Riccardo Monzoni¹ ,Barbara Lonzi²,Loredana Banci^2, Francesco Mari², Marco Vignaroli², Ario Federici¹

¹Department of Biomolecular Sciences – Division of Exercise and Health Sciences, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy.
² Department of Testing and Prototyping, Benelli Armi S.p.a., Urbino, Italy.

Aim:
The recoil of a shotgun can result in both an increase in perceived exertion and pain by the shooter and the occurrence of muscle fatigue phenomena. This represents a critical aspect of the disciplines of clay pigeon shooting where it is expected to hit a large number of targets by means of a rearm, which is typically the over/under shotgun. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the e ects of the recoil on the shooter and how the use of di erent weapons can modify these e ects. Both qualitative and quantitative tests allowed to assess e ort and pain perceived by the shooter (Rate of Perceived Exertion, RPE, and Visual Analog Scale, VAS) and his muscular force variation (Hand Grip Test, HGT, and Isometric Maximum Voluntary Contraction, IMVC) between rest condition and after the competition.

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 has red with three di erent shotguns having di erent technical characteristics (balance and ergonomics) during three Compak Sporting competition.

Results:
The reproducibility of rest conditions during the three competition days was assessed by Intraclass Correlation Coe cient (ICC). Subsequently, Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare the results of each test before and after the shooting session. Moreover, to determine any dependence on the technical features of the shotgun on the shooter’s fatigue, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to highlight any di erences between the three tested weapons. Signi cance was set a priori at p<0.05 for all tests.

Conclusion:
Thanks to the proposed experimental protocol, signi cant di erences were observed between rest condition and after Compak Sporting competition on HGT (p=0.036) and ET (p=4.5·10-5) for muscle fatigue and VAS (p=1.5·10-5) and RPE (p=1.4·10-3) for self- perceived fatigue. Signi cant di erences in muscle fatigue levels were found when comparing the three types of gun, especially with regard to the upper part of the non- dominant shooter’s body.