Front Sight E-Book

Marco Masetti

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

FRONT SIGHT by Marco Masetti Synopsis FRONT SIGHT is a collection of my notes as a high level Target Shooting Coach, who managed to achieve training an Athlete who won a Silver medal at the London Olympics. Mainly I speak of the training methodology in the field of Olympic target shooting, explaining in detail a method that was innovative in the period 2009-2012. More generally I speak of technical things, however, interspersed with actual episodes that occurred during competitions and training sessions. I recount what were the guidelines for me as an International Coach, my beliefs, my points of view and also my personal sports education. I believe it is a useful guide for the entire Shooting world seeing as I write specifically not only about what was carried out during the National Training Camps, but also about the work carried out during individual training sessions. I illustrate a training period of 21 weeks with a high-level athlete (but I do not publish all the 21 weekly work plans) and also a work plan developed for a club coach who had contacted me because he needed to train one of his athletes. These two chapters can undoubtedly set a good example for those learning to design work plans for themselves or for their Athletes. I provide insights into two scientific studies (with experiments) aimed at obtaining a better and improved level of performance, and also a series of "Shooting Games" to make training more interesting. At the end, I produce an extensive bibliography of the material cited in this book, but which was also useful for me throughout my sports education.

Leseprobe

Summary

Introduction

The Beginning

The Background

Presentation

Actual Examples

Adjustments

Conclusions

Training?

The Coach

The Pupil

Training and Planning

Transition Period

Preparation Period

Competitive Period

Conclusion

MAP (Multi Action Plan)

Theory

Research on the field

The Kinetic Chain

Key points

Verification of Key Points

Data Registration

Sorting

Determining the optimal shots

Determining average values

Evaluation

A High Level Season

First Training Camp

Second Training Camp

Two Special Training Camps

First Special Training Camp

Second Special Training Camp

A 21 week program

Week 1

Analysis and comments

Using the SCATT

Week 2

Analysis and comments

Week 3

Week 4

Analysis and comments

Week 6

Week 8

Week 9

Analysis and comments

Week 10

Week 11

Analysis and comments

Week 12

Analysis and comments

Weeks 13 and 14

Week 18

Analysis and comments

Week 19

Week 21

Analysis and comments

End of the journey

Work plan for a Club Coach

Rapid Fire Pistol

Lectio brevis

Training Camp: RFP

Individual Training

Ideas for unconventional training

Decision Training

Quiet Eye

Quiet Eye Definition

Example for the Pistol

Example for the Rifle

Quiet Eye Trainability

Management of…. errors?

Old Way – New Way

Example 1

Example 2

The Competition

Exercises

Holding the Grip

The Position

The Aiming

The Trigger

Physical Training

Shooting Games

Conclusion

Appendix A

Shooting Sports Training Conference

Appendix B

Examples of Workplans

Bibliography

Marco Masetti

FRONT SIGHT

Unconventional training notes for Olympic target shooting practice

“I can know where I am or even how fast I am going, but not both at the same time”

FRONT SIGHT

by Marco Masetti

[email protected]

www.mistermasetti.com

March 2022

ISBN 9791220396172

FRONT SIGHT is a collection of my notes as a high level Target Shooting Coach, who managed to achieve training an Athlete who won a Silver medal at the London Olympics.

Mainly I speak of the training methodology in the field of Olympic target shooting, explaining in detail a method that was innovative in the period 2009-2012.

More generally I speak of technical things, however, interspersed with actual episodes that occurred during competitions and training sessions.

I recount what were the guidelines for me as an International Coach, my beliefs, my points of view and also my personal sports education.

I believe it is a useful guide for the entire Shooting world seeing as I write specifically not only about what was carried out during the National Training Camps, but also about the work carried out during individual training sessions.

I illustrate a training period of 21 weeks with a high-level athlete (but I do not publish all the 21 weekly work plans) and also a work plan developed for a club coach who had contacted me because he needed to train one of his athletes.

These two chapters can undoubtedly set a good example for those learning to design work plans for themselves or for their Athletes.

I provide insights into two scientific studies (experiments included) aimed at obtaining a better and improved level of performance, and also a series of "Shooting Games" to make training more interesting.

At the end, I produce an extensive bibliography of the material cited in this book, which was also useful for me throughout my sports education.

A special thanks to Helen Spiby

for the excellent and demanding

translation work.

