Please Help out!

Please Support Our Sponsors

Mental Attitude

11 posts / 0 new
Last post
TheJet
TheJet's picture
Mental Attitude

Recently at the Brisbane SSAA Nationals I had a real issue with my attitude
Now I know many will say well thats not unusual with me
Well all jokes aside, when the conditions are really difficult and your expectations are high.
You really need to give yourself a shake mentally.
I witnessed one of the competitors at the world championships (not an Aussie) was in this very situations he was odds on to win
But he was walking around between details like he had just lost his last two bob.
He found a way to shake it and get back on the horse and win a medal.

Well I am not sure how he did it but he did, with me I found that my practice scores are way above my effort in the competition.
I was brain stuffed by the wind as it just wasn't playing the game but, others though were on it and better than that smashing it .
The good guys were excelling
What do they have that gives them that edge mentally ?
Stuart and Annie Elliott never seem to be fazed by whatever they are shooting in ,Normy just seems to shoot better when its tough.
How do you pull all that practice out when your shooting nines but can't buy a ten ?

Seems like everyone loves to give credit to the rifle or the Ammo but when its tough neither are nearly as important as whats going on behind your eyes.
I asked Norm once and he just said he doesn't shoot twenty five shots, just one good shot at a time.
He is of course right but finding the calm in the storm seems harder than that sometimes.
I am sure others have the same issues but any help would be appreciated and will also help others.

kind regards Ben

TheJet
TheJet's picture
Thanks Bill

You are right that anyone wanting to do well needs a mentor.
Someone to help you get your head in the game

Team KAOS
All the gear and no idea

Scott k
Scott k's picture
Ben

Here is an old post bill put up a while ago I have used it as my bible and put it down to getting up for my 3rd card at the worlds

