The long-term development of shooting skills in young biathletes

This study is a major part of the dissertation research. It is focused on the development of shooting skills in young biathletes in a three-year training period. Specifically, the long-term development of the percentage success rate of prone and standing shooting in both training and races is described in study. It mentions marginally shooting skills such as the postural stability, the stability of aiming and triggering. The first part of our research, completed in 2017, brought findings that the relationship between exercise intensity and the biathlete’s postural stability exists, but following part of it, finalized in 2018, did not demonstrate the dependence of exercise intensity on the aiming stability and triggering. Initially, the study involved 23 young biathletes (13 girls, 10 boys). Whole research was completed by 19 biathletes (11 girls: age 17.8±0.64 years; 8 boys: age 17.4±0.72 years) after three years. The results of our current study are based on the records of shooting on metal targets that were created during each biathlon shooting training and all biathlon races of the participants in the three-year period. Only shooting with previous physical load was involved into results, shooting at rest was not included in the study. The results show the improvement of the percentage success rate in both prone and standing shooting in the three-year training period in both girl and boy groups and in both training and races (total percentage success rate = the average of the training and races percentage success rate – girls in prone: 2016/2017: 71.3%, 2017/2018: 75.5%, 2018/2019: 80.0%; girls in standing: 2016/2017: 61.8%, 2017/2018: 67.7%, 2018/2019: 73.4%; boys in prone: 2016/2017: 72.0%, 2017/2018: 72.9%, 2018/2019: 75.3%; boys in standing: 2016/2017: 57.6%, 2017/2018: 63.5%, 2018/2019: 67.7%). Girls are better shooters than boys in this research group. In general, the gradual improvement of percentage success rate in time is expected to occur in young biathletes that are in the intensive training process, but our study brings unique data of concretely values at this age of athletes that has not been known yet. The obtained data could be used by biathlon trainers to compare the current level of shooting skills at a given age of their young athletes. At the same time, a normative standard of biathlon shooting skills in a given age could be created in the case of gathering more data. That is one of the goals of the Czech Biathlon Union.