Just Thinking Out Loud.

[Duane Thomas]

The thing is, you will never feel as fast as the other guy looks. Let me repeat that: you will never feel as fast as the other guy looks. I've had the experience, many times, of watching someone shoot a stage, and my God they looked fast. Then I run the stage, and I don't feel particularly fast, I'm just going along, watching my sights, things are happening smoothly but that's it. Then it turns out my time is just as fast or even faster than the guys I thought looked fast. Know this. Realize that you're probably much faster than you feel. Because if you start trying to go as fast as you thought the other guy was, you're going to push it over the line and crash and burn.

[Sam]

Having my wife at a match is always good for my performance. If I do anything stupid in front of her, I hear about it for a long, long, time. So, I shoot with great care.

I really do better if she's watching and John is there. It kinda takes the pressure off of me, cuz ol' eagle eyes is going to be bustin' on John too.

Nah, she doesn't shoot matches. She just motivates.

[Jasonub]

thinking too much stop thinking just do it

[benos]

Since this thread has nervously turned... After I became a big-time sponsored shooter, I had to go back to my old, home shooting range, The Miami Valley Shooting Range (I think it's now closed), to do a demo for S&W. My buddy and I used to hang out there when we were kids, more like 17-20 years actually, and dream of owning a Model 29. At the time, I could only afford the .41 mag, but, we were happier then, because we were poor. (Direct rip off from Monty Pythons "You were lucky" sketch.) Anyway, S&W scheduled me to do a demo there, probably around '89-90. I thought it would be fun... a trip down memory lane, all my old buds would come out, I'd be mister small town shooter who made it big time, with the fancy sponsored shooter race car outfit and all. Well, maybe that was the problem, because I was more nervous at that demo than I ever was in any competition. I could barely speak. All my motor skills felt shot. As my dad used to say - I felt like a monkey f'n a football. But the crazy thing was I shot really well - did some pretty fancy stuff. I never really could comprehend it - I had never experienced that level of nervousness, but still shot well (objectively). The only thing I can or could remember was that I had all my attention in the sights (and in the trigger when I was shooting guns I'd never shot before). I still have this dream-like memory of what some of the sight pictures looked like.

be

[shred]

Cool story. I used to think that I had to work on pushing all that nervousness stuff down and ignoring it.. but now acknowledging it and shooting with it seems to be a better way to go.

[sps]

I think we all have our "comfort zone" where we feel safe and secure. Once we go out of this comfort zone we feel insecure and want to go back to where it is nice and comfortable for us. If we do too good in a match we feel that this is "not like us" and therefore we subconsciously causing ourselves to go back to our comfort zone (this, by the way, works both ways). It all has to do with our self image. We have to believe that we can do better and this way the next time we are out of our comfort zone it wouldn't be uncomfortable, because "it's like us" to shoot well. By improving our self image I believe that there will be no "revert back to less than our best" like PaulW put it.

But that's just what I think

[GuildSF4]

Today, I don't care if I can hit at  25 yds or not, cause I know that when it's for real, the thing to do at  25 yds is move to cover.  Without ear protection, and with realistic CCW gear,  all this longer range  stuff goes right out the window.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I love the idea's in this thread especially about relaxing in the match and not worrying about who is watching you, or using their energy to help you.

The reason I quoted sixx is I was talking to a Soldier a while back about on of our stages and his comment was "If it was for real he would back off about 1/2 click and call in an air strike".