The “Mental Game” — Mantras for Competitive Shooting Success

The AccurateShooter.com DAILY BULLETIN had a recent topic in their blog titled: The “Mental Game” — Mantras for Competitive Shooting Success

My mantra tends to be Markowski in my shot process for 22, and now Clegg in my shot process for 45. I'm not opposed to a Zins, Zureck or Anderson either.

(Oh crap, I forgot Jin for Air Pistol.)

Zins, in his clinics, refers to this as a “keyword” which gives you, the shooter, a word to concentrate on your process.  It can be anything to remind you of your process.  For me it is “trigger” because I’m still working on trigger control in 2 shot drills.  When everything is going ok, I can get a 185 in ten 2 shot RF paced sustained fire drills.  So I’m improving.  For you it may be different and it may be different for slow vs RF vs TF.   

I’m not sure having a person ton”embody” is a good mantra however as it doesn’t direct your mind.

I got to see Sgt Markowski shoot a 100-9X 22 TF (his bad shot was a mid 10 at 7 o'clock) and Sgt Clegg clean all the 45 TF and RF recently for a 890.

Wow. Inspiring targets to look at.

Sa-tevp wrote:I got to see Sgt Markowski shoot a 100-9X 22 TF (his bad shot was a mid 10 at 7 o'clock) and Sgt Clegg clean all the 45 TF and RF recently for a 890.

Wow. Inspiring targets to look at.

Further research: Did you watch the shooter or the target for each of these?

P.S. (Stop focusing on the lowest shot! How many were within the actual letter X?)

Being able to walk along the shooting line and watch people's shot process is what I miss when we don't run relays. I did take my remaining time in Slow Fire to watch Sgt Markowski go through his shot process as the AMU team shooters are very consistent in their shot process but there are small variations between shooters. 

The only times I looked at the targets was when I would walk along the frames during score and repair. I can't be bothered to move my scope around as I have more important tasks to address.

By the way, both shot 299 NMCs. The 9Xs in Markowski's 22 TF 100-9X were all inner Xs.

Stephen