There are now 2 people keeping the UIT mailing list archives. Gary Piercey is keeping one at http://www.cs.mun.ca/~garyp/uitlist/ and Jeffrey Jongko has one at http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Sideline/4987/ so you should have no trouble keeping up if you're just joining. Many thanks to them for taking some work off my plate! As a reminder, simply mail any questions or answers to me or if you want deleted from the list. Thank you. In this issue: Re: one-shot matches and timing Re: Using a target scope for training? "Fun" match results Ideas on building "team" atmosphere Achieving Competitive Rhythm Flow - Part 1 (Long) ******************************************************************** I concur with the suggestion of slowing newer shooters down and forcing them to use all available time -- but only with respect to the standing position. There are both physical and mental reasons for this. The physical reason for not doing it in the prone position is simple: PAIN. The longer a shooter stays in the prone position, the more painful the support arm and hand become. Before long, the pain become distracting, so that the shooter fails to notice variations in important things like position of the butt in the shoulder and position of the face on the stock. In prone, I think it is better to force the shooter to check butt-placement and cheek-position each shot, but then fire the shot and move along smartly to the next one. The physical reason for not doing it in the kneeling position is that you need a large amount of time at the beginning of kneeling to get settled and oriented. In kneeling, proper (or near-perfect) orientation to the target is much harder to obtain than in the other positions. Shooters need to spend a large amount of time balancing, orienting themselves to the target, balancing some more, and orienting themselves to the target even more until the rifle points naturally at the desired column of bulls. For most shooters, there is not enough time in the preparation period to properly complete this process. Shooters who are disciplined enough to continue this process long after the "commence fire" command usually find that they can fire a large number of 10's in a short amount of time once they start shooting. Shooters who begin firing without perfect alignment to the target take longer to fire their shots and work very hard to get lots of shots that score less than 10. Mentally, sub-elite shooters should not fire one-shot matches in prone because it may reinforce undesirable processes in the subconcious. Ideally, a shooter wants to operate on auto-pilot, that state where they come off the firing line at the end of the match saying "I don't know what I did, but I just kept pulling the trigger and the shots kept going right in the middle of the 10-ring." This flow state is most easily learned in a very relaxed and steady prone position. Once learned there, it will carry into the other positions as these positions become more steady. A steady prone position can be learned quickly by any shooter, and they should therefore be taught to seek the flow state as soon as possible. A shooter who spends a long time firing one-shot matches in prone will have a difficult time learing to operate in the subconcious "flow" later on. Put another way, you want to teach a shooter to shoot standing like it's prone. You don't want to teach a shooter to shoot prone like it's standing. I personally know several shooters who were raised on one-shot matches in all positions and who now routinely score in the 370's in all three positions. I agree that the one-shot match approach is useful in the standing position. Standing is inherently unsteady. Shooters who work carefully on each shot standing will become steady in the standing position faster than those who are not as consciencious. This approach is not needed in prone because any well-built prone position is steady right from the start. Once the shooter learns how to be steady in standing, they are able to employ the mental "flow" state that they learned shooting prone. One final thought: learning steadiness in standing and learning the flow state in prone are not independent skills to be learned one at at time. From first grade through college, every student learns math and English at the same time. Not surprisingly, by Junior High School, kids are able to write essays about math. CPT D. Clark ****************************************************************** This is in response to Fabio in Brazil. I used to use a rifle scope, because at the time I did not know of any other method of rifle shooting. Later, when I found out about UIT type, I dropped the scope in favor of my iron sights. However, I do use my scope when we compete in our 3200 prone matches. One day is iron and the second is any sights - 160 shots each day. At this stage of my life, and with my health concerns, I just can no longer use a rifle scope in positions other than prone. There is just too much movement, which is of course amplified with a scope. I have a 20X Litschert (an old scope!!) and it is fine, for prone. I do think that using a scope in prone to test ammo, etc is perfectly fine. If I were going to test ammo, I would first test from the bench with several brands/lots, then when I found the best one, I would then put the scope on and shoot from the shoulder to see if it will do the same as far as groups goes. Other than for testing, or shooting in any sight prone matches, I have little use for my rifle scope. Hope this helps. Don Williams, International Shooting Sports, Oregon, USA. I coach, instruct and teach the shooting sports. ****************************************************************** Happy New Year, Michael. Although the list is dedicated to UIT style shooting, it is probably worthwhile to remember that a lot of shooters go along quite happily as NRA style club