To my wife Lorenza, my children Elisa and Michele and to my belated mother Francesca,

Introduction

I am well aware that I am writing something that will certainly not be a best seller, and this awareness means that I am totally convinced that I am about to take on something in which the unique underlying theme is passion.

Passion for an Olympic sport, a sport that has the power to absorb you both physically and mentally, and that can accompany you throughout your life.

In fact, you can already start practicing shooting from the age of 10 ...

Actually, what you are about to read is nothing more than the notes and philosophical dissertations of a Coach who after 13 years of teaching, of which at least 10 of these years were spent at a High Level, has decided to put everything into some kind of order.

In these notes you will not find many references to the shooting position, the grip, the trigger or anything else regarding the "classic" shooting technique.

I am well aware that the above mentioned technical topics are what tend to fascinate the followers of this sport and on which numerous books have been written of which I suggest you also read.

Books that I too have read enthusiastically and which have obviously contributed to educating me as a Coach.

When reading these manuals, I often realized that in principle they dealt with very interesting points, superbly written, with clarity and exceptionally well detailed.

Topics that are absolutely valid and irrefutably indispensable in order to achieve mastery in shooting.

But this is my doubt and perplexity: given that those texts provide the same "recipe" to everyone who reads them, once this mastery has been achieved, anyone who has achieved it should be able to always compete at the highest level and always perform excellently.

It should be sufficient to keep the right position, hold the pistol correctly, aim and shoot as illustrated and ... well, instead everything that is so well written in those texts, does not always actually happen.

Why doesn't it happen?

When you talk to shooters, you have the distinct feeling that the prevailing idea and the belief that anyone who trains a lot can constantly achieve exceptional results.

But when we put it into practice it's just not like that ……….. deep down we all know it's not “just” like that!

It is not "just" like that even for Champions who train twice a day for 5/6 days a week.

Well, I am convinced that the problem is another, which obviously doesn’t mean that the knowledge of the techniques so well described in those expert books should be ignored, but simply that the solution has not been described in those texts.

I have the conviction, perhaps the presumption, and therefore I "presume" that the solution is another. Here, from these notes of mine the explanation of what this belief is should emerge, and that is why I speak of an "unconventional" training system mainly for pistol shooters.

And when I speak of training, therefore the "way" in which one puts into practice the teachings of the texts I mentioned earlier, I can’t avoid sharing with you an enlightening episode that occurred on February 2, 2008 at the CONI School of Sport in Rome.

It was the "First Conference on Shooting Sports Training"1 where the Coaches of Target Shooting, Shotgun, Archery, Modern Pentathlon and Biathlon were invited.

For the target shooting section, the Sports Director, Aldo Vigiani, and myself should have been present. However, two days before, Aldo called me and told me he was unavailable and therefore I would have to manage alone.

No problem… I only had to organize the presentation to be held and prepare for the "round table" at the end of the conference.

I got to Acqua Acetosa and went to the Conference Hall: absolutely jam-packed! Obviously a very popular topic for people who work in this field.

I’m not going to dwell on how that incredible day unfolded, but only on the introduction given by one of the most well-known personalities in this field: Mario Gulinelli.

He represented the history and all the memories of this School of Sport, having a vast knowledge of every publication relating to every topic concerning all sports.

Well, after a brief introduction, he "stunned" the audience by stating that "there are texts that speak of technique, but there is no literature that deals specifically with training methodology in shooting sports (training as a team, timing, etc.)! "

And if he said so, that was the undisputed truth.

It would make me really happy if someone, after reading these notes of mine, has the inspiration to continue the work I started in 2008, in order to relate everything I have stated in a more scientific way regarding the training methods in target shooting.

Writing this, I would say that I even have the "presumption" that I mentioned before, of using an approach with a "strategic" way of thinking regarding the training.

I have seen this kind of approach used in Giorgio Nardone and Paul Watzlawick's book "L’Arte del Cambiamento", even if it is obviously used in a different context from this one.

In their text, they define an approach for facing problems which matches mine. An “elastic” approach, No preclusions, but pragmatic. And I like it very much because it is a way of thinking that has been used in the West since the times of Greek philosophy, whilst in the East it has even been put into practice in both the Buddhist and Zen cultures.

To conclude this forward I would like to state once again that I am not writing a "manifesto for target shooting" or announcing a new "theory": these are simply my notes on shooting, written by me in a period ranging from 2005 to 2018.

