How to hit two birds with one stone? How to apply 20/80 rule

[Russ]

How to hit two birds with one stone? How to apply 20/80 rule?
In any structured team, there are two types of ISSF pistol athletes: Slow fire (FP & AP) and rapid fire. If your goal is to secure a position in the national team, it is critical to perform FP at a respectful level! This is not from a strategy point only. The ratio is: if you can perform 550 in FP, at the same time, you can perform a respectful 575 AP with very little practice time.
If you already achieved AP level 575 and kept beliefs that your performance will give you a respectful 550 in FP, you are wrong my friend. You will be surprised how low your actual score might be in FP.
This information only can save you a few years of practice. Talk with your coach first before you will make the next “investment decision” of purchasing a ($2,000.00) free pistol. It may save you a few additional years of developing mistakes in your technique, and a lot of money. Especially, it alone may perhaps keep your dream alive!

Sorry to point this out again: if you are a “hobby shooter” you will never be able to see in this direction: how to double your outcome with less efforts or how to get more and spend less (20/80 rule). If you have the pleasure to make holes in the target and still are worried, why does your score not go up rapidly? There is no conspiracy about it, your perception level is holding you hostage, you are looking for pleasure in your activities and there will be no progress for years. At the same time, if you will change your direction toward to certain goal, such as to become a national team member for example or to achieve 575 in AP, you will never start complaining about temporary problems or difficulties.
The first stepping stone is to adjust your perceptions toward your goal. So what is your goal again? ;)
My two cents.

[Gerard]

An interesting perspective. I had not considered that use of a firearm might be necessary in order to advance to a high level of competition in AP. For my part, I have no interest at all in using a firearm. Too loud. Too dangerous. Just don't ever want to have one around the house. It's not a thing I am comfortable using.

I am content to pursue a perfect score in the long term, and a new personal best score every month in AP. Last month I won our tiny CAF postal match with a 543 score. Yesterday I shot a new personal best of 549, using the new grip I have finished carving for my 46m which fits my hand perfectly and makes higher scores almost easy. There are still several weeks left in the postal match, and I intend to beat my best score at least once before that deadline. This drive to compete against my own record seems sufficient for improvement to be seen, and so far my scores have risen quite well each month since starting shooting in December.

So while I appreciate your perspective in this, I would suggest that there is more than one approach to improving one's accuracy with an air pistol. As I am not an American I know nothing about qualifications for getting onto the US team, and this will never become important for me personally. If qualifying for the Canadian national team requires FP use, well, I will not join it when my scores go that high. I will instead shoot independently of that team, and my goal will be to win. That is a long term goal. For now a new personal best every few weeks seems at least mathematically satisfying. The graph curve continues to climb...

[Russ]

5 Different ways to unlock your learning potential about Olympic style target shooting:
One way is to read books.
The second way is to listen to audio seminars on CD’s.
The third way is to watch videos (online video or DVD’s)
The fourth way is to attend to clinics, live seminars, and competitions.(Experience it.)
The fifth way is to become part of an example (master class) in a group of highly motivated athletes and to participate in teleconferences and to share learning experiences. (Master it.) Check who is in your reference group (Master mind group); what their record of performance and achievements are. “Birds of the same feather flock together.”
Are there any other sources available to you?
You can’t just wish about better performance, you actually have to do something different. 565 -570 is really achievable. Someone have to start to do something different tomorrow, if his old pattern does not producing respectful scores for last few years.
Someone can use one method by reading only; someone can use all five ways to achieve their own desired destination. ;)

[lastman]

Interesting perspective.

I completely agree with you that for any match you need to be able to shoot well in FP.

Gerard, sorry to say mate but if you think you're going to shoot elite scores in AP without training FP, you're sadly mistaken. Take a look at the world's top AP shooters and you will notice they are all elite FP shooters.

FP is even important for RF.

Russ, there is one thing you missed. You can read, watch and listen all you like. If you don't perform a dump truck full of training it will never happen.

