More on Why We Miss

Posted On: 10-27-2022

David R. Vaught, Ph.D.

In a perfect world, young trap shooters would never miss.  Nice to visualize, but we know better.  Maybe one could not think of these errors as misses, but rather as obstructions to perfection.  After all perfection is our goal. 

I watch youth shooters and wonder what goes through their minds when they miss in competition and when they miss in practice.  I believe there are two trains of thought. 

In practice where no pressure exists shooters might just pass to the next target with little regard for the consequence of not achieving perfection.  In competition the wheels might completely fall off and the round goes south. 

I was recently reading and article on mental awareness and what caught my attention was the word “Context”.  In meaning, the author was referring to how one views the environment, the situation and the sense of being each time they shoot.  Let me offer this in another way: Ever wonder why a youth shooter can shoot lights out in preliminary tryouts, then shoot terribly in competition or the reverse shoots terrible in preliminaries, does not squad well, and then in competition, shoots very well?

Think of this in the context of the shoot.  We know the more one shoots competitively the more comfortable they become with the context of the event.  The comfort level of practice is, or can be a completely different context.  I think back to my collegiate days of basketball and remember how we shot free throws.  We were tasked with hitting 10 straight.  Miss one and start all over.  It would be late in the evening sometimes before I hit all ten, but I quickly learned to concentrate and hit those free throws, as I would need to in competition.  By game day hitting free throws became easy.  I learned to transfer the context of practice to game day.

In youth shooting I offer that many misses are nothing more than a misunderstanding of the context.  How one interprets where they are, what they need to do and what will be their course to success.  I do in this idea of missing provide that ceteris paribus – all things being equal in regard to the mechanics of shooting.  Here I am discussing the context of the shoot and how that influences misses.

So consider this at your next practice – make it the same context as competition.  Think about practicing in different locations, mix squads, make it a game-day experience, follow all the rules, and never leave the field on a miss.  Try ten straight or five straight and repeat – miss and start over.  Try different methods to prepare to meet the context of the competitive shoot.  This is how we grow as shooters and achieve perfection.