Don’t Neglect Nutrition and Sleep

You might not think of shotgun shooting as a physically strenuous sport. Now, if you’re an E-class shooter, shotgun shooting is probably not a very strenuous sport. But when you get into the master class competitions and you’ve got to be on cue at a certain level, there are a lot of other things that go into allowing you to have that zone experience.

Something that you might want to consider is looking at your food intake the day before a shoot, that night, and that morning. And don’t tell me you had a greasy cheeseburger and you had sausage and eggs and biscuits and hash browns.

Try to look at how you slept and what time you got to bed. What we find in coaching so many people in so many different venues is that your body is going to respond to a certain type of nutrition and a certain type and amount of sleep each night.

The first thing that you realize when you begin to keep a log is you don’t give it the amount of rest or the kind of rest or the nutrition on the weekends when you go to a shoot that you typically give it during the week when you’re performing at business. And the older we get the more important nutrition is.

As we talked about last month, spending some time at the gym and getting in shape will go a long way in enabling you to physiologically rise to the occasion when the stars align and your brain gets out of the way and you’re able to really have a zone experience.

This is an excerpt from the June 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.