Over the past two months, we have talked about how there is only one way for anyone to determine whether they have learned anything. In our game, that would be: “Can you do it on command – cold turkey, so to speak – on game day when people are watching and they’re keeping score?”
Until you can do that, you really have not learned anything. You are in the process of learning. There is a great difference in the approach to practice once you have mastered something and when you are still learning it. But we’ll get into that a little later.
We also have referred to the fact that ultimately, mastery comes down to not only how many times or how long you have done something, but the process in which you practice determines to a great extent how quickly mastery occurs.
Research shows over and over again that mastery of anything is not a gift; it is a result of good old-fashioned hard work, perseverance, and determination. In other words, practice, practice, practice. To be competitive in anything on a regional level, one must have at least 5,000 hours of actual engagement in the activity. To be competitive on a national level it’s 7,500 hours, and on a world-class level, it takes 10,000 hours of what we call “touch time” with the gun.
When we first began talking about this on our Coaching Hour several years ago, some of the listeners were not as accepting as others. They were sure there would be some exceptions. But the research has shown this to be factual.
As recently as March 2009 in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Mastery, Just 10,000 Hours Away,” the author John Paul Newport says: “Golf’s grand illusion that secretly all golfers think they are a lot better than their scores would indicate and all they need is a little more practice and a few more rounds under their belt to get there.”
We guess our game really is a lot like golf because our findings indicate that there are a lot of shooters out there who think they have “seen the light,” but in reality, it is that grand illusion. This misguided illusion comes from the fact that everyone makes great shots from time to time or even shoots a good score on a day when you were out of your mind, and in our excitement, we see ourselves as almost there. In record time, we might add – and without all the hard work.
Well, sorry to pop your bubble, but it’s a fairy tale. Newport’s closing sentence in the article sums it up well: “One of the main problems golfers have is unrealistic expectations, and they make themselves miserable when they should be having fun.”
We talked about and explained why you should never look at how you shoot during practice as indicative of mastery or what you have really learned because you have not learned it until you can repeatedly do it on game day. We talked about how we coach during a competition through observation. Then after the competition, we go over not just the hits and misses with students, but our observations on all of the skill sets used when shooting a competition.
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