Wednesday 27 February 2019

Life when not shooting

Being a vision impaired shooter does not mean you always pick up a rifle every day. For the last two days my rifle has stayed in its case. However this does not mean I am not doing things which contribute to my shooting.

I thought in this post I could give you a bit of an idea what I do when not actually shooting.

Probably most of my time actually is taken up by work. I work full time as a software developer. Normally this has very little overlap with my shooting, other than I do need to earn an income as there is currently no support for VI shooters in the UK. I have dabbled in mixing my skills as a software developer with my shooting by creating some apps to help me. The only shooting app I have published is VI shoot which allows you to configure your VIASS from an Android device.

My fitness regime is another significant part of my life. Some people think of shooting as a very static sport with very little movement, however you need a good level of fitness and muscle control to actually do it well. Normally I will be on my rowing machine for half an hour every day, core strength is very important for shooting. Tomorrow morning I will be going to do some yoga, again works on the core strength but also it should help my balance. I hope to get some pictures and/or video of me doing yoga for you to see.

Unfortunately being an international sports person does come with some administration from time to time. Over the last couple of days I have been getting together my forms for registering as a World Shooting ParaSport athlete as well as my medical diagnosis form for sight classification. This year probably will have more than usual administration as VI shooting has been adopted by World Shooting ParaSport and there is a new sight classification system as well. It does feel a bit of a nuisance but I guess its required and hopefully in future years there will be much less to do.

This is just some of what I do when not shooting. I will do posts like this from time to time to give you an idea of other things I do when not actually shooting.

Experience of creating shooting videos

You may be aware that over the last few weeks I have been creating some videos for IBSA on vision impaired shooting. It has been quite an ex...