Air pistol

Begin Your Journey To The Top

Free Air Pistol Training Tips

By Jukka Lahti/AirPistolTraining.com Version 1/July 1st 2009

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Table of contents

1. Introduction ‐ Why Should You Read This Guide? page 3

2. My story ‐ Shooting Since 1989 page 4

3. The Most Important Thing ‐ Be Organized page 7

3.1 Build a Training Schedule page 7

3.2 Keep a Training Diary page 8

4. What Kind of Pistol You Need? page 9

5. Physical Fitness ‐ Not to Be Overlooked page 10

6. Basic Techniques ‐ Back to Fundamentals page 11

6.1 Stance page 11

6.2 Grip page 12

6.3 Aiming page 13

6.4 Pulling The Trigger page 13

7. Mental Aspects ‐ Think And Don’t page 15

8. Now What? page 16

Please feel free to comment on anything I’m saying in this little book. I have barely scratched the surface but I will make additions to this book and I will write more in the future. So every comment, wish or question is valuable to me. You can send them to jukka@airpistoltraining.com.

Thank you for reading!

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1. Introduction ‐ Why Should You Read This Guide?

This guide is for anyone who wants to improve their air pistol scores.

You won’t find any magic tricks or gimmicks since there really aren’t any that will consistently produce better results.

If you’re after instantaneous improvements, this is not for you. But if you really want to know what it takes to start shooting better and maybe reach 540 or 550 or even higher scores at some in the future, read on.

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2. My story ‐ Shooting Since 1989 My name is Jukka Lahti. Don’t worry if you can’t pronounce it. Very few people in the world do since there is only about five million of us Finns.

So, I was born in Finland and started shooting when I was 12 years old.

My dad bought me a cheap Gamo air rifle for my birthday. Together we would shoot in our backyard to targets pinned on a wall of this old barn.

I was immediately hooked with this new pass time activity and about a month later I beat my dad on 10 shot competition. That got him thinking and after another month he took me to a local shooting range. There were mostly old geezers there but I just liked to shoot so I didn’t care.

The first two sessions I spent shooting with Feinwerkbau air rifle but then I got my hands on a Walther CO2 pistol (CP1 if I remember correctly) and that was it. The first three shots hit the wall, but after that I’ve missed a target once. (That happened years later when my Walther LMP1’s trigger system had a malfunction.)

The first year I shot only at our home range, but the next year I started to attend competition. Boy was that exciting!

A couple of times I finished last and my scores were way below my skill level. Soon, when I started to feel more at home standing on the line side by side with other competitors, my scores improved fast.

I won for the first time that same winter and my dad took me to a shooting camp for youngsters. There I learned a bunch of technical stuff but the most important thing I got out that week was this: If you want to improve your scores, you can’t ”just shoot”. You have to practice.

For the next couple of years I kept practicing and went to several training camps organized by The Finnish Sport Shooting Federation.

In 1993, after I had broken the national junior record for 50 m pistol, I was invited to the Finnish national junior team.

I was on the team for a few years and my scores kept getting better. At the age of 16 I shot 565 points in air pistol and a year later I improved to 569. For most shooters those are results they’ll never achieve.

Then two things happened. First our national team coach gave me some very bad advice and then I was introduced to spinning records.

My scores went down and with them, my motivation. I started my career as a DJ and put my Hämmerli air pistol away.

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A couple of years ago, 2005 to be exact, I remembered again how much fun it was to shoot. I joined a shooting club and started to go to the range every now and then. Since I used to be in the national team, I just couldn’t keep it at that. I wanted to shoot well.

I practiced a couple of months and went to a competition to my old home town. Boy, it was embarrassing. I shot 543 and my old club mates were asking if there had been something wrong with my weapon.

I told them absolutely not, it was all me. AS IT USUALLY IS. After the competition I went home and started to do some research. I read at least half a dozen books, browsed all I could find on the internet and read through all my notes from national team training camps.

As a result I developed a training schedule for myself for the next three months. And you know what. Three months later‐almost to the date‐I shot this in an official match:

Figure 1 (P‐HA is my club, Ilmapistooli=air pistol, Y means the competition was open to anyone, I finished 8th and Finaali=final)

As you can see, I shot 575 in qualification round and then my first final in men’s class was a complete disaster. Simply because I hadn’t shot a final since my junior years.

