Change One Thing at a Time

Since shooting is a combination of the mental and physical, there are things you can do to become better, some are mental, and some are physical. As trainers we see many shooters talk themselves out of good shooting. Your mental dialog should be positive as opposed to negative.

This means that you should say positive things, squeeze the trigger smoothly… and you will do what you say. If you say to yourself, don’t miss- guess what you will do? miss. You have to run a small dialog with yourself and talk through things, grip, stance, trigger, breath, sights, the basic fundamentals at first.

So the self-talk dialog you have with yourself has to be positive. Keep it positive and you will be more successful.

Along with the self-talk, have a strategy in how you coach yourself, what techniques you use to improve. This can also be important if you are listening to an instructor or coach.

One thing we see often is a new shooter will try and adjust a bunch of things all at once. This is problematic because if it does make you shoot better, you do not know which of the five things you have changed is the one that makes a difference. Be strategic, change one thing, try that and see if it makes a difference. If one thing does not work, move on to another.

When you find tips or tricks that work, use your brain like a camera and take mental snapshots of what success feels like, looks like, and what you did so it is repeatable.

Among the best things, you can do if you wish to be a better shooter is practice, that practice does not always mean a trip to the range. The best things you can do is proper training, on your own or with an instructor. Train a little, a lot. In other words, train in small batches as often as you can.

Copyright Raven One-Five, LLC, 2019