A.I. Kondrukh, Ph.D.
The Central Council of the All-Russian sports public organization "Russian Federation of Practical Shooting", Moscow

Key words: practical shooting, sport, worldviews, guidelines.

The relevance of addressing the issues of scientific analysis of the formation and development of practical shooting as a domestic sport is determined by several reasons.

− Firstly, it seems very timely to address this issue and even urgent in more generally problematic terms - restoration of the generalized system of civil and military-centered physical education in Russia [3].

−  Secondly, the present extreme popularity of practical shooting is stipulated by the applied tasks of its use in the training program for officers of various defence and law enforcement agencies. Moreover, the steady expansion of this segment of the social base of practical shooting in Russia proves that it is still very far to the limit of satisfaction of the growth of the specified demand.

− Thirdly, the steady trend of an absolute increase of those involved in practical shooting, the accumulation of big experience by veterans and managers are getting more involved in an acute contradiction with the existing scientific and methodological data starvation, lack of the system of educational professional training of management and coaching teams. The appearance of such a system, in turn, is impossible without the profound scientific monitoring and creation on its basis of the necessary and sufficient amount of training and methodological support.

The purpose of the study was to analyse the history of development of practical shooting as a sport, its ideological grounds, distinctive features, order of study units.

Results and discussion. The choice of methods of research, analysis and monitoring of the problem area of practical shooting is facilitated by the almost complete lack of theses focused on it, special studies and methodological developments dedicated to it. Rare exceptions are, for example, the works of the author of this material, the teaching aid of E.B. Efimov or the thesis of V.A. Kryuchin on competitive training of athletes in practical shooting, defended at Ural State University of Physical Culture in 2006. Owing to extremely poor theoretical and methodological support of the sports practice under consideration precludes the use of the conventional method of document analysis and switches attention to other empirical methods, in particular, to observation and experiment. Establishment of the Federation of Practical Shooting of Russia is a large scale domestic social educational experiment, and summarizing the results of the long-term activity of the Federation can provide reliable data and serve as a starting point for solving all the above tasks.

So, most likely, the history of practical shooting has American roots. Its prologue is associated with the dueling practice of Amerian cowboys, bandits, sheriffs in the XX century in the so-called Wild West. In these duels a shooter who was able to quickly take out a weapon and was guaranteed to hit its target from any, even the most unstable position, survived. The start of the sports history of practical shooting dates back to the late 70’s - early 80’s of the XX century and is identified with the organizational activities of the American veterans of the Vietnam War. It was their mentality, their beliefs and experience that formed the basis of the first Rules of practical shooting competitions. Those were the rules much more belligerent than they are now, true with regards to the terms of hitting the targets, extremely focused on combat practice. Even the targets of those times resembled a shape of a man with the hitting areas of А, С, D (Alpha, Charlie, Delta). Models of military equipment served as the scenery. Only recently, due to the pressure of the peace movement and humanistically minded public, they gave up the most obvious irritants in favor of impersonal, conventional, diamond-shaped sports targets and equally conventional scenery. The transition from the combat imagery to the «gentle» or «civil» style, however, did not affect the very essence, the specific content of the practical shooting competitions. However, this difference caused a reverse reaction from professionals and provided the stimulus to the opposite trends in the modern evolution of practical shooting - the tendency to strengthen its military and service application. This trend is also stimulated by the growing number of former and current officers of the law enforcement agencies involved in practical shooting as a sport. In the relevant Russian sports movement, for example, the military initially accounted for half of the contingent, and currently every third athlete is either a former or current employee of the law enforcement agencies.

Nevertheless, all athletes participate in the competitions as civilians, and the practical shooting competitions themselves are organized within general sports legal framework that does not allow to rank practical shooting as purely applied sports. Moreover, such a ranking is actually destructive and cannot entail anything but a collapse of practical shooting as a sport.

Another thing is to select and justify various «zones of responsibility», social and pedagogical orientation of practical shooting. Sport, general (basic) physical education, special (applied) physical education should become such zones [1, 2].

Despite a relatively recent emergence of the considered sport in Russia, it would be wrong to call it young. In fact, an official decision about the Russian regional office joining IPSC (International Practical Shooting Confederation) was made in 1999. It was lobbied by a very large number of practical shooting competitions that took place in Russia from 1997 to 1999. In 2006 practical shooting was already officially registered as an independent Russian sport, and in 2007 this sport received its first federal accreditation. Thus, since the late 90’s of the XX century and to the present day the practical shooting domestic movement and sport have accumulated considerable experience allowing not only to distinguish it from the shooting sports in general, but also to formulate responsibly a list of basic theoretical and methodological provisions or, to put it more correctly, sections.

Practical shooting includes competitions in four types of shooting: pistol and revolver shooting, plain-barrel gun shooting, grooved carabine shooting and all-round - TriGun.

