TargetTalk

I got back from a trip to Taiwan. Taiwan had some success in women's pistol ISSF World Cup series lately. I just want to see how they are training.

I went to one of the training "facility". It is housed in a classroom of an elementary school. The coach was able to use the elementary school room because he was able to convince the principal that shooting takes discipline and dedication. Children who can go through this rigorous training will do well academically. Principal bought in on the coach' s idea, allowed him to train children after hours. He seems to have good success so far.

The training I saw stressed much "off" shooting training. A lot of holding training with lighter model pistols for those kids.

One of the most interesting training is to have kids holding model pistol, looking at the front sight, and standing on one foot. Kids really have fun doing this exercise. They compete with each other to see who can hold pistol in natural point of aim on one foot. Competing on right leg and left leg standing.

Those kids can stand like a rock on one front foot. I try that. On my first try I was surprise how wiggly I am, considering I am a regular 550 shooter.

The coach stress this exercise because he believe stability has to come from ground up. One leg with arm raise train your ankle / calf gross and fine motor strength and balance. He said in his days of shooting, 1980's, they could wear ankle laced shooting boots. Those ankle laced boots are out lawed now. This makes ankle/ calf training that much more important. He said many coaches have neglected this part of training.

Well, kids definitely have fun doing this one leg training. They look rock solid.

Just want to pass on this tibit on shooting training to everyone.

Be water, be rock, my friends.

Sounds like fun. I used to do similar training, but have gotten away from it. I'm going to do it again. Thanks!

Never done the single leg but have used wobble boards. Will have to give this a try.

Kids naturally have much better balance that adults. The older you get, the more your balance deteriorates, and the more you need to train to maintain it.
But, if great balance were the key to great pistol shooting, all the great shooters would be under 25 years of age, and coming off careers as gymnasts or ballet dancers.
A better use of your time, would probably be to find a two footed stance, that for you, minimizes movement and body sway, for the amount of time it takes to complete your shot process.

Ankle exercises arent neglected really.
The ankles are trained automatically with balance exercises.
For example, those wobble plates, standing on a cushion with yr rifle, etc, etc.