Learning from Your Failures

It’s easy for shooters to dwell on the failure on the last station. But the winners learn from it and move on, and leave the misses behind them in the cage, maintaining a calm quiet mind. Most shooters would let that last stand affect the rest of their day by overreacting to the failure.

It might be interesting for you to hear what we see in situations like this. Everything about their game speeds up: their gait between stands, their speed of conversation gets really fast, they begin to hurry for no reason, and everything they do with their hands speeds up.

At that point they outrun their performance angels and begin to think and try. Because they don’t know what their score will be at the end of the course, fear sets in.

Three things happen when fear enters the brain, and you don’t know they are happening: your big muscles tense up, hands speed up, and eyes lose the ability to fixate. And you can imagine what that does to your ability to perform.

Experienced shooters learn to control their breathing and maintain control of their pace by slowing everything they are about to do way down, keeping their mind clear and calm. They accept the last result and move on.