An Introduction Shooting Sports

Well it has been quite a while since I posted on this blog, and if it wasn't for some friendly encouragement, I don't think I would have been back in an even longer time.

Today, I would like to start a series about shooting sports (International Rifle to be specific). I do not know how long this series will be, but I am going to try my best to explain every facet of shooting sports to the best of my ability. This is a sport that means a lot to me, but is not a very popular sport in the US.

First, a little background about my involvement in the shooting sports. I started shooting competitively in 2010 with a local 4-H club, and during that year we won a bid to compete in the 4-H nationals in Texas. That trip, with the shooting, the hurricane, the homemade pizza's, and the great company, completely hooked me on shooting. Once I returned, I was able to make some contacts with a local high school with a rifle team where I trained and competed with one of the top high school teams in the nation. After training with them for a year, I decided that I wanted to continue and shoot in college. With help from my dad and the coach, I was able to get a spot on the Murray State University NCAA Division 1 Rifle Team (the 8th ranked team in the nation) where I am still shooting now (as a freshman).


An Introduction to the Shooting Sports:

Ok, to get started let me say that yes, shooting is a real sport and takes a lot of training and skill (just as much, if not more than sports like football, baseball, etc.) in order to perfect. I can not tell you how many times I have heard people bad-mouth shooting because it seems like such an easy activity that anyone can do. To those people, I like to tell them my favorite quote by 3-time US olympic medalist Matthew Emmons, "you show me your olympic gold medal, and I'll show you mine. My gold is just as shiny as yours." Of course, I have no olympic gold medal, but I do have quite a few other medals that still do the trick.

In the group of "Shooting Sports" there are three disciplines with different sub-disciplines:

• Shotgun
• Trap 
• Skeet
• Double Trap
• Pistol
• 10 Meter Air Pistol
• 25 Meter Rapid Fire 
• 50 Meter Free Pistol 
• Rifle
• 10 Meter Air Rifle
• 50 Meter Smallbore Prone
• 50 Meter Smallbore 3-Position

There are other sub-disciplines, but these are the most popular (and the only ones currently in the Olympics). On this blog, I will be focusing on the Rifle category because that is the only one I have experience in. 

 For those of you interested in shooting, let me warn you, shooting is a very difficult sport that can get pretty expensive and require a lot of time. Of course, the cost and time required are dependent on how much you want to get out of the sport, but once bitten by the shooting bug, it is hard to stop. However, shooting is probably one of the greatest sports in the world (in my opinion) and is a sport that someone of any age can (and do) play.

Shooting is difficult. This might not seem true just from reading, but shooting is an endurance sport. As you will see in various pictures, some of the positions require almost a contortionist like flexibility and many can get quite painful. For instance, in kneeling (see picture) there is a lot of pressure focused on your foot, ankle, knee, support hand (the one on the rifle), and elbow. Because of this setup, kneeling is considered the most painful position by most shooters. In a 50 Meter 3-Position match, you are shooting in this position for almost an hour. For most shooters, this results in a loss of feeling in the foot (the kneeling roll cuts off virtually all circulation to your foot) and the support hand (the sling cuts off circulation to your hand and arm in some cases). Usually shooters cannot even stand until 5 or so minutes of sitting/laying down. To make matters worse, kneeling is shot as the last position meaning that the shooter has already had to endure prone and standing position for 2+ hours!

Many times I am asked, "why don't you just change the position?". The answer to this question is simple. The positions have been studied for over a hundred years, and the culmination to all that studying has led to these positions which give the most stable platform from which to shoot from. 

A hurdle even tougher to pass for some people is the mental side of shooting. What separates the best shooters from the rest is their ability to stay focused on a small black dot for multiple hours without rest. In theory, shooting is very easy, all you have to do is hit a dot. However, being able to do that 60+ times over multiple hours requires an immense amount of concentration and is extremely mentally draining. The whole deal with shooting is the ability to be consistent, to do the exact same thing the exact same way over and over and over again. 

I say all this to warn you about what you are thinking about getting in to, not to dissuade you from trying. Any sport you want to get in to has its difficulties and pains, shooting just presents them in a different form. I love shooting, and even after experiencing all of this I still get up every morning for 5AM practice because I want to continue competing and getting better. 

So far, all I have said are the bad things about shooting. Now, let me show you some of the benefits of shooting. First, shooting is safe. There are many rules in shooting dedicated specifically to safety and, believe it or not, shooting is the safest sport for you can compete in (look it up). For instance, in the 4-H which deals with a variety of kids only has only had 2 (i believe) documented injuries, neither of which were life threatening and were fixed on the range. Second, shooting is a great way to learn patience, decision making, and anger management. One of the things drilled into shooters heads is that they need to know when to take a shot and when not to. You only take the shot when it is a 10 (or try to), but this can take a long time and a number of holds. In order to battle through this, the shooter is forced to learn patience and decision making. Anger management comes from the necessity to remain calm throughout an entire match in order to keep their shots consistent. Finally, shooting is fun. It is extremely rewarding to put in a lot of effort and see that you shot a perfect 100/100 on a target. Also, because it is nearly impossible to shoot perfect scores all the time, there is always room for improvement, giving shooters a lifetime of enjoyment. This, of course, does not do the benefits of shooting justice, nor does it state all of them. I have been shooting for a while now and I still find new things to enjoy every day I am on the line.

I hope you enjoyed this and I urge you to do more research on shooting sports. If you are looking for an amazing sport to get into, there are few better. If you have any questions or comments, please ask them below. 

Up next will be a discussion of 10 Meter Air Rifle.