Looking at Your Top and Bottom Scores

You’re not always going to bring your “A” game to the show. As hard as you try, you’re not always going to do that. I went to the Beretta World Championships in 1987 and was fortunate enough to spend probably 45 minutes under a tent while it was raining.

I talked to the move/mount/shoot guy, Barry Simpson, about that. “How often when you go to a big shoot do you have your A game?” I asked. He said, “I’m lucky if I have my A game four or five times a year.”

We have talked about this. The thing that you should look at for a signal of improvement is not the height of your best scores. It’s the height of your lower scores coming up. Because that means your low scores are much closer to your top scores, which yields consistency.

It’s easy for people, because we’re also results-oriented, to only look at and remember and give emotion to the great performances and the top scores.

The top scores are there, but it’s not the top scores that bring the bottom scores up. If the bottom score is getting better and better and better, it gives you a better foundation that pushes those top scores higher and higher. Eventually what ends up happening is you’ll have more top scores and they’ll all be consistently higher because your bottom scores are so much better.

This is an excerpt from the January 2011 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.