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Date: Tue, 02 Dec 1997 22:13:24 -0500
To: topshot@indy.net
From: Michael Ray <topshot@indy.net
Subject: UIT Mailing List Vol. 2 - #9
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In this issue:

Cold temperature / Barrel cleaning
New UIT List Archive
Coaching site
Importance of mental training (long)

********************************************************************

Hello Mr Ray
  
Two questions for discussion:
  
When we travel to another city or country by plane, our ammo goes in 
the
luggage area into the airplane. The question is if the very low
temperatures the ammo are exposed may affect its accuracy.   

Cleaning the 22 barrel ( nobody ever touch that subject before ! ) :-)

The aluminum rod generally used for cleaning the 22 barrel can cause 
damage
or affects precision of the rifle when its used passing the rod forward 
and
backward through the barrel?
  
Sorry for the poor english!
Fabio Coelho   fjc@mandic.com.br
http://www.geocities.com/colosseum/arena/7456

[Editor - we have discussed how heat can effect ammo, but my GUESS 
would be
that cold would not do much to it. There really isn't much you can do 
about
that anyway when travelling.

As for cleaning, no damage should occur since you're using an AL rod. 
You
should enter from the breech end and use a bore guide to prevent 
solvent
from getting into the trigger mechanism. The Anschutz design engineer
recommends brushing their rifle barrels every few hundred rounds, but 
you
may want to see when your accuracy starts to fall off for an individual 
gun.]

******************************************************************

I have created another archive off my own home page so you might want 
to
change your link to:
       http://www.cs.mun.ca/~garyp/uitlist
Take a look and let me know what you think. 

Gary Piercey
___________________________________
E-mail: garyp@cs.mun.ca
WWW   : http://web.cs.mun.ca/~garyp

[Editor - Though I'm not a fan of frames, I think it looks excellent! I 
may
not bother putting one on my page now. One thing I would like is a bit
smaller text so a 800x600 screen doesn't need a scrollbar to read it.]

******************************************************************

Mike - This is a reputable (?) site for info on coaching in general 
that
you and your readers might be interested in.  (If you've checked it out
before, just chalk it up to a nice try.)

http://test.olympic-usa.org/inside/in_1_3_3_18.html

[Editor - I haven't really looked at it yet, but will throw it out 
there
for others to view and see what they think. I'll be interested to hear 
your
comments.]

******************************************************************

MIND IS MORE IMPORTANT DURING THE PRACTICE  SESSIONS FOR COMPETITIVE 
SPORTS. 

Chet Skinner (1997), a response to questions by the Chief of 
Competitions,
Army Marksmanship  Unit, Ft Benning GA. 

If one was to investigate the subject of kinesiology, attend a coaches'
clinic, or hear most sport scientists talking about improving elite
athletes, usually talk will be predominantly about physical training
(conditioning). Thresholds of various types, workloads, number of
repetitions, and in-depth explanations of the physiological responses 
to
exercise dominate discussions. One could conclude from this that 
physical
conditioning is the most important factor in determining elite
performances.

At the Pre-Olympic Scientific Congress in Eugene, Oregon in 1984, it 
was
the multiple Olympic Gold medalist and physiologist Dr. Peter Snell who
opined that when athletes line up for an Olympic final their 
conditioned
states will not discriminate them. Factors other than conditioning will
cause one athlete to win over another. Could this be heresy? Why do 
most
coaches still emphasize the importance of physical conditioning as 
being
the major secret for success at the world class and elite athletic 
level?
The emphasis on physiological training within national teams would 
suggest
the attribute of physical conditioning is necessary for world class and
elite athletic sporting success. If physical conditioning is not the 
most
conspicuous aspect of sport training then it is the area of sports 
activity
that is most popularly emphasized by practitioners and coaches alike. 
For
most people that would be enough.

But is there another side to this one-sided approach to competitive 
sport?
Could there be other things that need emphasizing to produce a champion 
as
Dr. Snell suggested? 

