TargetTalk

I know that performance anxiety is not uncommon. But for me, it's pretty extreme.

My performance percentage drops have been _slowly_ shrinking. Currently I'm at 4% drops at local PTO's. But when I did 3xAir last December, I had a nearly 7% drop! I was pretty disgusted and disappointed of course. At least the food was incredible and the people I met, some of the best.

In speaking with as many people as I can about this, I hear things. First, something about USAS stats that state that 3% drops are 'normal' for new shooters and that seasoned competitors can cut that to less than 1%, if not make it disappear all together at the highest levels. Okay, that's cool. How?

I don't get any concrete steps to take to correct. I tell people that I shoot as many PTO's as possible to get experience. They say, 'yes, that's good'. Well, my fear is that I'm not getting over anxiety issues, but that I'm simply becoming more accustomed and comfortable at the two ranges where I shoot PTO's. If that's the case, when I head back to 3xAir in December, I'm afraid I'll have another jaw-dropping 7% hit to my score, even though I might be at less than 3% at familiar PTO's.

The next comment I hear is that I care too much about scores. That's a tough pill to swallow, because yes, I do care about scores. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't. I wrote a web app that actually tracked and graphed my daily training scores. It's very cool. But I abandoned it upon this advise - and after realizing that they don't really matter... only the scores in competition mean anything. Now I just look at the size of groupings and my 10-shot averages each day.

Regardless, symptoms are; accelerated heart-rate. Shaky, numb hands and arms. A feeling that everyone on the line is watching me and all the dumb things I do. Then when the inevitable muscle flinch happens and I score a 4, I just 'hear' the range official and the shooters next to me thinking that I should find something else to do ;-)

I'm wondering if hypnosis might work for me. I've heard that for some people it is beneficial... but it sounds like a band-aid on something that should have stitches.

*sigh*... I'm headed off to shoot a PTO in Blackfoot tomorrow morning. Here's to a <3% drop tomorrow!

Oz

Please review and study Ed Hall posts on { for abreviation] positive thinking and begin practicing filling your mind with the mental process that reinforces your best shot sequence. Should you loose control and began thinking distructive things that have nothing to do with your shot sequence, try the distraction technique he describes in his posts. Essentially thinking about things that have nothing to do with where you are and what you are involved in at the moment. As you feel your body beginning to relax and your mind comming back under control, run your shot sequence mental program using only positive images, raise your pistol and shoot a ten. Good Shooting Bill Horton

Thanks for the mention, Mr. Horton,

Let's attack this from a couple angles:

First, we'll study scores

If you examine this 3-7% drop, is this a drop in average, high, PTO vs. average or PTO to PTO, or possibly a combination. What does your single PTO score look like compared to the low end of your average for training/practice? Don't expect to shoot your high score at the match. You should expect to be within your normal range of scores.

Now, let's cover numbers of tens vs. nines vs. lesser

Are you tracking the number of well executed shots vs. those you'd rather not have completed? I would suggest not tracking anything you don't want to repeat.

Now the BIG question

Are you doing all this tracking during the match/training or waiting until the posting of the final results? You already know my suggestion...

While you are shooting, each shot and the process to produce a ten is the only thing you should be thinking about. If you are letting other thoughts rule your performance, how can it be optimum?

The real performance degrader is doubt, frequently caused by fear of failure. But, failure at what, not winning? Remember that there are far more non-winners at any match than winners. So, should you fear being one of the majority?

Another thing to think about - are you watching all your neighbors and criticising their shortfalls? Neither are they!

Now to some other thoughts

If it scares you to think you might have any anxiety isuues, you will have those issues. You're setting yourself up for them.

What to do? Sit down and examine what it means to you, to fail, and then what it means to succeed. Then, determine what the consequences might be. If you fail, will you still be welcome at home, the club, other matches? OTOH, if you succeed will you be a hero, become wealthy, have to swat off reporters and ad agencies?

After you've worked out the above, move back to the basics of what it takes to produce a ten. List the steps. Write down the list and place it where you can refer to it when you shoot. Use the list as the focal point for each shot. During a match, don't even concern yourself with values; just produce holes following your shot process. After the match, review your results, but only keep track of overall results and possibly how many tens you fired. Don't concern yourself with the rest of the hits.

I think Mr. Horton was referring also to my suggestions of the use of a Happy Place visualization environment, but I am recommending that you not consider this at this point in time. First, work out your shot process and use it to focus your delivery. Later on you might want to visit the Happy Place reference, but not for now.

Take Care,
Ed Hall
Air Force Shooting Homepage
Bullseye (and International) Competition Things

YES! This is some serious, thought-provoking stuff! Thank you _so_ much. I'll print this off and start... at the beginning. There are some great steps I can begin to apply immediately. Plenty of work to do behind that trigger.

Oz

Oz:

First, "What Ed Said" (has been repeated by a lot of us many, many times in this forum. I know, I know, human attitude and behavior might be easy to understand but is damn difficult to actually change! Shooting properly might be SIMPLE but that sure in heck don't make it EASY!)

Perhaps another way to look at it might help.