shooters. The Darlington (Wis.) Rifle Club has held a 100-shot offhand tournament on the first weekend of the New Year for the past 30 years. The course of fire could not be simpler: Any rifle, any sights, any coat/boots/glove/etc. 100 shots standing at the A-17 target. Good luck and commence firing. I was one of about 35 people at Darlington last weekend, and had a great time. The oldest shooter was 73, the youngest must have been 15 or 16. Rifles of all ages and descriptions: Anschutz, Winchester, even a BSA in a Schuetzen stock. Palm rests made from billiard balls and shovel handles. Quilted NRA coats that no longer strapped around the middles of some well-fed shooters. And a television tuned to the Packer football game. (This is Wisconsin and there are priorities!) The winning score (not of the football game) was 970, with a 965 second place. The scores dropped quickly from there. But I think that all the shooters had a good time, which is why we play this game, after all. Tom Neuser ****************************************************************** I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas on how to build a strong team-oriented atmosphere. While shooting often is an individual sport, it is a team sport for US colleges. Many of my shooters may unneccesarily drop points for doing stupid things (even though I hound them on it all the time) without thinking about how they are affecting the team and its performance. So what methods, activities, etc. would be good for developing a sense of pride and dedication for lack of a better term? ****************************************************************** CHAPTER SIX - B - PART 1 THE PLAN.....Part 1 of 3 THE MENTAL ART OF WORLD CLASS COMPETITIVE SHOOTING Achieving Competitive Rhythm Flow Competitive Rhythm Flow is easiest to achieve when: 1. You acknowledge your skills are much better than the perceived level of difficulty for the contest. 2. The competition (you) is perceived as not so easy that you become bored and do not concentrate. 3. You have external and internal distractions under control and totally eliminated. 4. You are paying full attention to the one-shot-match performance for achieving the resulting perfect bull's-eye, with no errors in athletic performance technique. 5. You are mentally and physically relaxed and alert having completed a mental practice session for reactivating the neuromuscular systems in preparation for the competition. 6. You are thinking affirmatively, and have eliminated all negative thoughts. 7. Mental control over the neuromuscular system is allowed to develop, and not forced. 8. You have practiced and trained attention to in-depth concentration. The Mental Approach The most systematic approach to achieving focus and flow so far is accomplished through Mental Practice. The athlete adopts an approach of concentration where the athlete is in a state of pure mental flow. The competitor seeks to lose all distractions of ego, from surroundings, and immersing the athlete completely within the mental procedural activity of the non-dominant mental entity. Achieving One-Shot-Match with Perfect-Bull's-Eyes and Feedbacur commitment to your athletic performance goals is possibly the most important 'Athletic Psychology' decision you will make. If all you want out of the shooting sport is a bit of relaxed fun, then your approach should be entirely different from someone who wants to reach the Elite Olympic level. It is important to realize that excellence demands complete dedication and attention to detail; if you want to be a World Class Elite athlete, then training to be an elite athlete must be the most important thinge, take the opportunity to reward yourself appropriately. Feedback: Failure Where you have failed to reach the Perfect bull's-eye goal, ensure that you learn the lessons of the failure. These may be: 1. poor concentration 2. that your technique was faulty and needs to be adjusted during mental practice 3. etc. Use this information to adjust the One-Shot-Match to Perfect bull's-eye technique. Externalized feed back like this turns everything into an affirmative learning experience - even failing to meet a Perfect bull's-eye goal is a step forward towards perfect and superior technique! Remember that the fact of trying something, even if it does not work, often opens doors that would otherwise have remained closed. Feedback: Success Where you have achieved a Perfect bull's-eye this will reinforce and strengthen your next Perfect bull's-eye: 1. If the One-shot-match and Perfect bull's-eye to Superior performance goal was easily achieved, make your next performance level harder by making the perfect-bull's-eye more perfect. 2. If the One-shot-match and Perfect bull's-eye to Superior performance goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next performance level a little easier and double check Chap 7 time sequences. 3. If you learned something that would lead you to change performance techniques remaining or still outstanding, note it and analyze the proposed changes during the next mental practice session. 