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RIAC 2011 Notes for next time

Events, General, Notes, RIAC 2011, Training No Responses »

Dec 182011

A collection of notes for the next time, taken as I went through the week. If someone else is going next year, this might be useful.

A grab-bag of some sort to carry books/papers/a netbook/water/food to and from the range is a good idea – your kitbag and rifle case stay in the range, your rucksack is too awkward and a suitcase way too big. A small messenger bag or bumbag would work well.
A netbook would be very, very useful. A good smartphone with a lot of storage would be okay too, but a netbook would make blog entries, facebooking (which you *will* wind up doing), skyping home and so on a lot easier.
Bring a sewing kit.
Bring headache pills. You can’t just buy asprin over the counter in the local petrol station shop it turns out. Hit the pharmacy after security in the airport on the way out.
Bring talc and/or foot powder.
Bring a few bandaids.
Check to see if you can get a data roaming plan for your phone that doesn’t include the phrase “first-born child” in the tariff.
You need an MP3 player and large, visible-to-everyone-else, over-the-ear headphones. In-ear earbuds will work for sound reproduction, but nothing says “Leave me alone” like the large visible headphones. Hell, even ear defenders would work…
Hydration. 2 litres of water per day as a bare minimum – the cold and the hotel air suck the moisture out of you. Also, remember to rehydrate aggressively on arrival – the plane’s air is even worse. Also, drink some fruit juice – you sweat more than pure H2O. Hit the local shop and buy large 2L bottles of water on the first evening.
Nutrition. You’re burning more calories than you think. Swipe fruit from the breakfast buffet, eat lots of carbs in the evening meal. The hotel’s breakfasts, alas, don’t really do hot food well.
Bring a pen, sideshow bob…
A small pair of binoculars or better yet, a small monocular would be useful for the observation deck.
The targets used by RIAC (and Intershoot) don’t show a timer in the screen and you can’t always see the range clock. Bring a watch to the firing point!
Hide your TV’s remote control. There aren’t any english channels and you need the sleep, but the eurosport coverage of biathlon season will be hypnotic…
If you forget to book lunch on the range the day before, ask on the day anyway; they usually keep a few extra servings just in case.
There’s not much in walking range of the official airport hotel (neither the IBIS nor the ETAP hotel, which are side-by-side and interconnected and seem to share a kitchen for breakfast and dinner); a large team ought to hire a car if possible. There are a few places though, enough to get by on. But you’ll end up eating hotel dinners for a few days…
…but the hotel actually does a decent hamburger. You just won’t get enough calories from the main meal to replenish what you burnt off during the day, especially if it’s cold.

Procedure, procedure, procedure…

Training No Responses »

Oct 142011

Training at the moment is all revolving about this – doing the shot routine, every time, for every shot, in a mindful way. It’s mentally rather exhausting, but the results are getting better…

…and then I ran out of pellets. D’oh! It was on course for a mid-570s score at that stage. Not horrible…

Checking on progress with the RIKA

Training, WTSC No Responses »

Aug 182011

So tonight became a session with the RIKA to check to see (objectively) how the hold has improved, with some nice results.

Started off a bit late as work ran on, got into the kit, hooked up the RIKA and started dry-firing to get settled, then some warm-up shots to cernter myself, then fired some calibration shots for the RIKA:

Then we covered the screen of the RIKA (so I wouldn’t be distracted) and shot a few ten-shot strings:

My head was *not* in the game for that one Took a few minutes, centered myself a little, and continued on:

And of course the RIKA didn’t capture that string properly (for some reason the software only recorded seven of the ten shots). So back to the line and put in another ten:

Not as good as the second string, but it did turn out to be instructive – you can clearly tell on the RIKA trace that that 7 is from the trigger, not the hold:

You can also see from comparing with earlier RIKA traces that the hold has gotten much, much better. For example, this was last night:

Okay, it’s a bit easier to see with just the trace from a single shot. So here’s a single average shot from last night:

And here’s one from three months ago:

The amplitude of the vertical wobble is about the same, but the left-right wobble is much less and so is the drift (the longer-term wobble caused by sway and other large position problems) – and that earlier graph was the best I could find from that session, but the one from last night was average – there were better ones than that last night:

I mean, that’s nearly textbook, right there. Now, to get that to happen every time….

MQS 2 – this time it’s not a fluke

General, Training No Responses »

Aug 172011

Back to training after the UCD August Open, and started with Matt and I having a talk about what went wrong in the Open. With the few days rest between the Open and tonight, there was a bit of perspective and we both came to the conclusion that while there are still small technical things to work on (like my trigger finger alignment), the main problem is a complete lack of proper mental preperation for the match.

