You Must Practice with a Routine and Plan

It’s spring, which makes us want to get outside and shoot.

The biggest issue that seems to be coming up is shooters’ frustration at having so much potential in practice. Yet on game day, they fail to reach that potential!

What happens to your mental and physical game of shooting great scores?

We were watching the Masters Golf Tournament Sunday, and it was so fascinating to watch these great golfers go through the same meltdowns that I see a lot on the clays course. You can watch it happen when they don’t make a putt or end up in the bunker. Their whole mannerisms change and they don’t walk leisurely anymore.

It’s more like they are on a mission to put the ball in the hole. And all they are thinking about is what to do when it doesn’t go in.

Sound familiar?

You go to practice and you have a goal for each shot. You practice your routine, your breakpoints, and the tempo of the target and you shoot great.

Then you go to a tournament and everything changes. Instead of being relaxed, you get tense and fear the miss. Your brain goes into overdrive, and you worry about each shot instead of doing what you did in practice. Your routine goes out the window.

You allow your adrenaline to take you out of the game because your moves become short and quick, not slow and smooth like in practice.

A negative thought comes into your mind and you let it consume your thoughts. Or you try to block it, and that is not possible. Just think of it as a thought, not good or bad. You can’t block a negative thought, but you can replace it with some other thought.

In your practice, you were enjoying the thrill of breaking the target. You trusted your move, then the tournament comes and all the things you did to get there in practice go out the window. You try too hard, and all your brain is thinking about is please don’t let me miss.

So how is that working for you?

You must practice with a routine and a plan so that you can take your practice game to the tournament.