90% MENTAL

Posted by Coach Excellence on June 23, 2017 in Competition | ∞

Shooting is 90% Mental by Chip Lohman.

We generally agree that “shooting is 90 percent mental,” but apply it in very personal ways. When a coach emphasizes the need to focus, for example, one shooter’s interpretation may be to bear down and think harder, while the next may visualize “living in the moment” and relaxing.

From Dr. Keyes: “At the very highest levels, the problems of learning to shoot and how to deal with match pressure have been solved, more or less, but in order to achieve this level, the resolution of these issues has to have been worked out in a deliberate, layered manner that sets a solid base for the next level.

Talent, i.e. a set of physical, mental and psychological attributes that give the shooter a step up on the ladder to success, has a place, but mostly this is a starting point. It takes hard work—work that is specific to the training task, to improve to an elite level.

This is the “ten thousand hours” that you read about, and it can’t be a random amount of work. It has to be focused and deliberate, which means that when you train you have to have goals and a good idea about what is going to help you. After a while the very best shooters have a good idea about what is needed to succeed and their analytic abilities are at a peak.

But even the very best can be helped by a good coach who can help with that incremental increase in training that might make all the difference in the rarified competition that marks the very best.

The bottom line is that you have to work in order to succeed and you have to have the right kind of work, or you are wasting time. If you don’t have a good base of training, all the talent in the world will not help at the edges of your talent when stress becomes the most acute.

MATCH PRESSURE

From Olympic Gold medalist Lanny Bassham: “Here’s a myth—Pressure causes performance to drop. Pressure does not cause your performance to drop. What I learned about pressure was that when you feel the physical effects of pressure, it’s real. You feel an adrenaline rush and your heart rate and blood pressure go up. I’ve seen shooters shoot extremely high scores with their legs shaking. Pressure doesn’t cause your scores to go up or down, but your attitude does. Your attitude is what’s important.”

Good training also seeks to replace panic, a lack of preparation for the brain’s “fight or flight” alarm, with rehearsed options, an approach presented by National Smallbore Champion Ernie Vande Zande in his November 2011 interview where he reflected: “Back in high school, I felt that pressure was normal. I started noticing in speech class that sometimes I got pretty nervous, but I didn’t get nervous every time. Over time, I realized that I only became more nervous on days when I gave a speech, when I felt less prepared. I started thinking about that in relationship to my shooting. It was the same kind of thing: At those times when I wasn’t prepared, I felt more nervous.”

It can therefore be said that nerves/pressure/anxiety purely tie in with athlete preparedness, both technical and physical. If these two areas are lacking, then the mind can falter, however if the technical and physical elements are strong, then the mind will stay positive and supportive.

It’s up to you where you sit.