TargetTalk

Hi everyone,

I'm currently coaching a high school rifle team in Sydney, Australia. I'm myself an ex-student, and I've help to run the program on Saturdays with about 10 other guys. We've got about 55 students, of which about 35 are shooting prone at the moment. Our program used to focus heavily on fullbore (300-800m) since that's what our school competitions are, however with budget cuts and all, we've been mostly shooting 50m small bore for the past 2 years. As such, most of our gear and knowledge comes from our fullbore program.

For the past year or so, we've been seeing scores improve dramatically (my own included), where around 15 out of the 35 prone shooters are capable of posting scores higher than 550/600. The highest student scores are around 560, and another coach and myself consistently post around 575-580. We've got 17 rifles (a combination of Anschutz 1903, 1907, 1403, Walther Match), and we use CCI standard velocity (obviously not the best, but the most affordable). When we use Eley Team or Tenex in competition, scores tend to increase by 3-5 points. We're currently in the process of ballistic testing and chronographing different types of ammo in all 17 rifles to see which rifles prefer what ammo, however from what we've seen so far, all of our rifles easily hold a 9 ring group with CCI, and a 10 ring group with anything better.

In the past 6 months, we've seen the rate of improvement slow dramatically, and it seems that most of the students now post the same scores week in, week out. Is it possible we've hit some sort of invisible barrier as a result of our equipment or our coaching knowledge? If so, what options do we have to overcome it?

Thanks!

1) Well, if you were in the US, I'd ask if you have any coach certs ... i.e our level-1 thru level-3. Sometimes by attending those schools you can pick up on items you are missing to look at in your shooters.

2) I'd next ask if you have and have studied the books "Ways of the Rifle" and "Air Rifle Shooting". Good technical books that you should also encourage your shooters to read. (The serious ones will) These are easy to find in the competitive shooting shops.
If you cannot get your shooters to read the above, then Launi Meili's "Rifle - Steps to Success" is shorter ... not as much of a "coaching" book, but more directed at the athlete.

I personally think that Ranier Martens "Successful Coaching" is a must for any coach that is working with youth ... Gets into your mindset as a coach... I had spent many years as a high school coach (swimming) and this book would have helped me immensely at that time in my life.

To get into the mindset of the athlete, USOC had a set of "Sport Psychology" short books ... one for the athlete and a coach guide (Don't know if they still publish those ... a set was given to me by our previous National Coach Dave Johnson and is a good guide to getting the mental aspect of the athlete to focus in a correct(??) direction.

At the scores you are quoting (550+) the mental aspect of being able to focus completely on the shot is becoming critical. They pretty much know how to shoot tens ... just need to do it consistently.

3) I personally think that the CCI is good for pistol, but not consistent for rifle. The SK STD+ is really a minimum for me to hand to our shooters now. We have found specific lots of this that shoot darn near as well as matched Midas+ and Eley EPS Tenex. At the level you are talking about the shooter needs to be able to very accurately call their shot and a lower quality ammo just messed with that confidence that should be building.

We recently ran out of our practice ammo (STD+) and I got some Eley Sport (Purple box). This was fine for my beginning/intermediate shooters, but after that first practice with it, my top shooter went away fairly irritated telling me that she'd just dry fire if that was all I had to give her ... all the shot calls were off and she could not even fire above a 94 in prone. Really messed with her head. Got some good STD+ and the next weekend she fired a 587.

Much ramble, hope some of it helps

Hi jhmartin,

With regards to 1), I'm in Australia where it'd be a dream to have courses like those offered by the NRA. I do plan to return to the States some time next year, I will look at perhaps attending a course while I'm there.

2) I do indeed have Ways of the Rifle, and I have studied it in quite some detail. I've found that while it is a good reference, some of the concepts explained throughout are higher-level ones which can be hard to grasp for some of our youngest shooters, which is frustrating since they're often the ones who show the most undeveloped potential. The school shooting program is, almost without exception, the first introduction to firearms and shooting for these kids, and given how restrictive Australia is on firearm ownership and use, it's often hard to garner the support they need.

Do you know of any other books that would be perhaps more suitable for our younger guys and girls who are around 12 years old? I understand that the book is no substitute for proper coaching and tuition, but it would be nice to have the fundamentals nicely laid out and easy to understand and study. (I guess younger is relative since we get them started late compared to in the US.)

I haven't yet got a copy of Successful Coaching, but I notice it's on the Amazon store, so I shall download it to my Kindle and start reading it. We've actually got a few sport psychology books written by the Australian Institute of Sport which I can get my hands on. I'd imagine that the concepts would be quite similar.

