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Numerous opportunities exist for young people interested in pistol shooting sports. The Olympic events include Men’s and Women’s Air Pistol and Smallbore (.22) Men’s Free and Rapid Fire Pistol events as well as the Women’s Sport Pistol event. The junior event created to lead to these events is called Progressive Position Air Pistol (PPP). PPP is a great introduction to the sport as the equipment, and particularly the ammunition, are less expensive as well as cleaner and quieter. Temporary ranges can easily be set up in any large area (like a gym) as these guns do not require a permanent back-stop or special ventilation system. USA Shooting and the National Rifle Association www.nra.org both support this event and hold a jointly sponsored National Junior Olympic Progressive Position Air Pistol Championship. 4-H Shooting Sports 4-H Shooting Sports www.4-hshootingsports.org and Boy Scouts of America-Venturing www.scouting.org/venturing/ both offer youth programs for pistol shooting. Contact your local chapter to find out if it is offered in your area. Some schools and many local shooting clubs provide youth shooting sports programs as well. Check out the 4-H Passport Program for great pins your young athletes can earn USA Shooting publishes USA Shooting News (for members), sanctions matches and is the National Governing Body for the Olympic Shooting Sports in the US. We run Junior Olympic Development Camps and our website also includes information about match schedules, clothing sales and competition results. The NRA has a qualification program, sanctions matches, offers a tremendous variety of materials and has programs for competitions, collegiate shooting, coach education, advanced summer camps, etc. NRA also offers grant programs that provide fantastic funding for youth programs. Growing youth shooting sports in the US is always a focus for USAS. One of the key areas to achieve this is the Coach Education Program http://www.nrahq.org/education/training/coach_schools.asp in which we partner with the NRA and Civilian Marksmanship Program www.odcmp.com. Every youth shooting sports program should have at least one certified coach. We currently subsidize Pistol Coach Schools with a PPP focus. Please contact Bob.Foth@usashooting.org, 719-866-4881 for more details. 2009 National Junior Olympic PPP Championship Program 2009 State JO PPP Program Guidelines PPP RULES INTRODUCTION TO PROGRESSIVE-POSITION PISTOL By Charles Reed, February 2007 Progressive-Position Pistol (PPP) is an event designed specifically for young pistol shooters who have a desire to compete, but who are not yet ready to shoot with one hand. We have learned through experience that trying to get pre-adolescent pistol shooters ready to compete one-handed is a losing effort. To begin with, they are not strong enough to hold the pistol steady with one hand. Consequently, they tend to wave it around in the general direction of the target, and when it crosses the target they yank the trigger and hope for the best. To put it mildly, this produces discouraging scores. Worse yet, it instills bad habits, as trigger control and follow-through are impossible. Finally, and worst of all, serious one-handed training of the very young, particularly girls, may lead to overuse injuries. The combination of frustration and injury has traditionally led to very high attrition rates in young pistol shooters. To make a practical pathway to competitive Olympic-style pistol shooting available to very young shooters, Erich Buljung, the former National Pistol Coach, asked the National Training Center Shooting Club Juniors to help develop a new program just for young people. After a series of experimental and demonstration matches by the junior club, the PPP event was formally created by USA Shooting in 2004. The first national championship was held in 2005. Subsequently, the National Rifle Association added its endorsement to the program. PPP is shot with air pistols at a distance of 10 meters. Depending on the age and demonstrated skill of the athletes, shooters may shoot from rests, standing with two hands, or standing with one hand. In this program, the youngest shooters are not allowed to shoot with only one hand. This rule is intended to remove the temptation to push young children into one-handed shooting before they are strong enough to do it without developing bad habits and running the risk of injury. The very youngest shooters, up to the age of fifteen, are allowed to compete from a supported (rest) position. At the age of ten, they have the option (but not the requirement) to shoot from a two-handed, unsupported position. Similarly, at the age of thirteen they may progress to one-handed shooting. Currently (February 2007), the PPP program is available to junior shooters. A junior is someone who will not reach his or her twenty-first birthday by December 31st of the calendar year. It is essential that you read and become familiar with the rule book, which is available online on the USA Shooting web site. If you are completely new to pistol coaching, get a copy of The Basics of Pistol Shooting from the NRA. It