Focus on BEHAVIORS (things you do) and the RESULTS (the side effect of doing the things you are doing) will take care of themselves.

Especially in TRAINING environment* you should focus on "scoring" your BEHAVIORS, not the irrelevant hole in the paper:

- You execute some errors in your process (bad sight alignment + snatching shot) and get a 10! Should you celebrate? NO. That was a FAILURE.

- You execute your process successfully (focus on alignment, smooth application of increasing pressure when settled) and get an 8. Should you be irritated? NO. That was a SUCCESS.

If you have to "keep score" (for whatever reason) keep track of your BEHAVIORAL PERFORMANCE on the key TECHNIQUE ELEMENTS that you can CONTROL.



* (we have had this argument in this forum before, and Ed, David, myself and others "agree to disagree" on whether or not you should modify you approach for matches)

Steve Swartz

OBTW the issue isn't "performance drops."

The issue is "performance variability."

Every single time you shoot htere is a 50-50 probability that your score that day will either be HIGHER or LOWER tan your average.

So we obsess over the 50% when our "performance drops" and ignore the 50% when our "performance improves?"

Hmmmm . . . .

The true issue is "How do we move the average performance higher?"

Not

"Why can't I score above average ever single time?"

Steve Swartz

I can do nothing but to congratulate Steve for having reworded Ed's thoughts. Because it's my humble experience that expressing the same message in different words is the best way to help make understand a subject. Or, in other words, I read many things over and over again that made no impression to me but I felt "enlightened" after only reading the same message paraphrased once.

Steve Swartz as Guest wrote:OBTW the issue isn't "performance drops."

The issue is "performance variability."

Every single time you shoot htere is a 50-50 probability that your score that day will either be HIGHER or LOWER tan your average.

So we obsess over the 50% when our "performance drops" and ignore the 50% when our "performance improves?"

Hmmmm . . . .

The true issue is "How do we move the average performance higher?"

Not

"Why can't I score above average ever single time?"

Steve Swartz

hALL AND sWARTZ (OOps, caps lock)
Right on guys, right on. You nailed it!

I couldn't express with better words the problems of performance drop in competition than Oz did. Actually, I think my average drop is at least 10% in competition against training scores (I am not completely sure since I don`t usually score training but I feel is in that order). I have been tackling "serious" competition for about two years now and so far could not get rid of a terrible match pressure that provokes me frequent flinching and low scores. Since I was decided to overcome the problem I just started to work with a sport psicologist who is very practical and makes me do all the mental drills at the firing line and not at the coach. It is premature to say if it is going to be of help to me but so far I am very confident that it will. ¿Does anybody has some similar experience concerning the help of a specialist? Shooting is a very beautiful sport and no match pressure will prevent me from enjoying it.

ldevedia:

Yes.

Self hypnosis and autosuggestion worked best for me (ref Terry Orlick's "In Pursuit of Excellence).

Others have had great results with Lanny Bassham's stuff (didn't work for me; but a lot of people swear by it).

The key is to take "anxiety" and channel it into the positively focused "arousal" or "intensity."

You don't want to be "flat" for a match (no arousal) nor do you want to be "hyper" (anxious).

Focusing on behavirs in a positive way, with a high degree of energy and intensity . . .

(once agan, "simple" does not equal "easy")

Steve

Thank you Steve for your response. Lanny Basshams system didn't work for me either, probably because of my personal psicological characteristics. It well may work with others.

Steve Swartz as Guest wrote:Every single time you shoot htere is a 50-50 probability that your score that day will either be HIGHER or LOWER tan your average.

Steve, how very 'binomial' of you to point that out! I think perhaps you're mising Oz's point, however. If I read his posting correctly, his scores are below his average performance 100 percent of the time when he competes in a big match. There is nothing random about 100 percent.

Steve Swartz as Guest wrote:The true issue is "How do we move the average performance higher?"

Not

"Why can't I score above average ever single time?"
Steve Swartz

Actually, Steve, at Lake Woebegone, all of the scores are above average!

Seriously, I've always found that stepping outside and kicking a tree a few times, or doing isometric exercises (when stepping outside isn't practical) after a bad shot or a bad string seems to help. The theory is that physical excercise helps to burn off the excess adrenaline that we are blessed with in such situations, thus reducing our arousal level to something more manageable. Football players always talk about how they are all nerves before the start of the championship game, but once they hit somebody they are fine.

Alt least, it always seemed to work for me.

Al B.

In a perfect world . . . we would all "shoot the way we train" and "train to shoot every time as a match"

and that's kind of the point!

Of course, that's the THEORY. Obviously I have gotten some (very well publicized actually) cases of "match jitters."

Shoot more matches.

My first nationals were disasters.

My first (and second, one week later) world cups were disasters.

I have shot enough nationals now that I don't think "jitters" apply any more. At nationals.

Would we, each and every one of us, settle for "shooting the best we can on that day?"

Oddly enough, that's not good enough for a lot of us.

Sometimes, the "best you can" is not as good as you would lilke . . .