There are two aspects to making the wind your friend----psychological and technical. In order to make the wind your friend, you must master both aspects.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF SHOOTING IN THE WIND
Let’s tackle the psychological aspect first. How you feel emotionally about the wind can have a major impact on your score.
Most shooters would agree that negative emotions can adversely affect your score. But, not so many shooters would understand that positive emotions can be as bad as, or worse than, negative emotions. The most productive emotional state is stoicism. To shoot your best, never allow yourself to have any emotions, good or bad. Emotions release adrenalin. Adrenalin gives more brute strength; but it adversely affects fine motor coordination. In addition, if you allow yourself to be happy about a good shot, you’ll also be disappointed about a poor shot. And, psychologically, the disappointment will outweigh the happiness. Then, you’ll get discouraged and fail to shoot subsequent shots as well as you could. Before and during the match, it’s best to remain completely stoic. There will be plenty of time for celebration or mourning after the last round is fired.
So, let’s talk a little about how to put yourself in the proper frame of mind, both before and during the match.
Before The Match, you should consciously remind yourself that:
1. The wind is just as bad for everyone else as it is for you. The wind does not put you at any disadvantage. It is only a disadvantage for shooters who allow it to psychologically bother them.
2. You shouldn’t expect to shoot a personal high score. It would be unrealistic to expect to shoot your best scores under adverse weather conditions. Any time you shoot (particularly in the wind) it is very important to have realistic expectations.
3. You shouldn’t even expect to shoot great scores. The wind will probably lower scores. But, it will lower EVERYONE’S scores. Once again, wind is not a disadvantage for you.
4. Now here’s a tough one for most shooters to swallow. At a gut level, you absolutely must believe that winning does not matter. “Winning” or “Losing” are emotional thoughts. If you think about winning, each good thought will raise your hopes and each bad shot will increase your fears and self-doubts. And your emotions will contribute to your downfall. Instead, focus on stoically shooting each shot to the best of your ability. In truth, you have very little control over whether or not you win. Other shooters and their scores will determine that. However, you have complete control over whether you shoot each shot to the best of your ability. Your goal should be to finish the match knowing that you have executed each shot to the best of your ability.
If you merely accept these four truths, you’ll already have an advantage over most shooters before the match even starts.
During The Match, you must:
1. Trust your rifle and your wind flags.
2. Refuse to worry about previous shots. Just calmly learn from them and move on.
3. Remain emotionally detached. Stoicism will prevent your emotions from causing you to rush your shots. Remain calm. Wait for your wind conditions. Don’t talk yourself into an unsure shot. If you want/need to shoot a new condition, go back to the sighter bull and record the point of impact.
4. Focus totally on execution of the current shot. Any emotion (either positive or negative) can cause you to lose focus.
5. Just shoot, study the previous shots, learn from them, and shoot again. Make each shot the best you can shoot in the conditions.
Accepting the conditions, refusing to become emotionally involved, and maintaining the correct goal will take you halfway to making the wind your friend.
TECHNICAL ASPECT OF SHOOTING IN THE WIND
The other aspect of making the wind your friend is technical. A solid, consistent technical approach improves both your actual score and your confidence in your abilities. Let’s look at the technical aspects step by step. Here are the steps you can take to improve your scores on windy days.
1. Buy good equipment. Then shoot it enough that you know it and its capabilities. Have confidence in it. Without confidence, you’ll find yourself questioning your equipment for each bad shot rather than just accepting that it’s the wind.
2. Buy good wind flags and learn to read them. (I personally love Wick’s double tail flags with whirligigs. There, that should start a fight among the experienced shooters!) All of your flags should be identical. Three to six flags are adequate for rimfire benchrest. More flags give more data, but are more difficult to keep track of mentally. I use four flags set at 10, 20, 30, and 40 yards. I watch all of my flags, but give more emphasis to the closer flags.
3. Practice EXACTLY the same way you will shoot a match. Set up your rests the same way. Put every piece of equipment in the same place on the bench every time. If you must search for something on the bench, you’ll lose focus and perhaps lose your condition.
4. During your practice days, establish a GOOD zero in calm, “no wind” conditions. Record the windage and elevation settings on your scope so that you can always return to them. Having confidence in your zero is part of having confidence in your equipment.
5. Arrive at the match early. Put out your flags and study them for at least ten minutes before the match starts. Also study other nearby flags, particularly those upwind of you. They can warn you of impending changes before the changes get to your flags. Identify two to four wind conditions that you like. Those conditions must last long enough to be shootable. (Many “good” conditions don’t last long enough or come around often enough to be shootable.) One of your conditions should be the prevailing condition, even if it doesn’t seem good. If it’s the prevailing condition, you may be forced to shoot in it whether you like it or not. You might as well be prepared to do so.
6. Always set a timer so that you can quickly tell how much time you have left in the match. If you don’t know, you’ll naturally worry about it and rush your shots. (And your worry will distract you so that you can’t focus as well.) Use your timer in practice just as you would in a match.
7. When the match starts, shoot enough sighters to be confident that you know the holdoff for each of your conditions.
8. Don’t adjust your scope unless the wind is so bad that you would need to hold clear off the target. If the wind is bad, it is probably also switching often enough that you will need to shoot in several conditions. If you adjust your scope, it’s too easy to get lost in sight adjustments. It’s much simpler to keep your “no wind” zero and just hold off. Keeping your zero also makes it easier to learn from each shot. If you are adjusting your scope, it’s very difficult to learn what the wind is really doing to you. If you absolutely must adjust your scope, record your “no wind” zero settings so that you can return to them. Yeah, I know that you could aim more precisely if you aimed at the center of the bull. But, this isn’t a trigger pulling contest in calm conditions. This is a fight for survival in bad conditions.
9. Select conditions when all of your wind flags read approximately the same. At least, all of them should point in generally the same direction even if they don’t read the same speed. Avoid shooting when some of the flags read wind directions that are opposite of other flags.
10. Be patient. Wait for your conditions. If they don’t come back in a reasonable time, go back to your sighters and shoot the new PREVAILING condition. Record that condition in your book. Then go back to the record targets.
