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.
