TargetTalk

I'm currently training my air cadets for an upcoming summer biathlon competition and while they can run fast enough, they're really slow shooters.

I've been Googling my eyes out trying to find shooting drills to help them improve both their speed and confidence but I'm not having much luck. Can anyone help me out?

The event is a run and shoot event: 1 km loop, 5 shots prone at 10 m, another 1 km loop, another 5 shots prone at 10 m and a final 1 km loop. We're restricted to issue Daisy 853C air rifles and slings (no gloves).

They're all competent enough to hit the targets, they're just painfully slow. This is my first time coaching biathlon -- I'm a smallbore ISSF prone shooter -- so I'm not really sure how to proceed and I only have two more weeks and three practices left before the competition!

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Jason

Jason,

How slow are they on the mat, did you time them?

Jason,

My son in Cadets (Army...Yea) and coaches the Corps Biathlon Team. He competes in Civi biathlon as well, last year he won the civilian Provincials and competed at Nations in Valcartier(civilian biathlon). He is a pretty competent biathlete, last year he took his gold level biathlon coaching course threw Biathlon Canada to coach in the Biathlon Bears program and ion the Canada Games development Team for both Biathlon and 10m air rifle marksmanship.

Just talking to him about the time his Cadets are taking on the mat...they are shooting under load all 5 shots with the daisy air rifles around the 50 to 54 seconds. He tells me you won't get it down much less then that. His best time was 46 seconds.

What are your cadets doing it in?

Cheers

My best shooter is averaging around 90 seconds for five shots, which is consistent/competitive with other cadets in our zone, but the others are taking five or more minutes.

One of the other unit coaches suggested a "Charlie in the middle" drill where two shooters start at opposite ends of the falling target and compete to see who gets "Charlie" in the middle. And then there's the traditional One Shot drill where they get up and down in between.

I'm going to work shooting drills with them on Saturday and see whether their times improve. I'm running out of time as the zone match is November 3rd.

Jason
(former 507 Kentville RCACS cadet)

I've no experience in biathlon at all so these are my uninformed thoughts;

It could just be a lack of confidence. You could try for example getting them to shoot a single shot in say 15 seconds and see what the results are like. You can say that if they go beyond 15 seconds they score zero and you can always count down the last 5 seconds. Once they learn what they can do in a short time, they will develope the self confidence to continue.

We also have some comps in the UK where you have for example 1 minute, in which to shoot as many shots as you can into a scoring mark (hit or miss, the 'target' is about 1/2 the diameter of the black). You may also find that to be a useful drill.

Rob.

Let them build a proper position. Shooters slow down because movement of gun is high; a stable position will result in quicker shooting.

Pick the ten best rifle shooters of tis year; over 80% of them shoot fast because there position is stable. Secondly, if they shoot bad they slow down to increase their stability.

In our team -Olympic rifle- we often shoot on biatlontarget to develop a natural, stable hold without artificial support. Those with the bet developed position shoot faster.

I'm slow in posting an update, but it's been a crazy month.

Our competition went well. It was cold and windy and that threw almost everyone on the team as they weren't used to running in just above freezing weather -- we had a cold snap for a couple of weeks. I warned them about going out too hard but they were excited and took off like rockets. Oh well.

Except for one guy, everyone shot really well. As in better than in training. The key was helping them grow their confidence in getting off accurate shots more quickly. We did lots of one shot drills, getting up and down in position and shooting across the target box, all within a certain time period. We did our own version of "mad minutes" where they had to hit as many targets as possible within a certain time. I would also call out targets at random and they had to adjust their POI within so many seconds and break the shot.

In the end our squadron finished third overall about five minutes back of the team in second and seven minutes behind the winner. They all seemed to train running more than shooting, so that's something I'll have to keep in mind for next year.

But we did succeed in qualifying a junior for the male composite team for the provincials in February. Woohoo! We're waiting for his ski equipment to arrive -- and some snow -- and I'm trying to build a reasonable training plan for him right now. We had a sports day on the weekend and his cardio isn't nearly as good as I thought it would be so he's got some work ahead if he wants to do well.

Thanks to all for your advice.

Jason

Does anyone else find this post a little odd? It's posted in a 2 year old thread and is unrelated. It closely resembles another post which appeared in the last several months also by a first time poster. I don't get it. If it is a troll it worked. I let the first one go but can't give this one a pass. Please correct me if I'm wrong and accept my apology. I don't live in the Truckee area, but I have met Glen Jobe who set up the original program at Northstar and who now runs the biathlon program at ASC.

1)To my knowledge there is no longer a range at Northstar. It was closed down when Vail took over and the range equipment was moved to the Auburn Ski Club Training Center at Boreal Ridge.

2)The only 10th Mt. Division titled biathlon that I'm aware of in the Tahoe area is scheduled for 1/18/2015 at ASC.

3)Unless this was a running or mtn bike biathlon or was run on man made snow, I don't think there is enough natural snow in the Truckee area for a track to be set yet.

CJ

Krenovian wrote:Does anyone else find this post a little odd? It's posted in a 2 year old thread and is unrelated. It closely resembles another post which appeared in the last several months also by a first time poster.

Thanks for the heads-up; it's now been removed and the poster has been deleted.

It was actually a rip-off of a post from January 2011 by an established member