Thing is, y’see, we’ve never really worked on mental prep before. Logistical planning for matches, yes; technical training, intensively yes; physical training yes; but mental training is the next thing for us to learn how to train in. When I started shooting air back in ’98, we didn’t know how to train people to shoot properly. Safely, yes – we weren’t exactly lax in the safety department at any time – but we just didn’t know how to train people. We’d show them the rifle, show them how to safely shoot, and then just let them repeat that until they got good or went home. We practiced, we didn’t train, and there is a very significant difference. Some individual shooters would go off and get coaching from outside the country, but that rarely works, if ever. At the time, we had a contract with a coach who’d come over to train the national squad once every 4-6 weeks, and he went blue in the face saying this over and again – you can’t train properly through this “masterclass” approach. You need to have your coach there on a far more regular basis, to see you progress, to see the failures, to see you under pressure and relaxed, and to figure out what route is the fastest from where you are to where you want to go.

Dirty little secret in target shooting – while good kit is important, you gain more points per euro spent if you spend the euro on good coaching than on any other possible outlay.

Which is why people drive hundreds of kilometres to get to WTSC – it’s not the range, it’s Matt and Geoff’s coaching.

However, we’ve spent the last decade going from not knowing how to train to knowing how to train physically and technically and how to do logistics; how to train mentally has always been the next step to take, but until now, we’ve never really been ready to take it. Now, we are, and now we’re taking that step. That’s going to be the next phase of training for me and Paul and Ashling and all the other WTSC shooters.

Though we will be fixing my trigger finger alignment too

Anyway, after that rather productive chat, I kitted out and we just started shooting. Nothing specific, just shoot so Matt could watch the trigger finger again. Almost immediately, I could tell the difference between Sunday and tonight – my hips weren’t moving as much when they came forward at the start of the shot routine, and I noticed that that DURC dance (face the wall, hips square to the wall, then swing your hips from left to right repeatedly. It ain’t catchy, but every DURC airgun shooter seems to do it…) wasn’t happening because I was naturally moving my hip right slightly to load and then left properly to mount the rifle. In UCD, I’d had trouble with that – perhaps my stand wasn’t as well placed as I’d thought.

Some dry-firing to start, and after 20 mins or so, ten shots to check the sights:

Sighters

Matt didn’t say anything, so I just kept on shooting, but I kicked it over into the first string because I’d moved the sights and wanted a clean target.

String 1

String 2

Matt still hadn’t said anything by this stage and I just figured what the hell, I’d shoot a match. Wasn’t planned or anything, and it didn’t feel like my position was as rock-solid as I’d like, but I wanted a baseline after Sunday’s mess.

String 3

String 4

At this point I had to take a short break for five minutes – my right knee was in a fair amount of pain (I couldn’t bend it) and my feet were going numb. Unfortunately, this was the point where I noticed the score, and between that and the physical fun, things just went downhill fast…

String 5

And at this point, I’m thinking “Feck. Just shoot another 95/96 here and I’m looking at a new PB in the mid-70s” which is of course, the stupidest thing in the world to be thinking. It wasn’t helping that my knee was now telling me that it was formally considering seceding from the rest of me and filing for independent recognition with the UN on the grounds of inhumane treatment (I hyperextended that joint rather badly a few years back and it’s never really forgotten or forgiven me for that). The next nine shots got progressively harder and more disappointing, and the tenth was pretty much everything I had to give…

String 6

So there we go. Another MQS, under rather imperfect circumstances physically. Kindof proves Matt’s point – I was far more rested and in far less pain on Sunday, but my head wasn’t relaxed and centered and so my performance was dire; tonight I was in agony at the end, hungry and tired after a long day of work, and I still managed a 70 despite two tail-end strings that were ridiculously bad.

Talking about it with Matt afterwards, we both agree that even with the ridiculously bad suit and shoes I’m using now, there’s a 580 there for the taking. Going over the actual shots and looking at the scores, there’s a good six or seven 9.9/9.8 type shots that just squeaked out, and an 8.9 at the start – that’s not even counting the falling apart shots in the last strings. So there’s a new goal – get that 580 in the current suit. Once I do that, and change up to a proper new suit, well, that should be another few points of a jump

So bring on the mental training!

UCD August Airgun Open 2011

Events, Training, WTSC No Responses »

Aug 142011

First match since the holiday and the rust is showing…

UCD August Airgun Open 2011

My balance was all over the place, and things just refused to settle down. Anxiety levels were high, but it’s that annoying kind of anxiety that you can’t see as anxiety when it’s happening; think of it as just a generally heightened level of mental tension rather than anything specific – like the way you sometimes realise your shoulders are so tense that they’re touching your earlobes, but you didn’t have any one specific muscle in pain?

