Hitting the Mark: How Mental Training Can Improve Your Target Shooting Skills and Accuracy (Rifle, Pistol, Trap)
Program Your Performances from Within
The steady hand, the sharp eye, deep focus, and the calm mind - mental training delivers your best performances when it counts most, under competition pressure.
Do Anxiety or Nerves Affect Your Target Shooting During Competitions?
Or a Successful Shooter Looking To Improve Technique and Results Even Further?
Mental training allows you to take control of the nervousness and perform with machine-like consistency.
Regardless of whether you use a rifle, air rifle, pistol, handgun, or even a crossbow, mental training strengthens performance - right across the wide range of elite skills required to be successful.
Only different levels of mental strength separate competitors, at the highest level - because the levels of ability and skill are already extremely high. That's why many came to me to improve their mental strength, as they knew the mind was the vital X factor they were looking for.
And so I would teach them how to 'visualize' their shots in advance, purely in their mind - to pre-program their muscle memory and bring about more mental clarity during competition.
This way you walk into your next competition feeling mentally prepared, because in your mind, you will have already 'performed' at that competition many times in advance.
Preparing your mind for an event allows you to overcome common competition anxiety that forces a lot of shooters to seize up.
It is during visualisation where you also reinforce your highest levels of technique (slow-motion imagery sets technique with amazing efficiency), while helping you to master new skills more quickly.
This adds a new dimension to your rifle, pistol or trap performances - a kind of "secret weapon" your opponents do not have at their disposal.
You can also put exaggeration to good use here, to highlight and target various abilities, within the imagery - such as imagining you possess your own ultra-sharp telescopic vision of the target, etc.
So who uses mental training in shooting? Now, let's take a look ...
Champions Who Train Their Minds
(ie. those who have publicly discussed using mental training techniques)
Target Shooting Champions:
• Lanny Bassham - Olympic Gold medalist in rifle shooting and author of "With Winning in Mind"
• Matt Emmons - Olympic Gold medalist and World Champion in rifle
• Kim Rhode - Gold medalist and World Champion in shotgun
• Nicco Campriani - Olympic Gold medalist and World Champion in rifle
• Abhinav Bindra - Olympic Gold medalist in rifle
• Henri Junghänel - Gold medalist and World Champion in rifle
• Zhu Qinan - Olympic winner and World Champion in rifle
• Petra Zublasing - World Champion in rifle
• Vincent Hancock - Gold medalist and World Champion in shotgun
• Zhang Shan - Olympic winner and World Champion in shotgun
This is just a tiny sample. Now let's look at Trap shooters...
Trap Shooting Champions:
• Matt Dryke - Olympic Gold and World Champion
• Jessica Rossi - Olympic Gold and World Champion
• Giovanni Pellielo - Olympic Silver medalist and World Champion
• Marco Innocenti - Olympic Silver medalist and World Champion
• Alexey Alipov - Olympic Bronze medalist
• Roberto Schmits - Olympic Bronze medalist
• Catherine Skinner - Olympic Gold and World Champion
• Michael Diamond - Olympic winner and World Champion
• Kimberly Rhode - Olympic Gold and World Champion
• Richard Faulds - Olympic Gold and World Champion in shotgun
So as you can see, you are in pretty good company, when it comes to using this type of training...
The world's best use these methods, so why shouldn't you?
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Those who are equipped with both strong physical shooting skills - plus who are also mentally tough - become a true force to be reckoned with, at any level of competition.
It's that slight edge which sets you apart from the rest.
Preparing your mind allows all kinds of shooters to mentally prepare for their next event - no matter whether they are using rifles, air rifles, shotguns, pistols, airsoft pistols, revolvers, other handguns, or even crossbows.
You customize the visualisation each time to suit your changing needs - for your next events, the venues, gun types, different competitors, etc.
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Mind Training Benefits to Rifle, Pistol (or Trap Shooting) Success:
• Overcoming barriers - both long and short term issues
• Increased clarity of mind
• Relaxed intensity eagle-like vision
• Trance-like levels of concentration
• Stronger technique while executing your shot
• Steady hands, head and perfect trigger control
• Removing hesitation to shoot
• Greater belief in your ability and technique
• Dissolving self-doubt and negative inner dialogue when in the heat of competition
• Breaking out of slumps in form, and thriving under the pressure of competition conditions.
• Strengthening your practice drills - such as timed, weak-side, moving target, multiple target, and one-handed drills - or in trap, swing-through, pull-away, tracking, follow-through and focus drills.
As you can see, there are very few areas of your shooting that your mind cannot improve. This is because it is the very source of all your shooting experience, memory, expertise, knowledge, and body movement - basically everything you need to control your rifle or pistol.
Everyone has their own personal rate of improvement - in relation to how long it takes to strengthen results, and by how much - though in most cases it simply becomes an ongoing process of neverending progress.
You truly get your first glimpse of when your mind has optimized your performance when you experience the almost unnerving feeling that you simply cannot do anything wrong.
This mental state is known as 'the Zone' - where you are firing at your absolute optimum level, on autopilot. It is inevitably a great and memorable day whenever this occurs.
Some people find the exercise of visualisation easier to use than others - that is, imagining their optimum performance in their mind on a regular basis, in order to create a new subconscious blueprint.
This is where some guidance from mental trainers such as myself can help to make the process far clearer, easier and more achievable, and in quicker time, rather than trying to source all the information yourself from a vast range of different sources.
If at any stage you find it easier to be guided through the process entirely - I also have a guided hypnotic visualisation for shooters you can check out further below. You can also listen to the audio below for more info about visualisation.
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Audio Products to Master Performance
by Craig Townsend - Mental Trainer / Clinical Hypnotherapist
"I’ve had 3 first place wins in my past three 600 yard matches, besting the 2nd place finisher by a good margin. I also came within one point of setting a new national record here in the US."
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"I worked with Craig to develop a customized program that I can use daily. I was amazed how in tune Craig was with my sport and how he was able to include my technical and mental processes into a program that works".
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Information on mp3 downloads or customized recordings specifically designed for your sport.
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Listen....
• Audio - 'The Power of Visualization & Belief'
- Craig Townsend explains how these transform performance.
Click the 'Play' symbol to start the audio.