flags and indicators between shots while remaining in the aiming position. The visor I'm using has a tendency to slide up the back of my head rather than staying in place. This is the thing to work on outdoors. Technique is still good, with tens falling in comfortably, but making the experience easier is the next hurdle. Midlands doesn't really suffer the same light problems, so hopefully tomorrow will feature a more useful and comprehensive update with a full match result.

Training - Prone - DURC - 25th January 2010

2010-01-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, haven't updated since last week, but things are still decent. Today, I had a SCATT session, which I hadn't done before. Was struggling to get the target size right in my foresight, and to get comfortable and shoot well. The hold displayed by the machine was atrocious. It'd hold the ten ring nearly all the time, but only just. Definitely needs work though I'm not sure how reflective it is, since I was so uncomfortable, and since my current shooting is going well. Interesting also was the groups that were appearing on the SCATT were decent however, well capable of holding the ten, despite a pretty poor trace. I'll do more work with SCATT when I get a chance to figure out how to use it best, and a setup that gives me a representative sight picture to work with.

After the session with the SCATT, I needed to regain my confidence, so switched to a couple of live-fire cards, since there's another postal deadline creeping up. These were as I expected significantly better than the SCATT results. Groups in the sighter card were nice and tight, holding the inner ten comfortably. Shooting on the actual cards was only slightly less good. My biggest problem isn't technique anymore, not by a long shot. My technique means tens when my head is in it, but my concentration lets me down. It might be a slight lack of attention to sight picture or zero position, but that's what costs me points now. The first card was a 96. After dropping the first two shots, moving across the target from the sighter card, I didn't spend enough time re-orienting my zero and dropped the first shot ever so slightly out. The next followed it and both were called as bad shots. the next five went in before I dropped the eighth and last shots, due to lack of attention to sight picture and too much haste, respectively. The second card was better, as I corrected myself from my notes and dedicated my time to obsessively zeroing and paying rigorous attention to sight picture. Having dropped the first two right in the middle, I had a nasty moment on the third, where I dropped an 8, the trigger breaking while I was still breathing on having decided not to take the first attempt. This being the fly in the ointment on my planned perfect card, I determined not to miss anything else, and didn't, with another seven nice tight tens falling well in. It's not a shooting error, but as the only thing marring a card that really should have been perfect, it'll remind me to back off when aborting a shot attempt in future.

Currently, I haven't touched my rifle setup in quite some time, as I'm currently entirely satisfied with it - thought still need new sights. My position is good, tight and solid, my sight picture is good and I'm comfortable. My trigger control has improved again from the last update, and barring that one incident was without fault, sensitivity having greatly increased from before. The rest of the points will be gained in my head, which is unfortunately the hardest thing to work on. I'm on course for my targets at the moment, and happy that there's no technical reason I shouldn't achieve them, bar inexperience if conditions go sour on the day. Hopefully, we'll get a few training days in Sinclair this year and then I'll be comfortably on course for the 585 I want there.

Training - Prone - DURC - 20th January 2010

2010-01-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

Well, today's my first live-fire session in over a month. The snow over the holidays rendered all my shooting plans null and void and I was confined to dry-firing at home. This evidently didn't prove too bad for my shooting however, as today was better than expected for going so long without live firing.

Result was 388/400, which isn't bad for the recent past. Was expecting somewhere between 380 and 385. There's definitely a lot going for me at the moment, and the mechanics were starting to fall together better. I spent too long shooting that forty-shot string, but at the end, I had four rounds left over in the box, so I went back to the sighter target and shot those with a deliberately quick rhythm and knocked them all into a tight little group in the centre of the ten. Clearly, things are looking good. The mini-match itself included an 8, due to just really poor concentration and shot judgement.

The most noteworthy aspects of it, in a critical sense, were poor concentration over a long session and inconsistent trigger control. Sight picture was very good, hold was very good, position needs some consistency work, but is solid. Concentration was the major issue, and trigger control will be a product of regular shooting.

