A Winning State of Mind
"Shooting a 10 is not that hard to do. Lots
of people can shoot a 10 85% of the time.
But that next move up, to 95% of the time--
that's where it's less about inate talent and
more about understanding that talent is
work, talent combining what you have,
refining it, making it better, and making it
work under pressure."
Dr. Sean McCann
USOTC Sports
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At the National Coaches Conference in Colorado Springs, Dr. Sean McCann
of USOTC Sports conducted a workshop on "what actually happens when I do
sports pyschology work with a shooter or any other athlete." Dr. McCann entitled
his workshop, rather appropriately, "When Athletes Get Stuck…"
Dr. McCann broke his presentation into four parts:
> Foundation Issues
> Individual Personality Factors
> The Challenges Posed by Competitive Pressure
> Challenges at the Top
This article is the first of a four part series on Dr. McCann's workshop. In this
article, we start with foundation issues, which he described as "the building
blocks of any athlete in terms of their performance."
Dr. McCann began by discussing self-awareness as a tool for evaluating a shooter's progress and ability to make behavioral changes. "I'm really surprised at times at how little shooters know about what's going on during competition, not just with their minds, but with their bodies." He used the shooter's heart rate as an example. In "training at a 100 beats per minute is normal, but in competion 160 beats per minute is not unusual." Most shooters know that their heart rates are elevated during competition. What they may miss, however, is that "a lot of their well-practiced mental skills are not going to be highly effective in a different physiological state…"
In conjunction with self-awareness is the need to continually collect specific
data, and to look for "patterns or trends." Dr. McCann used as an example
shooters who have a problem with the last five shots "where they start to
count down." He also described shooters "who blew up terribly during the
first string, and then they're great…" These athletes often minimize their poor
starts, failing to recognize their improved performance came only "after the
pressure was off…"
There is also the issue of a lack of consistency. Here Dr. McCann laid out
three common cases:
The One-Time Wonder: Coaches often seek juniors who have "talent."
As with many things in life, however, talent alone does not guarantee
success, and being recognized as having inate abilities "can actually
interfere with the development of an athlete." Dr. McCann stated, "one
solution is to recognize that talent can only get you so far in shooting."
As he visualized it, "shooting a 10 is not that hard to do. Lots
of people can shoot a 10 85% of the time. But that next move up, to 95%
of the time--that's where it's less about inate talent and more about
understanding that talent is work, talent is combining what you have,
refining it, making it better, and making it work under pressure."
Doing It Without Expectations: Dr. McCann tied this performance issue
directly to self-awareness: "Some athletes don't really understand
how expectations get in the way." He added, "…expectations are just another
kind of distraction. You need to learn how to handle it, because if you get
good in this sport, you're going to have more of them."
Goal-Setting: Athletes often downplay the importance of goal-setting, seeing it
as "something you do for others, not for yourself." According to Dr. McCann,
though, this simple function is a key to behavioral change.
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