4. If while achieving the One-shot-match and Perfect bull's-eye performance, you noticed a deficit in your performance skills, break the circuit and restart the performance activity again. Remember too that technique change as you mature - adjust them regularly to reflect this growth in your mental and physical performance. Superior mental and physical technical performance goal setting is your servant, not your master. Collectively, they should bring you real pleasure, satisfaction and achievement. Deciding Your Commitment Deciding your commitment to your athletic performance goals is possibly the most important 'Athletic Psychology' decision you will make. If all you want out of the shooting sport is a bit of relaxed fun, then your approach should be entirely different from someone who wants to reach the Elite Olympic level. It is important to realize that excellence demands complete dedication and attention to detail; if you want to be a World Class Elite athlete, then training to be an elite athlete must be the most important thing in your life. If your career or family are more important than your sport, then you will find it difficult to devote the time and dedication you need to achieve excellence to the sport, unless you have a very sympathetic teacher, professor, boss or family. Once you have decided how committed you are, adjust your training and expectations appropriately. Deciding Your Goals Your Commitment to the Shooting Sport The first step in setting athletic performance goals is to decide your level of commitment to your athletic performance goals. If you want nothing more than a bit of social fun every now and again, then you should have different goals from someone who has decided to dedicate his or her life to achieving excellence in athletic performance. This decision about commitment will allow you to assess whether you 'own' the goals towards which you are currently working - do you want to achieve at a true superior performance level; or are you being pushed by your parents or coach into a daily grind which you are not enjoying? Skills to be Mastered Once you have decided your level of commitment to the proposed activity, the next stage is to analyze either the proposed activity, or the position you play in the proposed activity. Work out the detailed skills that you will need to attain the elite level you want to reach within the proposed activity. Understand what lies behind the performances exhibited by world class elite athletes operating at the superior performance level in this proposed activity. Your Goals in Life Before you actually set any proposed athletic goals, it is worth considering what your life goals are, so that you can further assess your commitment to the proposed activity in the context of your career, relationships, ongoing education, and other facets of your life. Focus and Flow Focus and Flow are at the heart of Sports Psychology: 1. Focus is the state of complete attention to detail and superior execution of a skill without fault to the exclusion of everything else. 2. Flow is the state of being completely and totally engrossed in the execution of a performance to the exclusion of everything else. When you are in a state of rhythmic flow, focusing intensely on the execution of skills, you will give your best performances. You enter a state of almost Zen-like meditation in which mood, distraction and different stresses simply have no place in your consciousness and therefore never accepted but totally rejected. You are physically and mentally free to implement skills just as you have trained to implement them. This is an immensely satisfying state to achieve. The qualities of flow are: 1. All your attention is focused either 2. on the skills or routine being performed 3. or on the input from your senses relevant to the proposed activity You are fully focused of the activities being performed, and are: 1. not aware of your own awareness, consciousness of self or ego. 2. not evaluating the quality of execution skills during and after one-shot-match performance. 3. not concerned with distractions such as scores, judges, audiences or other peoples expectations. 4. not making any conscious decisions in your mind or reasoning with words - you are trusting your body to follow its training. 5. You are in complete mental control of all neuromuscular actions and reactions. You feel almost in an altered state of consciousness; achieving flow is exhilarating, and gives a powerful feeling of competence. This will explain how to achieve flow and focus, and will explain how to deal with the main things that interfere with it. These are poor mood control, lack of ability to manage distraction and, most importantly, how to handle and use stress. Goal Setting Goal setting is a very powerful technique that can yield strong returns in all areas of your life. At its simplest level the process of setting goals and targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on and improve, and what is merely a distraction. Goal setting gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress leading towards superior performance in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals you can: 1. Achieve more. 2. Improve performance. 3. Improve the quality of your training. 4. Increase your motivation to achieve. 5. Increases your pride and satisfaction in your performance. 6. Improve your self-confidence. Research (Damon Burton, 1983) has shown that people who use goal-setting effectively: 1. suffer less from stress and anxiety. 2. concentrate better. 3. show more self-confidence. 4. perform better. 5. are happier with their performances. Goal Setting Helps self-confidence By setting goals, and measuring their achievement, you are able to see what you have done and what you are capable of. The process of achieving goals and seeing their achievement gives you the confidence including self-belief that you need and that you will be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals. Providing that you have the self-discipline to carry it through, goal setting is also relatively easy. The following on goal setting will give you effective guidelines to help you to use this technique effectively. Where Goal Setting Can Go Wrong Goal setting can go wrong for a number of reasons: 1. Outcome goals can be set instead of performance goals. Where an athlete using outcome goals fails to achieve the goal for reasons outside his or her control, this can be very dispiriting and can lead to loss of enthusiasm and feelings of failure. Always set performance goals. 2. Goals can be set unrealistically high. When a goal is perceived to be unreachable, no effort will be made to achieve it. Always set realistic goals. 