Intensity

[Catfish]

Greetings - I've been lurking here for some time and finally have what I consider to be a good enough question to post!

It involves intensity.

How much mental intensity is too much, and how much is too little? I find that when I focus and concentrate and have a desire to do well, I usually do. But there are times when I get too mad over dropping a shot or popping a no shoot and it becomes not too much fun and I stay a bit peeved for a stage or two after, which isn't doing me any good.

I like to win and I detest losing. And I think to some degree, that drives me to do well.

Conversely, those matches that I just sit back and goof off and have fun, I usually do well, but not well enough to win with any regularity as I just don't care what happens.

How do the big dogs handle it mentally when it just isn't your day, or things aren't going well?

thanks in advance,

DB

[Jake Di Vita]

Just shoot and forget man. You can't allow one blown stage to have an effect on the rest of your performance. If you screw up, file it away for further examination when the match is completed.

[Steve Anderson]

I do best when I call every shot.

My speed takes care of itself. If I'm beaten in time it's because:

1. I didn't see something properly or completely

or

2. The other guy was/is just plain faster on "any given Sunday"

Any thought of winning is detrimental to my performance, and causes my performance to deteriorate.

It makes me "try."

At the Buckeye Blast, I tried to shoot a sub 5 mini mart, and wound up with a 5.3, one no shoot and an extra shot. I had shot that at 4.11 3 down in practice just relaxing and seeing the dot.

I'm in a place right now where I'm really beginning to use my eyes and trust my speed to be there.

I know several locals who focus on winning. Some still active, some not. They seem to suffer from sporadic performance.

In fact, I have begun using the timer as a start signal only, and not looking at it near as much. I use the times lately to document what my "feelings" about a run mean in real time.

SA

[THS]

Interesting post.

I have a video of me shooting indoor RF Standards that shows me having a malfunction on the strong hand only stage. Immediately after I finish that string my body language changes big time! For the next string(s) I'm one Pi$$ed shooter. Worse yet, I blow the weak hand string too!

I watch that tape frequently, as it reminds me what happens why I worry about shots that have already left the gun. I try TOO hard, or try to "make it up" and at that point it usually goes to hell FAST.

Intensity is a good thing, but so is the perspective that this is a game. No More. No Less.

I think damage control is most important after a crash like miine. At that point there is no real way to make up 4 seconds lost to a malf, and I should have focused on POINTS.

Lastly, when it stops being fun go try something else; sporting clays, bullseye, anything. If you are paying to not have fun, you are missing something.

Relax and shoot; the friendships are way more important that the scores anyway.

Tom

[Loves2Shoot]

In this sport it seems the harder you try, the quicker you fail.

[Flexmoney]

p. 90 Our sport is a tension sport.

p. 136 R U Ready...standyby... Where's your brian right now?

p. 122 Wanting to win is a contradiction. The desire imposes a limit on your actions There is only the shooting.

p. 123 Always be on guard against trying. When you sense that happening, just back off, watch, and see what happens.

I am guilty of all of the above...and many more...mistakes.

[Steve Anderson]

"p. 136 R U Ready...standyby... Where's your brian right now?"

Is that an enosian slip?

SA

[benos]

Catfish,

That's an excellent question because it's difficult if not impossible to answer. And if we do succeed in figuring it out, we must learn it for ourselves by objectively studying our own behavior.

I've noticed that if I get in a rut, the absolute worse thing I can do is to care about winning. If I see that happening, I'll let go and just shoot for fun.

p. 122 Wanting to win is a contradiction. The desire imposes a limit on your actions There is only the shooting.

I've naturally been motivated to perform flawlessly my entire life. Of course I prefer to win, but the majority of my internal dialoge is devoted to developing impeccable activity. So that's where that sentence came from.

Be motivated to win all you want, but when that buzzer goes off -

(Slight edit by author...)Where's your brain right then?

