SciAm: "How to Avoid Choking under Pressure"

[EatMeerkats]

How to Avoid Choking under Pressure

[Limitless13]

That's good stuff. It would be interesting to see it applied to shooting, though most of the parameters are the same.

[Jimlakeside]

"...Oudejans recommends devising a high-tension practice regimen appropriate to your particular performance situation."

If I understood the article correctly training under the same kind of pressure as one would experience at a match is the answer. How to duplicate that experience in practice would be the trick.

[JFlowers]

Jim,

Put a $1000 in an envelope. Set a goal for your "practice" match. If you meet the goal, you get the money. If you don't your kid gets to blow it on XBox Games. Created enough pressure yet???????

[want2race]

Drink 4 Red Bulls and do 100 jumping jacks before your practice session. Since that's what I feel like at big matches, that's how I practice (at club matches).

[Micah]

Drink 4 Red Bulls and do 100 jumping jacks before your practice session. Since that's what I feel like at big matches, that's how I practice (at club matches).

Lol, Bill does that before every stage

[el pres]

Funny, it took all those doctors and scientists to come up with same thing that our host

a whole group of IPSC shooting books have been saying for 15yrs ?? Now to only apply that

thought, ....I mean no thought to the next classifier stage ??

[AlamoShooter]

How many of you figured out the label of the article is counter productive? One sure way to choke is to try and avoid choking. Learn to enjoy pressure.

One trick is to do some self talk , but do it out-loud. Like at your next practice set Say out-loud " I am going to shoot all As fast" Try not to look over your shoulder to see if someone is watching. If someone Is watching its a better drill.

Create a challenge for your self every chance you get. You may be real surprised at how much pressure a self challenge spoken Out loud can be.

[kurtm]

Second large match I ever shot ( S.O.F. World Championship 3-gun), me and my teammates made it to the team shoot off. Now this was back in the years when the shoot off was just before the big firepower demo. There were about 250 people in the grand stands, plus all the 4 man teams, and the good friends of the match staff that were mostly Gunsite instructors. Back in those days it was sudden death elimination. The first round was a shaking experience, second round I knew the crowd was there, 3 round...the finals against team Armalite (John Cook, Bennie Cooley Jr., Mike Voigt, and Todd Salmon) and the crowd didn't even exist......Yea We lost, but after that I never had "match pressure again". Relax and just shoot is just so easy to say, but sometimes it takes a BIG shock to the system to get there! Untill you find your own way there it can be quite a struggle. KurtM

[Glen]

At first glance, I completely misread this thread title.

... Avoid Choking ...... posted by EarMeerkats.

Glen

[KGentry]

How many of you figured out the label of the article is counter productive? One sure way to choke is to try and avoid choking. Learn to enjoy pressure.

One trick is to do some self talk , but do it out-loud. Like at your next practice set Say out-loud " I am going to shoot all As fast" Try not to look over your shoulder to see if someone is watching. If someone Is watching its a better drill.

Create a challenge for your self every chance you get. You may be real surprised at how much pressure a self challenge spoken Out loud can be.

So that is what you were doing at the match!! I did not want to say anything