I can't believe how good this Rested Pistol discipline is in the MPL competition. I've just shot this for the first time as an intro for me returning to shooting in general - it's such a leveller of skills and abilities that I'm surprised not more of us are doing it. It also gave me a great confidence boost for then attempting the 6yd MPL Pistol and I believe helped to improve my handling skills.

It's such a simple idea - resting the butt end on a suitable 50mm diameter tube, at a convenient height for sitting or standing, allows you to sort out your trigger control and sight picture and have the inherent straight arm free-hand wobble reduced - in my case it didn't completely remove the wobble, but certainly reduced it to a minimum.

It is simple to shoot, but please don't think that means easy - you still need to practice, practice, practice, breathe and squeeze and maintain the same sight picture for each shot. I used an HW40 that is effectively recoilless, but there's still a slight barrel jump when you release and follow through - you also seem to know more positively when you've pulled one off to the side and spoiled what you thought would be a good score.

I had to think about how to construct the "rest" and what height to use it from and considered using 50mm plastic waste pipe (but didn't want to buy a 3m whole length, nor had any offcuts) so I first made up a flat piece of pine shelf with 2 x 50mm pipe clips screwed side by side to the wood. I opted to fire from a seated position (I have joint problems and fibromyalgia) and placed my bespoke pine shelf / pipe clip rest on the top shelf of a 5 tread step ladder Turn the step ladder round so your feet are in the open part of the ladder frame, not the treaded side when you're seated and, voila, stable rest. To fire from a standing position next time I'll acquire some open tube, cut a slot along the length and push it onto the top rail of the step ladder - no need for an expensive shooting chair

With regards to the butt being on the tube, it obviously helps to have a flat butt, so to speak, as that needs to form a tangent with the tube. Having any protrusions from the butt such as a CO2 screw or a filling port won't help, so that will probably determine your choice of pistol for you.

I can't stop recommending this enough - you need to try this as a discipline. I feel this will also encourage more of us to shoot pistol - I was a full bore and small bore rifle shooter for years and this has been a revelation.

What do you think?