Posted by batty on January 28, 2010 under Competitons, Training | 
Thursday and its my day off so a good lie in is in order… yeah right!
When on trips abroad it is important to me that I am as considerate as possible to the rest of my team.. by doing this I like to think that it sets the example and that the other people in my team will do the same for me.
Like that bloody worked after someone came into our room, with their mouth on the highest volume threatening to jump on me because I was still in bed…. Did they not care to consider that I was resting and that it wasn’t my day for competing?
Lessons learnt and rant over before I say too much! It may already be too late but hey this is my blog for my rantings!
I spent most of the day down the range watching people shoot and waiting to take opportunity of the pre-event training set out for senior women at 18:00
Again training was good and it was good opportunity to have a bit of feedback, a natter and to utilise the head GBR coach, Donald McIntosh.
Lets home I can transfer my training into tomorrow competition
Posted by batty on January 27, 2010 under Competitons, Training |
Today we’ve had a nice late start followed by training in the afternoon.
As the range was quiet full I decided to go through equipment control. Its always nice to see some friendly faces especially on the side of the Jury!
As I had gone down the range in my boots and left my trainers in the room it made for a little complication. As boots get tested at equipment control its easier to sling them around your neck and go with other footwear on but my boots (as its snowing here) wasn’t really the best and most comfortable thing to wear… or so I thought!
I borrowed Pickles trainers and OMG what a mistake that was as they are so uncomfortable
Thankfully I was only in the queue for 30 minutes (unlike Kennys 2 hours!) as Dave Goodfellow (a British ISSF A Licence Judge) came to say hello at first and then came back a couple of minutes later to enquire if I had brought my blue British Shooting equipment control card. As it stays in my diary, of course I had it with me 
This saved me the other 1h30 minute wait in equipment control and the hassle of getting all my kit tested again only to have it comfortably pass.
So back on the range and off with Pickles god damn awful trainers!
Training was good, many positive shots again even if I did manage to double load one shot! Like a numpty!
Still I manage to perform to a level which I was happy with for my training and after a break went back onto the range to shoot 10 more shots, with very positive results.
Happy Days!
Posted by batty on January 24, 2010 under Training |
This week I have been trying to work on perfecting my air rifle process and visualisations for Munich. I’m finding that I am getting just a little bit sloppy with the visualisations but have been working on placing a “trigger object” on the firing point to remind me why I am there and what I am supposed to be thinking about. It’s getting easier to focus on the shot and I do feel much better at getting what I think is a perfect shot approach and release.
Let’s hope I can transfer that into next weeks competition!
I’m really happy with my new air rifle, it seems to fit me better than my other one and the adjustability is fantastic. I’d highly recommend the Walther anatomic!
Posted by batty on January 19, 2010 under Gym, Training |
I’ve managed to get mine and Mikey’s free access to the Mountbatten Centre in Portsmouth thanks to the Hampshire Talented Athlete Scheme. It’s great to get back in the gym though its not much fun when I’m there on my own but I get by this just by thinking “what would Kenny and Pickle be taking the micky out of?”
I’ve really enjoyed working on my own program and addressing the areas I think will benefit me the most, mainly my back and shoulders. I have got a hold of 2 books which are great for showing you what exercises work which muscles, its called strength anatomy (and it also shows you correct execution descriptions and diagrams) and I’ve also been utilising one called stretching anatomy. These books are available from Human Kinetics (or pirate bay, muhahahahaha)
Another good thing about the gym is watching Mikey get tortured by the gym instructors…. I mean I do love him to pieces but…… giggles!
Posted by batty on January 17, 2010 under Training |
Had to finish shooting the first stage of the ELEY competition today – the prone had already been shot in an earlier session so today was an S&K day! I did the standing and managed to shoot quite well taking on board the lessons learned in Hannover. Mikey was impressed and so was I. It’s nice to learn something, use it again and have good success with it
Kneeling was unfortunately a different matter. I do find kneeling so frustrating at times and today was one of those days, as I’ve probably said before it is very much a trade off between stability, comfort and balance. And I’m learning that a solid position kneeling maybe doesn’t exist for me at the moment. I know my jacket doesn’t help matters neither does the fact that I resemble the Michelin man on my good days
Still getting frustrated gets me nowhere so I’m leaving the kneeling for when I get back from Munich and I want to work more on my visualisation techniques when shooting air rifle as there’s just over a week until I travel to Munich for the IWK.
Posted by batty on January 16, 2010 under Training |
So Saturday arrived we had breakfast and headed off to the airport after some funny confusion with the taxi driver. We were waiting for the Airport Shuttle to arrive outside the hotel entrance. There was a taxi already there who asked if we were going to the airport… We explained that we were waiting for the shuttle. 10 minutes passed and this guy was chuntering away in German on his mobile phone for most of it when he suddenly turns around to Kenny and asks, “Are you Ken?” Ah well! LOL!
