Do Pros have bad days?

[DonovanM]

I shoot with the pros and they have bad stages but usually don't have bad days (unless they break an ankle or something similar). They have developed the ability to recover from disasters and forget them by the time they go to the next stage.

This.

The answer is yes - BUT - to get good at anything really, one aspect of the mental conditioning required is the ability to recover instantaneously from failure, even in the middle of a performance, not just over the course of the next stage.

Say you're fighting for the lead at Nationals and you just drilled a no-shoot in the face. You can't shoot the rest of the stage, or even the next target any differently. If you choke up and go conservative, you will fail. If you speed up to try to make up for it, you will also most likely fail. Make up the shot, move on - instantaneously.

Same thing if a gymnast at the Olympics just about fell over on the landing of their first jump, or if you dropped a 6 or a 7 during a High Power string. You can't let that freak you out.

The great thing is you can practice specifically this, when you practice. If you find that you're just not hitting anything, your gun isn't tracking like you want, something like that, take a mental step back and get yourself back on track. You probably just need to relax and let the shooting happen. Get back to the fundamentals and concentrate on your front sight. That's how it's been for me.

[Ben Stoeger]

Does this happen to pro shooters when on one day, when nothing indicate metal or physical fatigue, you go shooting and it just does not work?

Yes

[echotango]

have bad days all the time. Problem is once one stage goes bad, the rest gi downhill from there. Need to learn how to figure that out......

As said above, when pros have a bad day it's still good and you probably don't notice it. But they do!

Edited March 12, 2015 by echotango

[crotchThrower]

I just saw in hot shots TV, JM getting DQ'd for dropping his shotgun in the barrel without engaging the safety. He was having a heck of a match, one mistake and he was done. I don't think this happened recently, but it goes to show anyone can have a bad day.

[freakshow10mm]

Being a professional means you get paid to do something, not that you are flawless or are immune from bad days, slumps or the like. Being a professional also doesn't mean you are good at it, just that you get paid for it.

[Reshoot]

I just saw in hot shots TV, JM getting DQ'd for dropping his shotgun in the barrel without engaging the safety. He was having a heck of a match, one mistake and he was done. I don't think this happened recently, but it goes to show anyone can have a bad day.

Jerry did not fail to engage the safety, he had a part in the gun wrong. (his story, not mine)

He had drilled an tapped the shot gun receiver, for the sight, and then had to disassemble the receiver to remove metal chips. On re-assembly he reversed a price of the safety, unknowingly. The safety worked as long as the gun was right side up. The stage where he was DQ'd, he slid the safety with the gun upside down, only to find out, after the stage, the safety would not engage with the gun in that position.

I reckon you could say he made that bad day happen before leaving the house!

[TaranTactical]

Yes!

[BluePilgrim]

You have to have bad days to make the good days.

[shws]

they have bad days i'm sure. they're bad days are better than my good days though

[Sup38]

I seen some master Shooters have some good melt downs

[MrPostman]

I just make sure to take a huge dump in the range portapoti right before the match, I shoot so much better afterward, no stress so I can be as smooth and fast as possible.

Edited May 11, 2015 by MrPostman

[S&W686]

I have had an opportunity to shoot with some of the top shooters in the World and believe me they to have bad days. They are human most of the time.

[IHAVEGAS]

If you watched the career of Michael Jordan, he had what I think was a fairly average amount of bad days for a top level player, as a shooter. The thing though, if his shot was off he would just drive, or assist, or win with defense. Probably everyone can pick their own examples of pro athletes who would find a way to win when it was not their day to be in the zone.

I'm not sure if there is an analogy in shooting sports though. Seems like we are so one dimensional that when it ain't there it ain't there.

[johnbu]

I have had an opportunity to shoot with some of the top shooters in the World and believe me they to have bad days. They are human most of the time.

I shot with a sponsored shooter informally. He had a "bad day" but it was so much better than my best wet dream of a good shooting day it wasn't funny. Grumbling about a tenth slower draw or missing a grip and getting a (single) C etc. It's all relative to expectations, he expected perfection in practice.

There might be a lesson in that...

[GunBugBit]

Even the most consistent people have occasional screw-ups and bad days.

[RippinSVT]

Absolutely. I've seen BIG name pro shooters make screw ups that had them sick. They're human too. I'm not a pro, but I do shoot very high scores generally, and a screw-up to me "now" might be dropping a few points on a stage that many wouldn't fret over, yielding a score that I would've been very proud of a few years ago. It's all perspective. If you're shooting 98% generally, a 95% run seems terrible. If you're shooting 80% scores, that 79% may not seem like a big deal.

[bradsteimel]

Everyone has bad (or not quite up-to-par) days. What i've noticed about the pros is:

1) it's relative, so a bad day for them is still quite impress to the rest of us.

2) when they have a bad day or a couple of bad stages, instead of "checking out", they bare down and really dig to recover and work their way out of it.

[Audioman]

Everyone has good and bad days

[IHAVEGAS]

Ask any pitcher .

[target4fun]

I am going to quote something I heard from Jerry Miculek, where he talks about mistakes made on a stage and common problems people have.  This was in daves podcast interview with Jerry. 

He talked about when you make a mistake often the problem is that people try to make up for the mistake by shooting faster and not seeing there sights and then ending up with more misses and then they dig a hole that they cant get out of. 

I have seen this and its a very common thing where you get frustrated and going faster than your skill level.  I have done and everyone messes up but once you do you have to forget about it and keep shooting the best to your ability and not rushing your shots.  He then said you don't have to win every stage... which i think is something important to think about when you mess up. 

[DASR4]

im sure they have bad days like anyone else, but their bad days are still 300% better than my good days.

[MHitchcock]

We're all human, we all have bad days. Professionals train to a point where bad days are still within lets say 5% (arbitrary number not important to the point) of their typical peak performance. A normal shooter may have a bad day swing in the 30-50% range. A portion of this is the physical training and skill acquired through that training. The biggest factor is the mental focus. Most of us mere mortals (as pointed out by the paraphrased miculek interview) make a mistake and then make subsequent mistakes trying to fix what happened. A professional shooter has the discipline to focus on the present instead of the mistake one array or stage back. 

[powercatmd]

Great thread. 

I agree with MHitchcock.  Everyone has a bad day at some point.  You could delete professional shooter from his post and insert surgeon, pilot, baseball player, chef, etc and the same would hold true.  A true professional, in my opinion, will identify the mistake, analyze it, learn from it, and move on.