It was Friday afternoon and the sun was high and clear in the sky. In a gym at a school south of Copenhagen, preparations were being made for the POMW B course and the subsequent POMW C1 course. When a course under the auspices of Shindenkan is to be carried out, there is more behind it than you actually expect.
One thing is the execution itself and possible arrangements of remedies. Before all that can be discussed, there is the entire design and development of the course. POMW is no exception and perhaps the course that has demanded the most, but also the one that has shown the fastest results.
As always when developing courses, Yamana-Itotani Sensei has delved deeply into the subject before developing. With POMW it has been no different and yet, because here he has had to start from the beginning, as he had never fired a firearm before. But with focus and determination, he has gone from shooting in class Å to 1 division in a very short time. At the same time, he has managed to gather all his experiences together in a Shindenkan shooting technical handbook which had been presented to the course participants at the first POMW course 3 weeks before. It was now going to be exciting if the participants had practiced and if it had the effect that was hoped for.
All the Chief Instructors had trained according to the shooting technique handbook for approx. 5 months and knew very well that it worked. But it would now be exciting if 3 weeks of use could also be seen clearly. The gymnasium had been converted into a shooting range with space for approx. 14 lanes. Markings were made from the discs at a distance of 3-5-7-10 and 12 meters, so that as the learning took place, you could increase the distance to the disc and thus new learning.
Exactly at 17.00 the course started. 27 expectant participants had turned up and most had followed shooting technical handbook 100 %. Everyone was divided into teams of 2 people and the first distance of 3 meters was taken.
Why stand so close to the target, it's not just easier to hit?
Yes, if you know how to do it. At the same time, it is within that distance that most shooting episodes take place. But when you don't quite know how to shoot, even a distance of 3 meters can be difficult to hit. The vast majority of the POMW participants had to admit that during the first practical part of the POMW course. This even though shots were fired with airguns where the recoil is almost non-existent. But it turned out that the three weeks of basic shooting training according to Shindenkan's shooting technique handbook had created a collection of expectant participants who soon got the results of their training.
Three meters was the start of a weekend where the importance and effect of setting and training the base was bent in neon, carved out with a chisel in stone, cast in concrete and written in the sky in letters as big as beachside villas. And it worked to that extent.
During the first part of the practical part, the participants could not hit a loading gate. Now they could hit the targets and almost everyone got very nice collections of their shots.
Bling-Bling-Bling it sounded every time the bullets went through the discs in the metal shooting boxes. It may well sound strange, but it is a fantastic sound when a bullet hits the metal and I also think that it gives the shooter faith that they are doing the right thing 🙂
It is not so important that you hit in the black part of the disc, it is more important that you can collect your shots in a close group. It shows that you are using your base. The rest can be up to the setting of the gun or other small things that can be corrected. But it is immediately more difficult to build on if the foundations are not in order.
From 3 meters everyone moved to 5 meters with the same effect and then on to 7-10 and 12 meters. Fortunately, the clusters became smaller (ie the grouping of the shots became more spread out) at the longer distances, but the discs were hit, which gave faith that what you had been training for three weeks actually worked as intended.
THIS is how it should be cut 🙂
When that part was in place, it was time on Saturday morning for shooting between two targets. That is that one alternates between the goals. As always in Shindenkan, we don't do it the easiest way, so we started from 3 meters away.
"Whoa - whoa, it's just been written that if you know what you're doing, it's easy to hit from 3 metres".
That is also correct. But the closer you are to 2 targets, which have a certain distance between them, the more you have to work with your body to get the correct shooting position and that is the purpose of shooting at close range. Because it's not just about moving the arms, it's the whole body that has to work. And your whole attitude that needs to be in place - again 🙂
Throughout the course, the focus has been on safety. Although we shoot with Airguns, safety glasses are required for everyone. The plastic bullets that come out of airguns fly straight back when they hit something hard. The wooden boards hung up to protect the walls were apparently hard enough that the bullets flew around the ears of all the participants. And under the new form of shooting, there was no exception, now bullets could also take a new direction when they hit with a slightly different angle than before.
Although everyone was wearing safety glasses, safety was not relaxed and there were also a few of the participants who were DQ'd and had to sit on the bench to think about what they had done. In fact, there were also two entire teams that were DQed, but you can probably read more about that in other articles 🙂
At the same time as this type of shooting with airguns, it was also carried out with laserguns. Same type as military elite corps use. They weigh the same as a Glock pistol, have the same trigger and probably also have the same precision 🙂 If they end up in the hands of an expert, because it is the person behind the weapon who makes a difference.
The next section featured shooting while moving. Forward towards the discs and back again, down the entire row of discs, turning the body halfway and back again. Fantastic trip where one's basis from karate really came into its own. Or would like to come into his own 🙂
There is no doubt that shooting while moving is something completely different than when you are stationary on a range. Here, everything that has been learned must be gathered into a well-functioning unit. It is not without reason that IPSC shooting is formula 1 in shooting.
The last lesson of the day was precisely a trip through shooting's formula 1. IPSC for Shindenkaners and it must be said right away that most of the participants were full of boys. Now they had to show what they could do. And there were actually some who could do quite as much.
The trip through the course consisted of 15 targets along a line, all of which had to be hit, then a change of 180 degrees to a new track, a magazine change and here hit 7 targets, a jerk 3 meters to the right and then 3 poppers on the floor and a plate it had to be hit twice, so that it changed lights at a speed that could make any discotheque envious.
There were many who performed the trip very well. Some actually got their shot in the "bullseye" several times on the first 15 discs at the same time as they had to move on - really well done boys and girls.
The trip went on time and the number of misers was added to the time. Unfortunately, there were a great many of the airguns that were about to run out of Co2 gas, so it was decided to go through as quickly as possible and with as many hit targets as possible. There were actually quite a few who got through the first 15 discs without any problems but were DQed when they had to change lanes. It is precisely here that one's attitude must also be in place, otherwise you risk breaking the security and pointing the gun towards the rest of the participants - which must be said to be a breach of security 🙂
There were 4 of the participants who got through without any problems on the first review. And those who were DQ'd were allowed to go through the course one more time. All in all, an ending that brought the course together into an essence.
If there are some who are still in doubt as to what it is, it can be said very easily – setting, setting and again setting. If you don't have it in place, you can't hit a loading port - regardless of which weapon you use.
