Dear Gil and Vicki,
The last year has been a tough one for me as far as work goes. I’ve had to travel all over the world in my work and have not had time to shoot–much less practice. I did have the time to shoot a couple of shoots at the end of last year and shot in the 90’s with no practice! I shot one tournament this year and shot 81 on the sporting and 43 on 5-stand, (the second-highest score) again with no practice.
It seems as though I’m shooting better without any practice. What is going on?
Clyde McAfee
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Clyde,
What you are experiencing is not that unusual. It may seem unusual to you and to others but it is not that unusual to us. We have seen the same thing happen to people who buy a new gun, switch chokes or ammo, or even get different glasses. It has to do with a thing we call expectation and your emotional responses to your past performances.
It seems as though the more we teach and study human responses and mental performance, the more we keep coming back to the fact that it’s how you handle your past experiences that determines who you become. It is what it is; it becomes what you make it.
Another way to say it is that your environment is not reality – your perception of your environment is reality. Your emotions are the gatekeepers to the learning process and the performance process. The more emotion you give something, positive or negative, the deeper it is imprinted into your subconscious and the more it becomes like you to be that way or do the same thing again.
We know you both as a student and a person. You have worked hard on your mechanical game. Your move and mount are smooth and precise. You know how to compete because of your experience as a professional bass fisherman, and since taking up sporting clays you live to shoot. What happened is that you haven’t been able to shoot because of your work schedule.
When you were able to go and shoot you were so excited about just going you went without any expectation with regards to the outcome. There’s a fine line between “don’t give a darn” and a peak performance.
As trite as this may sound, when you just go to have fun, you will typically perform at a level that is more reflective of your true ability, because you’re more in the present and are just excited to be there. When you go to beat someone else, or to shoot a specific score or win your class, the chances are good that those thoughts will be in the back of your mind and will eventually trigger an emotional response to a missed target. When this occurs, you become hesitant and confused and begin to shoot not to miss, which encourages more negative emotional responses, and so on, and so on.
The same thing happens to someone who buys a new gun. They are excited and can’t wait to get out and shoot it. They typically shoot “lights out” with it because they have not had the time to miss enough with it and attach negative emotion to the misses with the new gun. We see this “new gun syndrome” frequently. People actually think it’s the gun that makes them shoot better.
Good equipment does and can make a difference in performance. Gil’s uncle Dusty Garrett told him once that 90% of the fun in doing anything is to have the best equipment you could afford. We agree. But consistent performance, regardless of the arena, has more to do with the person’s attitude than any other thing.
All top performers in sports, business, or for that matter life itself, have incredible control of their emotions. They are able to look at all things that happen around them as feedback – nothing more. When we see this level of emotional control in a student, they have the ability to do great things; not just in shooting, but in all areas of their life.
Dr. Sean McCann, who serves the USOC’s Sport Science and Technology Division, wrote a paper in which he put forth the thought that “Talent is not a gift, it’s a job.”
He went on to say, “A series of research studies found that people have two differing points of view about talent. One view is that talent is something you have or don’t have. Athletes with this view of talent expect things to come easy and tend to give up quickly when skills are hard to learn. This makes sense to them, because if it is hard to learn, then they must not be talented.
The other view is that talent must be developed through hard work. People holding this view stay at tasks much longer, expect skill development to take time, and do not become highly frustrated when things aren’t easy. Research found that this viewpoint results in much higher performance because these athletes expect to have to work long and hard to develop their talent.”
You have worked long and hard at developing your talent with a shotgun. What you’re enjoying are the fruits of your labor and a true reflection of the talent you have developed. If you can maintain control of your emotions and look at all of your results as feedback and an opportunity to learn, you just might be surprised at what might happen.
