Well, the only weapon I've received formal training for was a chinese-style wooden sword. Swords were taught as a side to hand-to-hand at a weekly martial arts class I used to attend when I was a lot younger. Adults got to use real (blunt!) swords though. The school also taught canes :P
Outside of that, I joined an Archery club in which I was a decent shot with the standard short bow, but sadly never got to use a compound bow which looked really neat.
More recently I started attending a local smallbore rifle club. They used bolt-action .22 sporting rifles (anything bigger that isn't a non-automatic farming or hunting shotgun or scattergun is heavily restricted in my country) and you had to wear these bulky jackets that restricted your movement - and likely made you a better shot in the process.
We started off with said bulky jackets and "slings" which forced you to hold the gun in a certain way while providing extra support which made you crazy accurate even if you didn't know what you were doing - like training wheels on a bike, really.
Later we moved on to having to lay down on your elbows and fire, which was a huge difficulty spike and also ached pretty bad.
Over the year I averaged a score of just below 9 per target. 10.1 was the highest you could get, which was pretty much dead-centre on the bullseye, followed by 10 which was within or bordering the bullseye without being dead-centre, and 9 which was the first ring outside the bullseye.
It was fun, but I really wish I lived somewhere where we could fire off more powerful guns. The only other alternative is for me to go to the black powder firearms club, which is very loud, and very smelly :P
TL;DR:
Formal Training: Wooden Chinese-style swords
Club Activities: Short bows, .22 bolt-action sporting rifles
Last edited by 4zb41; Mar 14, 2013 at 04:10 AM.