The fundamental principles of practical shooting are: precision, power, speed. It is interesting that this was the name of an organization that led the formation and development of this sport before the All-Russian sports public organization "Russian Federation of Practical Shooting» came into existence in 2006. It is quite easy to decipher these principles: maximum efficiency in hitting the targets during the minimal period of time with the maximum power of weapons. Combined realization of these factors requires outstanding experience, excellent reaction speed, explosive mobility (acceleration and velocity of the broken rhythm of movement, effective firing speed), strength, being well-stretched and flexible, endurance, coordination, excellent knowledge of characteristics and capabilities of the weapons used. In its turn, only the total account of fundamental principles and all the above factors, plus the ability (rather the skill) of quick and accurate working out of this account an optimal scheme, creating a plan of the order of hitting the targets of various degrees of difficulty find their expression in the formation of the integrative capacity that determines the skill level of a practical shooting athlete. It is advisable to call this integrative or strategic ability or quality practical shooting intelligence. It is in the latter that all the levels, trends of training a practical shooting athlete such as shooting, physical and psychological ones are balanced and harmonized. Without mature practical shooting intelligence it is simply impossible to win or even just perform successfully enough at a competition with many changing factors reaching up to 1,000 record shots and up to 600-700 targets used in always different and non-repetitive exercises.

We hope that the above points in their entirety and complexity provide a fairly clear, full understanding of the difference between practical shooting and the other shooting sports, in particular, bullet shooting. Certain differences of practical shooting are reflected in worldviews, the rules of joining the ranks of members of the Federation of Practical Shooting, consistency and content of the theoretical and methodological training sections.

The worldviews take shape in the «Code of Shooter», commandments that have the force of law for everyone engaged in practical shooting.

1. Shooting is an integral part of patriotic education in the real, not virtual space and time.  General physical strength and strength of spirit multiplied by the ability to shoot and fight are the basis on which alone it is possible to begin bringing up a patriot, for moral preaching of an unskillful man weak in body and spirit is most often ridiculous, pathetic and irritating.

2. Safe and skillful handling of «Code of Shooter» weapons is a comprehensive basic skill, the base of civil and patriotic education. It involves four principles:

− always handle a gun as loaded;

− not to point the gun to whеre one does not want to shoot;

− not to put one’s finger on the trigger until the gun is pointed at the target;

− before shooting one should make sure what kind of target is in front of one, what is in front of it and behind it.

Joining the Federation requires a permit for the gun, recommendations from two actual shooters - members of a sports club, a course of safe handling of weapons (including theoretical and practical exams), participation in a competition under the supervision of an instructor. These complex requirements make penetration of outsiders, mentally unstable and spiritually immature people, terrorists and bandits of all sorts into the Federation impossible, ensure the continuity of responsibility and discipline, create the conditions and atmosphere of combat brotherhood, sports association.

Ideologically-educational impact of practical shooting in the vast majority of cases is sure to reach the desired effect, although this effect is somewhat different for different age groups.  For example, the youth is characterized by obtaining masculinity, patriotic socialization, discipline, while adults get verified ideological synthesis of excitement, danger awareness and the need for maximum concentration comparable to the image of «a snake in one’s hand».

Finally, main or basic skills of practical shooting involve a whole range of guidelines that include the following sections:

−   holding a gun;

−   aiming at a target;

−   pull-off handling;

−   direction, aiming, shooting;

−   step-shot;

−   pulling out a gun from the holster;

−   change of container, loading and reloading of a gun;

−   raising a gun from a surface;

−   starting the shooting from different starting positions of a loaded gun;

−   shifting the aiming point laterally, along the line, while moving;

−   shooting from different positions (standing, sitting, shifting the body weight and the point of support);

−   shooting in prone position;

−   shooting from behind cover;

−   shooting in port;

−   shooting by a strong/weak arm;

−   shooting at moving targets;

−   shooting on the move.

Accordingly, teaching practical shooting technique requires correct methodological approach, in particular, explaining gun configuration to a shooter, how its parts and mechanisms work, the nature of a shot, all the above sections, analysis and ways of hitting targets of various kinds, psychophysiology of handling shots and misses.

In conclusion it should be noted that one more specific distinction of practical shooting is the use of targets with "feedback", that ensures immediate "sending of a signal to the brain about the need for correction, forming optimal motor function and "feeling of right shot". In essence, this is not another, but one of the main differences of practical shooting, converting (or, conversely, returning) it to the mechanism of active meditation that has been practiced even by medieval oriental warriors.

References

1. Konikov, S.L. «Martial Arts in training soldiers of the special forces group: Past and Present" / S.L. Konikov, A.A. Peredel'sky // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kultury. – 2010. – № 9. – P. 46–49. (In Russian)
2. Peredel'sky, A.A. Profile educational technology and its specific historical application / A.A. Peredel'sky // Vestnik sportivnoy nauki. – 2013. – № 1. – P. 49–53. (In Russian)
3. Peredel'sky, A.A. Formation of moral and spiritual health of individuals by means of physical and sports culture: the science to help ideology / A.A. Peredel'sky // Vestnik sportivnoy nauki. – 2012. – № 2. – P. 53–56. (In Russian)