20,000 Targets a Year

Posted On: 02-22-2023

One of my favorite authors is Malcolm Gladwell.  He has written many books that for the most show his ability to see and write about things most of us pass right over.  Little details that ends up being major causes of success or failure.  His words struck me when I recently read a Facebook post about the American Trap Association (ATA) members joining the 20,000-registered target club in 2022.  There are 42 shooters on the list and among them five females.  What an outstanding effort.

Gladwell, wrote in his book Outliers that success was not something people are born with but rather earn.  He wrote. “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” He also wrote, “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.” And finally, “Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.” Gladwell, also references something he calls the 10,000 hour rule or how long it really takes to get good at something.  All this leads me to the ATA 20,000 target membership.

Let’s put this into a time frame perspective.  We have 365 days in year so simple math says a person has to shoot 54 targets a day, or at least a couple of rounds everyday to achieve 20,000 rounds.  There are 52 weekends so the math provides 384 targets shot each weekend or about 15 rounds.  I have always provided that a round takes about 15 minutes, so 20,000 targets equals about 800 rounds or in time about 12,000 minutes or 200 hours of shooting.  One on hand this really is impressive, but in other worlds of expertise those 42 shooters have a long way to go to get to 10,000 hours of shooting.  Another way to understand this is to realize just how difficult it is to become great when one only shoots a couple rounds a week.  Very few achieve the level of the Great Leo Harrison III, so just imagine how many targets he shot each year over his short life. 

Can you achieve greatness?  Of course you can, you just have to practice and practice for the long haul in reaching goals.  Each one of those targets has to be a learning experience and each one has to allow one to move to the next target even better and more prepared than the last target. 

This year think about how many targets you will shoot.  Set a goal and do your best to reach it with hard work and dedication to practicing correctly and with purpose.  Look at each shell you put in your gun and connect that vision with breaking targets.  Over your life you might shoot 20,000 targets or maybe 10,000 hours, but consider your passion for staying in the sport from grade school, to junior high, to high school, to collegiate and then professional.  Then I think you can get there if that is your goal.