Making the Most of Shooting Mental Preparation
How to hit: Try These Mental Tips for Shooting
Shooting sports are unique in that athletes only have one shot, one split-second of skill, precision and focus to prove their abilities. Once this moment is over, that’s it. Their fate is sealed.
While every type of athlete can fall victim to immense pressure, anxiety and stress, this is, therefore, especially true for sport shooters. All of their hard work, preparation, and lessons learned will ultimately culminate in one very brief moment in time, during which they are put to the ultimate test.
Yes, this makes shooting sports highly rewarding. But this also means that the daunting and overwhelming pressure of this moment can weigh on athletes. Ironically, it can even get in the way of them performing to their full potential when the moment comes. That’s why developing psychological flexibility is so crucial in shooting.
These five tips and tricks can help shooting athletes master their mental preparation, helping them to immerse themselves in the moment, maintain focus, and make the most of their chance to prove their shooting skill.
Lean into the Pressure
Many associate the word “pressure” with negativity. There can be a belief that external and internal pressure always leads to feelings of stress and anxiety. We reject the idea of being put under pressure, and we try to avoid pressure situations wherever possible.
However, being subjected to a healthy amount of pressure is important to our personal growth, building trust, becoming more confident and skill development.
When we perceive pressure, either internally or from others around us, we can use this as the trigger to rise to whatever challenge lies before us. The stakes of our success are made real to us, and this gives us something to lose or something to win, depending on our perception, and makes us subconsciously want to work harder and reach higher to achieve our goals.
Instead of trying to reject the opportunity of having pressure placed on us, I work with shooters to help them lean into the feelings that pressure brings and create pressure-training scenarios to stress-test skills before a competition. We develop the mental skill to respond.
Rather than allowing pressure to take over your psyche and make you feel anxious or stressed, try to accept the pressure and lean into this feeling. It’s normal. By accepting your feelings and allowing them to exist, you stop the fight against them. You might even find that the pressure encourages you to rise to the occasion and motivate you to give your best effort.
Visualise What You’re Going to Commit To
The ability to visualise is advantageous in shooting sports.
It may sound far-fetched, but visualising yourself hitting the target successfully can help you make it a reality. Your mind is a very powerful tool, and it can sense every moment of self-doubt you experience. If you approach your shooting moment as though you know that you will succeed and you pour effort into visually imagining that success, you may be less likely to buckle under pressure.
I provide my shooters with pre-competition scripts for both visualisation and mindfulness practice to mentally prepare. They’ve shot their competition many times brilliantly before they’ve even arrived on range.
Acceptance Of The Learning Curve
Any shooter will know that this sport takes many hours of diligent practice, and you will inevitably face many challenges and failures before you start to become a good shooter. Mental training for shooting includes moving past your failures and not dwelling on them. You can use the lessons from these experiences. Ensure you preserve some value from a setback.
Spend time after the event reflecting on your learning. What happened, describe this. What other ways of responding might have been helpful? What action will you take if faced with this situation again in future? Perhaps your failure was due to changing your technical approach due to a psychological response? Make sure your actions are an appropriate solution to the right problem. ‘Solutioneering’ is a dangerous game in competition – finding a great solution to the wrong problem!
In competition, you need to be prepared with your strategies to respond and be clear on how to hit (rather than why have you missed!). It’s a huge psychological skill to be able to move on quickly after a disappointing shot. This requires solid routines, the skill of noticing change, resilience, presence of mind, and even self-forgiveness - all valuable qualities in shooting.
Understand ‘how to hit’
This may sound INCREDIBLY obvious!
But you will be amazed how many shooters are still paying attention to fixing their last shot (that they can no longer change) long after it’s gone. I work with shooters to develop an incredibly simple ‘how I hit’ mantra. When you find yourself trying to create new solutions: Notice and turn your attention back to what you want to do rather than what you don’t want to do.
Why you’ve missed could be 100 things. How you hit is simply a couple of bullet points. Which are you choosing under pressure?
Have Other Hobbies and Interests
A sole focus on one activity seems beneficial on the surface. Of course, succeeding in your sport takes practice, diligence, and passion, but it is possible to take this too far. Dedicating every waking moment to your sport and refusing to invest in hobbies, relationships or activities outside of this area of your life can lead to a dysfunctional reliance on your sporting success and a skewed sense of priority.
It is highly recommended to try and branch out to social circles outside of your sport and to allocate time to pursue other hobbies and interests when you can. This will decrease internal pressure because you know that you have other things going for you other than your sporting talent.
While sporting failures may still disappoint you, it’s less likely that you’ll feel as though your whole identity, self-worth, and sense of value are riding on your shooting success. You can shoot almost perfectly and still come 2nd. Don’t let the outcome define your character.
If you want to join a worldwide community of multi-discipline shooters all looking to maximise their mental game you can find out more here >