The sight picture problem from the July Open was completely gone though, thanks to the efforts of the UCD folk who spent the morning installing new lighting, and to moving to a new firing point (the ones in the center have more ambient lighting than the ones at either end because of the difficulty in mounting lights safely downrange). So that was a welcome relief, but it did just highlight the poor hold in the position

End result was that despite good logistical prep, despite decent time management, despite taking a break to talk with Matt and Geoff half-way through, despite lots of dry-firing and settling at the start, things just refused to calm down and settle into place the way they’ve done in training.

UCD August Airgun Open (Relay 1) 2011

Matt says it’ll come, and so does everyone else, and I know they’re right – it’s just that knowing it’ll happen doesn’t make waiting for it any easier

On the upside, Ashling set a brand new PB of 375 (that’s the ladies MQS, which is a nice result after such a short stint of training with Matt), and Paul blew everyone away with a new PB of 589 (up from 577 in less than a month – proof that it does come when you train long enough…) And Emma is coming back to training as well, and will be coming out to WTSC to train with us on Friday nights, so the WTSC gang is getting better and getting bigger again, which is nice to see after a few years of a lull…

Back to training…

Training No Responses »

Aug 102011

Took a fortnight off training over the last two weeks (and time off work for a holiday as well), mainly to catch up on sleep – my training schedule was seeing me leaving WTSC so late that I wasn’t getting home till after midnight on a work day, which isn’t the best thing in the world for your sleep cycle or your health. So after a week of sleeping a *lot* to catch up, and another week of general R&R, it was time to go back to the range.

I was expecting much rust, and there was some – but less than I was worried there might be. The position Matt, Geoff and I have built up over the last while is a fairly solid one both physically and technically, and getting back into it was a short half-hour of stretching and dry-firing. I switched over to live firing at that point, but everything was a bit loose. I hadn’t noticed (though Matt spotted it quickly) that my cheekpiece was now too low by a few mm; easily fixed. The grouping was still a bit loose though.

Matt stopped me shooting at that point, seeing how I wasn’t settling, and we spent a few minutes talking through my mental game and my approach to the shot. I spent a few minutes visualising and working on my mindset (well, not exactly mindset, but English has a desperately inadequate vocabulary for describing mental processes), and once I had found my place again mentally, shot ten shots:

Not a bad result. The 9.7 was a technical error (sight alignment was off but I didn’t spot it at the time), and the 8.7 was my one flier (probably to do with the sight alignment as well, but I’m not sure). The rest were quite solid shots though, so I’m happy enough with that. We’re going to continue working on the mental approach as our main task for the next while; if I can physically shoot like this in a crappy ill-fitting jacket and trousers and old boots, then the problems I’m having in matches aren’t to do with my position, but to do with my mental state.

And possibly my sight alignment on UCD’s range because it’s not really all that well-lit at the targets so you can get an asymmetric sight picture that makes sight alignment a pain in the neck (but I have a technical gadget-based solution to that in mind for later this month…)

MQS

General, Training No Responses »

Jul 142011

It took ten years, and the last push has taken eight months of hard work, both physically (I’ve lost over 30lb), mentally (lots of visualisation exercises, and lots of not listening to my own head), technically (3hrs on the range, 3 days a week, plus matches on the weekends and time training at home) and even financially (buying new kit and the like – and there’s more of that coming). It’s taken hard work and time from Matt and Geoff with coaching, but finally – I hit the MQS score of 570 in men’s air rifle tonight

MQS!

(Excuse the 120-67 totals in strings 4 and 5, didn’t hit the “next series” button on the megalink fast enough)

Groups were pretty okay:

String 1

String 2

String 3

String 4

String 5 (part one)

String 5 (part two)

String 6

Scores histogram’s pretty okay as well:

Scores Histogram

Total	98	95	94	91	96	96	570
	1	2	3	4	5	6	Total
10	8	6	4	2	7	6	33
9	2	3	6	7	2	4	24
8	0	1	0	1	1	0	3

And there’s still room to improve easily enough – that 91 for example, is down to my head being thrown, and there are two 8.9s in there (hell, cleaning the rifle could cause those…).