The literature contains many studies about the physiology of sport and
several generalizations are possible. 

1. In very unfit individuals any conditioning will produce changes in
physiological variables up to a certain level of performance 
competency. 

2. Beyond moderate performance competency only specialized conditioning
will produce further performance improvements but again only to a 
certain
level of performance competency.

3. The body will become conditioned to the activity that is practiced.
(KNEELING ANYBODY...?)

4. Despite extensive evaluations of world class and elite athletes,
measurements of physiological capacities only discriminate between 
athletes
of wide ranges of ability. They do not discriminate between a 
relatively
homogeneous group of  world class and elite athletes in the same sport. 

5. An athlete can reach a level of fitness and not exceed this specific
level, that is, an hereditary defined ceiling level of physical 
capacity
exists in all individuals. No manner of training will change those 
levels. 
 Any increase in performance will be achieved by homogeneous inclusion 
of
the cognitive element into the athletic activity.

6. The time to reach peak fitness is relatively short. Some have 
claimed
four weeks to three months for development.  In mature individuals 
those
times are even shorter. There are many modifying variables, such as 
initial
level of fitness, which will alter any time estimate. However, it seems
that most coaches think it takes 12 months to achieve a superior level 
of
fitness which, of course, is incorrect. 

7. It is possible for an individual to improve in fitness, as usually
revealed by physiology evaluations, while performances do not change or
even get worse. That phenomenon alone should indicate the lack of
relationship between a fitness-evaluative state and that of precision 
world
class or elite athletic  performance. 

8. Because of physiological and differences of ability, the physical
training of maturing individuals, men, and women need to differ. 

9. Training on activities that are unrelated to an intended competitive
performance results in incorrect technique and coaches who emphasize 
such
programs should be charged with "mal-practice." 

10. An athlete must be specifically fit to achieve a peak shooting
performance. 

11. Attempting to achieve "super" or "excess" levels of fitness for a 
sport
which does not require the achievement of extreme fatigue is 
inappropriate
and diminishes the athletes resources.  UIT Shooting is just such a 
sport
that does not require levels of extreme fatigue.

12. Emphasizing working hard at the expense of post-training-session
recovery is destructive to an athlete's well-being and suppresses or
eliminates athletic improvement. 

13. The overload and recovery principles are paramount in the physical
conditioning of elite athletes. 

14. More training effort and volume is required to change a fitness 
state
than to maintain one. 

15. Fitness is not necessarily lost in a very short time. 

16. Too much training, whether specific or non-specific, is harmful and
destructive to the world class and elite shooting athlete. 

There are other generalizations similar to these which could be stated. 
A
problem with them, as with those above, is they are correct but 
contradict
much "modern" training theory and conditioning practice at the highest
level, particularly in the sport of shooting. 

Many features of initial "physiological development" are actually
modifications created through the non-dominant mental entity  and 
central
nervous system (CNS) of the neuromuscular system. Physiological changes 
do
occur with improved performances and athlete reports of increased
well-being commonly occur.  For example, as much as nine percent of
endurance capacity increase is due to the trainability of the 
respiratory
muscles. Those muscles do not change immediately in a physiological 
sense
because their initial adaptation is neural. So if the physiology is not 
or
is hardly changing, it must be the CNS which is adapting to produce 
better
skill of breathing, more economical muscle adaptation.

The proposal being presented here is that it is the Non-dominant and
neuromuscular CNS adapting to practice exercise and using already 
existing
resources that constitutes most fitness and performance improvements in
high-performance athletes.

If one will accept a big assumptive step it is advocated that fitness
without good technique is wasted fitness. Thus, a skilled athlete who 
is
energized by maximum technical performance will always beat a more 
poorly
skilled athlete who is also energized solely by maximum physical 
fitness.
What is it that governs skill? It is the neuromuscular CNS and the
pictorial representation of movements in the brain. 

