VI prone shooting

Well I notice that last year I said I would keep you informed about the other shooting positions available for the vision impaired, but it seems like I had not actually got round to providing any information. As I have been doing prone for the last three weeks, now is the time to change that with this post on the prone position.

For those who don't know about the way IBSA specify vision impaired shooters do the prone and kneeling positions, well its done from a seated position at a table. For those who know about other types of shooting, the prone position is a bit like benchrest without the rest, or a bit like the way IPC disabled shooters do prone. However there are still a few differences from those descriptions.

Firstly the equipment used. The table used, according to IBSA should be between 70cm and 90cm. Also the table may have a cut away in the corner where the shooter sits, this helps provide somewhere for the shooter to put the right elbow. At my shooting club we are just using one of the tables used for benchrest. The seat used by the shooter is a stool, so no arms or back to the seat. The only other equipment is a handstop on the rifle. It is worth noting that for some reason IBSA rules say no slings are to be used although slings would normally be permitted for IPC shooters. While mentioning differences from IPC shooting, IBSA have decided to allow normal ISSF approved shooting jackets rather than IPC jackets, however the shooter must only use the top button on the jacket in prone.

The position above the table top is meant to closely resemble the prone position, so both elbows on the table. The left hand holds the rifle a long way forward, the handstop is there to stop the hand sliding forward. As for the right arm, the elbow probably wants to be on the bit of the table which sticks out to the right of the shooter.

As one is allowed to rest the rifle on a stand between shots, well why not make use of one so as to minimise the amount of movement one has to make. If using a stand between shots, just be careful you make sure you are properly clear of it when shooting, having the rifle resting on it may make it easier but may also not be permitted.

My feeling is that once one has got a reasonable position, then doing prone is quite comfortable and enjoyable. I have included a few photos showing me doing the prone last week, they may help you in understanding the position.

Thank you to survey respondents

This is a quick note to those who responded to my survey on disabled shooting and how disabled friendly their shooting clubs are. I appreciate the timescale was very short and this did give me concern over how many responses I would get. At the time of taking the results for analysis I have had 114 responses from a good number of clubs. I think I should have plenty of information now to work with to be able to draw up some conclusions and recommendations.

Again I would like to take this chance to thank those who responded. your time, effort and views are certainly appreciated and I will post further updates on what conclusions I manage to reach as I analyse the data.

Foot guide to help getting the same position each time

It seems like a little creation which I developed with my coach has been noticed last weekend at the British Championships, a foot guide to help in the set up process. As some interest has been shown then may be I better explain what it is, how I use it and when I think its appropriate.

Last year when I was training for the European Championships I was doing more training and so had different assistants on different days. We noticed that the set up of the position is very important for free standing and that it was hard for those unfamiliar with my shooting to help me get the correct position. As a good shooter will normally be taking the same position we decided to create a guide which shows my foot position. This guide is a piece of hard board with the front parts of my feet cut out on one side, obviously cut in the places where I normally put my feet for shooting.

When it comes to actually shooting, my assistant lines up the guide on the floor, helps me locate my feet into the foot holes and then removes the board. I normally maintain my position throughout the whole competition and so this is only done at the very beginning.

I have referred to this as a guide, there may be times when for some reason I need to make very small adjustments to my foot position after using the foot guide. Also as positions can develop with time, it may need to be something which is looked at from time to time to check that the guide is actually giving the shooter the optimum position for them.

I have seen some suggest that they were considering such a guide to help with beginners, I really doubt I could suggest such a thing. One reason is that the guide is probably specific to a given shooter as everyone has a slightly different position which they find comfortable. Also it may not be a good idea for beginners as they need to learn to feel for when the position is correct, as I noted I even may sometimes make small adjustments from what the guide says because I feel the position isn't quite right. If a beginner were to start by using a guide, they may rely on a guide too much and not really check how the position feels.

Report on British Championships

Well the British Championships finished today. It was good to be there, some interesting conversations and the demonstration of crossbow was also interesting.

Firstly the competition itself. I feel a little disappointed with my score of 590 out of a possible 600, of course in free standing. I think I had been hoping to improve on last year's score, however it was still good enough to win. As I said in an earlier post the lack of anyone from Aberdeen did mean the free standing was a bit low on numbers and so the scores were very spread, second place was down in the 540s so were not really posing much of a challenge to me, probably why its not feeling a great achievement to me.

Supported through up a number of surprises. Well done to Lee from Hereford for winning the supported with 597, particularly good as he is fairly new into the sport. Also well done to him for breaking a long standing junior record I had set a good number of years ago. I just hope Lee will keep going with the shooting. A bit of a surprise from Carole Brown getting 589, very surprising that it still was good enough for second place.

Now to some of the matters which were interesting. Blackburn Rifle Club had come with a crossbow for people to try out shooting crossbow. Having a go with that is the first time I have tried shooting anything but an air rifle. It was an interesting experience, you certainly can feel some recoil on the crossbow and you need to try and keep the follow through much more than you can get away with for air rifle. I don't think I will be taking up the crossbow as a major part of my shooting at the moment, it may be useful to try and improve my trigger/follow through technique which does need improving.

