Performance evaluation in Compak Sporting competition

Purpose: Clay pigeon shooting is a sport that requires dexterity and medium intensity muscular effort (Dal Monte 1983) where the shooters, using sportive shotguns, attempt to break clay targets mechanically flung into the air. The aims of this study were to investigate the performance in Compak Sporting (FITASC 2016) competition and to evaluate pain and effort perceived by the shooters due to the recoil, using two sportive shot- guns (shotgun_A, shotgun_B) with similar configurations but different technical characteristics (balance and ergonomics). Methods: 8 shooters (age 26.8 ± 4.6 years; BMI 22.9 ± 1.5 kg/ m2) with at least 4 years of shooting experience were recruited. Each shooter have shot with both sportive shotguns. Qualitative (Visual Analog Scale, VAS, and Rate of Perceived Exertion scale, RPE) and quantitative (Hand Grip Test dominant, HGTdh, and non-dominant hand, HGTndh) tests are proposed before (t0) and after competition (tf). VAS and RPE were used to evaluate pain and effort perceived after competition (tf), HGT of dominant and non-dominant hand were used to evaluate the muscular force varia- tion between before (t0) and after competition (tf). IntraClass Correlation (ICC) was used to exclude possible varia- tions of shooters in rest condition (t0) during the two competition days. In order to assess possible differences between shotgun_A(sA) and shotgun_B(sB), the total scores of Compak Sporting competition and the results of the evaluative tests after competition (tf) were compared using a 2-tailed paired sample t test. Significance was set a priori at p \ .05 for all tests. Results: Based on the proposed protocol, the following results were obtained for the parameters of interest: score (sA 51.63 ± 4.81, sB 47.75 ± 4.50); VAS (sA 4.47 ± 3.68, sB 6.37 ± 4.89); RPE (sA 1.94 ± 1.37, sB 2.50 ± 2.28); HGTdh (sA - 0.73 ± 0.18, sB - 1.03 ± 0.27) and HGTndh (sA - 3.16 ± 0.74), sB - 5.16 ± 0.79). The use of two different shotguns resulted in significant variations in handgrip strength (p = 0.0001): the grip of non-dominant hand of the shooters after firing with sB is weaker than when using sA. Conclusion: This protocol has allowed to realize a method of per- formance evaluation through the analysis of the score, the reduction of the district muscular strength (upper arms) and effort and pain perceived by the shooters after competition. References Dal Monte A (1983) La valutazione funzionale dell’atleta. Sansoni Editore, Firenze FITASC (2016) Regolamento internazionale Compak Sporting