A lot of people like to say I can get there by doing an hour a day, but that's simply not the case. If you're committed to shooting 565+ in FP you need to out in the hours day in, day out for a long time.

Good luck

[Gerard]

Gerard, sorry to say mate but if you think you're going to shoot elite scores in AP without training FP, you're sadly mistaken. Take a look at the world's top AP shooters and you will notice they are all elite FP shooters.

Perhaps you are correct. I'll check back here in a few months and let you know how I do in my first couple of competitions.

Two weeks ago I shot a 553 at home. Over the next few days it was 550, 546, 548, 553, and 552. Then I had to buckle down on a doublebass I need to finish buiding for a maker's competition in California next week, so haven't shot for 8 days at all, haven't even touched the pistol. Today I found a few minutes of quiet around the house to shoot as a breather from work (and yeah the bass is about ready now, as is the travel trunk I made, so it's down to the train trip and the judges to see how it rates), and shot 10 shots with no dry fire beforehand. My first shot was a bit off owing to a few things buzzing in my mind. Took a moment to breathe and calm down, then shot a bunch of good inside 9's and a 10.8. I've never shot a first target of the day nearly that well. Seems the mental training I've been doing while working and the weights and the running have all paid off. That target was so easy! I'll of course not make a general habit of taking more than a week away from practice, but it's good to see that what I've learned so far is stable, embedded in me now.

While I respect your opinion insofar as it applies to yourself and to your experiences of shooting generally, I do not believe that it applies to my own way of doing things. I obsess. I perfect. I have always, since childhood, taken hold of new tasks and pressed myself harder and harder until mastering them to my own very high, some have said excessively perfectionist standards. Perfection has always been the only level which truly satisfies me, so I am obviously always dissatisfied to some degree, perfection being unattainable in an absolute sense. Even a score of 600 would not be perfect, as there would of course be less than 60 shots scoring a 10.9... but one can come very, very close. It's just a matter of wanting it badly enough to drive the body and mind hard enough to get there, while maintaining a healthy perspective so as not to collapse in the trying.

It might seem I am delusional to any reading that, and that's fine by me. No one around me thought I was being very practical when I realised I wanted to become an instrument maker, but that has worked out rather well. No one ever got to the Olympics without wanting it very badly, and following through on every element needed to get there with an almost insane drive to reach that highest level. Free pistol may be fun, but no thanks, I'll be winning competitions with an air pistol. And yes, there are a few air pistol shooters who do not shoot free pistol, or who came to firearms later after becoming established champions with AP. Olena Kostevych for example, for years an AP-only shooter. Lately she's branched out and is doing rather well with a firearm, apparently applying almost identical technique to what she used in AP to gain so many medals. Watch the video of her at the latest Fort Benning in rapid fire pistol and precision fire besides. It's difficult to fine any variance in her stance, pistol hold, raise and sighting ritual, or follow-through between the two types of pistol, excepting the recoil obviously. Not a lot of shooters who are members here are shooting anything like those kinds of numbers.

[Russ]

I like your attitude Gerard. There are some exceptions in any rules.
The attitude and persuasion of your dream can break common rules of practice. I would like to see your competitive scores too.
If you can match your practice score with your competition score, I will consider you talented (exception of the common rules).
My best wishes to you!

[Russ]

If someone is interested to learn more about the 20/80 rule in Olympic style pistol target shooting or desires to start a discussion about talent or gifts in this discipline, please feel welcome to come to my inexpensive seminar in Troy, Michigan.
I still have some Memorial Day Specials. 20% OFF regular price list. (Offer valid until June 10, 2011)
Please contact me for details over PM or e-mail, if you are concerned. ;)

I will hold seminar at 2600 West Big Beaver Troy, 48084

Memorial Day Special Promotion from Midwest Academy Consulting Group.

