Club Instructor Light Sport Rifle

[Powderfinger]

Something that I have supported for a long time, a common core course with endorsements for disciplines. The second level courses for coaches should be even more easy to integrate as the NSRA ones at least are not discipline specific. I don't know the content of the NRA coaching course, but if they are teaching technical skills on them at present then an intermediate course to allow a common coach's course to go ahead might be the answer.

It should not be beyond the wit of man to produce a common prone rifle instructor course. The idea of running it on the smallbore rifle might bring a few howls of protest, but I have yet to hear any substantive reason why that could not be done. After all, in order to instruct, the candidate would still have to hold the relevant RCO qualification and that would stop a smallbore only shooter instructing fullbore without any other experience.

I to am sorry that the NATSS project is effectively dead. There were many potential benefits and had the will been there ways would have been found to overcome the obstacles on the road to integration. But the CPSA withdrew, and has not yet explained why, so that was that.

Rutty

Well said.

[DJP1]

There are certainly some differences at the moment between the way NSRA and NRA conduct their prone instructor courses. NRA has a hands on teaching unit with candidates instructing trainees on live firing, whereas NSRA typically uses dry fire classroom instruction which does not need a range. Logistically, you might have expected that to be the other way round but the NSRA unit works fine.

Why these two could not be merged I do not know.

As to NRA gallery rifle, bear in mind that the many NSRA lightweight shooters are using a Ruger 10/22 or similar self loading rifle. that's not a beast known to the NRA gallery shooter any longer, mores the pity.

[bullbarrel]

So how did the course go???????

My baited breath awaits.

[20series]

The course went very well, Dave Froggett the National Coaching and Development Manager from the NSRA ran it and since it was the first ever run I thought he did a very good job.

It was broken down into sections covering the organisation structure of shooting, legal stuff, safety, then practical stuff about building a good standing position and even some stretching exercises

All in all the twelve or so people on it seemed to enjoy it and get something out of it I know I did.

Alan

[BigAl]

It should not be beyond the wit of man to produce a common prone rifle instructor course. The idea of running it on the smallbore rifle might bring a few howls of protest, but I have yet to hear any substantive reason why that could not be done. After all, in order to instruct, the candidate would still have to hold the relevant RCO qualification and that would stop a smallbore only shooter instructing fullbore without any other experience.

Rutty

Rutty as this thread has come back to life so to speak, I would just like to say that as far as the NRA Club Instructor course is concerend you do not have to have the RCO qualification to do it. IIRC out of the half Dozen or so candidates that were on my course last year I think that I was the only one with the RCO qualification, I actually have both the NRA & NSRA RCO qualifications, although both orgainisations recongnise the other when it comes to shooting smallbore.
As far as the NRA Club Instructor (TR) course is concerend, they actually spent quite a lot of time teaching things that actually should be being taught on if not the Probationers course at least the TR improvers course that they run.
If you look at the NRA Clendar on line you will see that the Club Instructor course and the Improvers courses are run on the same weekend. On the second day the trainee instructors basically spend the day teaching the improvers course, so you actually get one day in the classroom and the next you are doing it for real, with real students. As most of the shooters that were on my course were not TR shooters but Classic SR shooters that wasn't very good for those that had paid £100 plus for the TR imrovers course, as many of those doing the instructing had really no idea about shooting propper TR, the disipline that they were "supposed" to be learining about. It seemed that most of those that were on the course were there as the clubs they belong to needed to have some instructors so that they could run probationer courses to the standard required for the new competency standards that the Safe Shooter Scheme requires.
Am I glad I went on the course? Yes, it was quite interesting and I did learn a bit, well about shooting anyway. My problem was that having an Adult Education teaching qualification already, I did not learn that much that was new about teaching/coaching. Also as I already mentioned they seemed to spend more time teaching things that should already be part of the skill set of a competent TR shooter. For exampe we spent aout an hour on how to build a basic prone position for a beginner, and without the chance to try any sort of practicle. Then we seemed to spend about an hour and a half on how to fill in and keep a plot on a range card; a skill that any reasonably competent TR shooter should have already mastered. I was the only candidate that seemed to have any experiance with them, having used them consistanly since I took up fullbore TR shooting. I know that keeping a good windage plot is important in TR but IMO is one to be taught to novices, and of course on the Wind Coaching courses. Would have much prefered to have spent some of that time on setting up the position, which was really rushed.
One final thing that I have to say was that some of the shooters that we had to instruct from the TR Improvers course, seemed to have a very low standard of ablity. They were supposed to have mostly been shooters that had passed the NRA probationary course, and then spent some time shooting with a club. It surprised me that some of the shooters that we had to deal with had managed to pass the probationary couse, let alone had been shooting with a club for a while. Maybe I have been shooting for too long now, but I don't remember shooting with others that were ever that poor. It may also have someting to do with having learned to shoot with a very good coach in the ATC and then learnt about fullbore TR while shooting with the RAF TR Club, so maybe I never got to shoot with any complete novices in my early days.

Alan