[bountyhunter]

Focus entirely on every shot as an individual and realize a bad one doesn't affect the others (unless you let it).

[mcoliver]

I think damage control is most important after a crash like miine. At that point there is no real way to make up 4 seconds lost to a malf, and I should have focused on POINTS.

I also do a similar thing. I do damage control to myself AFTER shooting a blown stage by asking myself "what happened" but not dwelling on it and forcing an answer. I agree that doing damage control while shooting will likely cause more damage than I can control.

I'm no big dawg but here's my take on being "intense". I realized I cannot always be at the peak of my skill, physically and mentally. There are only 2 choices then; stay home when you're not feeling it or shoot the match even when you're not feeling it. To a certain extent I alway prefer doing the second option. It's during these times that I feel I'm more tuned to my body shooting the gun than at any other time. Hence, I learn more from that experience.

[AikiDale]

Catfish,May 22 2003, 07:42 AM]It involves intensity. 

How much mental intensity is too much, and how much is too little?

Catfish,

When your state of mind is one of relaxed awareness, all the time, there is no difference in the intensity of shooting a match, practicing on the range, dry firing or writing to the forum. This state of mind will not insure your winning a match. It will insure you perform at your highest level of preparedness.

[Bear1142]

Catfish,

Sounds like your getting a lot of excellent feedback. Allow me to contribute. I firmly belive in the J. Michael Plaxco, Zen type approach to competing. Plaxco addresses this issue by commenting on shooting in the present tense. Don't shoot in the past (dwelling on past mistakes on stages) and don't shoot in the future (If I burn this next stage, I can win my class). In a more contemporary quote " All that matters is Right here, Right now (Van Halen)" With respect to intensity, it has its place. When I experience a stupid mistake during a couse of fire, not a miss or a no-shoot, something really stupid that should never happen. Like picking your gun off a table and having the magazine eject, requiring a standing reload before you ever fire your first shot. I get angry, my intensity goes to the next level, and I shoot more aggressively. I think the key is a controlled intensity. If there is such a concept. Sometimes the intensity is too much and I perfom even worse. Other times the increase in intensity seems to increase my focus or decrease my distractions and I perform better than expected. My real struggle is how do I artificially stimulate the level of "controlled" intensity I need? Sometimes music works. It's often been said that music soothes the savage beast. Well then it would stand to reason that it can also enrage the soothed beast. I could go on with a bunch of other issues, like if a technique calls for fine motor skills, you should try to be relaxed and free flowing. But what about Gross motor skills? Should you be energized and intense? Think about Football. The vast majority of the skills used are gross motor skills, yet you never see anyone trying to calm down and relax. It's all about intensity and to a lesser extent, rage. Do these attributes help with gross motor skills? If they do, are there applications in IPSC? Ah well, another topic for another time. Sorry for the quick hi-jack, I started thinking and I couldn't stop (yet another topic). Hope this sheds some light on your issue.

Erik

[Catfish]

Guys - thanks for all the thought provoking responses!

I think BE summed up my feelings about shooting quite well - it's not so much that I have a desire to win (although that's a plus) as it is to perform perfectly. If I shoot the best match of my life and still get beat, well, not much you can do about that. It's doing the silly, stupid things that I think are generally brought on by a lack of focus that really seems to create the most problems for me mentally after the fact.

So, perhaps a follow up question would be how do you maintain the proper focus and intensity with every shot? If I were to break down my own shooting, I would say that I spend probably 60% of my match at Plaxco's level 2, and 40% at level 3. How can I get to a point where I'm spending more time in the 'thinking without thinking and seeing without seeing' level?

I find it an interesting contradiction that we must control our ability to the point where all of our control takes place at the subconscious level and that to get to the point where you are relaxed you must fight through and maintain a certain degree of intensity.

DB

[Flexmoney]

So, perhaps a follow up question would be how do you maintain the proper focus and intensity with every shot?

Again..."Where is your focus right now?

