What does it really take to become one of the best in the world?

There is, of course, no single answer. But when you look at the best athletes in the world, there are certain things they have in common. They have set themselves a goal. They want to find out how good they can become. And they are willing to do what it takes to find the answer.
They train a lot. A lot.
It is often said that elite athletes sacrifice a great deal to achieve their goals. They sacrifice free time, social events, holidays, and sometimes even parts of their family life. In some ways, that is true. But I think the word sacrifice can be misleading.
Because if you truly want to become the best, it is not necessarily a sacrifice.

It is a choice.

You choose to spend your time on something you consider more important than the things you choose to give up.

Time Is Part of Training
Becoming one of the best in the world requires more than simply putting in a lot of training hours. It requires planning, evaluation, execution, and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to adjust along the way.
But it also requires creativity.

How can I get the most out of the time I have?
How can I train smarter?
How can I reduce the amount of time I spend on things that do not make me better?
For a shooter, this can be very practical. If it takes 45 minutes to drive to the shooting range, that means an hour and a half spent travelling there and back. If you do that four times a week, that is six hours.

Six hours every week.

If we calculate 40 training weeks a year, that becomes 240 hours. Over ten years, that is 2,400 hours. 2,400 hours that could have been spent training, recovering, developing technique, working on the mental side of the sport, or doing something else that brings you closer to your goal.

That does not mean you have to eliminate all travel time. The point is to look for opportunities. Perhaps some of the training can be done at home. Perhaps dry-fire training can replace part of the time spent at the range. Perhaps there are other solutions that allow you to use your time more effectively.
It is about being creative.

But More Is Not Always Better
At the same time, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the answer is always to train more. It isn’t.
Recovery is part of training. Without enough recovery, the quality of your training can suffer, and in the worst case, you can end up overtrained or injured.
So it is not just about how many hours you train.
It is about what you get out of those hours.

Quality over simply quantity.
Planning over randomness.
And long-term progress over short-term solutions.

The Normal Life

When you want to become truly great, it can also become difficult to live like everyone else.

You cannot necessarily go out every weekend if your goals require you to train and recover. You cannot always attend every birthday, party, or social gathering. Maybe renovating your house has to wait. Maybe holidays need to be planned differently. Maybe other parts of your life have to be prioritised differently than they would be if your sport were not such an important part of your life.

It can sound as though you are giving up your life. But that is not necessarily the case.
You are choosing. And that is an important difference.
For most people, there is no one forcing them to become the best in the world. No one is telling them that they have to train every day. No one is telling them that they have to turn down a party or spend the evening recovering.
It is a choice they make because they have a goal that means more to them than the alternative.

It Is a Choice to Become Great

Perhaps this is the most important thing to understand. When you want to become truly great at something, it is not necessarily about what you have to sacrifice.

It is about what you choose.
Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. The difference lies, among other things, in how we choose to use them. If you want to become one of the best, you have to be willing to do things that others do not need—or do not want—to do.
You have to train when others are taking time off.
You have to recover when others are going out.
You have to evaluate when others have already moved on.
You may have to say no to things you would actually like to do.

Not because you are forced to. But because you have chosen a goal. And perhaps that is the biggest difference of all:

It is not a sacrifice to do what you have chosen to do.
You chose the goal. You chose the path. And you chose what you are willing to do to get there.

Because it is a choice to become great.

Under Swedish Cup vil jeg gjennomföre scatt-treninger med de som önsker det. Jeg har kontor i närheten av Gymmet på Sävsjö Skyttesenter.

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World University Games are popular among many shooters around the world. According the Inside the games North Caroline has been awarded the summer games for 2029. You can read more about the games here North Carolina awarded 2029 FISU Summer World University Games (insidethegames.biz)

Issf published the 1st of January a draft of the new rules that will come. Most important ones for rifle will be as following

1 Change of distance from front sight to center of barrel. The old rule was 60mm and it has increased with 20mm to 80mm Rule 7.4.4.2 c
2 Change of distance from the fore-end to the center of the barrel. The old rule was 120mm but now it will be 140mm. Rule 7.4.2.2 d
3 If you have a soft cap it may touch the rear sight rule 7.5.8.8
4 Take also a note on how the sling for 50m shall be used. There has been some challenges during 2022 on this Rule 7.5.8.2

You will find more if you follow the link.
Microsoft Word – Draft PGG edit 31.12.22 sect. 7 Rifle-Rules 2022 PG 20.10.22.doc (issf-sports.org)

Read more about it in “inside the games

Western nations considering Paris 2024 boycott if Russia is allowed to compete (insidethegames.biz)

For many people in these days it is hard to train. Many ranges are closed around the globe. It is not only shootingsport that has this problem because of the pandemendic but many other sports too. For many it is difficult to find solution or motivation for practise, and as always those who will manage to do so during this horrible time will be strongest in the end. One of the reasons that makes it difficult is of course, ranges are closed. But also goalsetting since we do not know when it is over. Competitions are postponed or cancelled. This is hardest on the youngest i am guessing that has less of patience then older people. However, this may also be a hard time for older atlethes that do not have so many years left of their career. So what to do? I do not have the answers because this will be very individual what to do. But i can come up with suggestion and hopefully it can motivate.