And I define my notes as being "unconventional" because unlike other texts in circulation which, apart from some small personal subtleties by each of the Authors, all say more or less the same thing, namely HOW TO SHOOT, my notes describe WHAT I ACTUALLY DID regarding shooting training, so that “my” Athletes could obtain THE BEST POSSIBLE RESULTS!

In the midst of everything I've written, however, what is missing is those words, those knowing looks, that feeling that was created by working together and spending time together, the interpersonal relationship I had with each single Athlete, therefore the metacommunication, which is not possible to put into words, but which has constituted a fundamental and winning part of my way of being a Coach!

London 2012 Olympics

___________________

1 In Appendix 'A' the program of the conference

The Beginning

I began shooting when I wasn’t exactly "young": in November 1977, I had just turned 28, I went to a shooting range for the first time in Bazzano in the province of Bologna, and here I handled a gun for the first time in my life.

Love at first sight and the following year, in April 1978, I took part in my first competition (I came 1st) and so my shooting "story" began.

I took my first course in Coaching in 1987.

At that time the courses were held in Rome at the CONI School of Sport (Italian National Olympic Committee) at Acqua Acetosa which lasted a week, with the legendary instructors of the time: Prof. Trapassi, Amicosante, Frigerio, Lepore and some other teachers at the Sports School.

Unfortunately, many shooters attend Coaching courses, more with the idea of learning something for themselves as shooters, rather than with the idea of starting to teach and pursue an actual coaching "career".

The only advantage of this is that if a shooter asks you for some suggestions, because he knows you are a coach, you have a few more notions to propose.

But what is the advice that is most requested?

The most frequently asked questions are, more or less, the following:

“… Can you teach me how to score points? … Can you teach me how to shoot well? … Why do I always shoot to the right? etc. etc."

And the answers you usually hear are almost always the same:

"…… put your feet like this rather than that ……,… .. stand sidewards rather than forwards….,… ..you should change your grip…., you should use the correct shooting shoes…. etc. etc."

But, as I said in the "forward", in these notes of mine, there will be no explanation of the shooting technique in the strict sense, even if in the chapter relating to the "Exercises" something can be found.

Instead, an illustration of the Training Methodology I used with the Technical Staff, of which I was the Head Coach, and which the Sports Director, Aldo Vigiani, allowed me to carry out, should emerge.

I'm referring to some first-rate staff: Aldo Andreotti (coach), Herman Tragust (assistant coach), Gianpiero Cutolo (doctor), previously Gianni Danieli and then Giorgio Cardoni (physiotherapists), previously Marco De Sisti and then Roberto Finardi (athletics trainers), Claudio Robazza (sports psychologist).

And since things don't happen from nothing, I think it's only right to give credit to the Head Coach I replaced, who had certainly done a great job both in technical preparation and in behavioral ethics: Vincenzo Spilotro.

The Background

After the technical experiences I acquired in the four-year period 2005-2008, and after having technically led the Junior Staff from March to December 2008, in 2009 I took over managing the Pistol Staff. I was called by the Sports Director to explain my ideas and my guidelines on the methodology that I would have liked to apply over the next four years. Obviously, an explanation to be initially approved of by him (and whoever knows Aldo, knows perfectly well that if he hadn't shared even partially what I proposed, it would have ended there, even before starting!), after that it was to be passed on to the staff and then to the shooters.

The person with whom I interacted the most was Claudio Robazza, Sports Psychologist and Professor at the University of Chieti with whom I had already worked with for at least 3 years.

And when I say "I worked" I mean the kind of "engaging", "productive", "exciting" work in which we agreed totally on the way of interacting with the shooters and with the methodology of administering workloads.

Based on this experience, I prepared my presentation.

I found some articles that Prof. Fabio Partigiani, teacher of Physical Education in Rome and athletics trainer of the Italian Shotgun Federation (FITAV), had written for the magazine “Caccia & Tiro”, which were highly interesting.

Amongst them, I found an article that caught my attention in relation to the general lines of preparation that FITAV had followed to get to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

I had finally found practical confirmation of an idea that I had always believed in, and the graphical presentation of the data represented by Luca Scribani Rossi highlighted exactly what I wanted.

Obviously this work had been carried out by a federation with a great tradition of Olympic victories which I thought would allow me to make my presentation more “appetizing”, not only because of the technical content but also because I was refering to a very esteemed Federation that had won so many medals.

So, taking into consideration both what Professor Fabio Partigiani had illustrated, and also of what I intended to propose, I made my presentation.

Presentation

From the graph you can clearly see the classic relationship between the intensity and the volume of work throughout the sports year.