It’s March. For some, the year has already begun. For most, it’s just beginning. Our topics on the recent Coaching Hours have included “keeping it fun” and “making goals for the upcoming year”.
Webster defines fun as, “that which provides amusement or enjoyment.” Amusement is defined as, “a pleasurable diversion or entertainment.” Entertainment is defined as, “to consider with favor.” Happiness is defined as, “a state of well-being and contentment”.
In a recent edition of Golf Digest, Jamie Diaz put forth these thoughts in an article about “finding the zone”:
“People are the happiest when they are so involved in an activity that nothing else matters. The quality of the experience becomes more fulfilling than the result. This state is most often achieved when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a volunteer effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. The activity must be challenging and have defined rules, which promote intense concentration.”
No wonder sporting clays is so addictive.
Happiness and fun are connected. You can’t buy happiness unless you are having fun. You can’t have fun unless you are doing something that makes you happy. Shooters who shoot to impress others or prove something will have too many external thoughts to focus completely on what they’re doing. This is why we spend so much of our teaching time getting people to understand why they miss. Whether the problem was mechanical or mental is of no importance. The goal is for the student to learn, improve and excel.
If you expect to do well or improve your game this year, creating achievable goals is the first step. But before you tackle goal setting, it would be of great benefit for you to access why you shoot sporting clays. That’s right. Why do you spend the time and money to shoot lead pellets at a clay target in the air just to see if you can break it when it’s probably going to break when it hits the ground anyway?
In our experience, people who don’t have a clear understanding of why they shoot sporting clays can’t set effective goals. Their expectation of stellar performances becomes much greater than the commitment to achieve such lofty dreams. Without defining why you shoot sporting clays, we feel it’s inevitable that you will wake up one morning and realize that you’re in the declining years of a mediocre career as a clay target shooter!
We feel so strongly about this it is the subject of the very first chapter in our book, If It Ain’t Broke, Fix It. Here’s what we had to say:
Chapter 1: Why Are You Here?
No, we’re not going to ask you to give us a reason for existence, but we will ask you to think about why you shoot sporting clays or whatever shotgun sport you participate in. This is one of the first things we ask our students, and it’s something most people don’t take time to think about.
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