Sports Psychology
by Harry Hoover BSc Sports Sciences
The capacity to learn is a gift.
The ability to learn is a skill.
The willingness to learn is a choice.
- Brian Herbert
In a recent Bullshooter article, (Dec 2001, issue 154, pgs 6 & 7) I wrote about the various sports sciences and briefly, some of the ways that aspects of those sciences can help us improve our performances.
When I now attend competitions, I find I am watching other competitors from the perspective of a sports scientist, not as a competitor myself. And I'm learning some very interesting things.
Something I personally find very curious is that most shooters will find a way to purchase a newer gun, or a better gun if they believe they need it, no matter the cost. But if someone suggests that they invest that same money in developing their own abilities, for example learning about sport psychology, most will rubbish the idea very quickly.
Top shooters in most disciplines have told me that they don't need all that mumbo jumbo stuff, but it's also interesting to note that top international competitors in almost every sport on earth use as many aspects of sports sciences as they possibly can to gain even the tiniest competitive advantage. As an example (one that I'm very familiar with), both of the most recent regular Bianchi Cup champions have a daily exercise training programme, they use Nutritional Consultants, fine tune their physical activity using a Biomechanist, and most importantly, both regularly use sports psychologists to help hone their mental abilities. Of course this may all be far too much effort for many people, but if you have aspirations of improving your performance, you will have to start paying attention to these sorts of details.
Nobody is born a champion. We learn to crawl, then we learn to walk, then run, and if we apply ourselves, we can learn to run very fast, or very far. Natural ability takes us only so far, and for everyone of us, there is a level at which we peak, and it's almost impossible to advance past that level unless we continue our learning process. That can be tough. It may mean an increased physical regime, it may mean becoming mentally tougher, it may mean improvements in equipment. But rest assured, when you plateau, that is the top level that you will ever achieve, unless you want to continue improving.
Don't take the next bit too personally, as I also need to focus on aspects of all the following, as much, if not more than anyone else.
If, as an aspiring competitor, you think you can get to world-class level in any sport and still be a smoker, a drinker, overweight, unfit, etc., then you're deluding yourself. You can still have fun shooting, or in fact enjoy any sport, but you will be competing besides people who are putting in serious effort in all areas, and you simply won't be able to keep up.
So seriously, how much do you want to achieve your goals?
I want to get the point across that it's not just shooting ability that will improve your scores or take you to the top. Any fool can fire one perfect shot. I'm certain that any experienced shooter could take a complete novice to the range, and within an hour, have that novice fire at least one perfect shot. Which indicates (to me at least) that the physical demands of the actual shot are not so difficult.
What is difficult is performing that perfect shot 40 or 60 or 192 times in a row over several consecutive days, or whatever your particular discipline requires. What is required is a brain that works perfectly to achieve those results.
As soon as someone mentions the word psychology, the usual response is "I don't need a shrink", which is unfortunate because that's so far off the true nature of what a sports psychologist can do for you that it's not funny.
Sports Psychology is about using your mind to fine tune your performance, eliminate the errors, allow you to develop greater levels of confidence and make you mentally tough enough to cope with the high pressure demands of competition.
It doesn't have to be expensive.
The good old Kiwi attitude of "I can do it myself" holds good if you're prepared to find some books, study the subject yourself and truly apply your new knowledge.
Of course most top competitors already have an intuitive knowledge of sport psychology, they've been dabbling in it for years without really knowing what they were dabbling with.
When you set a goal for yourself, or make plans to develop your ammo, you are using psychological techniques. Learning about sport psychology just improves how you can dabble.
There are a number of key areas that sport psychology can help a person with, and as is often the case, most people don't need to use all of them.
The nature of shooting sports is such that in competition, the person who makes the fewest mistakes will win, and sport psychology is mainly about reducing the mistakes. Some of the ways this is achieved is by;
- Developing your confidence, as well as your practical abilities.
- Setting goals and then breaking those goals down into manageable steps so that the individual steps are all achievable.
- Developing methods that allow you to be relaxed or focused, or whatever state you want to be in at any given time.
- Teaching methods that allow you to concentrate totally on the task at hand and not be distracted by irrelevant issues.
As I mentioned previously, most of us have some natural abilities in some of these areas, but there is a big difference between some ability that you can put to good use at club level, and the ability to perform at top national or international level. If we look at national records in our sport, we see that it is often many years between even small improvements in the various disciplines. There can only be one answer to our overall lack of regular improvement, we're not training properly.
So, to train properly, we have to identify the areas in which we need to improve, and then find ways of achieving that.
Top level performance (which is just performance that allows you to achieve your goals), relies heavily on your confidence level. In order for you to be as confident as you possibly can, you have to have done your homework in many areas. Your gun and your ammo (and any other equipment) have to be as perfect as possible, so that you then know that any deviations from the expected results are your fault, not that of your equipment. If you don't know where your gun shoots at 50 yards with any particular ammo, how can you be sure of putting the shots where you want them? What happens to your group if it's raining? If there's a strong crosswind? Is it better for you to adjust your sights, or aim off? There are hundreds of details that you need to know the answers to, and if (like me), you've got a tiny mind with a lot on it, you need to record this data so that you don't forget. Or more importantly, so that you can refer back to it when required. Confidence is also about knowing how well you can perform in
practice, then reproducing that effort in competition. Most of us perform well at our home club, then achieve less than we wanted at away competitions. There are many underlying factors for this, and "confidence" is a term that broadly describes what is needed. Good preparation is a key to confidence, and includes things like travel planning, diet, hydration, ammo, practice, spare parts, etc.
