Biathlon: the Swedes train collectively for dry firing
With a shooting success rate of just 79.4% for the men’s group as a whole at last winter’s Biathlon World Cup, the Swedes had a tough time of it behind the rifle. As the last nation in the top 5 behind Norway, Germany, France and Italy, the Scandinavian team was unable to compete.
“We lost a bit in terms of shooting percentage and that’s something we want to rectify this year,” Johannes Lukas told SVT Sport. ” Our best biathletes, who were supposed to be on the podium, didn’t do very well,” said Swiss shooting coach Jean-Marc Chabloz.
The same cannot be said for the women, with the Oeberg sisters and their team-mates in fourth place among the five best national teams on the circuit. This collective failure has prompted the Swedish coaches and staff to make radical changes to the way their athletes train.
During the summer preparations, the coaches introduced collective dry firing sessions. The aim is to improve the biathletes’ stability in front of the targets: “Dry training is the best way to improve stability. It’s the slow muscle fibres that need to be trained, and you have to do it often and a lot to make progress,” explains Jean-Marc Chabloz.
“In this type of session, you stand for twenty minutes and just hold your gun. It’s incredibly hard. And I know I was really bad at it last year,” concedes Martin Ponsiluoma. Her compatriot Elvira Oeberg is also having a hard time of it: “It’s not my favourite exercise because you don’t feel the positive effects immediately,” she says.
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