But to be honest, I’m still too busy celebrating finally hitting the MQS (and setting a new PB, natch) to worry for now

Refocussing

Training No Responses »

Jul 012011

A straightforward enough day’s training, with a few dry-firing shots to warm up and then about 30 shots live. Matt turned away the screen for the last 15-20 shots, showing that I’ve left my focus slip from process to result:

Last six training shots

That last shot was knocked out by a rather untimely pain in the left leg (hooray for nerve damage ). The rest of the group wasn’t too bad; so if I don’t let the focus slip, the results aren’t so bad. So the training focus is pretty obvious

Mind you, Paul’s groups are currently better!

Paul's last ten-shot string

Which way’s up again?

Training No Responses »

Jun 302011

When I started shooting (back in ’94), the sights on the smallbore rifle I started out with(Ah, DURC#8, I remember it well ) looked like this:

Over the next few years, we got more fancy-looking sights, but they all had one thing in common with these, and that was that the sight remained upright relative to the rail on the rifle, so that the elevation knob (marked with T and H above) operated in the vertical plane defined by the rifle stock and the windage knob (L and R) at right angles to this. This makes a lot of sense if your rifle is held vertically (and indeed, many top shooters now have upright rifles when in position, abandoning older principles of shooting to maintain that, such as keeping your head upright). However, if – like me – you cant the rifle (ie, tilt it towards you), your elevation knob is now working at an angle. This was why I paid a bit extra when I first bought my rifles to get the fancy schmancy sights:

The reason was fairly simple – while the 6827 sights above are fixed, these 7020 sights rotate, allowing you to cant the rifle and have your sights upright, like so:

This becomes useful when you have to adjust those sights, for when you’re grouping well, but the center of the group is off to one side of the target. With the sights upright like this, all you have to do is figure out how far left or right you are and how far up or down you are on the target, and adjust the sights directly. But with the fixed sights above, you have to play with angles in your head and try to remember how many clicks up and how many clicks over it takes to move the shot horizontally on the target. Which, in a match, is a pain in the fundament.

Hence the hassle with the MEC Free rearsight. It’s a lovely bit of kit, but it doesn’t cant

So when the rifle is in position, the rearsight is canted, and that means it’s back to guesswork again. And to add insult to injury, it has two windage knobs – one on either side as you can see – which is lovely and symmetrical, but can lead to confusion when you adjust the wrong one in the heat of a match and move the shots in the wrong direction (because, being on a common axle, they of course have different senses when seen from different sides – you’ll note the earlier sights avoid this by having only one windage knob). And the elevation knob , being under the sight instead of on top of it, also confuses your mental model of how the sight adjusts.

It’s not exactly rocket science, it’s more along the lines of “No, your other left…”, but who needs that in a match? Especially when it costs points and time and mental calm to get it wrong?

Hence a bit of experimentation this evening to make sure I had the sense of how the adjustments work correct in my head:

That’s two shots, then 30 clicks left and one shot, 30 up + 30 left and one shot, 30 up + 60 right and one shot, and 60 down and one last shot, which landed back in the central group, so I’m happy enough with that. This done, a bit of computer graphics fun later, and I have this printed out on a handy reference card to keep with me at the firing point (and yes, in colour – colour printers are a bloody useful thing!):

MEC Free Rearsight Adjustment Reference Diagram

Still only approximate, but good enough for government work…

Trigger work

Training No Responses »

Jun 282011

After last Friday’s thoughts on trigger weight, today was the put-it-into-practice day. Reduced the trigger weight down to the 20-40g range (no gauge to measure exactly I’m afraid). Then adjusted six other things to get the same length of pull on both stages and weight on the first stage of the trigger that I had before and to ensure the sear engagement was correct – the match 54 trigger Anschutz uses is definitely excellent, but adjusting it isn’t really a tweak-one-screw-and-you’re-done sort of job…

Match 54 Trigger diagram

Match 54 Trigger Photo

Once that was done, it was a lot of dry-firing to get used to the new trigger weight. It’s a pretty large change since the triggering is such a major thing in target shooting, but it was going reasonably well after a half-hour or so. But the ten-shot series shot at the end wasn’t so great, something else crept in (Matt thinks there was a problem in my sight picture, I think I might just have been tired – it had been a rather longish day at work before coming out to WTSC).

Ten-shot string composite

Either way, we get to do this again on Thursday and Friday, just dry-firing and visualising and dry-firing and firing the occasional live shot just to check on things. Change one major thing, shoot a hundred shots to see if it’s worth shooting the next nine hundred to properly test it…

Older Entries

RIAC 2011 Notes for next time

Procedure, procedure, procedure…

Checking on progress with the RIKA

MQS 2 – this time it’s not a fluke

UCD August Airgun Open 2011

Back to training…

MQS

Refocussing

Which way’s up again?

Trigger work

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