"Learn Marksmanship and Bullseye Pistol Target shooting, Olympic Style Pistol, ISSF, International Pistol (NRA)": 3 hours intro class $125.00

More than 20 years experience teaching & coaching in Olympic Style Target Shooting (ISSF) & International Pistol (NRA)

NRA Certified Pistol Instructor. One of The Top Ten USA Olympic Style Athlete in 2007 USAS National Championship at Fort Benning, Georgia;

Training for all levels of pistol shooters: beginner to Olympic contender

Visit us at: http://midwestshootingacademy.com/events.shtml
P.S. All level of experience is welcome. No experience is not an issue! We can help all

Please contact me if you would like to discuss payment options by phone or email.

You are only limited by the goals you set for yourself!

Contact us today to sign up for othere classes.

Sincerely

Ruslan Dyatlov

Midwest Acdemy Consulting Group
Troy, Michigan.

Please contact me for more details:

Thank you.

[Greg Derr]

Gerard: Don't be fooled. There are plenty of athletes who specialize in one discipline. If you want to just shoot AP, " Just Do It" as the saying goes. I don't believe you need to be good at Free Pistol shooter to succeed at Air Pistol for a minute. Does it help? Well maybe but it could also hurt in some ways. Let me explain. If you have limited time with FP and lots of time and a home range for AP you naturally would have more opportunity to train with the AP and thus should see more success. The FP on the other hand may give to some self doubt since you can't seem to train the amount that you may wish and that would frustrate many.

For me personally I loved to shoot everything and got a lot of trigger time with a lot of guns in a lot of matches, this gave me an overall high confidence level with any gun. Does this need to be the way for everyone. NO. Today some folks can't have firearms, should they not train with the AP due to that fact, hell no.

Lesson here is do what you want as hard as you want. Anyone trying to limit you is not giving you good advice.

[Russ]

I agree with Greg.

,” Gerard: Don't be fooled”

"lot of guns in a lot of matches"

.....It can be quite time consuming and probably expensive. Greg just forgot to mention about someone who was behind his back for a long period of time, many people know about it (taking care about his progress). ;) What is the name of your coach, Greg? Please tell us more about him!
Greg, why do you not suggest others to use coaching help as you did?
It can save time, money, and can also protect many athletes from possible injuries.
Thank you.

[Hemmers]

An interesting perspective. I had not considered that use of a firearm might be necessary in order to advance to a high level of competition in AP. For my part, I have no interest at all in using a firearm. Too loud. Too dangerous. Just don't ever want to have one around the house. It's not a thing I am comfortable using.

For all intents and purposes, an air pistol is a firearm. The fact it uses a store of pressurised gas as propellant instead of using a chemical reaction to generate high pressure gases on demand is immaterial.
Air guns can and do kill. If you go around thinking an air pistol is less dangerous than a free pistol then you're wrong.

When did you last hear of someone being killed with a FP? A lot less frequently than with airguns. Partly because there are fewer about, partly because people think air guns are "not dangerous" or are "toys".
They're Wrong. With a capital W.


I suspect one does not need to do FP to excel at AP, in the same way that one does not need to do 3P to be an excellent prone shooter.

However, since most national squads will require both disciplines to make it worth them taking you to competitions, anyone with international aspirations will need to do both, and there can be benefits to corss-disipline training.
I think the main point of the post though was that if you are doing both, then your training needs to be 20/80 AP/FP. If you are solely doing AP, then it's 100/0. Obviously.

Same with rifle. True enough there are some prone and air specialists, but national associations far prefer to cover the costs of one person who can do them all, than 3 people.

[Russ]

The 20/80 rule is a concept idea and anyone with international aspirations will need to do both.

Gentlemen, the 20/80 rule is a concept idea. The idea of working with a Free pistol is one part of the complete picture. There are some more.


I agree with Hemmers about his statement completely, and would like to point the attention to someone who has “international aspirations and the will/need to do both”. As he said: if you will excel only in AP, you will have less chances to travel with the national team, in comparison with someone who can perform AP & FP.

[Gerard]

For all intents and purposes, an air pistol is a firearm. The fact it uses a store of pressurised gas as propellant instead of using a chemical reaction to generate high pressure gases on demand is immaterial.
Air guns can and do kill. If you go around thinking an air pistol is less dangerous than a free pistol then you're wrong.