3. Conversely goals can be set so low that the athlete feels no challenge of benefit in achieving the goal. Setting goals has been a waste of time. Always set goals that are challenging. Goals can be so vague that they are useless: 1. it is difficult to know whether vague goals have been achieved. If achievement cannot be measured, then your self-confidence will not benefit from goal setting, nor can you observe progress towards a greater goal. Set precise goals. 2. Goal setting can be unsystematic, sporadic and disorganized. Here goals will be forgotten, achievement of goals will not be measured, and feedback will not occur into new goals. The major benefits of goal setting will have been lost. Be organized and regular in the way that you use goal setting. 3. Too many goals may be set, leading to a feeling of overload. Remember that you deserve time to relax and enjoy being human. Where goal setting does go wrong, not only are the benefits of goal setting lost, but the whole process of goal setting can fall into disrepute. By avoiding these problems, and setting goals effectively as described previously, you can achieve and maintain strong forward momentum. How Focus and Attention Work This section briefly explains the necessary theory behind the way in which your brain works. This will put subsequent sections into context. There are two main things you need to understand: 1. How parts of your brain work together, and 2. How your brain has evolved to react to stimuli How Parts of Your Brain Work Together Your brain is a very complex system made up of a vast number of components interacting in a complex and sophisticated way. You will probably be aware of the theory that function of the brain is separated into left and right hemisphere functions. This theory grossly oversimplifies the complexity of brain function. It does, however, provide us with a useful model to apply to sports psychology that has a feeling of intuitive correctness. The Left Brain/Right Brain Model This model holds that different high level functions of your brain are localized into either the left side or the right side in the following way: Your Left Brain performs analytical activities processed logically, in sequence, such as: 1. Logic and rational thinking 2. Language and verbal self-instruction 3. Mathematics 4. Planning and Goal Setting 5. Analysis of a complex skill and construction of a pictorial representation of how that skill should be performed Whereas your Right Brain controls complex activities where many factors are handled together, such as: 1. mental practice using pictorial representations 2. Coordination, and execution of complex movements in space 3. Integration of complex skills into flowing movement 4. Intuition and creativity The Left Brain (often called the Analyzer) tends to be dominant, as skills it is responsible for are most intensively trained during education. This part of the brain analyses and understands new skills, and examines existing technique for correctness or for errors and faults. This part of the brain is highly effective during mental practice for the improvement of technique and during competitions as the virtual mental coach performing quality analysis of performance. The Right Brain (called the Integrator) tends to be non-dominant and controls the best performance of a skill by integrating all the components of the skill into one flowing movement in which all the isolated components of the performance skill work together. This is important because either your analyzer or your integrator will be dominant in different circumstances: 1. During much of the training or mental practice periods the Analyzer will be dominant, picking up errors, faults in technique or harmful attitudes. It will then send corrections to the Integrator to amend the complex skill and file into memory. The analyzer will also determine when the athlete must break the circuit and commence a new one-shot-match. 2. During performance, however, the Integrator will be in control, so that all the skills learned are performed in a completely coordinated, flowing way. The Integrator is most effective in making tactical and skill decisions. Letting the analyzer control performance by criticizing or mental analysis of the on going execution of skills distracts the integrator and destroys the attempted performance. The Mental coach quality assurance analysis must be accomplished but only command the Integrator to break circuit when the skills are incorrect or not complying with the prescribed instruction for execution or accomplishing the stated and accepted goal. Effectively, you have achieved 'flow' when your integrator is in complete control of a performance, and is not being distracted either by analysis from the left side of your brain, or by external factors. How Your Brain Reacts to Stimuli Your brain has evolved to protect you from danger. An important part of this is the response that draws your attention to unexpected or unusual stimuli. These might, for example, indicate that a predator is about to strike. Things that indicate danger might be: 1. Intense stimuli such as loud noise and flashing light 2. Movement 3. Unusual stimuli - things not experienced before can be dangerous 4. Absence of usual stimuli - lack of noise might indicate that other animals are aware of a predator In a natural environment, this drawing of attention is very important for survival. However in a modern sporting environment these are distractions that break flow. Loud noises can come from cheering crowds. Flashes of light can come from flash photography. Movement can come from performers in unrelated events, etc. Part of learning flow is learning to isolate the important stimuli for the performance activity from the irrelevant ones that cause distraction. This will involve learning to selectively override your brains natural