Be Methodical!

You’ve got to be methodical about everything you do and every shot you take. If you’re not methodical and intense every time that you get ready to call for the target and go after it, then your results are not something you can look at and build on.

You’ve got to practice intently with your routines. When you shoot tournaments, you’ve got to stick with your goal on every shot, regardless of result. Make a goal. Stick with it. Don’t go to the default goal with trying not to look down. You’ve got to do everything with the same intensity.

One of the biggest mistakes we see people make is they practice consciously and then try to shoot unconsciously. Every shot in practice and tournaments must be the same: the same intensity, the same scrutiny, hit or miss. And more importantly, they all have to have your routine.

Practice your pre-shot routine, your post-shot routine and more importantly your correction routine.

Stay in your routine. You control your pace with what you do between the pairs and what you do between the stations. Panic will get in there and make you walk fast between the stations. It’ll make you talk fast and move fast. But you can control your pace by walking slowly, taking your time getting there and making your plan control your pace.

Take no shot – in practice or tournaments – without a breakpoint. No casual breakpoint. Specific breakpoints. You must begin by the way you practice and by the way you shoot tournaments.

You must begin to develop the person you want to become by doing and acting like that person. You’ve got to become who you want to be. It must become out of character for you to go and play grab-ass around your buddies. That’s hard to do because you all love to go shoot.

If you want to go out and play, go out and play; but if you want to start scoring in master class and get into master class, it’s going to take a lot greater commitment. You’re going to have to really take all advantage you can from your practice time.

 

This is an excerpt from the January 2012 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with more than 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.