Finally it was good to talk with John from Blackburn Rifle Club and Liz from the disabled shooting project. We covered all sorts of things, possible other disciplines one could try and do, the state of the rules, ways of increasing competitions, my project for my Open University course and other things. On other disciplines I have now at least some ideas on possible things to look at for air pistol, something I really would like to do as it would certainly reduce the baggage when travelling to competitions.

Its been a good day, however long and tiring with that early start I needed to make to get to Wolverhampton in time for my detail. Hopefully if those discussions lead to anything then I will be writing about those developments here.

Upcoming British Championships

Well the British Championships are coming up this weekend. At the moment I don't have a huge amount to say on the topic. I am slightly disappointed that nobody from Aberdeen is going to be able to be there, they normally offer some of the best competition in the free standing event. Also I know that some people are a bit annoyed with the way the sport is being run and as the AGM is held at the competition there may be some interesting discussions in the AGM.

This year is the first year where I have decided not to enter in the stand assisted event, it was a decision made last year that I should really focus on my free standing particularly if I intend to compete internationally. As I will only be competing in the free standing, I think this is the reason I am so disappointed that nobody is entering from Aberdeen. It can be nice just to know that there is someone who is actually competing against you, keeping you on your toes. My main focus I think is to improve on what I did last year and so hopefully set a new British record.

Disabled shooting survey

This is not directly related to VI shooting, however as it relates to shooting and disabled people I thought it was worth mentioning here.

I am currently studying a post graduate course with the Open University and the current module I am studying is on problem solving and improvement and requires me to do a small project. So I have decided to do a project on how shooting clubs can become more disabled friendly, or may be more correctly, how can the Disabled Shooting Project can assist shooting clubs to become more disabled friendly. As part of this project I would like to get views from shooters, both disabled and non-disabled, on their views of how disabled friendly they feel their shooting clubs are.

I hope you can spare a few moments and possibly will fill in the survey below to assist me in this project. If you do answer the survey, thank you for your time.

IBSA Open European Championships 2011

I realise its been over a week since the Open European Championships, however I was quite busy in getting some university work completed which probably should have recieved greater attention while I was in Slovakia.

Firstly journey went without any problems. This was the first time I had flown with my air rifle, however that all went smoothly. There was a little bit of confusion at Vienna airport in knowing where to find the air rifle, however it was found and there was no problem. From Vienna we had road transport arranged by the organiser.

The Wednesday was set aside for the equipment control and training. As my training time was not until late in the afternoon I decided to have a bit of a break until then. At the training session, as here in the UK loading is normally done by the assistant as the specialist scope we use can make it difficult to load the rifle, we decided to ask whether it would be permitted for my assistant to load for me. We managed to get approval for this.

The Thursday saw the day of the standing competition, the one which was my main focus as its the discipline I am experienced in. We heard word in the morning that there was some disatisfaction over my assistant loading for me and as I started my sighting shots we were officially informed that I would have to load the rifle for myself. I possibly took more sighting shots than I would normally so that I could get used to the new shooting procedure of me loading. Luckily this change did not seem to affect me and I completed the competition with a score of 585. This was possibly slightly unfortunate as there were three people on 586. Anyway this got me 6th place which saw me into my first international final. I had a couple of bad shots in the final, however I had finished the main competition sufficiently ahead of 7th place that I maintained 6th place. This was possibly lower than I wanted, however the top scores were tighter than I had been expecting.

The Friday was for the three position competition, my first ever competition doing other positions than standing. For some reason IBSA have decided to adopt sitting positions to replace the prone and kneeling and so we had not got a suitable seat and table for doing these positions. I am grateful to the Danish team for loaning me a suitable table and seat. Also while the IBSA rules seem to be very clear about slings not being permitted, it had been decided that slings would be allowed for the competition. Thank you to the team from Finland for loaning me a sling. The three position started with the sitting position for prone, I must have been lucky with finding the position as it was feeling quite good and comfortable. There were some moments where I was just doing the shooting and I was so unaware of how many shots I had taken that I became concerned in case I did too many and so needed to check how many I had done. I finished the prone part with a score of 394, which while may be not going to be the top score it was certainly good for my first go. Next came the kneeling, which did not go so good. I must have not found the position as it was uncomfortable and unstable. At one point I was ready to withdraw from the competition, but some how I managed to push myself on and completed the competition with a score of 375. There was little time to recover as there was still the standing to do. I completed the standing with a score of 388, which may be is lower than I would have liked, but considering what I had done just before that I was still happy with this score. I finished the three position with a total of 1157 which gave me 13th place.

The Saturday was the day of the prone competition, after my good experience with the prone the day before I was looking forward to this competition. I did not quite find the position I had found the day before for the prone, however it was still feeling very stable and I felt able to continue. I completed this competition with a score of 593, which I felt was fairly good considering the amount I had done before. This saw me in at 10th place, which I was quite happy with.

You can find a full copy of the results here.

I really enjoyed the time at the championships, may be I would have preferred the kneeling to have been a bit easier. Also I hope that may be more people in the UK could take up doing the prone discipline, then may be in future others could be going to such championships.

I imagine my next main competition is going to be the British Championships in March. I don't know whether I will be able to encourage some adoption of the prone position before the British Championships, however I hope at least it can be discussed at the British Championships and may be future years will have the prone discipline as well.