TargetTalk

For quite some time I have developed an interest on the subject of mental/psychological training.
I have read some books and searched the net on this subject - all sounds nice and well and very applicable to the shooting sport. Actually, I am already using some of its applications.

However, I miss sufficient evidence for usage, application and effectivity for that kind of training.

For this reason I have set up a questionnaire and published it on our trainer page: http://www.svlondorf1969.de/Trainer.html .

There is an English version and a German version available. The page contains as well additional resources that I found on the net (including Dr. Orlick's zone of excellence). The questionnaire has no commercial background and the identity of the respondents will be kept strictly confidential and not disclosed to others.

I would kindly ask the community to have a look at it (Word format), hopefully filling it out and mailing it back to the indicated address. (Of course I could have chosen something like surveymonkey.com for this, but I believe if someone takes the effort of downloading, filling out and mailing back the data will be more reliable.)

The questionnaire will be availabe for some months and I will publish the collected and analyzed data in due course.

Thank you in advance and looking forward to your responses

Axel

There is an English version and a German version available.

Axel,
Went to your URL, but could not find the English version.

Fred

P.S. Never mind. I found the download reference.

the link http://www.svlondorf1969.de/Trainer.html is to the 'header' page in German - http://www.svlondorf1969.de/LinkedDocum ... aining.doc is the link to the English version

After one month its time for an update (not on the data, just on the statistics - after all, I do not want to add bias to the data. See the "clever Hans" phenomenon on this isssue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_hans )

The download of the respective questionnaires has reached 150. To date, 460 visitors on this forum, 240 hits on 3 German forums. Downloads from this forum: 77, the other 3: 65.

Interesting the distribution over time: In the first days the thread on this forum has seen more than 200 visitors. It took one month in 3 forums to reach half of this number.

This fits an observation which is usually described: A German sees a glass with water as half empty, others see it as half full instead..

The download rate ist better for the German forums though: 1 out of 4 visitors downloaded the questionnaire, on this forum: 1 out of 7 (ish) downloaded the questionnaire. And Archers seem to be more interested than shooters.

Regarding the availability: I will leave the questionnaires online until end of August - so there is plenty of time. (It would be nice if my mailbox would not be flooded with thousands of returned questionnaires on August 31...)

Keep reminding up periodically. When you first posted this, I was too busy to take the time. Now I have some time and just sent off the questionaire. Probably others are in the same position.

Best regards,
Steve Turner

Hi Steve,

what a coincidence: I just answered to your mail.

Allt the best

Axel

Dear all,

I would like to bring this topic again into focus.

I am (still) interested to find out whether psychological/mental training is just a lipservice or actually used (and if, how it relates to other ways of training and how/if it can be attributed to the success/performance of the shooter).

Therefore, please find a questionnaire for download with 39 items on the subject of mental training.
Here is the link:
http://www.svlondorf1969.de/LinkedDocum ... aining.doc (the questionnaire in English)

or here :
http://www.svlondorf1969.de/LinkedDocum ... aining.doc (the questionnaire in German)

Since the original post (May 19) the number of downloads has reached almost 300 (both versions combined). The return rate still leaves a lot ot be desired.
The questionnaire will be online until end of August - the analysis of the data will follow shortly after. The result will be available on the trainer page of our club homepage:
http://www.svlondorf1969.de/Trainer.html

The procedure is: download the questionnaire, take your time to fill it out and mail it back to me: info@svlondorf1969.de

Unfortunately, no financial reward, just individual satisfaction of having contributed to the general body of knowledge of the shooting community. (The questionnaire represents an overview of one's training activities - it is quite likely that this action triggers additional thinking: should I do more of this and/or less of that..)

Looking forward to your answers

Axel

If you created your questionnaire as a simple to use web form, then MAYBE you could hope for couple dozen replies. You can't expect people to go through the trouble of filling it manually and sending it off to you for whatever purpose, and you can't blame them for it - time is money. Instead of doing this menial task they could be working, doing something they enjoy, etc. It rather aggravates me when people expect you to donate your time to them like it is worth nothing (spammers, telemarketers, religion recruiters, etc).

I believe if someone takes the effort of downloading, filling out and mailing back the data will be more reliable

Might be good idea if you have a billion of data points and you can afford to throw out 90% of the data, but if you can only expect under 100 replies under best of circumstances, throwing out most of the data leaves you with nothing.

Sorry for being rather brute about this, but someone needs a reality check.

AAlex wrote:If you created your questionnaire as a simple to use web form, then MAYBE you could hope for couple dozen replies. You can't expect people to go through the trouble of filling it manually and sending it off to you for whatever purpose, and you can't blame them for it - time is money. Instead of doing this menial task they could be working, doing something they enjoy, etc. It rather aggravates me when people expect you to donate your time to them like it is worth nothing (spammers, telemarketers, religion recruiters, etc).

I believe if someone takes the effort of downloading, filling out and mailing back the data will be more reliable

Might be good idea if you have a billion of data points and you can afford to throw out 90% of the data, but if you can only expect under 100 replies under best of circumstances, throwing out most of the data leaves you with nothing.

Sorry for being rather brute about this, but someone needs a reality check.

Time is money but you don't mind wasting yours complaining about something you don't want to nor are going to do. I guess your time isn't worth much. Sorry for being brute but someone needs a reality check.

Dear all,

I'd like to bring the topic of mental training into focus again.

Firstly, let me thank all who took the time to download the respective questionnaire and then mailed it back to me.

The present figures:
1350 views of this announcement in English on this forum here,
600-odd views of the respective announcement on German forum(s).

The questionnaire was downloaded some 400 times nearly equally distributed between the 2 versions.

To all those who have downloaded the questionnaire (already and in the days to come) and not yet mailed it back:
May I kindly ask you to take the second step to answer the questions and mail the questionnaire back to me?

Even if you do not perform any form of mental training answering the questionnaire will be beneficial: Presently, it is an accepted belief that physical training helps to a certain level, dry-firing adds a substantial edge and mental training fills the remaining gap for 600 out of 600 (AP/FP...) - but maybe mental training is, well you know, mental..and futile. Hard data lacks so far..

The more fellow-shooters respond, the more reliable the analysis will become.

Please find for your convenience the link to the questionnaire again: http://www.svlondorf1969.de/LinkedDocum ... aining.doc

I will leave it online until mid-September and make the result of the analysis available on the trainer section of our local homepage: http://www.svlondorf1969.de/Trainer.html

kind regards and thanks again for your help

Axel