Injuries

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Nick Selby

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Joined
Feb 20, 2013
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Location
Gloucesteshire
Injuries

Hi, I'm a Physio who is keen to understand more about shooting and the effects it can have on the body. I was wondering what injuries/problems regular shooters have experienced from shooting? Also, anything else to consider such balance or coordination issues..

Any info gratefully received.

Thanks.

 
Injuries
Hi, I'm a Physio who is keen to understand more about shooting and the effects it can have on the body. I was wondering what injuries/problems regular shooters have experienced from shooting? Also, anything else to consider such balance or coordination issues..
Any info gratefully received.
Thanks.
Hi wilfie

My lower back barely lasts a fitasc shoot these days and sometimes 100 sporting is almost too much, i think its a combination of carrying carts in front pocket, lots of standing around and picking up gunslip and bag, combined with an old injury


 
Thanks for the reply Gav. I'm guessing there will be a lot of low back pain sufferers amongst shooters.
make sure you set up a stall at the major shoots this year, the guy at the worlds last year seemed to be pretty busy

 
I am keen to get involved but need to understand a bit more about shooting. I am a real newbie to the sport but would be interested to get involved as a shooter and possibly as a Physio...

 
I am keen to get involved but need to understand a bit more about shooting. I am a real newbie to the sport but would be interested to get involved as a shooter and possibly as a Physio...
Most shooters have issues from holding that large weight out in front of them and carrying it around the shoot. Of course in addition to the gut, there is the gun to consider.

 
My personal pain has been that of headaches particularly early on in my clay shooting when I weighted nothing and guns had yet to evolve into the heavy weight sorted near master pieces of present day, no recoil reduction devices and 32g shells just added to the nasty cocktail. Also recall borrowing a Beretta S57E field gun and literally wincing from shoulder pain towards the last few shots on each stand, this was a light gun with a plastic butt cap shooting 32g shells back in the early 80's. 

Things got progressively better as having learnt about recoil I bought much heavier guns and fitted them with good recoil pads and of course the adoption of 28g loads helped a great deal. In the last decade or so the easy availability of devices such as the ISIS has without doubt helped, but you have to balance things with personal tolerance levels. Many's the day I went home with a blinding headache caused by concussion but oddly shoulder ache has never caused me anywhere near the same trouble. Using a heavy, sorted gun with a reducer and good pad with sensible shells and pacing yourself correctly it is possible to avoid headaches and I have been known to shoot 3 rounds in a day plus pool stands and just suffered a murmuring of  head pains, I have also gone home with a blinder shooting a single round but often this is coupled to high stress levels either from work or shooting well below par and losing to people you know you can beat.

I truly believe headaches are much more common than people admit to, those that never suffer it through concussion of recoil are extremely lucky. Nowadays I shoot a PFS stock which is ace and providing I shoot no more than around 200 clays I don't hurt anywhere. 

 
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Injuries

Hi, I'm a Physio who is keen to understand more about shooting and the effects it can have on the body. I was wondering what injuries/problems regular shooters have experienced from shooting? Also, anything else to consider such balance or coordination issues..

Any info gratefully received.

Thanks.
Phone Dave Izzard at http://www.recoilsystems.com/ ,http://www.recoilsystems.com/ , he will tell you all about it. He developed the ISIS recoil reducer for himself, due to injuries sustained by shooting lots of cartridges.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Injuries

Hi, I'm a Physio who is keen to understand more about shooting and the effects it can have on the body. I was wondering what injuries/problems regular shooters have experienced from shooting? Also, anything else to consider such balance or coordination issues..

Any info gratefully received.

Thanks.
I've had head injury from beating my head against a brick wall and twisted knees from trying to kick my self up the ass.....and it's all shooting related.,,,!On a serious note... occasional shoulder pain if I use a lightweight gun... usually aches the next day.

 
Injuries could be kept to a minimum if the following were taken on board,

Correct gun fit, standing position, dry practice to improve muscle memory, keeping in fairly good shape and shooting loads suitable for the targets. These will help reduce the physical impact shooting has on us, problem being so many shooters dont spend that bit of time to practice and get the basics right.

Also new shooters who have been taken along to a shoot for the first time get whacked about because of poor instruction.

Steve Andrews who is no longer with us bless him, had it sussed. He would watch the shooter not the targets when coaching, and address the shooters stance gun fit and any eye issues first, then he would work on other things. Hit ratios improved and also the impact on the body was reduced.