Make these steps habitual and your shooting should improve significantly.
Most of what I’ve said above is self explanatory. The internet contains several visual aids that purport to display the effect of various wind conditions on point of impact. They often show 10 o’clock to 4 o’clock stringing as the wind direction varies around the clock. Those visual aids may be theoretical approximations. But, that’s not what really happens at any of the ranges I frequent. The generic visual aids certainly aren’t precise enough to rely on during a match. The terrain of the range and the actual variances in the wind make it essential to know much more precisely what effect the wind is having on your point of impact.
Early on in this article, I mentioned that rimfire benchrest was particularly affected by the wind due to the poor ballistic coefficient of the rimfire projectile. In addition, the rules of rimfire benchrest make the wind much more of a factor. In centerfire benchrest only five shots are fired per match. It’s relatively easy to get five shots off in one, or at most, two wind conditions. However, rimfire bench rules require firing twenty five shots; and each shot must be fired at a different bull. It’s practically impossible to shoot that many shots without encountering three, four, or more wind conditions.
When I started shooting rimfire benchrest, I watched my flags and tried to memorize their correlation to my point of impact on my sighter targets. That worked fairly well when the wind was steady in strength and direction. But, that has actually happened only once or twice in my shooting career. I found that I needed to be prepared to shoot at least three to four wind conditions. And, I’m senile. I simply couldn’t remember exactly where to hold for each condition. In addition, I had a psychological problem. I found it difficult to hold off far enough. If I needed to hold in the middle of the 8 ring, I’d only hold on the edge of the 8/9. Consequently, too many of my shots got blown downwind out of the 10. I needed the confidence to be bold in my hold-offs.
Very seldom will all of your wind flags read the same angle and speed. So, you’ll need to do a little quick mental averaging. That’s where experience comes in. You should be able to pick conditions where all of the flags are pointing in reasonably the same direction. At all costs, avoid conditions where some flags are pointing left and others are pointing right. And be very wary of “calms”. I don’t believe that there is any such thing as a calm. A calm is merely a switch in progress. Calms give me mysterious highs and lows.
I never assume that today’s point of impact will be the same as yesterdays even if the wind flags are reading the same. Today’s data is only good for today. Seemingly identical wind conditions on different days can give different points of impact.
In this short article, I’ve only been able to give you a quick summary of shooting in the wind. You’ll find much more in-depth coverage in books such as Precision Shooting’s “The Benchrest Shooting Primer”, Mike Ratigan’s “Extreme Rifle Accuracy” and back issues of Precision Shooting. But, if you’re a rimfire shooter, remember that you’ll need to adapt the centerfire tactics to suit your game.
Much of what I’ve said may not be new to you. Much of it is simply common sense. But do you really practice it? Can you remain emotionally detached from the effects of weather on your scores? Do you have an effective game plan for shooting in bad conditions? Do you have a system for recalling up to four wind conditions? Can you honestly say that you consider the wind an advantage to you because it’s a disadvantage to your competition? Is the wind your friend because it is the enemy of your enemy?
If so, you’ll beat a lot of good “trigger pullers” when the conditions get ugly!
Just shoot your best. Don’t worry about the rest.
On the internet, you can find "wind rose diagrams" that show the theoretical effect on POI for various wind directions. Those wind roses are somewhat reasonable for steady state, laminar flow wind conditions. Unfortunately, steady state, laminar flow conditions are about as common as unicorns.
The reality is that you need to correlate the flag conditions that you see on that particular range and that particular day with the consequent points of impact of your bullets on your targets. (That's why they put sighter bulls on the targets.) And you need to memorize those flag conditions and resultant POIs so that you can ajust your POAs for those conditions when you go to your record bulls. Don't worry about where the wind is "supposed" to push the bullets. Just shoot sighters and see where the wind is "actually" pushing the bullets. (On a different day or a different range, the same flag conditions may result in significantly different POIs.)
I try to put out my flags and study them for at least ten minutes before the match starts. Also I study other nearby flags, particularly those upwind of me. They can warn me of impending changes before the changes get to my flags. I identify two or three wind conditions that I like. Those conditions must last long enough to be shootable. (Many “good” conditions don’t last long enough or come around often enough to be shootable.) One of my conditions is the "prevailing" condition, even if it doesn’t seem good. If it’s the prevailing condition, I may be forced to shoot in it whether I like it or not.
I try to select conditions when all of my wind flags read approximately the same. At least, all of them should point in generally the same direction even if they don’t read the same speed. I avoid shooting when some of the flags read wind directions that are opposite of other flags.
When the relay starts, I shoot enough sighters in my chosen conditions to determine where those conditions are causing my bullets to impact. (Yeah, it's a memorization exercise. Those of us who have reached the age of senelity struggle, but that's the only way to shoot respectable scores.)
“CHASERS” VS “WAITERS” --- There are two styles of shooters -- those who “chase conditions” and those who “wait for conditions”. Shooters who chase conditions tend to shoot at a fairly constant rate. They guess the appropriate point of aim for whatever condition exists at the time they are ready to shoot. Shooters who wait for conditions use their sighters to select two three conditions that they want to shoot. Then they wait for those conditions during the match. They tend to shoot far more sporadically than those who chase conditions. Admittedly, waiting for your condition to return, while your timer counts down, can be hard on the nerves. But, in my experience, chasing conditions results in far lower scores than waiting for conditions.
I wait!
I try to be patient. I wait for my conditions. If they don’t come back in a reasonable time, I go back to my sighters and shoot the new PREVAILING condition. Then I go back to the record targets.
If the wind conditions are reasonably steady, you can look at the flags, then look through your scope, adjust the POA, and shoot. But, if the wind conditions change every few seconds, you may have to adjust your POA for a specific condition, watch your flags until that condition appears, and then pull the trigger without looking back through your scope. It's kind of scary to shoot without looking through the scope, but it can be necessary.
One other note: There is no such thing as a "calm". A "calm" is just a switch in progress. And, "calms" promote mirage which is never helpful to accuracy. I avoid shooting in calm conditions.