The strings were 96, 99, 96, 97, with the second 96 featuring the dodgy eight and a nine that was also poor shot judgement. The first 96 felt better, but featured some errors as I was still settling back into a shooting rhythm. The 99 was very tight, with the only nine just edging out, and the groups nicely formed. the 97 was a product of fatigue, with at least one and possibly a second shot the product of a loss of concentration.

I can however definitely see forty shot scores creeping up further towards 395/400 in the next few months, as I was very pleased with today's session. The comfort of my revised position is paying dividends as I can shoot under time pressure without my focus being unduly affected by discomfort. This will be of great benefit towards the end of matches, and will doubtless save me what might otherwise be lost points and places.

My current short-term focus is the Isle of Man at Easter, with the target being 585 under relatively easy conditions, or 580 under trying conditions. I'm currently on course for this with regular training opportunities. The longer term focus is of course the World University Shooting Championships in Wroclaw next September. This will be a far more challenging match and I aim to step up the standards to match, with my score goal being 595 and a 104+ final. That should hopefully secure a win, which is the goal at the end of it. Mike Dunne's expressed interest in shooting it as well, and with the facilities in Munich at his feet, I'll need to work hard to keep up. Could be a good team effort though.

General Update for Week 14-18/12/09

2009-12-20T17:55:00.000-08:00

Have not gotten around to blogging individual training sessions recently. As such, this is a general purposes update to keep useful information logged.

I recently attempted to change the buttons on my jacket, since it has now broken in and shifted about slightly. After some time and quite a bit of help, I achieved more form-fitting jacket arrangement. This, however, was not beneficial, and particularly for prone, was considerably less comfortable. A crease down the left of my jacket in the standing position is completely removed in the prone position when the trigger hand comes around. I reverted to the original button placements and my shooting returned to its previous state. The jacket will remain in its current settings until I find that there's a serious issue or until new information presents itself.

Onto training itself, it's followed a rather predictable pattern lately. The standard of shooting has been very good, shooting at a single aiming mark. In most cases, eight or nine shots of a ten-shot group will fall in the ten ring, though there have been cases where as many as four fell out. Actually shooting cards for postal competitions has been less good. I can't seem to shoot more than 97/100. Can't seem to shoot less, mind. Last four or five cards at least I've shot have all been 97s. One might be a 96, but I'm fairly confident. Results on a single aiming mark would indicate that competition results on electronics or Gehmann boxes will be more successful. I can only hope that this proves to be the case.

I've been working on my new position and setup. I haven't had to tweak anything, but it's a good position. It's simple, relatively straight, high enough not to be risky, solid and comfortable, but with no delicate points which require the sensitivity of touch and control that my previous, very low one did. It's also, as I've said before, removed a lot of the issues I had with cant. The biggest thing I've found lately is a new method of placing the trigger hand elbow. This arose from discovering the significance of keeping my wrist straight into the pistol grip. The trick is to grip the pistol grip, straighten the arm to the elbow, and let it fall straight down with no extension outwards from the side of my body apart from that generated by the height of my position. This has been very effective and has resulted in marginal nines falling into the ten ring, generally well into it. Most of my tens are good, deep centre tens. I would estimate that over two thirds of my shots are centre tens, probably nearing three quarters. In addition, the nines are almost always very close; I would say 9.7 or better. This is indicative of an overall improvement in shooting technique, which is fast progressing.

On to equipment, I've been trying to find the perfect foresight element size for my standard training range in Trinity, and, predictably, it's the one that makes a gap in my collection. (3.9 isn't right. 4.1 isn't quite right either. But there's no 4.0 in the box) so I've borrowed one from the DURC toolbox. This has been of benefit. Previously, my eyes had tired over long series of shooting and lost definition in the sight picture while using s 3.9, while the 4.1 just shows too much light and my groups open up slightly. The 4.0, while a standard metal insert rather than my usual plastic and glass elements, is perfect.