When you start to shoot...what are you focused on?

If you are like most (of us), then you have to fight the need for speed. My best shooting is always done when I am completely focused on seeing. Not just a little bit of seeing...truely seeing.

[Catfish]

Flex - generally speaking, when the buzzer gets ready to go off - my mind goes blank. I couldn't tell you what I was thinking during any COF. Things just happen mostly all by themselves.

I understand completely when you said we must fight the need for speed. Learning patience on the front sight is most challenging.

[Flexmoney]

Learning patience on the front sight is most challenging.

I agree.

I often make that my shooting goal. It is certainly fundamental. Can't really do well without it.

[benos]

I distinctly remember when the phrase "visual patience" came into my mind on the drive home from a Tuesday night steel match, long ago. I remember thinking - wow, that really sums it up.

generally speaking, when the buzzer gets ready to go off - my mind goes blank.

That's the reason surprises happen.

The "last trick" I learned, which raised me to a higher and more consistent level, was to maintain a calm, aware state right through the buzzer, the draw stroke, and until I had the proper sight picture for the first shot. This state of awareness not only includes what I see mentally or visually, but how my body, mentally and physically, "feels" during that entire time. Maintaining total awareness during that one second or so is paramount for consistent success.

Maintaining conscious bodily awareness at the beginning prevents me from unconsciously rushing at the buzzer. Don't make any attempt to control anything during that time, simply remain aware.

Every planned detail, every form of control, should occur as you are mentally rehearsing exactly what you are going to do before you shoot. Then, silently maintaining a state conscious awareness allows your training, combined with your plan, to manifest as action. I call this "maintaining the set."

The Set

(I pasted this in from material I wrote some time ago for the new book. And please don't ask when it'll be done. A few of the topics from the sentence below are "stand alone" topics from other work, but you'll figure it out.)

A set gathers things together, in this case – your training, clear intent (the totality of your plan), capacity, confidence, trust, determination, decisiveness, and conscious attention.

This is probably the most difficult thing I have ever tried to explain.

The set is a state of mental alertness or mental awareness that allows all of the topics mentioned above to express themselves.

The more and more I shoot and rehearse for stages, the more and more attention I direct toward the actual state of mind that I’m going to have, the actual way I am going to feel, not only as I start the stage, but as I move throughout the stage. I direct more attention to that matter than I do the actual visualization of the mechanics of the stage itself. To me that set, that state of mind, is what actually allows those things to be carried out. How am I going to feel the seeing?

I visualize what I am going to do, but don’t dwell on it near as long as I used to. The bottom time is the set; it’s what allows everything to be expressed. It allows you to be able to fluidly shift your focus to every area that is needed to get the job done in the best fashion, but it is not a focus on that, per se. It’s a focus on clarity.

Different people may feel that clarity in different places, although I think you’ll normally feel it in one of two places, either the forehead or stomach areas. I feel it in the center of my forehead, about an inch above my eyes. I can produce that feeling in my forehead that instantly stops the entire thought process and turns my attention so highly onto attention itself that there is no room for thought. Some people feel it in their stomach in an area two or three inches below the navel.

It takes an extreme amount of attention to maintain that state. As soon as your attention slips from maintaining it, you will find thoughts are back and your internal dialogue is rolling, controlling, and limiting you.

The set is an aware monitoring of your mental and physical state. It is critical because, if you start from an aware, attentive state, in which your muscles are set just right to do the job at hand - perfectly, with no extra effort – then, by monitoring and maintaining your attention, you ensure you never go "up," thereby losing your "center." The set is a method to maintain your center throughout the stage and throughout the match. If you start out tense or rushing, it is very difficult to return yourself to a centered position while you are shooting. It is extremely difficult to do that; I have done it now and then, but it’s much easier to start from the proper frame of mind and then, by monitoring that, ensure that your mind doesn’t go anywhere else, ensure that you don’t create tension by unconsciously trying too hard.