reaction to stimuli and eliminate all disruptive or irrelevant information input. How Focus and Attention Work This section briefly explains the necessary theory behind the way in which your brain works. This will put subsequent sections into context. There are two main things you need to understand: 1. How parts of your brain work together, and 2. How your brain has evolved to react to stimuli Introduction to Mental practice and Simulation Background Your body is a beautifully evolved functional neuromuscular entity, comprising, among other things, a complex neuromuscular system constructed of muscles that can be trained to a peak of fitness and nerves that control the muscles. The nerves are massively linked in your brain; vast numbers of nerve cells are linked with a major number of interconnections. Initially our brains are very disorganized. Much of the process of growing up, being educated, and becoming mentally mature is the process of organizing the vast chaos of the interconnectedness of the nerves in our brain into useful pathways. Much of the process of learning and improving athletic reflexes and skills is the laying down, modification, and strengthening of nerve pathways in our body and brains. Some of these nerve pathways lie outside our brain in nerves and muscle of the body and spine. These need to be trained by physical and mental practice. Many of the pathways, however, lie within the brain. These pathways can be effectively trained by the use of mental techniques such as mental practice and simulation. Mental practice Mental practice is the process by which you can create, modify or strengthen pathways important to the coordination of your muscles, by training purely within your mind. Imagination is the driving force of mental practice. Mental practice is the process by which learned skills are filed into the memory for future use by the non-dominant or integrator mental entity in developing control of the neuromuscular systems. Mental practice rests on the important principle that you can exercise selected yet specific parts of your brain with first priority inputs from the memory files and second priority inputs from your imagination rather than from your senses. The parts of the brain that you train with mental practice through pictorial representations experience imagined and real input representations similarly. So in its most effective form you can use mental practice to train the parts of your mind and neuromuscular pathways. Even at this inferior level of use mental practice is useful training where: 1. An athlete is injured, and cannot train in any other way. 2. The correct equipment is not available, or practice is not possible for some other reason 3. Where rapid practice is needed However just to use mental practice for the reasons above is to undervalue its effectiveness grossly. Unleashing the Power of the mental practice The real power of mental practice lies in a number of much more sophisticated points: 1. Mental practice allows you to practice and improve technique while preparing for events and eventualities you can never expect to train for in reality. With practice it allows you to enter a situation you have never physically experienced with the feeling that you have been there before and achieved whatever you are trying to achieve. 2. Similarly mental practice allows you to prepare and practice your response to physical and psychological problems that do not occur normally, so that if they occur, you can respond to them competently and confidently. Mental practice can be used to train in functional psychology skills such as stress and distraction management. 3. It allows you to pre-experience the achievement of goals. This helps to give you confidence that these goals can be achieved, and so allows you to increase your abilities to levels you might not otherwise have reached. 4. Practicing with mental practice helps you to slow down complex skills so that you can isolate and feel the correct component movements of the skills, and isolate where problems in technique lie. Mental practice can also be used to affect some aspects of the 'involuntary' responses of your body such as releases of adrenaline. Athletes will use mental practice in a highly effective way to significantly reduce e.g. heart beat rate or oxygen consumption. Simulation and Modeling Simulation is similar to mental practice in that it seeks to improve the quality of training by teaching your brain to cope with circumstances that would not be otherwise met until an important competition was reached. Simulation, however, is carried out by making the your physical training circumstances as similar as possible to the 'real thing' - for example by bringing in crowds of spectators, by having performances judged, or by inviting press to a training session. In many ways simulation is superior to mental practice in training, as the stresses introduced are vivid because they exist in reality. You should therefore use simulation and mental practice together for maximum effect. Improving Technique Mental practice using pictorial representations during simulation can be used effectively for improving technique, particularly when used in conjunction with close study and analysis of the technique of high level performers in your specific functional activity. By selecting participants whose performance you admire in a particular exercise, and either watching or voiding them executing technique, you can build see how they implement every stage of a skill. Using a mental video recorder you can slow the action down so that the components of the skill can be isolated. Once you have done this you can practice each component of the skill being observed, and can build them up into a complex action or favorable pictorial representations of the skill as it should be implemented. Alternatively you can video your execution of a