The next week I shot 577 and everything looked really good, but then I hurt my arm when‐believe it or not‐I was changing tires to my car.

Rest of the season went pretty much overboard although I did manage a few 560‐565 scores.

On summer time I tried to shoot 50 m pistol, but my arm got upset and I haven’t really been shooting much since. Instead I have started one business and right now I’m in the middle of starting a new company.

As you can imagine, I have quite a lot on my plate right now so you might be wondering why I’m spending time on this book. I have a

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simple answer for you. I love this sport. I love that I’m good at it and I love when other people are too.

I’m writing this so could have fun at the range every time and that you can enjoy making your buddies angry when you always beat them. I love to win and I bet you do too! So, let’s get on with it.

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3. The Most Important Thing ‐ Be Organized You’ve probably tried all kinds of tricks you’ve read about in some magazine or you’ve heard from other shooters. If you’re seriously trying to better your scores, forget about all of them.

Why? Because shooting is precision sport where the tiniest error can make a huge difference. To eliminate those errors you have to drive your shooting process into your muscle memory.

Your shooting has to be an automated performance that you don’t have to think about. You should be able to produce a perfect shot two minutes after you’ve get out of bed. In‐order‐to produce that kind of level of automation you have to practice the correct technique over and over again. Thousands and thousands of times.

By now understand of course what I mean when I urge you to forget all the trick they tell you. That’s right, every time you try something new, you brake up the process of building the automation. Your muscle memory has to start almost from scratch.

Being organized means that at the beginning of a new season you start from the fundamentals.

First you go over your equipment, what needs to be tweak, repaired, adjusted. Usually you have to at least work your handle a bit. Check your eye sight, if there’s any changes, deal with it. (It’s better for pistol shooter not to see clearly very far. Sights have to be sharp but not the target.)

Then you go over your stance and grip. This is the time to make any changes you might have thought about last season. After this phase you don’t modify your equipment or change your stance and grip unless it is absolutely necessary!

3.1 Build a Training Schedule A training schedule is an ideal way to be organized. In the schedule you define when you do what: when you train your physics, when you train technique, when you have competition like training, when are the competitions and when you rest.

In each technical training session you should concentrate on one single thing (stance, grip, aiming, pulling the trigger and even smaller things inside these procedures). You should also set goals for each session.

The goal has nothing to do with scores, but it has everything to do with the right process. You want to determine how much improvement you want to see in one session.

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Your training schedule is a road map from first level to second or third or fourth. On general level you plan it for the next six or even twelve months. Then you make more detailed plan for the next two or three months and on each week or day you can adjust your plan if you see it necessary.

In the beginning of a season you should always concentrate on the fundamentals before you start doing any new stuff you’ve planned for the season. If you run into difficulties during the season, you should go back to the basics.

3.2 Keep a Training Diary If you’ve just started shooting and plan to attend only one competition, you don’t need a diary. However, if you plan to continue shooting a bit longer, you can benefit greatly from keeping a training diary.

The basic reason to keep a diary is that you’ll see what work and what doesn’t. When you’re having difficulties at some point, you can go back to your diary and see what have you done in similar situations.

Diary also helps you to construct your training schedule.

In the diary you put the gold facts about your practice sessions: time spent, shots fired, location, time of day, weather etc. In addition you write down a few lines on how the sessions went, how did you feel and if there is something you should do differently on the next session.

Your diary is part of your practice session. You start your practice by reading your notes from the latest session and you’re not finished until you have written down facts and feelings from this session.

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4. What Kind of Pistol You Need?

When you’re aiming for acceptable results, you have to have a real competition pistol. If your pistol looks anything like those in the movies, forget it. Your weapon has to have at least adjustable rear sights, grip size, grip angle, trigger pressure and trigger location.

At the moment I have a Steyr LP10 which I like very much. There are several other manufactures that produce weapons for the top athletes.

You’ve probably heard names like Anschütz, Benelli, Feinwerkbau, Morini, Tesro and Walther. (If I left some out, feel free to let me know.)

Go to a dealer who is specialized in competition firearms and try them out. As long as the weapons you’re considering are built according to the rules of ISSF you can choose just about any make you like.

All new air pistols operate with compressed air which produced the most consistent pellet velocity and they have high grade barrels. So they will be straight shooters as long as you use high grade ammunition (H&N or RWS high quality pellets). Until you reach scores of 570 and above you don’t have to think which ammunition will suite best for your weapon.

