British Shooting Talent Pathway – all you need to know – Clay Shooter magazine online supplement

What is Talent Pathway? How do I go about joining? How will it help my shooting? Talent Pathway manager Christian Schofield answers all these questions and more!

The aim of the British Shooting Talent Pathway is to help athletes develop the skills and behaviours to deliver constant World leading performances. One of the key British Shooting values is “to do the basics exceptionally well”. Hard work and attention to detail are key ingredients of success.

GBTP Shotgun

Our approach

We have two strands to our approach – people and environment. We are working hard to create the environment in which athletes and coaches are able to develop. We aim to have enjoyable training sessions where people are challenged, and are supported in striving to meet those challenges. We have seen from other sports around the world that this approach achieves results.

We now have on board Kurt Lindley, our People Development Manager, who is helping us to learn from other sports and from each other. Kurt organised training days for the coaches, with the last one held at Loughborough University. A professor gave a talk about the athlete-coach relationship, and we went to see people from the English Institute of Sport. We talked to people in the sport of power lifting about how they prepare for competitions. If we are to help the athletes meet their goals we must constantly strive to improve as coaches and find better ways of doing our business.

To this end, we have just run the first British Shooting-organised International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) D Licence Course for Shotgun coaches (part of a series of courses run and licensed by the ISSF Academy). We had 24 delegates, many of whom will work towards becoming a British Shooting Skills Coach, working with Talent Pathway athletes. The enthusiasm and knowledge demonstrated by those on the course was amazing and showed that we have a good future ahead of us.

Finland Grand Prix - Mixed Pairs

Long term development

The British Shooting School is used to describe the initial stages of the Pathway, which incorporates several stages or elements, from Talent Hub up to World Class; the Pathway is a continuous process. The concept of the British Shooting School is that over 10 sessions we will provide the knowledge and guidance to help you develop and realise your potential. The 10 sessions are spread out over the year from March to October. The idea is that you, the athlete, will work on your own or perhaps with your personal coach between the sessions, and in the sessions we will help you construct your own training plan and show you how you can train effectively. You can think of it like doing a degree at university – you will attend lectures and find out from your tutor what you need to write your essay on, then go away, write it, and return again to have it marked, at which point you will agree on some areas of improvement or set some development goals.

We concentrate on long term development and not on short term performance. Athletes are constantly, but gently, reminded that their development will take time and that our aim is to do the basics exceptionally well. It is a difficult but important message to get across; without a good foundation, consistent performance will elude you. Competition pressure will punish poor technique and unravel performance.

There are many opportunities to develop and compete within the Pathway. We encourage people to shoot Registered shoots, County and National Championships.

We provide support at key international Grand Prix and take teams to the main international events. For junior athletes we have fantastic development opportunities with the Junior World Cup series. The events allow us to take up to six athletes in each category to experience international competition.

Bronze at the European Championships