I introduced Oz to PDs ,I should have keep my mouth shut. The good news is the more I shoot the smaller the my PDs get. Oz sees that ! I have shoot in 5 stress matches ( matches that I really cared about) and I feel Im getting better..... Call me the master of the 9.9 ! (in A Big Match) My wobble area increases just a hair moving my normal 10 out to a 9.9 or 9.8 . In stead of losing .1 or.2 points im losing a full point which drops my 580plus home scores down to 562 to 569. SEEMS LIKE ALOT! BUT when you factor in the 9.9 and 9.8s its nothing ! JUST A HAIR on 15 shots............... My personality (I feel ) has alot to do with this. Im HIGH STRUNG, Hyper,Know I can win, want to win ATTITUDE everything I wish I wasnt but what makes me who I am! (understand) I will never NEVER change that!!!!!! (unless I take drugs) My butterflies R as big as condors! and I just got to accept that ! GET USED TO IT ! SHOOT MORE MATCHES !CREATE A SHOOT PLAN, train with it and stick to it in a match ! I have yet to do that ! (almost did at the trials with a coaches help on the last day ).............. Someday me and Oz will show up at a match with a well trained shoot plan, an I dont care attitude (where else would I rather be) , shoot with focus on nothing but shooting. Then we can stand next to each other in a final ( THAT WOULD BE A WHOLE NEW PROBLEM ). David.

Hi Steve.

A long time ago, a guy I used to know told me that you have to re-learn to compete at every level of competition. He was talking about ping-pong, but I think it applies to any sport. I've heard your story many times from shooters at various levels of competition, both pistol and archery. As I recall, even Lanny Bassham described the same thing the first time he competed at the Olympics.

Bassham has made a career out of positive thinking. But you would have to be dead from the neck up not to notice when you are performing poorly. And when you are in a competition where you really, really want to do well, the result of a bad shot or a string of bad shots is going to cause a sympathetic neverous system response, aka, "fight of flight." Unfortunately, this is not conducive to good shooting, and it will cause your performance to spiral progressively downward.

What do you do in this kind of situation? I've found that hitting something helps, i.e., you 'fight', and then you can calm down. Then you go back to using positive imagery. But you have to address the physiological component of the problem. Otherwise, all that excess adrenaline is going to interfere with your ability to utilize that nice positive imagery that Lanny Bassham preaches. It's also going to interfere with your fine muscle control, your depth perception and your time perception.

"Shooting the best that you can" on a given day is a relative term. Your 'best' isn't going to be as good when you're excessively amp'ed up as it is when you're a bit calmer. If you can do something to take the edge off when you're too wound up, that counts toward shooting your best.

Regards,

Al B.

This may sound overly simplistic but it works for me.
"worry about only what is in your control"
you are a good shooter ...You know that ... go do it.
If your worrying about others your not working like training and thats where your going wrong.
If you get a poor shot quickly figure out what went wrong and move on ...that shot is no longer in your control so don't dwell on it.
competition is no different than training other than I would not experiment during a match.

I very much appreciate everyone's comments. I took Ed's posting and printed it out, doing a lot of reflecting on it. I also focused on the thoughts and ideas from others posts as well. There is certainly a common theme to it all.

I'm and ecstatic and so excited to report back that at this last PTO, I came within only a few points of my daily shooting average! HOW SERIOUSLY COOL IS THAT! I walked in with only a couple of butterflies. Sat back and went through everything in my mind, including the steps I take to shoot a 10. And while not all 60 shots turned out to be 10's, 25 of them were, which is another PB in competition.

I believe that I'm moving on to another phase in this little endeavor, which is so exciting. I have a couple more PTO's in two weeks, where I have the chance to ensure I can recreate the calmness and confidence I had shooting at this last PTO.

Thanks again for all the thoughts. I'm beginning to think that maybe, some of you might just know what you're talking about ;-)

Oz

I'm a catcher on a softball team(catcher because i'm the oldest). As the catcher I'm allowed to talk to anything but the batter.I'm that little voice behind the batter that makes him think twice.Sometimes encourageing him to make a wrong choice.The more I talk the worse the other team bats (thank God its church teams).Some players are effected alot more by my chatter than others. In softball you only get 3 strikes while shooting your strikes are almost unlimited. Your not out until you shoot a shot less than a ten.In softball you have to swing with that chatter, while shooting if any chatter occurs take the pitch, put the gun down. Even if that chatter is telling you its a good shoot dont listen, dont even think! I have found my best shots are my relatively quick(most of the time)non thinking shots. First learn to shoot a ten (sight alinement , trigger pull, hold) Once you know you can shoot a ten then make it a automatic ,non thinking, repetitive act. If that catcher in your head starts talking make that an indicator to take a strike, start over put the gun down. This is what keep coming into my mind during our game tonight. Thinking about shooting during a softball game , my life is all messed up! We did win and after the game the other teams coach congradulated me on my "catching skills" or should I say" chatter". Im not Bob but he was at the game.

Bob's Customer:

Great way of saying it . . . I never heard it put quite that way before; thanks!

Am filing that one away for sure . . .

Steve