Ii would be better if you’d had a chance to try a weapon you’re interested in for a couple of weeks. There is a phenomenon that appears almost every time you buy a new pistol or try someone else’s gun: you get great results with it right out of the gate.

This has probably something to do with the fact that you concentrate on the fundamentals when you’re shooting with a strange weapon. In a couple weeks this phenomenon will fade and you can evaluate the pistol by it’s true merit.

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5. Physical Fitness ‐ Not to Be Overlooked When I talk about physical fitness I’m not just referring to the muscles in your pistol arm. Of course you have to have certain amount of muscles to be able to raise your pistol and hold it steady for 4‐10 seconds 80‐90 (men) or 60‐70 (women) times during a competition.

If you have been shooting regularly one or two years, this shouldn’t be a problem for you. You need however be in fairly good physical condition to manage a two‐hour competition without getting tired.

The first place where physical fatigue shows is your brains. When your brains don’t function fully, you won’t be able to aim, grip or pull the trigger the way you should.

You understand of course this level of fitness isn’t very hard to achieve, but you need to exercise regularly to maintain required level.

Strength in your arms and shoulders is important when improving stability of your weapon when aiming. That’s why you should do some weight lifting but not during competition season. Reason for this is that when your muscles grow they momentarily lose their sensitivity.

In other words you’ll lose your touch.

You’ll always benefit from tight core muscles ie. strong abs and back.

They will stabilize your stance and ease the pressure on your shoulders and legs. If you need major workout to improve your core muscles I suggest you do it off‐season.

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6. Basic Techniques ‐ Back to Fundamentals Shooting with air pistol is really pretty easy. You take your stance, your take a firm grip, you aim, you aim and you follow thru. Doing it exactly the same way 80 times in a row is a bit harder.

Here are four major things you should concentrate on when trying to improve your scores.

6.1 Stance It all starts with how you stand. Your stance has to be solid, comfortable and exactly the same for each‐and‐every shot. There are different perspectives on stance and the way top athletes stand has changed over the years.

In the old days almost everybody stood their chest facing the target.

Nowadays almost no‐one does that anymore. Instead, almost everybody stands in way that their shoulders are aligned with the shooting line. There is a good reason for this.

You see, when you are standing in 90° angle against the target, there are bigger muscles in your neck, back, chest and sides helping your arm to hold the pistol. Bigger muscles means more power and more stable arm.

There is sort of a trend among the top shooters to have their both feet in 90° angle with the target and only about 30 cm apart (figure 2). I find this kind of positioning tiresome since it causes tension in pelvis, thighs and calfs.

Figure 2

Another negative aspect of this kind of stance is that you have to turn your head 90° to be able to aim. This causes tension in the neck which can weaken blood flow to your brain and thus disturb your eyesight.

I recommend you don’t do like those guys but put your feet a bit more apart. Shoulder width is good. Then you take your rear leg a few

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centimeters forward and finally turn your feet slightly inside out (figure 3).

Figure 3

This makes your stance more relaxed and easier to maintain. The stance is also more stable.

Otherwise you should stand straight, maybe arch you back just a little bit, keep your left shoulder (right, if you’re shooting with your left hand) relaxed and right hand in your trouser pocket.

Of course these are just guidelines. Remember that you have to feel comfortable in your stance about two hours. Don’t make it something that starts to bother you in the middle of a competition.

6.2 Grip Are you squeezing your pistol as hard as you can? Well, don’t. The recoil of an air pistol is almost nonexistent so you don’t need to use force against that.

When you loosen up your grip a bit the weapon will be much more settled, no trembling that comes from tense muscle in your hand.

Loosening also helps your release as your trigger finger will be more relaxed.

I’m not going to give you any percentage of how hard you should squeeze since it’s ultimately a question of personal preference. Do a bit of testing to see what fits for you and then stick with it.

The pressure produced by your middle finger, ring‐finger and little finger has to be directed directly backwards. That’s why don’t squeeze at all with your fingertips.

Always remember to check that your pistol is centered between the web of your thumb and your forefinger. The position of your hand should be exactly the same every time you shoot. This is very important since a small change in your grip will cause surprisingly big changes on target.

