Workouts to avoid?

[abarquerov]

Hey there!

I started out shooting last thursday in the shooting federation of my country (El Salvador). While I was a teenager (I'm 23 now), I occasionally went to the range with my dad to shoot 9mm so I'm still quite a noob.

Anyway, today my arm was quite shaky compared to yesterday and I'm wondering how much of an influence the workout at the gym last night had. Are there specific workouts I should avoid? It was a kettlebell training combined with some hits to a boxing sack. It was ab day.

And, by the way, I was also interested in shooting with rifle. Should I still practice some time with pistol (10m) and then make the transition to rifle, forget about the rifle altogether, do both?

Thanks!

[holmqer]

In general, reasonable workouts one day should not seriously degrade shooting the next day. The key here is "reasonable". If your workout the day before was so intense that a good night sleep was not sufficient to recover, you were probably overdoing it. We all have much different levels of fitness, one guys intense workout is another guys warmup.

There are many factors that could be at play; distraction, illness, lack of adequate sleep, too much caffeine, dehydration or circadian rhythm just to list a few.

They key is to understand your mind and body, and when things start to go badly, assess what the root cause is and fix it.

Shooting is a mix of mental and physical, if your mind is not focused your body can't help you and vice versa.

[m1963]

The US Army Pistol Marksmanship Training Guide is a great resource for information in this area:

http://www.saveourguns.com/Ar_Marks_Un_ ... _Guide.pdf

[TenMetrePeter]

The US Army Pistol Marksmanship Training Guide is a great resource for information in this area:

http://www.saveourguns.com/Ar_Marks_Un_ ... _Guide.pdf

Thats a good read!

Personally I might add to the list of affecting diet and drug items :
Sugar and
Ventolin (for any asthmatics)
Both cause me to have a shaky hand.

[SteveT]

I find that a workout will affect my pistol shooting for 1-3 days. I can still see the effects on my hold for about 1 day after the muscles stop aching. Arm workouts affects my hold the most, then core and legs affect it the least. I try and schedule my workouts so I don't work on arms right before a shooting session and I'll skip or reduce workouts for a few days before an important match.

I have only a little rifle experience, but many say it is easier for pistol shooters to take up the rifle than the other way. IMO rifle and pistol shooting use the same skills, but emphasize different aspects. Rifle shooting is more dependent on process and equipment. Pistol shooting emphasizes sight alignment and smoothly pull the trigger. Both require smoothly pulling the trigger while the sight picture wobbles around, but the movement is so much greater in a one handed pistol stance that rifle shooters can find it hard to pull the trigger. Pistol shooters adapt to the smaller range of motion easily but many have to learn to be much more precise in the process of building the stance and setting up for the shot. Pistol targets' widely spaced rings are forgiving of small errors. Rifle targets' closely spaced scoring rings and, generally, longer distances are unforgiving of any errors. In pistol shooting sight alignment errors and trigger errors result in huge errors on the target, the difference between a 10 and a 0. All the other errors (stance, grip, wobble area) result in small errors on the target. A pistol shooter can advance and improve and do well at the local and regional level if they have a good trigger pull, even if they have a sloppy process.

I don't think you will hurt yourself as a beginner shooting both. There will probably be some benefit to the cross training. But if you want to be a great shooter at the national and international level you will eventually have to pick one discipline.

[abarquerov]

Thanks for your replies! That document is definitely a great read!

[kameljock]

One of the most overlooked aspects of weight training is recovery time. The older you are the more recovery you need.

Here is a very good article on recovery
http://www.criticalbench.com/strength_t ... covery.htm

Here is an excellent resource for all things relating to training exrx.net

Good Luck

[paw080]

One of the most overlooked aspects of weight training is recovery time. The older you are the more recovery you need.

Here is a very good article on recovery
http://www.criticalbench.com/strength_t ... covery.htm

Here is an excellent resource for all things relating to training exrx.net

Good Luck

Hi Kamel, You are so right about recovery time. This is something that needs to be programed

into all strengthening workouts. It will be a bit different for each person. I learned how important

this is when I started training world class distance runners. The runners from Tanzania, Ethiopia,

Kenya and Zimbabwe plus a sprinkling of American runners; all required a stress period and a recovery

period. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of sick and/or injured athletes. The runners ran track(1500-10,000 M)

and 8K-10k Cross Country events.

Tony

[hundert]

workouts have little influence on shooting, BUT, after shoulders your arm will shake like crazy, but it will go away some hours after the work out (unfortunately I didn't time it how many). I can hit back, chest or legs and go shoot after a few hours break and it has no influence on my score.
The next day doesn't matter even if you're sore.