A good coach will concentrate on these points above first because sore or injured shooters will soon change to another sport if they cant solve things, and this puts people off shooting in the first place because everyone thinks it will hurt.

 
I've had a deltoid muscle strain in my left arm for 3 months now, I only feel pain mounting the gun, it's not getting any better on it's own, suggestions?

 
Coming from target shooting there was always the concern for youngsters shooting standing with an air or cartridge rifle weighing upwards of 4 kilos.  There was a fairly common age limit of 14 adopted because one does not want to stress young bodies before they are fully grown and can cope with it from both a muscles and skeletal point of view.  There is support provided from the heavy canvas or leather shooting jackets, slings etc but the aiming time is longer than for shotgun.

Shotguns are much lighter but still there are the injuries that come from hefting 3+ kilos out in front of you for 100 shots or so with sporting.  Probably shooters should warm up more before they start with bending, stretching and rotating exercises before they start to throw the gun around and risk pulled muscles etc.  Youngsters with parents who shoot tend to start shooting shotguns much earlier that their target shooting equivalents.

For those that do it there are the risks from picking up heavy boxes of clays and slabs of cartridges awkwardly and thus risking a prolapsed disc in the back.  It is vital to adopt safe lifting practice, bending knees and not twisting while lifting.

 
My personal pain has been that of headaches particularly early on in my clay shooting when I weighted nothing and guns had yet to evolve into the heavy weight sorted near master pieces of present day, no recoil reduction devices and 32g shells just added to the nasty cocktail. Also recall borrowing a Beretta S57E field gun and literally wincing from shoulder pain towards the last few shots on each stand, this was a light gun with a plastic butt cap shooting 32g shells back in the early 80's. 

Things got progressively better as having learnt about recoil I bought much heavier guns and fitted them with good recoil pads and of course the adoption of 28g loads helped a great deal. In the last decade or so the easy availability of devices such as the ISIS has without doubt helped, but you have to balance things with personal tolerance levels. Many's the day I went home with a blinding headache caused by concussion but oddly shoulder ache has never caused me anywhere near the same trouble. Using a heavy, sorted gun with a reducer and good pad with sensible shells and pacing yourself correctly it is possible to avoid headaches and I have been known to shoot 3 rounds in a day plus pool stands and just suffered a murmuring of  head pains, I have also gone home with a blinder shooting a single round but often this is coupled to high stress levels either from work or shooting well below par and losing to people you know you can beat.

I truly believe headaches are much more common than people admit to, those that never suffer it through concussion of recoil are extremely lucky. Nowadays I shoot a PFS stock which is ace and providing I shoot no more than around 200 clays I don't hurt anywhere. 
I concur completely.

Neck pain  after a long days shooting and then a fearsome migraine the next morning. I nearly gave up shooting altogether.

Now it is an Isis recoil reducer on a well fitting gun and the lowest recoiling cartridges I can find.......Shooting related migraines have been  almost eliminated.

I also have to manage the weight of my guns as I have puny arms. Lugging a 9lb gun around all day doesn't help me at all. I think it is something akin to tennis elbow.......

 
I have a pain in my wallet and in the neck when I get home… all shooting related, I think that’s injury enough!!!

 
I know a very good shooting instructor who used to be part of the local competition scene with a promising way about him but he hasn't shot a gun now for about ten years. Turns out it suddenly started giving him fearsome neck problems and with a family to support he chose the sensible option. :hmm:

I have a mate who no longer shoots because of illness who despite being the size of a small bungalow used to load his own 24g low recoil shells before they were commonly available just so his shoulder was spared the pounding :huh:   proof enough that recoil affects different people in different ways, being big is not in itself a guarantee you won't suffer.

 
You get big/soft guys in all forms of sport just the same as you get little/tough ones...

 
I've had a deltoid muscle strain in my left arm for 3 months now, I only feel pain mounting the gun, it's not getting any better on it's own, suggestions?
Deltoid muscle strains can be a pain (no pun intended) you can obviously pick one up doing many things and my guess is that it wasn't shooting that caused it, Deltiods are split into three heads and it could be anyone of the three causing pain, and usually more painfull when your arms are raised more so with the humerus coming up shoulder level. Having spent twenty years or more as a bodybuilder (packed in now) i suffered my fair share of deltoid strains and can only say they can take weeks months and even years to ease my advice would be to gently warm up shoulder muscles for five mins before shooting and raise the gun as slowly poss and eventually it will go but oddly enough you can suffer for so long that when the pain goes you don't even realise. :fan:

 
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