Thus, training hard and diligently without the neural patterns that 
govern
good competition-appropriate skill is a relatively futile pursuit. The
modifier of this proposal is that most coaches should know good from 
bad
skill and how to produce those desirable techniques.  In the shooting
sports, understanding of the correlation between the physical and 
mental
technique is so poor that performances are actually regressing and
"improvements" generally come only from rule changes for the most part.

The essential thesis of this discussion is that the brain's pictorial
representations of movement must guide physiological and neuromuscular 
work
in a beneficial and efficient manner for valuable gains to be achieved
through practice. Much emphasized practice that is uneconomical can be
wasted practice. A case could be made that if incorrect practice is
stressed enough then the competing dominance of the conditioned 
strength of
the competition-inappropriate neural patterns (movement pictorial
representations) will inhibit improvement and better forms of 
performance. 

The pictorial representations of movements in the brain is different
between beginners and elite athletes. Beginners use "schema" to 
cognitively
control their way through a performance. By contrast, elite athletes 
want
movements to be automated and not involve "conscious effort." If that 
is
true, then the research that was prevalent more than 100 years ago 
still
holds true today. Movement patterns are pictorially represented in the
brain of individuals when automated performances occur. The automated
movement patterns are invoked, the muscles of the body respond while 
the
athlete thinks(sees) strategy and the cognitive demands of the 
competition.
Thus, automated  neuromuscular control is paramount for a high-level
performance. Few coaches realize just how precise discriminated 
movements
can be. 

Enough! Training responses are initiated, determined, and dictated by 
the
brains non-dominant mental entity. Without attention to the control of
thought processes, many athletes will be trained inappropriately. 

Fitness is good. Fitness is necessary. But it is only valuable for 
athletic
performance when it is developed in concert with mechanically efficient
movement patterns which are encoded to high levels of automaticity in 
the
athlete's non-dominant mental entity. 

Training for fitness alone is likely to yield errors. Training to 
energize
the repetitive performance of good movement patterns is likely to yield
rewarding improvements and in those with ability, performance 
excellence.
As implied above, a complicating factor is whether shooting coaches 
know
what are good mental and physical movement patterns. 

The implication for coaching? If athletes are not performing with good
technique, stop them, give them a rest, and start again with good
technique. That technique has to be specific to the desired competitive
levels. 

This proposal does not state that there is no place in training for 
work
other than specific work. Specific work is necessary to achieve high 
levels
of performance and often, performance improvements. Training at slow 
paces
also has some benefits.

1. Improves the aerobic system which will allow a greater volume of 
both
non-specific and specific training to be tolerated, 

2. Facilitates faster lactate clearance in recovery as well as general
recovery from fatigue,

3. Facilitates lactate resynthesis during exercise in the 
non-propulsive
muscles such as the legs and the overall physique. 

Neurologically non-specific training does not promote world class or 
elite
performance. Remember, world class elite athletes and their training
principles are different to non-elite individuals.

What has to be shelved is the notion that all physical practice 
contributes
to competitive  performance. Only a very small amount of physical 
training
does and that is superimposed on a general level of fitness which is
insufficient for a very high-level of  competitive performance. The 
problem
is that few shooting athletes get out of the general trained state 
because
of their general training and so cannot perform in a much improved 
manner.

In the sport of shooting, not only is constant overtraining common but 
so
is the perpetuation of non-specific and irrelevant activities. Shooters
spend a tremendous amount of time doing the wrong things but since that 
is
a minority opinion . . . This question can be posed; "When will the 
current
trend in training philosophy and practice reach the 'Dead-end' level 
and be
altered so as to better serve our shooting athletes?" 

Gold medals are given for superior mental and physical shooting 
performance.

******************************************************************
End of UIT Mailing List #9

Michael Ray - Systems Engineer
Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. Rifle Coach
UIT Shooting Page - http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/1190/index.htm




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