This post is for all those biathletes out there and anyone else interested in what we mysterious biathletes do in order to build our shooting skills. While shooting might not be something that the Norwegians are well known for, it is yet another part of my training that also took a drastic turn during my time abroad.

Shooting in Torsby

The background behind Norwegians and shooting is one of hit and miss… literally. They’re either brilliant on the shooting range—more often than not—or they’re somewhat embarrassing to watch. I remember one example where Lars Berger (aka “the moose”) simply missed several shots in rapid succession in a relay competition because he wasn’t worried about the amount of time it took to ski an extra penalty lap—this just goes against the rules I was taught. Somehow, I remember Norway still winning that relay. All in all, some Norwegians have been known as fast shooting maniacs with a fairly inconsistent outcome, nevertheless they have come across the line first more often than their shooting statistics might estimate.

The Norwegian biathlon association has realized that shooting is an area to improve upon and launched a fairly large campaign in the last few years to increase performance. Basically, this entailed a collaboration resulting in more information available to athletes of all abilities about technique, training drills, and tests (in Norwegian at http://www.skiskyting.no/t2.aspx?p=39419). The US currently doesn’t have anything like this set up, but I believe this is something they are working towards.

Ane shooting in Torsby

The overall approach to shooting includes four categories that I’m sure every biathlete is familiar with: dryfiring (shooting drills without live bullets), slowfire shots (no physical load), easy combination shots (low physical load), and hard combination shots (high physical load). As far as my numbers go, the amount of shots and time spent on shooting training drastically picked up from my experiences at home. I blame this primarily on the convenient availability of a shooting range and the increased availability of free time. As an example, I went from shooting a total of about 400 rounds a month to over 1000. Roughly 600 of these shots were combination shots. Anyway, my shooting experiences in Norway were a lot fun and often surrounded by competition. Some of my earlier posts describe in detail some of the games and tests we did… Samling i Folldal (2nd and 3rd paragraph), Skyting og RvL (2nd paragraph), Samling i Vik (2nd to last paragraph), and Samling Torsby (6th paragraph).

Since my arrival back in the US, I’ve continued a lot of the shooting drills and ideas that I picked up in Norway. My year abroad definitely improved my shooting speed and confidence, but there is still quite a bit of room for improvement!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 11:57 am and is filed under Norway, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.