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In order to be able to grip your gun exactly the same way every time, you have to adjust your handle in a way it fits your hand almost like a glove. Use a knife, file and sandpaper to make room for your muscles and putty to fill gaps between your hand and the handle.

Or, you can buy a tailored handle. Remember thought, that your hand is a living thing and it won’t stay the same year after year. That’s why you have to check at least once every year how your hand and handle fit together.

6.3 Aiming If you’ve been shooting for a while, you probably know how to aim. I’ll explain it anyway since it is the most important part on your technique. It is so obviously relevant, it is overlooked by many, if not the majority of shooters.

On the left you see a picture of what you should see when you aim.

Your front sight is right in the middle of the notch on the rear sight and their top edges are even. Aim under the target’s black center so that you see a bit of white between your sights and the black area.

How much of white there should be is up to you. If the space is too little, you’ll feel uncomfortable. If the space is too big, it’ll be more difficult to find the right target point on each shot.

There is one fatal mistake many shooters make when there aiming and very often they don’t even realize it. As you have been shooting a while you get used to it. What happens then is, your eyes start to wonder away from the sights.

It’s like when you drive certain root every morning to get to work. You don’t have to think when to turn etc. and that’s why most of all traffic accidents happen near home or work. You stop paying attention.

When your eyes wonder to the target, you’re not making sure your sights are aligned and your hits will be all over the target. Most commonly hits will be low since usually your front sight will start to slug.

You have to focus your eyes to your front sight through the whole shot process. If you don’t do this, nothing else will matter.

6.4 Pulling The Trigger How you pull the trigger is the second most important thing in pistol shooting. Bad trigger technique can easily take 50‐60 points from your score.

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When shooting you try not to move, but you have to move your index finger. If you move it violently, you’ll move your whole hand and your weapon.

You have to squeeze the trigger very steadily and slowly but yet with determination. In my opinion, pulling the trigger must be unconscious action that just happens. The release has to be a ”surprise”.

As for the other fingers, it is equally or even more important that the movement of your trigger finger is directed straight backwards. It’s simple: if you pull the trigger to the right, your hits will be on the right.

By adjusting the trigger and trigger pressure you can make the squeezing process easier for yourself. Minimum pressure your trigger has to take without a release is 500 g. By sharing this weight for example evenly between the first and second stage of trigger travel you can smooth the trigger movement.

Placement of your trigger is a question of personal preference. You should place the trigger so that you can pull it without your index finger touching any other part of the weapon.

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7. Mental Aspects ‐ Think And Don’t Shooting is one of those sports where what happens in your head is a lot more important than what you do physically. Huge amount of books have been written on psychological training for athletes and it will benefit you to read at least a few.

At this point I will say that to reach good scores, you have to think a lot. To reach great scores you have to learn not to think.

It means that when you practice, you have to think all the time about what you are doing. You have to do things consciously. When you’re competing, you have to clear your head completely and trust your muscle memory to do the job.

This is THE ONLY WAY you can reach high scores and it is the only way you will constantly reach your potential in competitions.

Shooting is a sport where you truly have to just do your best and then check the score board how you did. You can force a ten every now and then, but you can’t do it all the time. You don’t have any control on what your competitors are doing. You don’t know how they are doing or at least you shouldn’t.

If during a competition you start calculating what your result would be ”if I continue this way”, you’re doomed. If you start following your competitors during a competition, you’re doomed. If you think about what you’re going to do in the final, you won’t get there. YOU HAVE TO DO YOUR OWN THING!

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8. Now What?

As I said, shooting with air pistol is quite easy. You can make it difficult if you begin to think you’re good enough to ignore the fundamentals.

Start again right now! Stop what you’re doing and start improving your physical fitness. Go cycling, jogging or do long walks. Do some weight lifting and work your core muscles. Do this for two months.

During that phase you have time to adjust your weapon so that when you go to the range it’ll be ready.

When you start practicing with your gun, start with your stance, then your grip, then aiming and then trigger technique. Think about what you do in practice and then have fun in competitions. Be organized and soon you’ll beat your buddies every time you’re shooting together.

Have a great time!

Please feel free to comment on anything I’m saying in this little book. I have barely scratched the surface but I will make additions to this book and I will write more in the future. So every comment, wish or question is valuable to me. You can send them to jukka@airpistoltraining.com.

Thank you for reading!