3) I'm inclined to agree with your opinion of CCI ammo. I personally shoot Tenex, but that's because I fund it myself. The school provides us with CCI standard because we get it cheap (probably not cheap by your standards though!). Our more senior shooters are beginning to practice with Eley Team since according to my testing of our rifles, that's what seems to be the most consistent performer. That's about the best we can do though, unfortunately. I would be interested to see if some form of methodical testing could perhaps prove that the ammo/rifle combination is indeed becoming a bottleneck.

jhmartin wrote:1) Well, if you were in the US, I'd ask if you have any coach certs ... i.e our level-1 thru level-3. Sometimes by attending those schools you can pick up on items you are missing to look at in your shooters.

2) I'd next ask if you have and have studied the books "Ways of the Rifle" and "Air Rifle Shooting". Good technical books that you should also encourage your shooters to read. (The serious ones will) These are easy to find in the competitive shooting shops.
If you cannot get your shooters to read the above, then Launi Meili's "Rifle - Steps to Success" is shorter ... not as much of a "coaching" book, but more directed at the athlete.

I personally think that Ranier Martens "Successful Coaching" is a must for any coach that is working with youth ... Gets into your mindset as a coach... I had spent many years as a high school coach (swimming) and this book would have helped me immensely at that time in my life.

To get into the mindset of the athlete, USOC had a set of "Sport Psychology" short books ... one for the athlete and a coach guide (Don't know if they still publish those ... a set was given to me by our previous National Coach Dave Johnson and is a good guide to getting the mental aspect of the athlete to focus in a correct(??) direction.

At the scores you are quoting (550+) the mental aspect of being able to focus completely on the shot is becoming critical. They pretty much know how to shoot tens ... just need to do it consistently.

3) I personally think that the CCI is good for pistol, but not consistent for rifle. The SK STD+ is really a minimum for me to hand to our shooters now. We have found specific lots of this that shoot darn near as well as matched Midas+ and Eley EPS Tenex. At the level you are talking about the shooter needs to be able to very accurately call their shot and a lower quality ammo just messed with that confidence that should be building.

We recently ran out of our practice ammo (STD+) and I got some Eley Sport (Purple box). This was fine for my beginning/intermediate shooters, but after that first practice with it, my top shooter went away fairly irritated telling me that she'd just dry fire if that was all I had to give her ... all the shot calls were off and she could not even fire above a 94 in prone. Really messed with her head. Got some good STD+ and the next weekend she fired a 587.

Much ramble, hope some of it helps

As noted Launi's book is good for younger shooters and covers a whole range of aspects of the discipline.

In the US, our 4-H program uses the NRA book "Basics of Rifle Shooting" (NRA #EF 13180 - Green Cover) which "Covers gun safety, ammunition, parts and operation, cleaning, storing, and marksmanship fundamentals for rifles".
It's OK for the first month or so but does not cover any competitive aspects.

The book I like(d?) is the red cover "NRA Junior Rifle Shooting" (EM 09450)... a bit dated but covered all the positions. It appears that the NRA does not publish this anymore (????), if you can find a few of these they are written at a younger age level. (There are actually some of them "used" on Amazon)

I'd rate the Eley Team a step up from STD+, so that's good.
RE: proving a bottleneck - get a "workmate" type bench to clamp the rifle in and load it up with some weight and even at 50 ft you should be able to clearly see the difference in the ammo.
You can build a "palmrest" device to slide on the rail and clamp securely in the bench. And example of a "bedazzled" one - http://vc4hss.com/22_Rifle/2013_images/ ... o_USAS.jpg

No shooting program any more. Kids should get away from the shooting programs because we've heard so many shooting incidents these days. I'm afraid if the kids interested in guns, the shooting incidents will happen again. Moreover, Government should pay more attention the school security and measures needed to be taken. Maybe install metal detectors at the entrance and have security guards.

DarbyGloss wrote:No shooting program any more. Kids should get away from the shooting programs because we've heard so many shooting incidents these days. I'm afraid if the kids interested in guns, the shooting incidents will happen again. Moreover, Government should pay more attention the school security and measures needed to be taken. Maybe install metal detectors at the entrance and have security guards.

Guns aren't the problem. I was just checking out the statistics for school expulsion in Milwaukee and none of the expulsions were for guns. I mean this is MPS, arguably the worst district in the entire state for sure the most crime infested city in the state and not a single student had a gun with them in the past 4 years? Think about it.

bpscCheney:

DarbyGloss = troll

One thing that has always been helpful is to solicit the help from other coaches. Seeing the same children all the time and the same positions you tend to overlook many obvious things. Have some practice sessions at other clubs with good shooters and little things that make a big difference are invariably learned.