This leads on to my next issue. I need to replace my sights. My rearsight is a not particularly reliable old Anschutz unit, which has been proving deficient in sensitivity since last year. In the Isle of Man last year, I noticed that I couldn't quite click into the centre. 10.6s at seven o'clock turned into 10.5s and 10.6s at one or two o'clock with one click up. I'm planning to buy a Centra rearsight when I have some spare cash. In addition, I'm planning to buy an adjustable foresight, in order to have the facility to combat eye fatigue through long matches and to quickly and easily decide on the appropriate foresight element size for varying light conditions on the day. I've been intending to get a 22mm foresight in order to facilitate future use of an extension tube should I go down that route in the future. I've gotten a different trigger blade from a generous donor which I intend to experiment with. I've yet to try it on my prone rifle, but I've quite liked comparable triggers when shooting air rifle and expect excellent results.

For the next short while, I'm on holidays, so will have more opportunity to train outdoors, and will hopefully be able to post good results from some 50m shooting. I intend to shoot a couple of full matches in the near future, which will give me an indication of my current standard. I've sent the NTSA an Expression of Interest for the World Cup in Belgrade, the World Championships and the University Shooting Championships for the coming year, so I'll be continuing to train four times a week for the rest of the year, barring times when academic work absolutely precludes it. It should be possible for the foreseeable future however, and in the vast majority of cases. My goal of 585 in the Isle of Man Easter Shoot still stands. I'm forsaking my intention to attend the Grand Prix in Plzen due to proximity of exams and financial pressure due to my intention to attend the aforementioned events, scores permitting. 585 in Sinclair would be indicative of the strong likelihood of a better performance at a less difficult range. We remain optimistic for the time being! Hopefully my next few 60-shot training matches will be in the 580s on six-bull cards. If they are, I'm well on track and can definitely hope to do so.

Training - Prone - DURC - 7th November 2009

2009-12-09T06:26:00.000-08:00

Have been experimenting lately with shooting trousers for prone. I've have some good days and some bad days with and without them. Am beginning to conclude that I'm best off with consistency, and for convenience's sake, I'm going to continue without them for the time being, barring further involvement with three positions.

The objective today was a positional rebuild. What I was looking for was
Tightness
More elevation
Less angled from line of fire

Results were that those were achieved. I shortened the buttplate carrier, brought in the handstop slightly. initially, this wasn't quite right, tension was poor, but I pushed the handstop back out slightly and tightened the sling, keeping the carrier short, and it allowed a good, relatively straight on position, with good tension.

A bonus effect was that a good deal of the cant I've been trying to reduce on my setup disappeared. The buttplate carrier is still canted, but the system has been made simpler and this will hopefully transfer to easier control under match conditions, less sensitivity and ultimately, better scores.

Shot some groups with the setup, which were very promising for initial testing. I was also looking for greater comfort in my wrist from the elevated position, and this was definitely a major benefit. I spent forty shots in position between groups and a card, and comfort was massively improved. If I improve my tempo and train for it, a whole match without a break is conceivable now. The card was only a 96, but the tens were dead centre, consistently, and the 9s were just slightly out, due to small variations in vertical cheek pressure. I need to play very delicately with my cheekpiece setting, seems to have changed by a couple of millimetres by raising the position. Might get a training session in later, in which case I'll see how solid I can get it. It's the last thing I need to tighten with the rebuild, and then it'll be a case of learning the subtleties of it and shooting in it a lot.

The new jacket is fully broken in now. As such, the buttons have shifted and are no longer quite perfectly positioned. I'm going to go down to the range tonight and get some help with that. Hopefully will improve things further.

Aims of This

2009-12-09T06:18:00.000-08:00

This is a blog to act as a training diary for my target shooting ambitions. It'll hopefully contain photos and regular, detailed analysis of my training.

To start with, I'm an Irish target shooter, shooting the three Olympic rifle events, along with a few other shooting sports. My primary shooting interest is in 50m Prone Rifle however, and most of my training will be detailing this. I'll also hopefully have some commentary on my forays into 10m air rifle and 50m three positions rifle.

That's all for now. Going to get started with a proper training entry in a few minutes, so will hopefully manage to keep this on track now.