PRE-SEASON TRAINING


MARCH 2004

Lester L. Greevy, Jr.


It’s March when you read this and the shooting season is just about to start,
but it is January as I write. It is 3 degrees out and the weatherman says the
wind chill factor makes it feel like -10. There is no way a shooter can train
meaningfully at the range in this weather.

Our Youth Development Shotgun Team has kids to get ready for the Spring Olympic
Selection Match at Fort Benning the third week in March. So, what do you do all
winter when you can’t shoot outside?

The first thing you do is take a break from shooting and don’t worry about it.
The kids had a long season beginning in April at the Spring World Championship
Selection shoot and ending in October at the Fall Olympic Selection Match. They
needed a vacation to charge their batteries, to enjoy hunting season and the
holidays and their families. A break is very important insurance against
burnout. Lanny Bashelman in his very important book “With Winning in Mind”
emphasizes the principal of the break.

But when January comes, the break is over and we go back to work and the first
job has to do with creating a training plan and a calendar. All the important
matches are written on the calendar. Notice how much time you have between
matches. Plan what you will do with that time. Decide which matches are the
most important and how you will prepare to be at your peak for those events.

Periodization, or peaking at the right time, is very important and can only be
done with a written training plan that sets forth for each day what forms of
training you will engage in.

Basically, you begin the training season with physical conditioning. For trap
shooting, emphasis should be on developing stamina and aerobics, muscle tone and
strength, posture and balance. That means light weights and lots of
repetitions, treadmills and exercise bicycles.

Power, which is composed of strength and speed, is also important and can be
improved by a type of exercise called pylometrics. Medicine ball routines like
the chest throw are probably the best single exercises a trap shooter can do.
They are excellent for aerobics, stamina, and quickness. Tom Migdalski’s book,
“The Complete Book of the Shotgunning Games”, has a good chapter on fitness and
conditioning and Amazon.com has some good books on plyometrics and medicine ball
exercises. Another source is Fitter First products who have a website at
www.fitterone.com.

Along with physical conditioning, visual conditioning is important. Dr. Wayne
Martin’s book, “An Insight to Sports”, although first published in 1984, is
still about the best resource for understanding and improving vision. Several
exercises are recommended by Martin, the best include Eye Rotations, the Yard
Stick Versions and Binocular Strings. All are easy to do and fully described in
the book. Also available are several VHS tapes with eye exercises, one of the
better is by Decot Hy-Wyd. These therapies are very effective in improving a
shooter’s ability to pickup and hold focus on the target and like the physical
conditioning, can be done inside and should be emphasized before and during the
early part of the season.

Winter is a good time to set goals for the year. Books have been written about
goal setting and again Lenny Bassham’s, “With Winning in Mind”, is one of the
best. But simply stated, goals should be specific, measurable, achievable,
realistic, timely, and written down.

Many shooters who are trying to improve their mental game tend to disregard goal
setting as not being important or necessary for them. There is a time when I
felt that way, but nothing could be further from the truth. At the highest
levels of competition, goal setting is the most important element of the
shooters mental game and training plan. I have seen many competitions in which
proper goals or the lack of them have affected outcome.

How you schedule practice shooting, in particularly how you regulate volume and
intensity of practice also has a great effect on periodization and peaking.
Early on you want high volume, shoot a lot. Later as you approach an important
match, volume diminishes and intensity (shooting for score) increases. But how
do you do that in the winter, in foul weather, bundled up in lots of extra
clothes that make gun swing jerky and can cause bad habits? That has been the
problem.

I may have found the solution. Bob Ridge, of Total Turnkey Management in
Duncanville, Texas, is the USA distributor of the DryFire target simulator. He
loaned me one for the kids of the Youth Development Shotgun Team to use in
return for us giving him practical and accurate feedback. This system, using
your PC or laptop computer projects upon the wall or a specially prepared
screen, a dot of light that replicates a clay target’s flight. When the dot is
shot at, by a laser unit inserted in your gun, the results, hits/miss, distance
from center of pattern in inches, range of the target in yards, and time for
shot in hundredths of a second are displayed on the computer screen along with a
graphic representation of the relationship between pattern and target.

Each shooter can individualize his load (shot weight, size and velocity), his
chokes and point of aim.

DryFire can accurately portray the target flight for many shotgun games. I have
it set up in my basement for the kids to train on in the evening or if the
weather is not good enough for range work. We use American Trap; singles,
handicap and doubles and International Trap and Double Trap.

This is an extraordinary teaching tool. The target can be slowed down or sped
up to allow a shooter to dial in break point, mount point, and look point. Gun
movement errors are not hidden by muzzle blast and recoil, but are accurately
displayed on the computer screen.

I have been a critic of video game type shooting devices and that is probably
because most of them had been presented and used as games. If the DryFire
system were used as a game, it would be of limited value. But used as a
teaching and training tool and with proper coaching, it can steepen the learning
curve considerably.

Double Trap is a good example. It is the toughest of the Olympic Clay Targets
Sports. To be shot successfully, the first target must be shot with maintained
lead and a minimum of gun movement. The break point of the first shot must be
chosen to minimize and ease the gun movement to the second target. The shooter
must precisely select and memorize the break point, mount point and look point
for the first shot. On the range, this takes months to master. It is very hard
for the coach to explain and for the new shooter to grasp. With the DryFire and
a mag light to indicate shot pattern and a hand held laser to trace target line,
I can teach the fundamentals in a night. The shooter can then dial himself in
on each of the 15 different target presentations by using the very accurate
computer screen feedback to make adjustments, something that is impossible to do
on the range.

Used properly, I think the DryFire Target Simulator can be of great value. The
acid test will come in March at Fort Benning.

Sometime shooters in the northern parts of the country, where winter shooting is
very limited feel disadvantaged when comparing themselves to shooters from the
more temperate parts of the country. It does not have to be that way. There
are many things that can be done without going to the range to prepare for the
upcoming season.


Upcoming International Trap Matches

North Mountain Sportsman - Muncy Valley, PA

May 29 - 30, Pennsylvania State Junior Olympic Championships

open to all USAS Shooters born in 1984 or later

Contact: Les Greevy, e-mail: les@greevy.com


Ontelaunee Rod & Gun - New Tripoli, PA

April 17 - 18, Spring warm-up

May 15 - 16, Appalachian Spring Classic

June 25 - 26 - 27, Grand Prix of America

Contact: Will Machauer, e-mail: wwm12@juno.com