TheJet
TheJet's picture
Thanks Scotty

Perfect mate
I have read this before but forgotten all of it.
Specially never shoot on green and red flags
Plus having that good idea and using it on a scoring target

Team KAOS
All the gear and no idea

LJ Fraser
Mental Attitude

There is also some great CD's from Lanny Basham a former olympic gold medalist that you may want to listen to. Controlling your thoughts at the range is one of the many tools you need for success. Having positive affirmations on your shooting performance is a fancy way of staying positive about the matter at hand. Shooting well is more a mental control of your thoughts rather that just pulling the trigger. I use this statement for every shooting discipline i compete in and it remains constant it doesn't say " your are the best at this sport and you will win" this is an unrelastic statement. Control what you can control and work within parameters that you can't control. Recently at a Fly match in Canberra which was a particularly hard day at the range the wind gods were handing out some free lessons on humility for all to take into consideration.

The difference between the top finishers and the lower shooters was purely mental toughness and this comes from being put into difficult situations and learn from them. After many years of shooting and over the past 3 -4 years taking on short range C/F benchrest and soon R/F benchrest i hope to be competing in the top level at some stage. I remember someone telling me (i do know the name but don't wish to disclose) that you need at least ten years in short range to begin to get into the top 10 patch list let alone win matches. I do remember it clearly as though it was yesterday and i also remember thinking to myself that is what he thinks that is not what i think. So i sat down and thought about his comments later and put it down in writing what he said and then i thought ok what do i do about this. So i studied matches learnt how to prep cases properly and went about learning the business at hand becuase the mental toughness side of my consciousness was very attuned to automating the perfect shot sequence after many years of shooting in other shooting sports.

I guess what i am trying to say is this the guy saying it takes ten years to perform well has this in his mindset and it will take him ten years before he begins to develop. If you listen to your inner voice it is up to you how well you will do as shooting is a lonely sport at the bench.

Now for the technical side.

I suspect that every person shooting a match has a view on this and what works for some doesn't for others. So on a tough day the first thing i do is look at the firing line on the first detail and see the target numbers of the recognised consistant shooters. i watch their flags and time the wind cycles between shots and view their fall of shot this give parameters to work with when your detail comes up. Most of the biggest mistakes happen because shooters do not have a plan. If you go to the fly shooter website i wrote a post on their about tough conditions and several plans to shoot in them these will help or at least will give some tips.

last of all remember good scores, promote better scores, better scores promote great scores, and great scores promote podium finishes............

Knighty
Knighty's picture
Mental attitude

Thats excellent advice Les and yes Ben, never tell yourself that you can't do it or be as good as the winners. Have a plan like Les said and work to this plan. Another thing mate is that every shooter has their day.......Rooster one day and Feather duster the next so never get downhearted.

Team KAOS
Calm and Relentless

TheJet
TheJet's picture
Thanks Les

I liked your idea of checking the top shooters in detail one.
You are right that what you think will become your reality.
Finding a way in amongst the storm of shots going in places they shouldn't
There is always a way to shoot the card you just have to calmly find it.
Thankyou for your reply I will check out your posts on long rang section

kind regards Ben

Team KAOS
All the gear and no idea

Knighty
Knighty's picture
Mind games

Benny,please email me your phone number. I would like to talk to you on the phone.
gwknight@hotkey.net.au
Thanks mate

Team KAOS
Calm and Relentless

TheJet
TheJet's picture
Mental attitude

Well I have taken the advice given to me here and have been listening to Lanny Basham in the car as I go to and from work etc
At a club night last week we were shooting RBA cards as our last comp for the club year
My mind was all over the place as I am just about to start another challenging job at work and a very good freind of mine is very crook at the moment.

I shot my first card and dropped I think fifteen shots which was terrible but conditions were great either.
Then on the second card I decided to get into the game and use lanny Bashams techniques and after every shot say to myself "that is how I shoot"
When I shot a ten and smashed it , I would just say "that's how I shoot" not yeah Baby as per usual
If I missed a ten I just moved to the next target , I let my sub conscience just shoot the card with my hold off positions. Not over think the whole thing

The difference was night and day, I shot 248 with fourteen dots
Now that score would probably not win competitions but it felt easy
There are many things I still need to learn in this game but I feel now that I am heading in the right direction
Anyway I just thought I would give you an update on my journey

Kind regards Ben

Team KAOS
All the gear and no idea

BigStick
BigStick's picture
Good job Ben keep it up. Kim

Good job Ben keep it up.
Kim

Knighty
Knighty's picture
Good shooting

Well done Ben. Keep it up mate and remember you are a great shooter.

Team KAOS
Calm and Relentless

Log in or register to post comments