Hi ,

With the new year around the corner we are going to spend time with our families and probably be away from the range with no access to our pistols. This is a great time to take a break from guns, but it does not mean we have to completely let go.

On top of the 60+ training plans already shared in the website, I thought I would send this one just for you to thank you for opening my emails :) This is what I will be doing during my Xmas trip to Spain while visiting my family.

Training plan

Caveats / Caution

I'm not a coach yet. I have experience in shooting and with coaches. For the last four years I've been dedicating a lot of time and effort to improve my own fitness for shooting and for every day life. I've made and will make many mistakes, and that is part of the journey: test and learn.

First thing to take into consideration is that this is a vacation and it can be stressful to manage family, social meetings, and training. Don't beat yourself up: whatever you manage to do is infinitely better than not doing anything, and if you sloth... ENJOY IT :)

This is a general conditioning training plan, to maintain or improve physical endurance and some of the muscles that we use for shooting. The objective is to move and get something done, not to hit a record mark of weight or time. Above all, you have to prevent getting hurt.

Run

Run 3 times a week. Time and distance depend on your shape (I will be going for 30'). If you are not running regularly this is the best moment to start with a run-walk program (search for Coach to 5k on your mobile app store) while you get away and have some time for yourself. If you can't or won't run, walk. Leave at least one day of rest between runs.

Walk

Walk at least 10k six to seven days a week. The steps from running count towards your goal. Walking has great benefits for your body and mind. This is a great moment to take someone with you to talk to: walking conversations have something magic about them and make time fly. You don't have to walk all the steps in a single time. Specially if you are not used to walk it is better to break it in chunks and build up gradually. If you are not used to walking start by doing a bit and then, depending on how you feel the day after, increase or decrease the distance.

Hold

Warm up your shoulders and arms for five minutes or more (you can do just part of this warm up or all of it).

Do 10 holds of up to 1 minute with each arm with maximum 1kg, 3 to 5 days a week. While one arm holds, the other one rests. Focus on keeping your arm and body as steady as possible

The length of time and the weight depends on your current shape. DON'T HURT YOURSELF. Don't over do it. Pay attention to your body. Water and milk bottles are great to use and you can change their weight easily. Cans of food are good too: anything that has the right weight for your current physical shape. Spice the holds up and make it easier to count with these exercises. If you are in really good shape and you feel this is not enough, do it up to two times per day, six times a week. But seriously, don't over do it or you will get burned out and your training will suffer.

Workout

Do 3 workouts a week working on your core (the most important one), your upper body, and your lower body. Again, nothing strenuous, what matters is doing them. Stacking 5 minutes of each for a 15 minute workout will have a great impact already if you are not used to it. If you want to keep it to a minimum, just do core. There are plenty of free and paid mobile apps that tell you what to do (I mostly use the ones by Fitify).

Rest

Make sure that you take an active rest day at least one day a week: walk, swim, do some sport in a leisure way. Keep moving and the blood flow going but don't do it as a workout.

Write it down

Write down in a note pad, a piece of paper, or a mobile habit tracking app the exercises you plan to do and how often. Then mark each day that you do the exercise. It will help you do more. This is the tracker I used in the summer break. You can use some of the pages reserved for notes in the target shooting journal.

Weekly plan examples

These are just some examples. Alternate rest days as your family and social schedule demand. I've removed the name of the weekdays to start whenever it suits you.

3 days a week

1. Run, workout, hold, walk.
2. Rest.
3. Run, workout, hold, walk.
4. Rest.
5. Run, workout, hold, walk.
6. Rest.
7. Rest.

5 days a week

1. Run, hold, walk.
2. Workout, hold, walk.
3. Run, hold, walk.
4. Rest
5. Workout, hold, walk.
6. Run, hold, walk.
7. Rest.

6 days a week

1. Run, hold, walk.
2. Workout, hold, walk.
3. Run, hold, walk.
4. Workout, hold, walk.
5. Run, hold, walk.
6. Workout, hold, walk.
7. Rest.

Enjoy

If these exercises feel like a burden, skip them and focus on enjoying your time with family and friends. You will be more motivated to train when you get back home.

Please let me know if you find this plan useful.

T-shirts?

I'm thinking of making new t-shirts for shooters with basically two ideas:

• The first one would be having the phrase Love the struggle, which I think represents perfectly the why off the challenge we face in our path to mastery.
• The second would be a series of t-shirts just with the silhouette of different target pistols, to promote our love for insiders only.

Do you think any of these ideas is interesting? Any other ideas of t-shirts you would buy?

Become a sponsor

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of Olympic Pistol, join the exclusive mailinglist for advertisers or reply to this email.

Enjoy the break and be good to yourself :)

Ramon Suarez

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