So we arrived at the airport, got in the queue and had a nice woman serving us at check-in
I hate check in at airports when travelling with my kit, its not the firearms, people there, handing over passports etc it’s the “big weigh-in” that terrifies me as I have heard horror stories about people getting screwed for £200 or more and I would hate for that to happen to me!
20kg’s was our limit plus 20kg for the rifle, quite hard to hit with 2 rifles, kit and clothes for a week!
But!!! Our rifles didn’t get weighed, our kit bags, although over the limit (Kenny had a cracking 27kg’s in his kit bag) got on the plane without any issues or charges. Although we did have a little wait as the crew there were so efficient
Once again we had the tiny plane on the way back, 2 seats on one side, 1 seat on the other side the hostess we had was brilliant though, She let me and Pickle move to the front seats which had better leg room which gave Pickle better chance to spread out and sleep after his long week and late night
So we landed at Heathrow around 12:20, we were off the plane and collected our kit bags and were waiting for our rifles to make an appearance.
Hmmm, what a wait that was. After waiting around for about 15 minutes we contacted the BMI desk to see where our rifles were.
Considering we had seen them sat on the run way at 12:25 we didn’t see our rifles until 13:50 after a great cock and bull story about it being too much for one person to transport and so they had to go back over to terminal 5 to get someone to give them a hand.
Now I’m short! And many people like to remind me about that but the G4S Security personnel who turned up with our rifles, a man and a woman… the old woman who was pushing the trolley was shorter than me by a good 2-3 inches and she was aided by and even older and frailer man.. Hmmmm What a piss take!
Posted by batty on January 15, 2010 under Training |
As the rest of the team has already left to attend the royal league matches in Olso leaving only me, Kenny and Pickle left for today’s training. I stared the morning with bit of kneeling training and followed it by air in the afternoon.
Again frustrations were creeping in with kneeling and trying to get the correct equilibrium for balance and stability…. But the frustrations got too much for me so I’ll get on with more work with it when I get home… on a positive note I have found that its better if I move the sling down the arm as this reduces the pulling of the jacket across my back
We had to break in the finals hall at lunch time so that it could be cleaned and tidied before the caretaker went home. Thankfully, as Hannover has such a great facility, we could move into the air range to continue our training in the afternoon.
Air training proved to be great fun, transferring the lessons learn throughout the week, as well as having a good laugh shooting a “bundasliga” style match with Kenny…. Of course he beat me (Kenny is shooting excellently at the moment) but I was just happy to be there, happy to be training with the boys, happy to have gained knowledge/ learnt lessons but mostly I was happy that I was eager within myself to get training more when I got home, not only in the range but at the gym also.
I did have one totally numpty moment when I packed up my kit ready for the flight home: Note to self – tighten my torque bolts on my air rifle in future!!!!!!!!
Posted by batty on January 11, 2010 under Preparations, Training |
Hey guys
As the title says i’m now in Hanover for a week of indoor training.
This is only a quick blog post as its 12 midnight and we are up for a “warm up” for 7 am.
So here goes:
We arrived safe and sound at Hanover aiport on Sunday night after a nice easy flight even if the plane was a tiny thing with less than 40 seats – I am surprized our rifles and kit actually arrived after I saw the size of the plane!
The flight was about 1hour 30 minutes during which I had planned to watch a film or at least part of one but failed miserably after Pickle “borrowed” it to watch a shooting film, still I didn’t mind really.
Today we have had a good day training. I was really happy with my prone. I struggled a little on my standing but theres plenty of time to work on that.
The highlight of my first day in Hanover has got to be the gym… its been a while since i was last in the gym thanks to illness, injury and mostly my bone idle-ness but the session I had this evening really gave me the push I have been looking for and i’m ready for more tomorrow.
Right, i’m off to bed, check back tomorrow for more posts and hopefully a video of the funkyest toilet I have ever seen.
Oh and a message for my mum – not found ice cream or hot chocolate yet but i’m working on it!!! (apparently i always judge a place by its ice cream or hot chocolate (ice cream Dortmund was the winner and Plzen wins for hot chocolate!!!))
Night y’all
Posted by batty on January 8, 2010 under Training |
So it snowed the other day and there is still at least 3 inches everywhere except for where its been cleared for the roads etc
Still me and Mike managed to get to the range yesterday and had a good evening training.
Still doing tweaks to the new air rifle and solved 2 issues I had been having.
The first was with my left foot. For some reason it always wants to turn out when i’m standing… but with a little discussion with Mike we tried having an extra pair of socks on and voi-la! problem sorted!
The second involved getting Mike (who also happens to be a “B” licence ISSF Judge) to check the overlap on my jacket and we added an extra button onto the bottom in an effort to use the jacket more effectively whilst standing
