What did shooting teach me in those years?
2024-08-12
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The author is in shooting training
You need to adjust your breathing and pull the trigger within thirty seconds. If you fail, you must put down your gun.
This is what our shooting instructor told us on the first day of training.
At that time, the most difficult thing for me was not missing the target, but not being able to adjust my breathing within 30 seconds. The overwhelming silence accompanied by the sound of my heartbeat and the sound of the contestants beside me pulling the trigger lightly and resting the front end of the gun on the sponge pad would make me feel discouraged. Putting down the gun requires mental preparation, because it means that the complete set of actions just done - standing still, holding the gun, breathing, putting your face on the gun, looking through the scope, etc. - is invalid and failed. Putting down the gun without firing a bullet is almost like surrendering.
I also tried not to put the gun down, and I would shoot whenever I could adjust my breathing. It turned out that if I held the gun for more than 30 seconds, my wrist would start to shake unnoticeably. The rings on the target paper were not even within the ring count several times. It was a kind of frustration and disappointment that I had never felt before.
Looking back at this sport today, if there is any impact it has had on my life, I think it is that shooting taught me when to adjust myself and put the gun down, no matter how reluctant I am, I have to put it down so that I can pick it up better next time.
When preparing for the Guizhou Provincial Shooting Championship, I had to temporarily stop all other sports and focus on preparing for the competition. At that time, I also had tennis lessons every week, but later in training, I found that the tennis swing action invisibly affected the stability of my wrist, so I had to stop the tennis lessons.
During normal training, we need to line up at the venue to get guns. A male teacher sat by the door and registered each of our names, the time of picking up and returning the guns, and the model of our guns. There are several old rifles in the warehouse. If I remember correctly, they should be the old Emei EM45B air rifles. Its loading method, weight and appearance are all different from the guns we use in competitions.
My training suit was dark blue. We didn't have much choice but to choose a suit that fit our body shape and write our name on the back of our competition suit to avoid getting the wrong one. My training suit had some wrinkles on it and was decorated with white and blue lines. It looked neat and tidy, like an astronaut ready to land on the moon at any time.
The clothes smelled like gun bags, with the smell of burlap and nylon soaked in oil and then dried in the sun. Maybe it was the worn edges and leather straps mixed with the sweat of different people's palms, which exuded a mechanical and solemn atmosphere. Just like the words "Fight for Honor" written on the venue where we trained. It always made people who saw it excited, as if you no longer represented yourself when you put on that clothes.
The author (right) and Olympic champion Tao Luna
The reason why the ancient Greek Olympic Games have continued to this day is also due to the love of competition and the yearning for hard work and pride in human genes.
In the past, people believed in the inheritance of the Olympic Games because they regarded this form of competition as a "false war" and everything people showed in this kind of fighting was just within the scope of "games". However, a careful reading of Homer's epic poems will reveal that the continuation of the Olympic Games is because it is an indispensable ritual at funerals - humans use the mode of competition to show their strength to the gods, appease the restless souls of the deceased, and through competition, reunite the hearts of the people who have been loosened by the departure of the deceased.
Shooting is not a traditional Olympic sport; it only officially became a competitive event in 1896.
Of all the sports, I like shooting the most. Shooting is a lonely sport where you compete with yourself. Every moment you understand your body better than the last moment.
Adjust your standing position. The five-kilogram shooting suit makes it difficult to move inside. It's like a sandbag carrying a load. You will feel a force dragging you down, as if your legs are nailed to the ground. I have to wear a thin shirt inside to ensure that this slenderness gives me a certain connection or control over this heavy suit. Next is the shoulder. I want to feel and warm the cold metal through the support and residual heat of the shoulder.
Lower your head, close your eyes and adjust your breathing and heartbeat. After loading, you need to be fully aware of the presence of the gun in your body. You should even try to imagine that it has become an organ of your body. You must know how to use it and make it a part of you. I don't know if other athletes have the same experience: table tennis rackets, badminton rackets or fencing events, do they also imagine the objects in their hands as an organ of their body, and feel its temperature and beating in order to better control it?
The bullets were fired very fast. But I would wait until I heard the crisp sound of the bullets passing through the target paper before I relaxed and took down the gun. The coach was not worried about my skills, but he told me more than once that I needed to adjust my mentality and not look at how many shots others made or how many bullets they fired, but just follow my own pace.
On the day of the competition, my gun was not properly adjusted for the first few rounds. I had to fine-tune my shooting range based on the sight's deviation to the left. As a result, I scored five rings with the first round of the competition. When I saw this number, I knew the competition was over. I only felt the empty, dim shooting venue. There was an athlete aiming at each position. There was almost no noisy talking in the huge venue. There were sounds of lead bullets being put in, triggers being pulled, and holes being punched in the hard textile line.
I felt the cruelty of the competition. All the efforts behind the scenes could be erased by those numbers. In the last game, I only scored 175 out of 20 bullets. I left the competition venue before the results were fully announced. Because I knew that such a result would not rank high in the province.
That was the last time I picked up an air rifle, and my fantasy of becoming a professional athlete was shattered. In the days that followed, in every life decision and every opportunity that came, I remembered what my coach told me at the time: you must adjust your breathing and fire the lead bullet within 30 seconds. If you are not ready, you must put down your gun.
Today, as a shooting athlete, I have become a past possibility in a parallel universe. As I age, I begin to find that the things I can become are becoming fewer and fewer. I don’t know if my early sports experience has brought any nourishment to my life. If so, I think it must be learning how to adjust my breathing in the long run of life.
Author: Jiang Zai
Text: Jiang Zai Editor: Qian Yutong Responsible Editor: Shu Ming
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