is an excellent primer and used in the NRA’s Basic Pistol Course. After you have digested this wonderful little book and are ready to move to the next level, go to the Civilian Marksmanship Program web site at http://www.odcmp.com, and get item 778, AMU SERVICE PISTOL GUIDE. The real title is Advanced Pistol Guide, and it is published by the US Army Marksmanship Unit. The biggest difference between PPP and traditional Olympic-style shooting is the use of supported and two-handed positions. Here are a few of the more important items to keep in mind: -Safety is paramount. Pistols are shorter and lighter than rifles. Consequently, they are more easily pointed in an unsafe direction. This is not a problem, even with very young shooters, if they are properly instructed and closely watched during the first few weeks. -The focus of the shooting eye must be on the front sight, as sight alignment is much more critical than placement of the sight on the target. -Wobble is to be ignored. With training, it will become smaller, but will never cease entirely. Trying to get off the perfect shot just as the sight picture becomes perfect is a losing proposition because of reaction time. By the time the shooter sees a perfect picture and releases the trigger, the sight picture is no longer perfect. The ten-ring of the pistol target is deliberately large enough to accommodate the wobble of a well trained shooter or a beginning supported position shooter. The shooter must be trained to keep the sights aligned and pull the trigger straight to the rear without disturbing that sight alignment. If the natural point of aim is properly attained, placement of the sight on the target will pretty much take care of itself -Many of this country’s best pistol coaches now agree that the six o’clock hold is not a good one, because the shooter will try to get the front sight perfectly placed on the bottom edge of the black. As we explained above, that is a bad habit. The very best hold for precision pistol shooting is the sub-six (holding approximately two scoring rings below the black), but beginning shooters who have not yet learned to trust their holds may find this to be a bit much to comprehend. Teaching beginners to use a center hold seems to work well. Later, after they become comfortable with experimentation and trust their holds, you can teach them sub-six. -Even from a supported position, body position is very important. Adjust the support materials to let the shooter sit comfortably upright with the head in a natural, upright, position. The feet should not dangle. They should be flat on the floor. If the legs are too short for this, then the child should rest the feet on the cross-bar of the chair or stool or use a foot rest. -Two-handed shooters are required to have the shooting arm straight. The isosceles position and the Weaver are both legal. The modified Weaver, with its bent shooting arm, is not. -The non-aiming eye should be occluded. Cross-dominance is not a big issue with pistol shooters. There are many very fine pistol shooters who hold the pistol in the right hand but aim with the left eye, or vice-versa. If the athlete wears glasses, a piece of Scotch Magic Mending Tape on the lens of the non-aiming eye works very well and will not leave residue, if removed promptly after the shooting session. Translucent surgical tape is equally good, but harder to obtain. Other tapes may also work well, so experiment, if you are so inclined. If the athlete does not wear glasses, then safety glasses from a hardware store work just fine. The occluder (sometimes improperly called a blinder) must not block all light to the non-shooting eye. Ideally, it is made of a translucent material. Next best is white or off-white. The worst is black. The reason is that if light is blocked to the non-shooting eye, the pupil of that eye will dilate. This would not be a concern, since that eye is not being used, except that the shooting eye will also dilate in a sympathetic reaction. If that happens, then the shooting eye will get too much light. -Pay close attention to the rules on clothing and equipment. We are not going to repeat them here, because you need to read the rule book. In a nut shell, supportive clothing and equipment is not legal. For better stability, athletes who are standing up to shoot should use flat soled shoes, but expensive shooting shoes are not necessary. Skate board shoes, deck shoes, indoor soccer shoes, and low-quarter gym shoes have all been used effectively by elite shooters. -Since the air pistol target does have much larger scoring rings than the air rifle target, you do not need to spend piles of money for match grade pellets for training. We have tried the cheapest pellets we can find, and they work just fine for beginning and intermediate pistol shooter practice. For advanced shooters and for matches, we always issue match pellets. This has been a real down-and-dirty introduction to this exciting new shooting event. We hope you will use it get a program going in your own area. We look forward to meeting you and your kids at the next national championship. |
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