...man who aim at published stage descriptions, miss.

It seems like a discussion periodically appears on the Benoverse around someone trying to determine the best way to shoot the stages of a major match solely based on the information presented in published courses of fire. The latest one at the time of this writing occurred in the thread for the 2008 Area 6 stages. Usually, the discussion is started by someone making their first trip to a major match, and they want to make the most out of their preparation time and get a jump on their stage strategies. Unfortunately, they're headed down a dead end with that thinking - trying to gather strategies from a written course description is like trying to determine the most scenic drive by looking at a road map. You can glean some information, but its mostly a worthless exercise.

Published course descriptions ARE useful for some things, though. Let's take a look at the useful information you can glean from them, and how you can use that to better prepare for the match.

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Specificity. That's what this really comes down to. High level performers set specific goals that give a clear direction to their efforts. In a solid goal setting program, there are no vague, directionless goals - the goals become like a ladder, pointing a constant, straight, unwavering upward path.

Goals set in this fashion will be appropriate and attainable, and will mostly be "performance goals" as opposed to "outcome goals". A performance goal might be "Achieve a consistent 1.00 second draw with A-zone hits at 7 yards", as opposed to an outcome goal such as "Win every local match." I may talk about this a bit more in a later post - but for now, we left off last time with a promise to discuss those first two bits - appropriate and attainable. What do those mean to us, and how are they important in our goal setting??? I bet you can guess already....

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How many times have you been mid-stage, and something goes a little wrong? You do what you need to do to correct it, and move on - but now you're improvising, off your original plan, and somehow things go from a little bad, to a lot worse? You look around and think "Where am I? And why am I in this handbasket?"

Lets take an example from Austin area GM Bryan W on why its so important to get back on your plan!

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Inevitably, any discussion about the mental game gets into the concept of Self Talk. Put simply, Self Talk is all of the things you say to yourself. Sounds a little nuts, I know. Try this, though - for one 24 hour period, consciously monitor every thought that runs through your head. You'll probably find that you really do talk to yourself a lot - and if you've never done this exercise before, you'll probably find that a lot of the things you say to yourself aren't all that flattering. "That was stupid." "You look like a dork." and so on.

Now, pay attention to what you say to yourself with regards to your shooting. Your Self Talk reveals a lot about your self-image - what you truly believe you are capable of doing, and also has the ability to undermine your performance (or, if used to your advantage, support and build it up). This really comes out following a stage with some mistakes in it - what runs through your head, then? "You dumb jerk, you really suck." "You might as well give up now." "Things never go my way." "This match stinks." Maybe you said some really, complimentary stuff to yourself before the stage, too... "I can't hit those hardcover targets." "Swingers always eat my lunch." "Let's see how bad I suck on this stage."

Would your best friend ever say anything like that to you? If so, why are they your best friend??? We would all do well to take a lesson from two of the best shooters in the game on how we should be treating ourselves on and off the range - Max Michel, Jr. and Travis Tomasie.

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