Of course I treat my air pistol as a firearm! Anything less than that degree of caution would be foolhardy when I have a 5 year old boy running around the house. I try not to be a fool, to the pistol is locked away far out of his reach when not in use, with no possibility of his using any furniture to climb to that high closet shelf. And it's an IZZY, left un-cocked with the breach open and checked with an empty barrel indicator (actually an old doublebass gut string dyed red) in place in the rear of the barrel. It would be quite an accomplishment for that small boy to procure the pistol apply the 20 pounds cocking force (I shortened the cocking lever about 1.5" from the stock 18 pound length) to it (it's longer than his arm span when open), remove the string, find pellets, load it, and point it at himself (again, longer than his arms). But I don't take that chance. I have had numerous discussions with him about safety already, and will continue with these small lessons so that he will have a long lasting understanding of firearm safety. He's frankly not very interested. When daddy shoots it's really boring for him. Anyone who stores an airgun without such safety measures is truly a fool, agreed.

However, since most national squads will require both disciplines to make it worth them taking you to competitions, anyone with international aspirations will need to do both, and there can be benefits to corss-disipline training.

Indeed. This is something which immediately concerned me when I realised that I had loftier aspirations than when I'd started shooting pistol for the first time in the winter. My feeling about it is that sure, it is potentially limiting. But the situation for funding in Canada is notoriously weak anyway. Only first ranked team members have their fees paid for by the team, development team members must pay something like $250/year just to be there. Other fees may also be due, such as coaching and travel costs, but I am not privy to that information yet. So I'm anticipating that if I get to a level in competition where I am invited to join the team, it is likely that I will at least partially fund my own travel, and quite possibly pay 100% of that cost. I'll have to make sure and put that amount of money aside so as to avoid disappointments should I progress to an elite level some day.

[peterz]

There is one respect in which an international style air pistol is vastly safer than a firearm, and it is critically important to me:

A pellet from any of my pistols will not penetrate the floorboards (3/4 inch plywood) of the first floor of my home if fired from the basement. That means that even the wildest imaginable shot or ricochet should not endanger people in the rest of the house. This was a major consideration in deciding that it was safe to build a 10 meter range in my basement.

In other respects, of course, my air guns do need to be treated as if they were firearms. I note that my children are grown, and that I have no grandchildren.

--pz

[zuckerman]

couple things. as an example, Madison wi requires a locked firearm, including pellet guns, either a trigger lock or a physical locked case/safe of some kind. last year NZ passed a law about air guns due to a cop being killed by one, and there was a news item recently, some Dumb **** talked his girlfriend into shooting him in the chest with an air rifle, (news called it a pellet rifle) he survived only because of a physical anomaly with his heart, pellet ended up through his chest and embedded in his back muscle.. I can dig up the sources if anybody wants 'em.

[Gerard]

Well that was a case of a potential Darwin Award gone wrong. How ironic, Darwin fails to cull a complete numbnutz thanks to a genetic defect... I don't think I've heard a funnier biology joke.

I forgot to say; thanks Russ and Greg, both very encouraging comments and I am grateful for them.

[Russ]

It just happens to be that he is my favorite music producer and he is from Canada as well. You can consider him as a coach; the man behind the curtains who makes stars shine! David Foster inspires me!

Get yourself inspired!
Learn from the stars! It does not really matter if it's a music star or sport star! Get your own coach, learn from Greg, and whatever he implies to say. :)))
http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/good_day_la/ ... A_20091103

[Gerard]

Oh. Oh dear. Well that explains our difficulties in getting along in the forums at times Russ. I've never enjoyed a single thing David Foster has produced nor any of his own playing as a musician. Different tastes, that's all. And I'd never dare to suggest that anyone else's taste was 'wrong' just because it does not align with my own. We all have our own ways of arriving at satisfying results, whether in music or in shooting. There is a lot of common ground of course, common language and tools. But it is in matters of taste, of what works for the individual, where the differences arise.

