Originally Posted by
barrow_matt
To add to the above I had been reading an old shooting book from the club and trying to get my position right practising at home. I watched the 50m prone Commonwealth final though and noticed a lot of the shooters use a fairly straight right leg and don't cock it at the angle shown in many of the books, looking on youtube at 50m prone finals such as world championships and olympic finals shows similar techniques too.
Which book and how old!?
Thinking on position and performance changes with the wind. The chaps who write Ways of the Rifle have it about right. They set out to write a book titled "Way of the Rifle" before realising they coudn't be that specific and basically had to lay a framework for building a position that suited individual shooters, hence the Plural in the name.
Subsequent revisions have tried to follow this theme by laying a default or "textbook" position but then discussing why you might need to change each element and why that process will be different fior each shooter. Also, there is a danger watching people on TV because although you cna clearly see their outer position, you can't see what's going on with their inner position, under their clothes, etc. You also don't know if they're doing something for a specific and personal reason - like an old injury or something.
Rutty's anecdote reminds me of another, this time regarding Pistol. There was a rather good shooter turned up to a competition and ranked highly, having shot (controversially) with his pistol canted slightly, semi-gangsta stylie.
Sure enough at the next competition, many others were trying to emulate his position without much success. When asked what advantage it held, he answered with some amusement "None whatsoever. I'd love to have a conventional vertical hold, but I shattered my wrist in an accident and this is as close as I can get it!"
Last edited by Hemmers; 15-10-2010 at 12:12 PM.
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." Sigmund Freud
Shooting is my meditation