The term means to lie on bed or ground in a position with chest downwards and back upwards.

Etymology

The word "prone," meaning "naturally inclined to something, apt, liable," has been recorded in English since 1382; the meaning "lying face-down" was first recorded in 1578, but is also referred to as "lying down" or "going prone."

"Prone" derives from the Latin pronus: "bent forward, inclined to," from the adverbial form of the prefix pro- "forward." Both the original, literal, and the derived figurative sense were used in Latin, but the figurative is older in English.

Anatomy

In anatomy

Anatomy

Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...

, the prone position is a position of the body

Human body

The human body is the entire structure of a human organism, and consists of a head, neck, torso, two arms and two legs.By the time the human reaches adulthood, the body consists of close to 100 trillion cells, the basic unit of life...

 lying face down. It is opposed to the supine position

Supine position

The supine position is a position of the body: lying down with the face up, as opposed to the prone position, which is face down, sometimes with the hands behind the head or neck. When used in surgical procedures, it allows access to the peritoneal, thoracic and pericardial regions; as well as the...

 which is face up. Using the terms defined in the anatomical position, the ventral side is down, and the dorsal side is up.

With respect to the forearm, prone refers to that configuration where the palm of the hand

Hand

A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered extremity located at the end of an arm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs...

 is directed posteriorly, and the radius

Radius (bone)

The radius is one of the two large bones of the forearm, the other being the ulna. It extends from the lateral side of the elbow to the thumb side of the wrist and runs parallel to the ulna, which exceeds it in length and size. It is a long bone, prism-shaped and slightly curved longitudinally...

 and ulna

Ulna

The ulna is one of the two long bones in the forearm, the other being the radius. It is prismatic in form and runs parallel to the radius, which is shorter and smaller. In anatomical position The ulna is one of the two long bones in the forearm, the other being the radius. It is prismatic in form...

 are crossed.

Shooting

In competitive shooting

Shooting sports

A shooting sport is a competitive sport involving tests of proficiency using various types of guns such as firearms and airguns . Hunting is also a shooting sport, and indeed shooting live pigeons was an Olympic event...

, the prone position is the position of a shooter lying face down on the ground. It is considered the easiest and most accurate position as the ground provides extra stability. It is the starting position in three positions

Three positions

International Rifle events in Three positions are conducted with an equal number of shots fired from the Prone, the Standing and the Kneeling positions, always in that order....

 events. Currently the Olympics

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 only have one purely prone event, the fifty meters men's rifle prone. Both men and women also have the fifty meters rifle three positions. Many video games (particularly first-person shooter

First-person shooter

First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...

s) allow the player character

Player character

A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...

 to go into the prone position.

50m Prone Men (ISSF)

Male shooters shoot a .22LR calibre rifle (smallbore) over a course of fire of 60 shots to count, after unlimited sighting shots, in a time limit of 1 hour and 15 minutes (when using electronic targets). If necessary, an 'elimination' course of fire may be undertaken to reduce the number of shooters to the number that may fire simultaneously in a 'qualification' round. Each shot may score from 1 to 10 points, with no decimal points (e.g. 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, but not 3.2 or 9.8 etc.) The maximum score for an elimination or qualification round is 600 points. The top 8 shooters in the qualification round will be selected to shoot 'shot-for-shot' in an 'Olympic' final. The final is 10 shots, shot after a five minute period for unlimited sighters. The 10 shots are shot on command in a 45 second time-span, where each shooter must shoot one shot. Following each individual finals shot, the individual shooter's score for that shot is read to the audience. Shots in the final are scored to one decimal place, e.g. a shooter may score 9.8 or 10.6 in the finals for a shot, whereas in the qualification or elimination round those same shots would score 9 or 10 respectively. The maximum score for 10 shots in the finals is 109.0, with 10.9 being the maximum score for each shot. The Finals score for the 10 shots is added to the score for the qualification round.

UK Prone (NSRA)

The UK national shooting body also has courses of fire for prone shooting at multiple distances and targets. Commonly, this is split into what is known as 'short' and 'long' ranges.

UK Prone Short Range

The NSRA

National Smallbore Rifle Association

The National Smallbore Rifle Association, The NSRA, is the national governing body for all Small-bore Rifle and Pistol Target Shooting in the United Kingdom, including Airgun and Match Crossbow Shooting....

 generally refers to shooting .22LR calibre rifles over a distance of between 15 yards and 25 metres 'indoors' as being short range shooting. Targets are generally outward gauging (touching a ring on the target scores the lower of the two adjacent scores), except on some of the Schools and older targets (e.g. 5 bull targets). Being indoors, no allowance is necessary for wind, light or other changes. Shots are scored as decimal values from 0 to 10, with no decimal places.

UK Prone Long Range

UK Long range shooting is generally over either 50 yards, 50 metres or 100 yards distance outdoors. Targets vary, but generally the ISSF 50M (scaled) is used for 50 yards or 50 metres and a proportional sized target is used for 100 yards. A 50-yard, 50-metre or 100-yard target is generally constructed to allow 20 shots to count, to be executed during one 'detail' of 20 minutes duration. Sighting shots are included in that time period.

Outdoors, variables such as light, wind, temperature, humidity and mirage affect the target image and bullet trajectory. To help shooters, most ranges have wind flags placed at useful positions around the range to display the wind conditions.

Pilots and the prone position

The prone position is also used to describe the way pilots and other crew may be positioned in an aircraft; lying on their stomachs rather than seated in a normal upright position. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the bomb aimer in some bombers would be positioned this way to be better able to view the ground through a transparent panel or bubble in the nose of a bomber. Later, it was suggested that a pilot in the prone position might be more effective in some kinds of high-speed aircraft, because it would permit the pilot to withstand a greater g-force

G-force

The g-force associated with an object is its acceleration relative to free-fall. This acceleration experienced by an object is due to the vector sum of non-gravitational forces acting on an object free to move. The accelerations that are not produced by gravity are termed proper accelerations, and...

 in the upward and downward direction with respect to the plane, and many speculative designs of the 1950s featured this arrangement. However, it never became mainstream. One example of this approach is seen in the Gloster Meteor F8 "Prone Pilot".

See also

• Lying position
  Lying (position)
  Lying is a type of human position in which the body is more or less horizontal and supported along its length by the surface underneath....
  
  
• Prone bike
  Prone bike
  A prone bicycle is a bicycle which places the rider in a prone position. The bottom bracket is located at the bicycle's rear, the rider lies either on a pad or in a hard-shell seat. The prone position of the rider's body can reduce aerodynamic drag and therefore increase the efficiency of the vehicle...
  
  
• Recovery position
  Recovery position
  The recovery position refers to one of a series of variations on a lateral recumbent or three-quarters prone position of the body, in to which an unconscious but breathing casualty can be placed as part of first aid treatment.An unconscious person The recovery position refers to one of a series of...
  
  
• Supine position
  Supine position
  The supine position is a position of the body: lying down with the face up, as opposed to the prone position, which is face down, sometimes with the hands behind the head or neck. When used in surgical procedures, it allows access to the peritoneal, thoracic and pericardial regions; as well as the...