Still wondering how fitness is important to this shooting sport? At the 2008 Area 1 Championship, we got a solid demonstration of why having a broad, general, inclusive fitness program is an important part of any well rounded shooting program.
Stage designer Chuck Anderson threw us a curve ball on stage 9 in the form of a Breaching Technologies, Inc. Ram Breaching Door. Check out the vid - a few comments follow on the DR Performance Shooting main site...
Showing posts with label Mental Game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mental Game. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Into the Breach...
Friday, March 21, 2008
Confucious say...
...man who aim at published stage descriptions, miss.
It seems like a discussion periodically appears on the Benoverse around someone trying to determine the best way to shoot the stages of a major match solely based on the information presented in published courses of fire. The latest one at the time of this writing occurred in the thread for the 2008 Area 6 stages. Usually, the discussion is started by someone making their first trip to a major match, and they want to make the most out of their preparation time and get a jump on their stage strategies. Unfortunately, they're headed down a dead end with that thinking - trying to gather strategies from a written course description is like trying to determine the most scenic drive by looking at a road map. You can glean some information, but its mostly a worthless exercise.
Published course descriptions ARE useful for some things, though. Let's take a look at the useful information you can glean from them, and how you can use that to better prepare for the match.
Confuscious also say... visit the DR Performance Shooting site for the rest of the article!
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Goals: Appropriate and Attainable
Specificity. That's what this really comes down to. High level performers set specific goals that give a clear direction to their efforts. In a solid goal setting program, there are no vague, directionless goals - the goals become like a ladder, pointing a constant, straight, unwavering upward path.
Goals set in this fashion will be appropriate and attainable, and will mostly be "performance goals" as opposed to "outcome goals". A performance goal might be "Achieve a consistent 1.00 second draw with A-zone hits at 7 yards", as opposed to an outcome goal such as "Win every local match." I may talk about this a bit more in a later post - but for now, we left off last time with a promise to discuss those first two bits - appropriate and attainable. What do those mean to us, and how are they important in our goal setting??? I bet you can guess already....
That's right... head over to the DR Performance Shooting main site, and check it out!
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Get Back To Your Plan
How many times have you been mid-stage, and something goes a little wrong? You do what you need to do to correct it, and move on - but now you're improvising, off your original plan, and somehow things go from a little bad, to a lot worse? You look around and think "Where am I? And why am I in this handbasket?"
Head over to the DR Performance Shooting site to see the video and read the article!
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Self Talk, the M2/TT Way
Inevitably, any discussion about the mental game gets into the concept of Self Talk. Put simply, Self Talk is all of the things you say to yourself. Sounds a little nuts, I know. Try this, though - for one 24 hour period, consciously monitor every thought that runs through your head. You'll probably find that you really do talk to yourself a lot - and if you've never done this exercise before, you'll probably find that a lot of the things you say to yourself aren't all that flattering. "That was stupid." "You look like a dork." and so on.
Now, pay attention to what you say to yourself with regards to your shooting. Your Self Talk reveals a lot about your self-image - what you truly believe you are capable of doing, and also has the ability to undermine your performance (or, if used to your advantage, support and build it up). This really comes out following a stage with some mistakes in it - what runs through your head, then? "You dumb jerk, you really suck." "You might as well give up now." "Things never go my way." "This match stinks." Maybe you said some really, complimentary stuff to yourself before the stage, too... "I can't hit those hardcover targets." "Swingers always eat my lunch." "Let's see how bad I suck on this stage."
Would your best friend ever say anything like that to you? If so, why are they your best friend??? We would all do well to head on over to the DR Performance Shooting main site take a lesson from two of the best shooters in the game on how we should be treating ourselves on and off the range - Max Michel, Jr. and Travis Tomasie.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
No Easy Shots
When do you see the hardest shots? When you arrive at a match, do you feel like the targets suddenly got smaller, or farther away? Does the A-zone look like its about 2" across. What about those tight shots with no-shoots all around? If you've had those sensations, its quite likely that the target arrays you practice are simply too easy...
Hit the DR Performance Shooting site for an introduction to the concept of No Easy Shots....
Goals: Pathways to your Dreams
Goals. Dreams. Desires. Wants. Needs. Ambitions. What do these words mean to you? In just about anything we do, we all have some ideas about what we want out of it. I'm going to talk about this in the context of shooting, of course - it is a blog about shooting, after all - but these concepts can apply to anything in our lives. I mean anything, from the serious and important (say, career, or parenting), to the trivial and mundane (maybe brushing your teeth...).
So, think about this for a moment - what do you really want out of your shooting? What are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want?
Ok, have you thought about it - I mean, really and honestly thought about it? Then hit the DR Performance Shooting main site, and read on...
Saturday, December 15, 2007
The trick is not to care...
SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't seen Fight Club and plan to - the article linked here contains some spoilers....
My good friend, and sometimes student, "Calamity Jane" Ball posted a link to an article on http://stronglifts.com earlier today in her Range Diary on the Benoverse. She actually got the link from Derrick "Catfish" Birdsall - another bud of mine.
Not only is it a good, short read that references one of my favorite flicks, but it called to mind a conversation I had with another shooter about the drive to become a GM...
...which you can read on the DR Performance Shooting main site!
Friday, November 30, 2007
What do I need to practice?
Making a decision about what skills you need to practice is crucial to seeing your best performance improvements. Most of us go to the range and practice the things we like to do - after all, the whole point is to have fun, right? Usually, though, what we like to do is what we're already good at, leaving the neglected skills we don't enjoy (cause usually we're not already good at them, or they're not as "fun" as the other skills) languishing in the dust. Those skills show up on match day, too - and many times they can make a difference between winning or not.
So, how do you figure out what to practice?
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The end of Winter Break
With the season opener - the 2008 Florida Open - coming up fast in two months, its time to start dusting off the gear, running drills, and generally getting things back in order after a well deserved Winter Break. With a sport that seems to have no well defined "off season" (as opposed to, say, baseball, or football), it might be curious to some folks why you'd really want to take a break. I mean, the next big match is always right around the corner, right? And what do you do with that time off anyway? Doesn't that mean a lot more work to get ready when you're done slacking off??
Let's take a look at why taking a little vacation from our favorite obsession can actually mean an improvement in performance level, and help avoid everyone's favorite condition: burn out.
Read the rest of the article on the DR Performance Shooting site!
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