TargetTalk

I want to start a training plan for all ISSF Pistol disciplines but want to specialize in the Men's Olympic Events.

I need to find where to get information on a proper training plan. Is there a general training plan that helps all shooting events and some detailed training for each event?

I would like to hear from any of you, if you have one and what you do in your training plan for the year.

After an absence from shooting, I have been at the same level with not much improvement after I started again in the late 1990's.

I want to improve before old age gets the best of me and it's now or never.

If any of you have too much information to share as a reply here, you can email it to me directly.

Thank you for any assistance

Claudio, A training plan is a comprehensive document that can be as simple or complex as you need and a LOT of work to develop much like a business plan. I recommend you get a loose leaf binder w/ subject dividers. Like a business plan you need a set of goals, be realistic and make them achievable.

Write out your goal on the first page with a general over all plan on how to achieve it..
Then using a calender (spread sheets are good for this) brake down each day for one Year into hours, then red out when you can’t train because of work, family commitments, vacation, travel times, birthdays, football games, sleep (and don’t skimp on sleep), and matches, in short anything that will keep you from training. The remainder is the amount of time in which you have to train. Realistically you can probably do the first three months in detail, be most of the way there with the second quarter, less so in the third and only an outline of your time in the fourth quarter of the year.

Separate each month into a divided section. The first page of this should be your monthly calendar, use two pages if you need to. Each day of the month will have 3 pages or more pages devoted to it. The first page is a daily calender broken down into hours and to be used for scheduling. The idea here is two fold; one to make you using your training guide and not just look at it, and two to allow you to adjust your training guide for under & over estimations in your time allocations while keeping your focus on training. The second page is your daily training log that includes how well you slept what you’re attempting to accomplish in training etc. The third page is a general comment page, a sheet of lined paper for you to write down your thoughts and inspirations, or adjustments to your equipment like sight changes, grip mods., etc..

Good luck in your efforts,
troop

Hi Claudio.

The NCCP coaching theory programs offer info on developing periodised annual training plans. If you can get a copy of the manual, that would be a great start. You may also want to look into "Periodization Training for Sports" by Tudor Bompa. It is an excellent indepth look at developing training plans for athletes.

As well, take a look at the Documents Library at TargetShooting.ca, which has a couple of entries on plans:

- Blank Annual Training Plan Chart: Chart for developing Annual Training Plan
- Training Plans (Verbal Notes): Article By Tom Redhead, National Small-bore Rifle Association's (UK) National Pistol Coach.


Looking at the year ahead of you, you may want to consider dividing your year and setting goals as follows:

a) Pre-season – Build foundation of skills and abilities

General Pre-season – provides groundwork through a high volume of training at lower levels of intensity. Physical training is the main focus.

Specific Pre-season – transition to competition by blending various types of training. Physical training maintains its high volume, but the exercises become more specific.


b) In-season – Stabilize performance

Pre-competitive In-season – take skills and abilities developed and incorporate them into performance. The focus to obtain in this phase is to fine tune the skills and determine where the athlete truly stands (performance-wise.) Inconsistent performance is natural in this phase as the athlete must constantly adapt to rationalize training with performance.

Competitive In-season – Results is the focus of this phase. The athlete pursues maximum performance. There is a high intensity of training coupled with the high stress of competition. Consequently, training volumes decrease. You must incorporate active rest to aid in recovery.


c) Post-Season - Recuperation
Use general physical activity to maintain levels of fitness. Rehabilitate any injuries. Athletes may participate in similar sports, but they must avoid specialization in them. Remember to keep training intensity and volume low, as this is the athletes’ recovery phase.


I have more detailed info if you're interested. Drop me a note and I'll see what I can send your way.

