Thread: Testing a conventional approach to load development

Originally Posted by gimp

How much muscle fatigue would you expect a shooter (with good mobility) to experience shooting prone from a bipod and rear bag ?

Muscle fatigue is a cumulative thing I'm told - as you hold your muscles rigidly you are forcing them to consume energy to do so. As you consume energy the end result of this is waste products being formed that must be carried away and dumped from the system - obvious thing is the harder the muscles work the more energy consumed and the faster waste products are formed i.e. the faster the muscles fatigue out.

So, again - not much of a definitive answer as it would depend on the exact circumstances. Factors, how much energy consumed at what rate prior to getting behind the rifle, how stable and comfortable the position (shooting up or down over something or around something, looking directly into the blazing orb, raining into your face vs nice and comfortable level on a formed range in perfect conditions).

A lot of it is also technique - a shooter who has technique that allows them to be very relaxed and a good comfortably set up rifle that doesn't force them into a sod of a position could hold on target for a very long time. I've also seen new shooters go off and need a break in less than a minute just due to crap technique.

I'm going to compare this to a really out there task - wearing breathing apparatus. They used to run 'nominal consumption' rates of 45L of air per minute - but often found bigger framed people would come back for another can of air after less time. Smaller framed people (ladies etc) often could doubled the time. So they wanted a better average - they worked out that by putting people onto a running track in the gear and carrying loads to simulate working they could get average consumption rates to work out if the 'nominal consumption' rate was fair. After the testing the new 'nominal rate' is 60L/min.

I would suspect that the only way to arrive at a 'nominal time' would be to test a bunch of people behind a bunch of firearms and see what the result is. I know of nothing that exists like this as a 'time to not exceed' or anything like that, just what I was trained in mil shooting (admitting I never did as much as I was interested in here) and learned over the years of dabbling in the sports side.