As with many things, the best way to describe what something is, is to describe what it’s not. The set contains no feeling of effort or trying whatsoever. It is a very calm, very deliberate, very matter of fact mode of operation.

The set that you are feeling, is not only so much a feeling of awareness as it is a feeling of the whole attention level; the feeling of your mind and the feeling in your body. It is like a somatic, total body sensation of how you feel when you’re shooting. That feeling, that body feel, is learned in practice; the set is the feeling you have that encompasses all the feelings you have in your grip, arms, stomach, legs, mind, eyes and state of attention. It encompasses all those things into one body feeling. That total feeling is a lot easier to remember without using words than it is to try to think of a list of technical descriptions. When under pressure, no matter how big the strain is, the feeling of the set will not desert you like technical thoughts will. Thoughts are always a little behind the action. If you’re thinking your way through an act, you’ll notice your actions are "sticky."

I’ve had this experience many times and have talked to other shooters who also have had it, that upon completion of an extremely successful course of fire, you cannot remember what thoughts you had. It’s a natural tendency to want to think back and know what you did or what you were thinking to control such a good performance, but it’s that lack of thoughts that produces that lack of memory.

The lack of memory is the result of being in the set. By putting yourself in the most favorable condition to allow the ultimate expression of your capacity, that condition has very little to do with thought, so there is very little memory associated with it. So the bottom line really isn’t a bottom line; it’s that your attention always has to be attentive. It can never park itself in one place or get comfortable in one place, because that will only last for so long before the trick wears off.

The desire to remember what we were thinking as we were performing impeccably, when in fact there is nothing to remember, imposes a sense of uncertainty or fear in the mind. Enter trust. Through experience, we must learn to trust that if we maintain a state of conscious awareness and simply witness what is actually happening, the aforementioned topics will manifest themselves to your capacity.

A way that might help get into the whole feel of the set I’m describing would be if you were holding your pistol out in front of you and everything about your postition felt the most perfect, relaxed and neutral as possible, then direct your mind to absorb your body’s feeling. Feel that set of how you’re holding right there. That total body feel also includes your mental feel, the feel of "relaxed and hard" or of "moving quickly but not in a hurry," "matter of fact," whatever means the most to you. No words! The attention necessary to hold that feeling does not allow words to surface.

The set allows your intent to be expressed at it’s highest, most complete level. The memory of the feeling is so total that it cannot be broken down. As soon as you try to categorize any particular part of it, you make it so complex that you destroy any hope of spontaneously creating it in the present.

You can see how your will functions while performing actions in your everyday life; it’s subtle and it’s hidden, but it’s always there. If you’re alert to it, your will is directing your action simply by your intent or your desire to do that action in the most efficient manner necessary. In its natural state, your will asserts itself very spontaneously. When you drop you wallet, you reach and pick it up. If a that moment you are "present," the chances of not picking it up are slim. (Nor would have dropped it in the first place.) If you’re thinking random thoughts when you reach to pick it up, you may pick it up and drop it again. If you’re reaching for a doorknob, for example, and your hand slips off before the door opens, if you’re attentive to your thoughts you may notice you were somewhere else, your internal dialogue was running.

(By "will" I mean your desire backed by conviction, determination, and decisiveness.)

be

[Catfish]

Wow. Thanks for the fantastic insight. I'm going to chew on this for a bit.

After you pointed out the necessity of maintaining focus for just that brief second after the buzzer, a lot of little pieces fell into place, much like a rubiks cube. Many thanks.

[j1b]

Like Brian wrote - the question is unanswerable but let me throw a little hitch in this thread.

I am not unlike you guys in that we need to shoot, see what we need to see, let the shooting happen and not force the issue.

I am going to say though, that we are ultimately responsible for the outcome of any given shot and stage. By virtue of that our actions, thought process and results can and probably should be dictated by intensity. Let me re-phrase that - if all we ever did was let the shooting happen then 2 second Bill Drills would not exist. We focused, added intensity, then let the shooting happen (because we all know we can't try to shoot a 2 second Bill) and it happened.

