Ask The Instructor: Getting Psyched

Question: What’s the best way to prepare mentally for a competition the day of the competition or the day before?

Answer: On the night before your competition, do three things. 1) Sort out your gear. This will prevent the inevitable rushing around in the morning searching for your earplugs or your glasses. Establish a written “pre-competition packing list” to further reduce stress when sorting yourself out the night before the big day. 2) Just before heading to bed, take your shotgun out and go through the physical and mental motions of shooting a minimum of two complete stations or pegs (gun unloaded of course, using snap caps if you like).  It is critical that you conduct your pre-sot planning prior to each simulated station as well as your pre-shot routine prior to your simulation of engaging each pair. 3) Make sure you get plenty of sleep by scheduling bedtime early enough to wake for a timely departure for the shooting grounds. On the morning of competition, grab something light to eat and, before leaving the house or hotel, repeat your rehearsal with shotgun in hand, as you did the night before. After you arrive at the shooting grounds, check in and have your equipment sorted, conduct your rehearsal a third time. If a warm-up is available, take advantage of the opportunity to get your hands and eyes working together well, making sure to run through your pre-shot routine each time you prepare to call for a target pair. Limit your warm-up to between 10 and 25 targets. Now you are ready to move to your first station. During competition, elite athletes focus on the process rather than their performance. In order to yield exceptional performance, you must employ what you have practiced and focus on the process of pre-shot planning and your pre-shot routine, absent any performance expectations. Exceptional performance is much more likely to follow exceptional adherence to a process, rather than performance aspirations. Re-running your pre-shot routine is critical because it represents the process to which you are committing as you step into your first station.