Patrick
haynes@targetshooting.ca

Claudio --
Patrick's web site is loaded with information -- as is Pilkington's. From a philosophy perspective I like what Don Nygord has to say. The below is cut/pasted from his notes section -- more information there as well. Cheers. Dick Poore
====================

"Training Plans

How do you set up a training plan? What is training, anyway?
Training is a learning process both for your mind and your body (anyone out there think you can seperate them?). Learning theory is pretty well established and basically says that short sessions and lots of them is the most efficient way to learn anything. The U.S. Shooting Team shotgun coach, Lloyd Woodhouse, has the most rational plans that I have heard. He defines "training" as that time spent perfecting each element of the technique (sometimes called "the fundementals"), this should consume about 80% of your learning time. "Practice" should take about 15% of your learning time and is defined as simulating match conditions as closely as possible, but being able to stop in the middle of or at the end of a series of shots, making an adjustment to come closer to the perfect technique, and then repeating the series or continuing as needed. You'll notice that there is 5% left - and that is the time spent at actual matches.

Three sessions a week for about 3-4 hours per session is a pretty heavy learning load, but it is about what is required on the range for those seeking to become elite shooters. Alternate days should be spent in physical or mental "training" to maintain good physical condition or increase strength, and/or to work on visualization techniques.

One important aspect not commonly recognized is to schedule uninterupted time and concentrate on a single element. New studies show that if you try to learn more than one thing in a day, your learning efficiency goes down! It seems that it takes the mind/body combo some significant time to integrate what it is trying to learn. So, when you "train", pick one element of the technique, focus on it, work to perform it perfectly and don't try to do anything else in that session. Then take a break, for heaven's sake!

Don"

Thanks for the praise. *s* Since everyone is being so nice, I thought that I would release some new material.

Last October, I had to put an annual training plan together for Avianna Chao (my lovely fiancee) for my NCCP Level 3 Coaching Theory.

To help myself out with this daunting task, I decided to put together a summary of Mental, Physical and Technical Training Goals, based on the various phases of the year.

The purpose of the document was not to tell the athlete what they should be doing during each microcycle or training session, but to offer some general guidance on what they should be doing in that phase. Essentially, this was the generalised document which I used to guide the plan development elsewhere.

While created for a pistol shooter, the overview can be applied to any shooting athlete.

You can download my Annual Training Plan Overview from the Document Library Section at TargetShooting Canada.

Good shooting.
Patrick Haynes
Targetshooting Canada

I think I know what the training plan should consist of but now it is the details that need to be worked on.

In my humble opinion, I think there are two kinds of Training Plans, one that is designed and sent in for advancement as coach and another more basic or detailed plan for the Athlete.

What I really need to know now is the details of what type of physical exercise, what type of mental training and what kind of technical exercises, special targets and training aids etc. I need to find out the general training exercises and basics and specific training to each ISSF discipline. This might be big task for anyone to do on their own for the first time.

I have gone through targetshooting.ca site and I didn't realize how much more was added since the last time I checked the training sections. I have found a lot of useful information to start my detailed training plan and I need a different one for my daughters. I don't think it is gong to be easy to create one. I have gone to a few other sites, Pilkguns archives, bullseye Pistol and Nygord Precision.

I was hoping to find a detailed starter-training plan that might be out there. Any other ideas or is it up to your coach if you have one or up to the Athlete if they don't?

Thanks for your help

I now have a better understanding of a Yearly Training Plan. I am aware that each athlete is different and requires their own plan according to their needs and development.

To was trying to get information on how to start a general training plan, one that is basic, minimum requirements and that every athlete can do. If an Athlete has never done any specific training or any training plan, except to practice shooting, a basic plan to start must be developed. I believe that practice should be done to confirm what you have done, learned and accomplished in training.

I was hoping to find a basic or starter shooting sports training plan that was already developed and can be accomplished by all Athletes. I also wanted to find some basic training aids for all the pistol disciplines (wall shooting, raises, dry fire etc.). I have enough information now to start to develop this basic training plan. I could use more training aids or discipline specific information.

I do not want to wait and let another year go by. It is better to start training than not training and it is better to do some basic training than no training at all.

Is there anything out there that will answer my basic training plan or training aids, any literature or web sites to find more information on this?