skill, and compare your technique as it is with how it should be or how better performers carry it out. This is a function of the virtual mental Coach. Increasing Stress Levels - Psyching Up Where you are not feeling motivated towards an event, either because you are bored by it, because there is no serious competition or because you are tired, you may need to psych yourself up. This will raise your level of arousal so that you can perform effectively. The following techniques can be used to psych up: Warm up faster and harder 1. Use mental practice - for example, a shooter might imagine him or herself achieving superior performance while achieving Perfect bull's-eyes! 2. Use pictorial representations of energy flowing throughout the body - 'I can feel energy flowing into me' 3. Focus on the importance of procedural and technical performance during the event 4. or Focus on personal goals, such as performing the perfect one-shot-match and achieve the perfect bull's-eye resulting in superior performance in a particular time sequence, rather than unchallenging outcome goals such as winning (when competition is not intense). Optimum Stress Levels The level of stress under which you operate is important: If you are not under enough stress, then you may find that your performance suffers because you are bored and unmotivated. If you are under too much stress, then you will find that your results suffer as you find it difficult to focus on technique and fail to flow with the performance. Where stress is low, you may find that your performance is low because you become bored, lack concentration and lack motivation. If this state persists for a long time, then you may find the sport tedious, and give it up. Where stress is too high, your performance can suffer from all the symptoms of stress. Your flow can be disrupted, you can be distracted, and competition can become threatening and unpleasant. In the middle, at a moderate level of stress, there is a Quiet Zone of best performance. If you can keep yourself within this Quiet Zone, then you will be sufficiently aroused to give a high quality performance, while not being over-stressed and unhappy. This Quiet Zone of optimum performance is in a different place and is a different shape for different people. Some people may operate most effectively at a level of stress that would leave other people either bored or in pieces. It is possible that someone who functions superbly in a low level competition might experience difficulties in high level competition. Alternatively someone who performs only moderately at low level of competition might give exceptional performances under extreme pressure. Not only will the Quiet Zone of optimum performance appear in different time frames for different athletes, they will also occur at different frequencies. This is why you must take responsibility for controlling your own levels of stress, particularly in a team situation. If the team generally needs motivation, but you are in an optimum zone, then paying attention to a motivating team talk may move you to a state of being over-stressed. Similarly if some team members need to be relaxed, then relaxation techniques applied to an entire team may move you to a state of boredom lacking motivation. You may also find that fine and complex skills are less tolerant to stress than simple skills - your zone of optimum performance may be narrower for very difficult skills than for the basic skills of the functional activity. Finding Your Optimum Stress Level An effective way of finding the stress level at which you operate best is to keep a training and performance log. In this record the quality of every training session or performance, along with the level of stress that you felt during that performance. If you have stress monitoringistractions, prepare for all eventualities, and keep your performance flowing in rhythm with Chapter 7, The Mental Art of World Class Competitive Shooting. Your Refocusing Plan A refocusing plan is very similar to an on-site psych plan, it is to prepare for return to a state of focus and flow during a performance sequence where something goes wrong. This might be because you are distracted, become stressed, make a mistake or suffer an unjust refereeing or other official decision. Since you will CHAPTER SIX - B - PART I THE PLAN..... THE MENTAL ART OF WORLD CLASS COMPETITIVE SHOOTING Achieving Competitive Rhythm Flow Competitive Rhythm Flow is easiest to achieve when: 1. You acknowledge your skills are much better than the perceived level of difficulty for the contest. 2. The competition (you) is perceived as not so easy that you become bored and do not concentrate. 3. You have external and internal distractions under control and totally eliminated. 4. You are paying full arained attention to in-depth concentration. The Mental Approach The most systematic approach to achieving focus and flow so far is accomplished through Mental Practice. The athlete adopts an approach of concentration where the athlete is in a state of pure mental flow. The competitor seeks to lose all distractions of ego, from surroundings, and immersing the athlete completely within the mental procedural activity of the non-dominant mental entity. Achieving One-Shot-Match with Perfect-Bull's-Eye for some time, take the opportunity to reward yourself appropriately. Feedback: Failure Where you have failed to reach the Perfect bull's-eye goal, ens s during the next mental practice session. 4. If while achieving the One-shot-match and Perfect bull's-eye performance, you noticed a defic Chet Skinner CSkinner@clarksville.com ****************************************************************** End of UIT Mailing List #12 Michael Ray - Systems Engineer Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. Rifle Coach UIT Shooting Page - http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/1190/index.htm