Key technical components for air pistol shooting performance

[emre-nur]

Some interesting excerpts from the paper
Key technical components for air pistol shooting performance
by Erik Olsson and Marko S. Laaksonen
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epub/10 ... ccess=true

"...When it comes to cleanness of triggering and timing of triggering, studies on air rifle, running target and air pistol shooting report differing results. In air rifle (Ihalainen et al., 2016a, 2018) and running target (Mononen et al., 2003) the cleanness of triggering seems to be an important technical component, but studies made on air pistol have failed to show the same result (Hawkins, 2011; Hawkins & Bertrand, 2015). This difference between the shooting disciplines is illogical. There are two major arguments for that the cleanness of triggering is at least as important for air pistol shooting as it is for running target and air rifle shooting. The first argument is the number of contact points between the shooter and the gun. With a rifle the shooter has four contact points with the gun: one hand on the pistol grip, one hand on the front stock, but pad against the shoulder and the cheek against the cheekpiece. In pistol shooting the shooter has only one contact point; one hand on the grip (ISSF, 2017). With fewer contact points in air pistol, it is more difficult to minimise the barrel movements from the triggering action compared to rifle disciplines. Greater barrel movements during the triggering could therefore lead to more variance in shooting performance (Ihalainen et al., 2016a; Mason et al., 1990; Mononen et al., 2003). The second argument is the trigger pull weight. In air rifle shooting the trigger pull weight is often as low as 50–100 g while in air pistol it must be at least 500 g regulated by the rules (ISSF, 2017)"

[BobGee]

Interesting that the analyses put sighting ahead of triggering (followed by stability of hold). The age old chicken or egg discussion.

Thanks for posting. Nice to see that it is open source.

Bob

[dontshootcritters]

I've just clicked onto the web page and there's a tonne of info there to read and digest.
Thank you for sharing.

[KDZ]

Results not surprising: "stability of hold, aiming accuracy, cleanness of triggering and timing of triggering, the two last one not reported earlier in air pistol shooting, were significantly correlated with shooting score. Two stepwise multiple regression analyses identified aiming accuracy as the most important component followed by timing of triggering and stability of hold, explaining together 75–78% of the variance in shooting score."

[Oldnslow]

This seems consistent with the repeated advice here to (as I think of it) live with the wobble:

"The COG HIT measure [the mean location of the aiming point during the last second] is what the shot score would have been if it were placed at the average aiming point and is independent of the stability of hold. If the barrel movements are evenly distributed around the target centre, the barrel movements can be far larger than the 10-ring and the COG HIT could still be inside the 10-ring. This means that the most important technical component is to keep the centrum of the barrel movements as close to the target centre as possible, independent of the ability to keep the pistol stable.

[nmondal]

This seems consistent with the repeated advice here to (as I think of it) live with the wobble:
This means that the most important technical component is to keep the centrum of the barrel movements as close to the target centre as possible, independent of the ability to keep the pistol stable.

I can vouch for it - happening again and again.