Mental Conditioning

As the old saying goes,"Put your mind to it"

I don't know about you folks, but I find it very difficult to focus on the shot, especially during slow fire where you are allowed time to think. For me, if I have any idle time, my mind wanders around like a lost kid in a toy store. For me, it takes a tremendous amount of focus to shoot a ten and I can't always shut down the other thoughts enough to shoot well. I refer to this as either "the voices in my head" or "the demons in my mind", whatever you call it, it is very hard to control and work around. I am sure the doctors have some fancy name for it and probably plenty of drugs to cure or treat it but that just isn't my cup of tea.

This problem is so bad, I decided to make a note of all the thoughts that entered my mind during my slow fire practice session this morning. Here is what was happening in my mind between shots...

• I wonder if I closed the garage door when I left this morning

• Gotta go to the hardware store to buy a new faucet for the laundry room sink

• Damn it, I forgot to go to the cleaners to pick up my dress shirts yesterday

• I hope upper management doesn't change our plans again for the trade show coming up

• I think I will skip cleaning the guns when I get back, I only have one league night this week for shooting

• Why does that guy in the left lane have a strange looking target holder and why does is sway so much

• Ughh, I hate the sharp crack of a 357, why do people buy and shoot those things!

• Gotta run to the bank on the way home and get some cash, probably get gas too

• How did I get a scratch on the gun box there?

While those might seem exaggerated or even silly, they are not, and, yes, that is what goes through my mind while trying to shoot. Most of those thoughts were racing through my mind between 2 shots. I am sure there were more, but after the string of fire I wrote down the ones I remembered.

I use a simple, if not, old fashioned solution, I count sheep! Well, I don't count sheep but I do count. I find that if I count very slowly, one increment per breath, the voices in my head can't intrude on the task of counting, thus keeping my mind free. All the while I am taking the breath, in my mind I am saying the number very slowly and it works like a charm. I use this in slow fire to set my cadence and to allow a good amount of time to rest for the next shot. During sustained fire, I do it between strings during preparation.

I don't know if counting will work for you, but you will need to find a way to maintain your focus on shooting. There are many other things people do to clear their minds, meditation, praying, hyping up, staring at the target, or drinking coffee to name a few. I am sure if you spend some time searching around, you will find plenty of information to help with mental focus. The obvious things to avoid are alcohol and other mind altering drugs (legal or illegal).

You may hear of shooters talking about the "zone". The zone simply refers to that place in your mind where you have complete and total focus on what you are doing and pretty much nothing around you could disturb you. I am sure you have been in the zone on something you focused really hard on, well, that is the place in your mind you want to be for shooting. If you have been in the zone with other things in life such as solving difficult problems, try to emulate that thought process with shooting.

A lot has been written about positive visualization where you picture yourself shooting perfectly. I have heard of people that use this and not only for shooting but all other sports, team and individual. A quick search on Google for Positive Visualization turned up a lot of hits so you can do some quick research on that topic to see if there is something that might help you.

Another area of concern is trying to figure out what mental games we may play on ourselves which prevents us from achieving higher levels of performance. I was at a sales seminar years back and they were going over some of the mind games which keeps some salesman from achieving higher sales targets. The two that stuck out in my mind the most were: Fear of Failure and Fear of Success.

Fear of failure is something which can be easily understood by most. You are so afraid of failing, that you don't even try to participate. You don't try any harder because you might fail to achieve it. For example, a shooter that is a Marksman can win his class at some events but he knows that if he is bumped to sharpshooter, he will not win as often. As a result, he fears failing in sharpshooter so he doesn't attempt to improve and move up.

Fear of success is very similar to fear of failing but it lurks deeper in the dark areas of our minds. Fear of success is very difficult to understand, but as it turns out, it is more common that you might think. All too often we spend our time in the "comfort zones" of life. We do things that we are comfortable with, if something were to change and possibly prevent us from going to our comfort zones, the result would be uncomfortable. Related to the sales seminar, if a sales person were to suddenly start making 2 or 3 times more money, he might move into a new neighborhood with people of a "higher class" who may not be like the buddies in the old neighborhood. He might have to start entertaining more clients which may not be so desirable, especially if the person is an introvert. This is a dark-side problem which is hard to grasp because it isn't something we are comfortable thinking about. How can having more money to spend be a bad thing? Well, if you look at what has happened to a lot of lottery winners, you will start to see there is a dark side to success (I believe there was a television series about how the lottery ruined people's lives). While I realize this is a very abstract concept, let me try to apply it to shooting and I will give you my situation of "Fear of success". As I get closer to master classification I know that once I achieve that level of performance, my fear is that I have to continue that level of performance. As it is right now, anytime I do not shoot a ten, I have to fight off the urge to cuss myself out for "missing a shot". I can just imagine how hard I will be on myself when I do become a master. Mind games are tough to understand and deal with, but we all play them on ourselves and we have to manage them carefully.