Shooting skills are not innate; they are developed over time through practice, training and precise repetition. While some shooters may have a natural aptitude for certain movements due to genetics, muscle composition, reflexes or were Rob Leatham, who seemingly was born with a pistol in his hand, mastering shooting skills requires deliberate learning and consistent training.
Skill improvement requires consistent and deliberate practice, ensuring that movements become more refined over time. Repetition is essential, but it must be combined with mindful execution to follow the shooting process by gaining better control and avoid ingraining bad habits like chasing after time or results. By remaining deeply focused on precise, deliberate movement, you can build greater control in preparation for greater speed.
One of my favorites of many quotes from “Master Rob” is that “Shooters only have two settings: too slow or out of control.” If you really analyze this statement from a performance training perspective, it turns out to be frighteningly accurate.
If we were to set both extremes as margins—too slow at the furthest most left-hand margin and out of control at the furthest most right—your on-demand repeatable skill level falls somewhere in between. Let’s call this arbitrary line of demarcation your go-to skill.
All of us want that go-to skill to move as far from both out of control and too slow as possible which would land it right smack in the middle of the two extremes. So how do we get there—and equally important, how can we keep it there?
Both margins are not fixed and change on any given day. Anytime the margins move, so does your go-to skill. The wider your margins, the greater the variance of your go-to skill. This is the antithesis of consistency and the crux of the training conundrum. To solve the problem, you must first determine a fixed point to anchor your margins.
Find Your Limits
Using a shot timer, fire one round from the holster, guarantee your hit on a target and run it ten times to find your average. Let’s say out of the holster you were averaging 2.0 seconds (for easy math) to get a good hit on target in the A-box at 10 yards. All of them were solid hits because misses don’t count. Your left margin (too slow) is now officially set at your recorded average of 2.0 seconds.
Next, set up the same drill and this time, your task is to place rounds anywhere on paper and not in the A-box at an accelerated pace faster than your go-to skill. Safely keep every round on paper, run faster than 2.0 seconds to the point where you’re barely able to keep them on paper and then record each time. You may find your average let’s say is 1.0 seconds. Here you have now set your left (too slow) and right (out of control) margins.
Now that you’ve set your margins your next step in refining your skills is to do two things—develop efficient movement and gain greater control. These are two very disparate but linked refinement tools.
Efficiency And Control
The first, efficiency, is to develop no wasted movement. What that means is zero input into the gun or into your brainbox. Any input into the gun will force you to make a correction. Both the input and its correction cost you time. If you fall out of the zone and allow thoughts into your brain-housing group such as “don’t miss” or “go faster” or anything along those lines—any thought for that matter—this is also foreign input. Any foreign input, mechanical or mental, costs you efficiency and time.
The second refinement tool is control. For you to operate at higher speeds means that you need to gain greater control. Whether it’s the mechanical process, the visual process or the mental process, your primary objective is to not relinquish or attenuate your control, if anything you want to try and develop more.
Focus-Pocus
Mental focus is an undeniable component of skills development. Sustained mental engagement is what transforms effort into expertise. Your ability to focus on details, recognize patterns and correct mistakes in real time significantly accelerates the learning process, making your diagnostics as important as the practice itself.
Beyond just acquiring a skill, mental focus plays a critical role in refining and perfecting performance. A good shooter not only can repeat tasks on demand but can also analyze their actions, identify weaknesses and make necessary adjustments. This process, known as deliberate practice, is impossible without a high degree of concentration. A focused mind allows you to remain aware of your physical movements and thought processes, ensuring that you are continuously improving, rather than reinforcing bad habits.
Mental focus helps develop the holy grail of consistency, as higher performance requires the ability to avoid distractions and stay engaged with the task at hand. Without the ability to concentrate, even the most talented shooters struggle to reach their full potential.
The closer you can bring together your left and right margins, the smaller the space in between, the more consistent your go-to-skill. Developing your skills is not just about rote repetition but about refining performance with conscious effort. Without consistent mental focus, finding your efficiencies and developing greater control, true mastery remains out of reach.
