CatsEye Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 Where is our focus? Is it on winning or on being the best we can be? We shoot in competitive sports so we all have some degree of competitiveness and want to win. Should this be our focus though? Through the Law of Attraction, as we focus on competition (winning) we attract more people, circumstances and events to compete against. So, in my opinion, we actually hamper our desire to win. As we change focus to self improvement and awareness our goals become internalized and are actually able to be controlled by us. We feel less pressure at a match because what others do is irrelevant. We focus on our shooting, on the next shot, on the next stage, with no worries of the past or future. As our self improvement goals are realized we find that the outer goal of winning actually takes care of itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjb45 Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 I really like your conclusion. As a consequence of improving our technique, our standings improve. For me, I focus my efforts on drills. I do not like practicing stages. I feel I learn nothing from shooting the same stage over and over again. The discipline of improving my shooting technique has been hard but the results pay off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Gaines Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 Where is our focus? Is it on winning or on being the best we can be? We shoot in competitive sports so we all have some degree of competitiveness and want to win. Should this be our focus though? I try to "focus" on shooting every stage at a match the best of my ability, with everything that I have in my toolbox(Experience). I have yet to do that ever! I have shot stages that were to the best of my ability, but not an entire match. That is my "focus"! My "focus" is competiting against my expectations and not so much the competition itself, because if I shoot to my ablity, the winning will happen, if not, you can still feel good about a match performance. Winning comes from doing your best, or not doing your best for each and every stage, and your competitior doing his best, or not his best and you beating him. Becasue you shot a better match. Thats it! its that simple JMO, Everyone is different in what they expect and want from a match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grapemeister Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 I’m competitive, there is no doubt. But, it has become less about competing against, and more about just competing. In other words I really don’t feel like I’m competing against other people. My focus, for a long time, was on the match and the competition...doing good, doing better than the next guy! Now, for the most part, the focus is on the moment, the task at hand, the stage, and the targets. This, in turn, has given me the freedom to be a better shooter. I'm about 15 months into USPSA. Fairly recently I started working on not trying, not thinking about the performance of other shooters, and not having preconceived notions of my performance or placement at the end of the match. With this new attitude, my overall performance in matches has improved, and I’m having more fun. I love this feeling, compared to the anxiety and worry I had before. My desires, worry, anxiety and expectations were actually holding me back. I'm not sure if this is a byproduct of this new frame of thought, but I'm also a lot more confident than I was before. The fear of pushing my limits in a match is just about gone. I'm becoming more of a witness to my shooting. I find myself more and more going into autopilot, and letting the body and subconscious figure out and execute what it is capable of doing. I'm not perfect; I still let fear, self doubt, worry, and anxiety creep back in sometimes. And, on occasion I still find myself peeking around the end of the berm to see how someone is doing, or asking what time someone had on a stage. I'm doing a lot better than I was before, and I will continue to get better Wow, I never thought I would get this deep! Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 I love this feeling, compared to the anxiety and worry I had before. My desires, worry, anxiety and expectations were actually holding me back. I'm not sure if this is a byproduct of this new frame of thought, but I'm also a lot more confident than I was before. My guess would be that they are absolutely related! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrome308 Posted June 22, 2011 Share Posted June 22, 2011 I usually attend matches (about 2 a month), and I don't get much time to practice otherwise. What better place to practice for a match, than at a match environment? I try to be aware of when I'm executing on instinct and old habits, and when I'm accepting poor 'match results' for training time on this skill or that. Getting good results while simply executing on ingrained habits is great fun and quite ego-building, but I'm not going to build any new skills shooting the same way I always shoot. I've got to try new stuff and do things I'm bad at, and that means some degree of failure and not-winning. So, test your conclusions and do some self-evaluation at a match, OR use that time to build up to new heights. A competitive spirit and will/expectations to succeed can be an asset in training and practice as well, just don't be suprised or unhappy when you find you've still got work to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shooterbenedetto Posted June 22, 2011 Share Posted June 22, 2011 Being able to go into a zone and not worry about everyone is the KEY! i can understand and would be simple to do on a stage but what do you do when you are shooting man to man shoot off! ZONE and FOCUS on your target! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlosa Posted June 22, 2011 Share Posted June 22, 2011 (edited) Being able to go into a zone and not worry about everyone is the KEY! i can understand and would be simple to do on a stage but what do you do when you are shooting man to man shoot off! ZONE and FOCUS on your target! In this situation the best thing you can do is tell your self you've already won it... Tell your self the guy next to you is not as skilled and hard working as you (even if it's total bs) By building your ego you remove self doubt.. Letting your subcunsions skills do the rest This might not work for every one.. Edited June 22, 2011 by carlosa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jarozzy Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Where is our focus? Is it on winning or on being the best we can be? We shoot in competitive sports so we all have some degree of competitiveness and want to win. Should this be our focus though? Through the Law of Attraction, as we focus on competition (winning) we attract more people, circumstances and events to compete against. So, in my opinion, we actually hamper our desire to win. As we change focus to self improvement and awareness our goals become internalized and are actually able to be controlled by us. We feel less pressure at a match because what others do is irrelevant. We focus on our shooting, on the next shot, on the next stage, with no worries of the past or future. As our self improvement goals are realized we find that the outer goal of winning actually takes care of itself. It goes both ways. As you said "As our self improvement goals are realized we find that the outer goal of winning actually takes care of itself" but if you also concentrate on the competition aspect of sports than your personal goals will take care of itself. I like to take a blend of the two arguments. In practice my main focus in personal goals pushing myself to get better , but will add in a bit of competition. At a match my focus is the competition with my personal goals in the back of my mind still there to remind me that i need to work on a certain aspect to get better. So i guess what i am saying that to truly get better you need to concentrate on both personal goals and competition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MQW Posted October 20, 2011 Share Posted October 20, 2011 Brother, you are dead on the money; that's exactly what I have been working on for quite a while now; I have recently been working with Dr. Jason Selk, the Author of "10 Minute Toughness", this book deals with that kind of thinking, which is exactly how we should be focused to have repeated success in this sport or for that matter, any sport we are involved in. Where is our focus? Is it on winning or on being the best we can be? We shoot in competitive sports so we all have some degree of competitiveness and want to win. Should this be our focus though? Through the Law of Attraction, as we focus on competition (winning) we attract more people, circumstances and events to compete against. So, in my opinion, we actually hamper our desire to win. As we change focus to self improvement and awareness our goals become internalized and are actually able to be controlled by us. We feel less pressure at a match because what others do is irrelevant. We focus on our shooting, on the next shot, on the next stage, with no worries of the past or future. As our self improvement goals are realized we find that the outer goal of winning actually takes care of itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wide45 Posted October 21, 2011 Share Posted October 21, 2011 I usually attend matches (about 2 a month), and I don't get much time to practice otherwise. What better place to practice for a match, than at a match environment? I try to be aware of when I'm executing on instinct and old habits, and when I'm accepting poor 'match results' for training time on this skill or that. Getting good results while simply executing on ingrained habits is great fun and quite ego-building, but I'm not going to build any new skills shooting the same way I always shoot. I've got to try new stuff and do things I'm bad at, and that means some degree of failure and not-winning. So, test your conclusions and do some self-evaluation at a match, OR use that time to build up to new heights. A competitive spirit and will/expectations to succeed can be an asset in training and practice as well, just don't be suprised or unhappy when you find you've still got work to do. A match is terrible practice. It will show what you don't know, but is little help in learning skills. You would improve much faster if you shot one match per month, and used the other day for some serious range time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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