So I'm going to give advice different than those of my peers. I am going to say play with it and figure out what works. For some too much intensity blows them over the edge, while for others if there is no intensity then there is no way they will perform at a level that would be acceptable (to them). Also consider the fact that intensity takes effort, so focus yours. Noone can be totally intense in all areas of their shooting. Where should your intensity be focused - and how much.

I know you guys hate me for this - but I again think Tiger is a great example. Clearly he is very intense - yet he continues to perform. Maybe he lets his swing "just happen" but his intensity is focused elsewhere - I don't know - but he does have intensity and it is evident. Is it too much? Again I don't know - but it does demonstrate that shooting is a sport, golf is a sport, and intensity probably has a home to some degree in sports.

The key is to be focused on the areas that will allow you to perform while at the exact same time controlling those things that will detract from your performance.

I have always been a very intense shooter. Often times that hurt me and sometimes it did not, but I believe that there is something to be said for that feeling - called intensity, or focus, or diligence, or whatever other word you want to call it.

JB

[j1b]

Just read BEs post before mine - and feel like a ham

[Duane Thomas]

I know you guys hate me for this - but I again think Tiger is a great example.

I can't understand why anyone would resent comparing IPSC and golf. Robbie has said that of all the sports he's ever tried, golf reminds him the most of IPSC shooting. Really, the similarities are eerie.

[j1b]

I've been really focusing on my golf game of late. Robbie and I used to play a few times - and yes - he did liken it to shooting. He always told me it was the hardest sport he's ever tried.

Golf is often times considered a wussy sport. I hate trying to compare it because so many shooters are "anti-golf." I know I used to be. Today it is my biggest challenge.

Anyhow - It plays a big role in my life today - I've used it in many examples - and I just don't want to offend anyone by using it too much.

Love the game though - shot an 87 on Sunday.

JB

[benos]

For some too much intensity blows them over the edge, while for others if there is no intensity then there is no way they will perform at a level that would be acceptable (to them).

That's it.

Over the years, I've shot some tremendous strings when, for some reason, I was caught by "not caring," almost at all. It was like I was on the sidelines witnessing "the activity," with no emotional content whatsoever. Clear intent, combined with total awareness, drove the action.

But don't get caught trying not to care though.

[BigDave]

One thing I've really been focusing on lately is relaxation. I've noticed a lot of tenseness in my face when shooting, especially, right before the buzzer. Once I realize it, I conciously make myself relax and I've had some good experiences. I track my sights better, my vision is more clear than it ever has been and my overall performance improves. Several have stated it here, and I can attest that it is true, if you allow yourself to be visually patient, the speed aspect will develop itself, and so on.

This past weekend was my first USPSA match in over 2 months, nearly three (lots of NRA Action Pistol ). The classifer was my second stage. I completely bombed the first because (1) I tried to shoot beyond my ability, and (2) admittedly I was trying to show my intestinal fortitude to a forum member (thanks Hank ). That glorious crash and burn was a real eye opener. On the next stage, the classifer, I relaxed and committed myself to shooting for points. Ends up I had a personal victory. It will end up being one of my best classifiers on record, nearly twice the percentatge I last shot it in (although I didn't realize I shot it before till I looked at my record several hours later), and my time, for my ability, was good. I was going fast without trying, I allowed myself to.

On the other hand, the Burner looks as though he could spit nails and leak razor blades when he shoots, it must work for him.

[rhino]

I shot my best match ever when I absolutely did not care how I did. It was a GSSF match before they started making it wimpier ... time still mattered (comstock scoring) and they still had the mover. I borrowed a Glock 17 to shoot (never had one before) and placed 10th overall (of about 300 or so). I just wanted to bust some caps, make some noise, then go have some fun afterward.

Weird how that happens.