That Darn Talent Thing!

Don’t you hate it! You turn up every weekend to club competitions, you practice dry firing at home, you read all the books, you have a good coach and some novice joins the club and within three months outshoots you! You even stopped drinking coffee and started to go for runs early morning to increase fitness levels! What is going on? The answer must be that the novice shooter is talented. You have heard rumours of these people as many sports are willing to purport that they have talented athletes within their sport. You know, the ones that never train but are so gifted that they merely turn up and blow the opposition away. Why haven’t you got this talent you ask yourself over and over again. Life is just not fair!

Talent can be defined as a special aptitude, faculty or gift. All shooters have in fact some form of talent as we all enter into our shooting career with a pre disposed set of physical and mental abilities. Now would you like to hear the good news? Talent alone is not everything. Possessing talent can provide you with an edge but all great champions will tell you that talent needs to be backed up with dedication, motivation perfecting ones technique and a capacity for training.

Believe it or not, but often having a lot of talent is one of the greatest disadvantages to a developing shooter. If there are no challenges then there is no real incentive to train and to try and perfect ones technique. The consequence is often that these shooters do not further develop their competitive attributes. Sports are littered with talented youngsters who fail to fulfill their so called ‘potential’. Most of us realise that we may never reach Olympic level, but we should all try and maximise our performance capabilities over time. Most club shooters will never reach the level of fitness, technique and mental toughness to become a shooter who ends up represents his/her country at International events. Because it requires not only talent but also a tremendous amount of work and devotion in reaching this elite level status.

The fundamentals in shooting a perfect shot is ultimately a simple act with no real ‘secrets’ on how to achieve it. As one elite shooter once told me it all boils down to keeping ones sight steady as one squeezes the trigger and then went on to state “So what is so hard about that?” I walked away thinking he must be talented as I was still struggling with mere feeble technical things such as sight alignment and trigger control. Surely, it can’t be that hard I often ask myself? I have experienced shooting that ‘perfect 10’. So I have the ability, it can’t be that hard? So what is the trick? The trick is to repeat this process 40 or 60 times during a match! This requires perfect technique and the mental skills to execute the technique under competition match pressure.

Do shooters need physical talents? The answer to this is that shooters need a range of physical attributes such as fitness levels that allow them to maintain a steady hold over the duration of a match. So I often wonder what would have happened had I been borne talented, perhaps stocky with a high aerobic capacity?

So what about mental skills? Don’t some people say that the sport of shooting is 90% mental? Isn’t that a talent? Perhaps at the advanced and or elite level this can be found to be true. Unfortunately it is not always true for about 90% of club shooters. Mental training and the impact of mental skills will assist the overall performance as it creates a neurological pathway for the muscles to act. However, to take full advantage of ones mental skills one must achieve a certain level of physical and technical performance before one can fully actualise the potential. Talent can therefore provide some attributes but it rarely can provide all of the attributes. For example, the development of an efficient method of shooting which includes learning to be still, the development of having a consistent grip, and maintaining sight alignment whilst squeezing the trigger. All these attributes require a lot of talent in different areas.

So when does this 90% mental thing actually ever kick in? Once a shooter becomes better at executing the technical aspects of shooting then the emphasis will shift towards the mental aspects of shooting. It is at this stage that shooters who are mentally talented or have certain mental gifts can finally shine. It should be noted that most club shooters at this stage have also acquired some basic mental skills such as visualization, relaxation and imagery. As most club shooters will have developed a shooting cycle of visualization, breathing, relaxation, technique, sight picture, trigger, and call of shot. So gradually over time and with practice simple technical aspects such as sight alignment and trigger control become sophisticated and complex mental skills. So the elite shooter who once told me it all boils down to keeping ones sight steady as one squeezes the trigger was actually stating mental skills that he was able to express physically. “So what is hard about that – everything unless you decide to devote a lot of hard work to a rather simple skill.

Finally, perhaps I need a lot of talent to become a good shooter. Perhaps I will just take the simpler route and practice more and let the more talented people worry about themselves? Perhaps the more I practice the more talented I become?

Good shooting

Dieter Wilhelmi