Shooting seems much the same. There are the basics, which pretty much all shooters share at the highest levels. But we take interest in watching the differences between the elite shooters, as each has their signature variations, alongside those elements they have taken from others quite visibly, which together make them able to shoot those spectacular results.

[Hemmers]

A pellet from any of my pistols will not penetrate the floorboards (3/4 inch plywood) of the first floor of my home if fired from the basement. That means that even the wildest imaginable shot or ricochet should not endanger people in the rest of the house. This was a major consideration in deciding that it was safe to build a 10 meter range in my basement.

In other respects, of course, my air guns do need to be treated as if they were firearms. I note that my children are grown, and that I have no grandchildren.

--pz

Fair enough, but you would be unlikely to be shooting FP or indeed many other cartridge firearms in a 10m range anyway. If you're doing indoor FP, its for technique, in which case you might as well dry-fire on SCATT.
For live-firing you'd be at a club or set up a separate 50m outdoor range.

In your case, AP is arguably more dangerous because you are actually shooting it in the house (albeit in a range environment). A FP would be locked in a cabinet/case, taken out, put in a case, taken to a range, shot, packed away and never make contact with ammo anywhere other than on the range itself.

The one thing I would say about the NZ cop getting shot, is I believe they were using PCP air rifles tuned up to generate muzzle energies in excess of .22lr guns (because airguns are available without a licence).

Your average target gun is around about 6ft/lbs ME, which whilst enough to do damage, is more or less an order of magnitude below what the NZ cop was shot with.

In the UK, unlicensed air rifles are limited to 12ft/lb, so whilst 10m target rifles and pistols will come tuned to 4-6, hunting air rifles will be around 10/11, which is enough for rabbits out to ~30yds, or humans if you hit a fleshy bit (eyes, back of the neck, etc).

[Russ]

Oh. Oh dear. Well that explains our difficulties in getting along in the forums at times Russ. I've never enjoyed a single thing David Foster has produced nor any of his own playing as a musician. Different tastes, that's all. And I'd never dare to suggest that anyone else's taste was 'wrong' just because it does not align with my own. We all have our own ways of arriving at satisfying results, whether in music or in shooting. There is a lot of common ground of course, common language and tools. But it is in matters of taste, of what works for the individual, where the differences arise.

Shooting seems much the same. There are the basics, which pretty much all shooters share at the highest levels. But we take interest in watching the differences between the elite shooters, as each has their signature variations, alongside those elements they have taken from others quite visibly, which together make them able to shoot those spectacular results.

You don't need to beat a dead horse again Mr. Gerard.;) We spoke about this subject already a long time ago.
I’m not looking for someone; I’m looking for a motivated athlete who believes in himself that 570 in AP can be achieved in a short period of time, not in years as we see in the traditional coaching way.
I will be perfectly fine without your special attendance!
I am still more interested in your competitive scores. Please do not be shy to post it after the match. It will be fascinating to see how close you can get to your target score performance without qualified help.
I can say again about my service. I do consulting, this is not traditional coaching. If I told you about coaching, it means you can achieve twice as more progress than working alone when working with someone in your area who can save you years of digging into the wrong direction!
Digging harder into the wrong direction possibly will cause related problems with back pain and arm, wrist injuries. Please be cautious of making unwise decisions. ;)
I’m sorry that you got the impression that I‘m trying to convince you to take my seminar. I’m sorry again!
You are not my target audience. I hope someone else is reading this forum. Thank you for the participation in my post. I wish you success!
Sinserely
Russ

[peterz]

Fair enough, but you would be unlikely to be shooting FP or indeed many other cartridge firearms in a 10m range anyway.

Absolutely correct. The question wasn't whether to build an FP range in the house, but rather whether to build any range in the house. AP made sense; nothing else did.

I think your argument about the AP being more dangerous than a locked-up FP is specious. It's comparing apples with accordions or something.