Thanks
Claudio

Claudio -

I also have wanted the same thing that you are looking for . There is a lot of excellent information on all of the sites that were mentioned above, the most comprehensive being TargetShootingCanada, but there really is no comprehensive plan for the new to intermediate shooter to work with. It has always been popular to recommend that shooters seek out a coach, but real, experienced coaches are not plentiful and are mostly available only to the elite class working towards national team status. I think what we want to see is something put together by a well respected coach saying,”This is what I would do for the first year if I was to coach a brand new shooter”, and “This is what I would do for the second year for such a shooter”, and then maybe “This is what I would do for someone who has been shooting and has some bad habits” Not that we want to ape the plans in their entirety, but using them as the skeleton to build a tailored program.

I have often wondered just how the really good shooters train. It would be instructive to be able to read the shooting diaries of some of our better athletes. Also, No one has really done a good job of covering the use of video in training for those of us that have a camera, but not a cameraman. Computer trainers are in a similar state. My survey of trainer users shows that very few shooters that have them use them on a regular and frequent basis. Either they aren't worth the money, or we really don't understand how to get the most from them.

I thought that the new and improved USAS publication might give us more of training information. Some of the National Federation Web sites take a stab at providing coaching information, but nothing like we want, of recent vintage at least, seems to be available. It would be of tremendous value to the sport to have a modern basic training manual.

Larry

perhaps that would be a good subject for coverage & discussion in the new magazine that Try&Bom are publishing.

What I found out so far on Training Plans is that you need to develop one for yourself if you don’t have access to a level 3 coach or better. The closest to a complete training plan that I could find so far for Adults is the USAMU Training Manual.

It appears to be a very long task to develop a training plan for every shooter and most coaches will reserve that kind of dedication to the top Juniors, master level athletes, National Team, World athletes and Olympians. If you need a training plan and find a coach you could get a Training Plan as well. There is a lot of free advice out there, even from Coaches. A well-developed Training Plan from a qualified Coach will certainly come with a fee. Once a coach has done a few training plans, then I am sure that only a little fine tuning for each athlete is needed and the cost might be reasonable. It all depends how serious you are and what you willing to do to achieve your goals.

I am not a high level athlete yet and I don’t have access to a high level coach or even afford one. I have decided to do my own Training Plan. I will share what I have found out. Patrick Haynes has some very good suggestions, a good training plan outline and some very good training materials on his site (www.targetshooting.ca ). Another very good site that I got information from was www.bullseyepistol.com Don Nygord’s site (www.nygordprecision.com) and also www.Pilkguns.com Another very good source of Coaching and training information can be found at International Shooting Sports and it is run by Don Williams. Don has many good books and videos to help out many shooters. There are a few good books out there that are good for coaching and training an athlete.

In the Internet search engine (I use Google), I typed in pistol training plan or pistol shooting etc. and found thousands of sites that took days to go through (no I didn’t visit them all just the ones I though were relevant). I did find some good information but most of it was repeat or reference to other sites and materials I had already seen.

I now have a folder full of coaching and training information. I now have to put that information into sub folders under General training, physical training and mental training. Then I have to go through it and get rid of repeat information or summarize it and modify it into point form. Then I am ready to develop my Training Plan.

The only thing that needs extra care is a training plan for junior shooters. The physical and some mental training is going to be very different for different ages. Juniors of different ages develop at different levels of physical and mental ability. We need to search out books on junior development in order to develop a training plan for them with the materials that we have already found for pistol shooting.

It’s a good thing that I am taking a short break from shooting because this is going to take a few more days to do. I hope I will finish it and not stop as I did a few years ago. Maybe then it was too much for me to handle but now I have plenty of material and I am ready.

I hope this helps a little for those of you who are thinking of a training plan. I am almost a level 2 coach and one day (time permitting) I will be at least a level 3 coach. I have coached juniors and some adult athletes and my training plan is very basic.
One thing I know for sure, even a very basic training plan is better than none at all.