WHERE DOES MENTAL TRAINING FIT IN?
by M.J. Keyes
Some pundit (I think it was me) once said, “Shooting is 90 percent mental.” The problem with that statement is that it is not always true. At least not for 90 percent of shooters. Let me throw in another “ninety”: the above statement is true if your average Air Pistol score is 90 percent.
What does all of this mean? The answer is complex because even though you are trying to perform a single sports act in Air Pistol, you have to achieve a certain level of performance before the mental side of the game makes a big difference.
Not that mental training should be ignored until you reach that level. Far from it. You need all the basic mental tools to improve your technique and fitness for match shooting. But if you don’t have the technical building blocks in place, you will never have a great need for the more sophisticated mental tools because you will never be in a position to use them.
It takes at least seven years to develop into an elite level shooter and this is with coaching support and the plasticity of youth. During this time a shooter learns to shoot a shot with perfect technique, he develops a training plan, he sets goals, learns to practice properly and becomes coachable. Most of us are not going to reach the Olympic level, but we can reach what I call 90 percent of performance capability.
In order to get to your personal 90 percent, you will have to follow a demanding path. Most shooters will not reach the level of mental toughness, technique and fitness needed to be one of the finalists in the Olympics. It just takes too much work and devotion. But, hey, so what? There is plenty you can do and your might surprise yourself.
There are three barriers that have to be breached in the journey. The first is one most shooters don’t think of as an impediment, talent.
All of us walk into competitive shooting with a set of physical and mental gifts that allow us to be still, relaxed, and focused. For some, there is almost instant success in scoring tens. The tools are there without much development. Herein lies the problem. Shooters, especially young shooters, can grow complacent beating all the locals in match after match and are not able to see that higher goals are obtainable. In the old Soviet system, young shooters would be held back from shooting in upper level matches until they were determined to be mature enough to handle the pressures. Sometimes this meant keeping back the national champion and sending a veteran.
The reason for this was that having talent is great, but it is no substitute for training and technique especially when the stakes increase.
The talent barrier is usually easy to overcome except, perhaps, in the case of an extremely talented person. If there are no challenges, then there is no incentive to improve and no further development. Most shooters who have the talent to go from novice level to intermediate will continue to try to improve because they see that hard work is needed to succeed.
In my opinion, the best way to improve is through coaching. Shooting static targets is a simple act with no secrets about how to do it (“sight alignment and trigger control”). The trick is to learn how to do it efficiently and to concentrate on only doing it during a match. The first part takes technique and the second mental toughness. A coach can keep you focused and to be able to analyze what your are doing without the emotional filter you might have.
Once you overcome the talent barrier, the next is much tougher. Talent may allow you to be accurate, but most likely you will not be either precise or consistent. In order to hit the target precisely you have to have an efficient method of shooting which includes learning to be still, have a consistent grip, and not change the sight alignment while pulling the trigger. Not only do you have to be physically fit, but also you have to have an understanding of why you are using a technique.
Let’s talk a little about fitness. It doesn’t take much strength to lift a pistol, aim, and score a ten. The problem is that you have to do this at least 60 times (for men, 40 for women) and the real number is probably closer to three times that when you include sighters, dry firing and aborts. You are asking a small part of your body to repeat the same action over 100 times in an hour or so and if you are not fit, you won’t be able to do it. Then you become inconsistent. As you get better at shooting and your average improves, the groups get smaller which means that a smaller number of muscle fibers are called into action. This means more fitness.
As you progress, your performance level intensifies and room for mistakes lessens. As your performance level improves to a high level most of the errors become mental, not physical or technical. This is the 90 percent level.
Some shooters cannot go beyond the technical level of shooting. They are consistently at a certain score level, but their performance level is still not optimal. If you are able to hit 9/10 ring each and every time your shoot in practice, then why doesn’t it occur in a match?
By the time a shooter has reached this level, basic mental skills such as visualization, relaxation and imagery are well known. Most shooters will have evolved a shooting cycle of visualization, breathing, relaxation, technique, sight picture, trigger, and call of shot. This is fine as far as it goes. “Sight alignment and trigger control” has gone from a simple teaching slogan to a sophisticated method of producing tens. Now it has to go back to being simple again.
The very complexity of the shooting act can cause problems. A lot of shooters at this level go through a checklist each time they shoot. Checklists are good, but they have a tendency to slow down the rhythm of the shooter and can cause anxiety in a situation that already has a lot of distractions. They also impede the so called “flow phenomenon” or as some call it, “the Zone.”
The human brain is designed to process about three or four thoughts at once. Highly trained persons can handle up to seven before performance is impaired. In a match stress situation, the number should be only one thought. A shooter in the Zone will have no thoughts to deal with, they just shoot.
We cannot predict when we go into a Zone and it is probably not possible to induce one at will. But the best shooters will shoot with one conscious thought (usually “sight” or “trigger”) and let the rest of the shooting cycle occur automatically including a mental checklist that is automatic and not deliberate. When things are not correct, the cycle is aborted. If there are too many distractions or the game plane is not going as well, the shooter takes a time out and either regroups or replans. The idea is to select more tens out of the performance mix and to totally eliminate poor performance. This is where the mental skills rule supreme. This is where the shooter has to learn better mental methods.
As a shooter progresses from level of talent to level of training to near perfection on the line, the mental skills become more important while the fitness levels and technique training become part of mental toughness. Elite level shooters usually don’t have to develop style. Training consists of maintaining performance and working on the emotional and mental challenges shooting at that level brings on. The rest has been taken care of more or less.
The other aspect of this evolution to becoming a top shooter is that none of the mental or emotional problems of shooting matches ever go away. They are present in beginners and elite shooters. But at the lower end of the scale these problems are not as important as developing fitness and learning style. Practice should reflect this and the technical and physical side be emphasized. Performance at the intermediate level is often inconsistent due to both poor performance and match stress. Part of mental training is to realize this and to try to improve performance while starting to develop match stress solutions. The changes needed to do this will often lead to poor scores since your body and mind have to learn all over again. If you decide that you don’t want to take these chances, then you will not improve. As your technique/performance gets better, you will emphasize the mental side more and develop methods to deal with those elements within you that keep you from performing perfectly.