One of the other factors leading to confidence is; The ability to focus completely on what you're doing. Focus, or concentration allows us to perform the task at hand to the best of our ability. Anything that interferes with that; i.e., irrelevant thoughts popping into our minds at random, also interferes with our performance. A prime example is a shooter completely throwing the last shot of a string, or a competition, because they've already relaxed, because the previous shots were successful, and the thought popped into their head that "this is a piece of cake". There are exercises and techniques that you can use to prevent this happening, but for now, it is more important that you know that you can access this information than to actually read about the methods here.
Similarly, there are training techniques that allow you to learn to relax, both mentally and physically. Physical relaxation can involve things like sauna and massage, spa pools, or perhaps even a beer the night before a match. Mental relaxation is very easy, once you learn a few simple techniques, and skills in this area will not only help your sporting performance, it can also enhance many other aspects of your life.
Very often, the first step towards any sort of improvement is to have a goal. It can be whatever you like, big or small, long term or short term, and it can apply just to your sport, or your career, or marriage, or whatever. Once you have a goal, you will need to figure out exactly how you will go about achieving it. That usually involves breaking the goal down into smaller steps that are individually much more manageable that the overall goal. For example, your goal might be to be able to high jump two meters. This would then involve smaller goals (or steps) such as learning to jump without hurting yourself, increasing leg strength, finding better shoes, having more time for training by getting household chores done in less time, etc. The number of lesser goals will be very individual, and may be extremely varied, and perhaps not even directly relevant to the original goal, but taken as a single step in the process, they will lead to you achieving what you wanted.
All of the above become relatively meaningless if they are not written down. When something's just in your head, you tend to forget it, or place less importance on it. So write it down. Put it in big words on the fridge door, on the toilet calendar, in your diary.
Oh yes, the diary. This is an invaluable tool. It records your goals, what you did towards achieving those goals, all your records of what you've already tried that didn't work, and more importantly, what you've tried that did work.
A logical extension of your diary are cue cards, which record all the important things you're going to concentrate on in competition. It's just a little piece of paper, or cardboard (laminated?) with reminders, i.e., "focus on trigger squeeze", or "guarantee the first shot". Whatever little bits of information that will help you to focus on the here and now, achieving the task at hand. Have a different one for each match or event, or even a different one for each distance. Whatever you need.
Remember, whatever discipline you shoot, its pointless firing shots that miss. Every type of competition boils down to firing one perfect shot, followed by one perfect shot, followed by one perfect shot, etc. If we're not achieving that, we need to look at where and why we're not, and calculate ways to improve it. Obviously not too many people fire only perfect shots, but that's our big goal, isn't it? This is what we are striving for.
If you're currently achieving 50% of possible score, then a week of training will have a marked effect on your score, i.e., big improvement for small effort. But as your ability and scores improve, lets say to 95%, then you will have to put in a huge effort to achieve a 1% increase in ability. You may need to work and study for years to get that increase. Even more work is needed to improve from 98% to 99%. Few of us can afford either the time or the expense of thousands of shots per week, so the key is to train smarter, not harder.
Visualisation is an aspect of sport psychology that can be of huge benefit. The ability to see yourself and your actions in your own mind gives you the potential to train any aspect of your performance that you want. Try shutting your eyes and imagine a picture of something nice like an icecream. Wasn't that hard was it? Now imagine a double cone, with different coloured icecream in each cone. Now try and imagine it's a hot day and melting icecream is dripping off your hand. That wasn't very hard either, was it? If you could do that previous exercise, you can learn to use the technique to improve your shooting ability, or in fact, the ability to perform any task on earth. You can learn to see yourself on the winners podium, or to see yourself in action and able to pinpoint areas to improve on, etc. Like most things, practice will be needed to get exactly the results you want, but if you use this technique well, it can help you give up smoking, succeed in exams, be a better dad, whatever you want.
I'd like to tell you about one of my experiences, which taught me a valuable lesson. Prior to 1995, I had never shot over about 1,890 points in any NRA match. Then suddenly, at the Oceania games, I shot a 1916. I was over the moon, I'd won a medal (silver) and I told myself "you've finally made it, you can do this anytime, this is a piece of cake". Well, for the next two years I was unable to score over 1900, despite putting in some intense practice and untold numbers of bullets down range. The effect of that was so frustrating I could have cried every time I left the range. "I've done this before, what the hell's wrong with me?
Pretty obvious really, I'd had a very lucky day in 95, and my actual abilities didn't match my expectations of myself. I had a lot of learning to do, and until I realized that I wasn't going to get the improvements I so desperately wanted. I have learned that I need to keep learning and I always will.
Put some time and effort into developing yourself and your mental abilities and you'll see not only your sporting performances enhanced, but also many other aspects of your life.
May your trigger finger never lose it's magic.
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