There’s More than Just One Way to Look at It: Competence and Confidence

Last month we talked about what practice really is and how important it is. We also looked at how our game differs from the other shooting sports, in that we don’t have the luxury of practicing the course we will shoot on game day. 

This is the crystal meth of our game. When you mention practice to most people they immediately think of improving the mechanics of their game and not the mental part of their game. Our findings are that you must practice the mental part of your game just as much as the mechanical part. To perform at elite levels in anything we do, it is essential that both are instinctive or subconscious. There are many ways to look at the many things that we tackle in our lives, both on and off the sporting clays course. We are all different in the way we think and react to the things around us, both the good and not so good. Mental performance is determined by how we can control these reactions and the emotions that accompany them. 

The bottom line is that whatever happens just is. It becomes whatever you make it by your reaction to it. 

Sound too simple? Read on.

This is why practicing correctly is so important. Learning to shoot is about learning mechanical excellence and learning to perform is about learning how to think. We have studied and continue to research mental performance with many different “experts.” We have had many successes with our students over the years teaching mental performance in sporting clays and skeet as well as other areas of life. There are, we have found, some common threads in all approaches. 

In order to perform well, you can’t be thinking. You must be totally focused on doing. You must have practiced whatever you do enough so that your reactions are instinctive or subconscious. You must have also practiced your mental approach, not only to the game itself but also controlling your emotional reactions to what happens during the game.  This doesn’t only apply to the things under your control, but the avalanche of the things that you can’t control. 

Our students have found that there are so many things that happen around you on game day that you have no control over. If you can’t control your emotional reaction to those, you have no hope of controlling your thought process on the things that are in your control, which would be your performance.

It seems to us that there are two different ways of looking at controlling the thought process and creating that zone. That feeling all of us have experienced at one time in our lives. Because we had nothing to do with creating it, as soon as we recognized that we were there, we weren’t. There is the belief that if you think the right thoughts in the right sequence that you will produce the correct action. It is a very believable process. There is another belief that if you create the right action, the right thought will follow. 

We know, it sounds like a chicken-or-the-egg thing. But our findings indicate that almost all approaches fall under these two categories. So let’s look at each of them. 

First, let’s look at the “think the right thought and get the right action” belief. It makes logical sense. We even said it at the beginning of this tip; learning to perform is about learning how to think. We would agree that you can think your way into breaking a 50-yard crosser, just like you can think your way out of breaking a 50-yard crosser (we have seen a lot of people do the latter). What happens when this thought process doesn’t work? What do you do when you have thought the right thoughts in the right sequence and it doesn’t break? Do you think the same thoughts in the same sequence again and expect a different result? Do you change the thought process? If so, what part of the process do you change? 

Confused? We know the feeling.

Now let’s look at the other belief, the one that says, “If you create the right action the right thought will follow.” This one is not quite as logical. Does this mean that you shoot without thinking? Where have we heard that before? We would agree that you could create the right action and hit a 50-yard crosser, just like you could create the wrong action and miss it. In our experience, we find that it is much easier to think the right thoughts if you can create the right action. You can think the right thoughts, but without the subconscious shooting skills to back them up, they are of little value. It’s a heck of a lot easier when facing a 50-yard crosser to think the right way if you have broken a 50-yard crosser a few hundred times.