There are clubs that has a possibility to lent out the targets or scatt so the atlethe can have it home it is very good for the training. There might be restrictions of having rifles at home or the house is not big enough. But it can also be good thing using a scatt too and there you do not need 10meters. By using scatt you can have goals using the measurements that is in Scatt. This might also be something that an atlethe will find good since the focus has a tendency to go to technical parts of the shooting instead of scores on the target. This can be fun and relaxing.
If a club have many scatts it is possible to be social (in todays world) and have the coach training the atlethes. Simple by using example Zoom. Here everyone can see eachother and it is possible to share the scatt system with everyone. That means the coach can sit at home watching the atlethe practise and comment and give tasks to next time. With this it is only the imagination that stops you.
The last but maybe the most important thing. What about finding a goal about yourself. Get to know yourself better in this periode? How do you react on the pandemendic time. What does it do to you and how can you learn from this that you can use it for the shooting later? Or for other things for that matter.

I hope that the pandemendic soon will be over. We will probably have to learn to live with covid-19 as it is will never go away. But with the vaccine soon coming lift will almost be the same as it was. Saying almost because it has changed the world and some of the things that has changed might be a good thing. How come? People have seen oppertunities and it is time clubs and atlethes do the same. Stay safe

In all over the world the covid-19 effect our daily life. It effect how we meet, it effect how we do greetings, it effect how we train and so on. And even if the vaccine will come it will still effect us a long long time. In shops, or where you must pay we can see there is a plexiglas between the cashier and the customer. This might become a reality for different sports too. Here is a picture of a shooting range in Norway (Photo: Magne Ivar Mellem) and how they have solved their way of being able to have competitions. This might be a future way too?

The other day an atlethe and i tried to build up the pulse for learning how to shoot during pulse. The atlethe had gymclothes with her and we decided to do it like this. Shoot sightingshots, change to gymclothes, run around 500meter, come back and change to shootingclothes. Since the sightingshots was done it was straight on the match. And the match was a 20shots-match. She used a little time to get into the shootingclothes so the puls went down a little bit before starting but this we also wanted. In the beginning it was hard to shoot. It was easy to see for me as a coach that the rifle moved much more then usual. And it was not easy to shoot either. However, the result on the target was decent, not good but just a little bit under the avarage on a 10shot serie. The second serie was better and more normal standard. After the 20shots match was done she did another run for 500m. This procedyre we did 3 times. Every time the first serie was a little lower then the 2 serie and this was expected. The interesting thing was that the 1 serie became better and better. The atlethe started to work more with the breathing to get the puls down. And that is a good key to do. We learned a lot of this training both of us and are thinking some things that can make it even better. And as the atlethe said “this was fun, something happend during the training and i really got challenged”. And that is what it is about, challenge the atlethe.

In the past weekend there was a trainingcamp for the Swedish team. In Sweden the national team for junior and senior practice together and sometimes even the Parateam is there too.
When i say practice together the teams have different scedules but can go and talk to eachother and sometimes there is a match against eachother. The juniors love to beat the seniors. In this camp we had a seperate program and most of the training was air-rifle since the we are going into a air-rifle season. In the first day we worked with the hip on the session part where i organized the training. We worked about the stability putting the hip forward and different speed in the in and outlift to the stand. And what happend with the hip in different speed. This was before lunch. After lunch they could choose between their own plans and tasks during training, a lecture about trainingplans or both. The lecture was around 45min. After this it was time for physical training too.
The next morning it was a new organized training by me where we worked about the triggerrelease. Only the release it selves. Not how long the aimingperiode is, or the timing between the target and trigger-release.
What they should be aware of is that with wrong placement of buttplate if that effected the triggerfinger’s placement on the trigger. And again after lunch it was their own program and including the physical training. During the sunday we stoped training at 12 since some has 4-5 hours drive back home. The training sunday was a 60shots match and a final after that. Under you can see the result of the winner in the final.

The 4 competitions that was shot in the last weekend was hard. The atlethes had the day off on monday (except for physical training). As a coach i looked forward to meet the atlethes again on tuesday but during their short meal ( a fruit and yogurt or something) i notice they were tired. I could see that my sessionplan would be to hard to follow when it came to consentration. My session would probably be a bad session for the atlethes and they would probably not learn so much. So i decided to change the training. This is important as a coach to be able to do. To “read” the atlethes and their mood and especially after a hard competition weekend or longer training periode. So i changed the plan for the session. Instead of stability session they could do whatever they wanted. But they should have a task and a goal. To make sure they learned something they should be able to answer what, why and how about their task. I noticed that during the session the atlethes had more breaks then normal, but that was ok. This was also a confirmation of that it was a correct decision to give them the freedom of the session. They did work very well when they were training, but needed more breaks then normal. And sometimes this is and should be ok.