KIRSTY HEGARTY’S ROUTINE
Visualise yourself executing what you want to achieve – hitting the target. When we visualise scenarios our brain can’t tell the difference between us physically completing a skill and imagining the process, so the same neural pathways and connections to your muscle movements are fired.
STEP 3 FOCUSING
You’re getting ready to execute the shot, so your attention needs to shift from the internal to the external. Up until now you’ve been focusing on yourself, but now you may choose to look at your eye hold point. Just bring attention to that external point of view and you’re ready.
STEP 4 EXECUTING
Taking the shot. Robert Singer recommends cultivating a quiet mind in this step, but in shooting we rarely have time to change what we’re thinking. Instead, work on accepting where the mind is and on focusing your attention to that external point from Step 3. Take the shot.
STEP 5
Overthinking the shot you’ve just taken is not helpful, particularly if you missed. So, acknowledge what happened – was it a hit or a miss – and remind yourself of what you need to do to hit the next one. Just remember that the previous shot has no bearing on the next.
Shooting is difficult but it’s not complicated. We only make it complicated when
Olympic and Commonwealth Games medallist Kirsty Hegarty (née Barr) favours a simple pre-shot routine. Here she explains her Olympic Trap sequence.
“Using a pre-shot routine helps me get into the perfect mindset for shooting without thinking. One thing that hampers building a score is your brain questioning what you are doing or how you are doing it. So, getting into the zone beforehand makes a huge difference.
“I also practise a pre-shoot routine of sorts, which includes some dry mounting and visualisation. If
I visualise hitting some targets before the start, then by the time I’ve reached the stands, my head will already be in competition mode. I also have my shooting glasses on all day so that my eyes become accustomed to them. I enjoy playing card games throughout the day too, because for me it’s all about staying relaxed and enjoying the competition.
“As for my pre-shot routine, it’s very straightforward:
Just before each shot, I mindfully identify where I want to pick the target up, so I know where I need to set my eyes. This is, of course, good shooting practice, but the mindful element helps me to focus on what I’m about to do.
Post-shot, I focus on my breathing. This helps me to clear my mind and stops me from overthinking shooting techniques. It enables me to perform naturally rather than in a forced manner.”
STEP 1
we overthink it, so bear this in mind when formulating your own pre-shot routine. Keep things simple and avoid the temptation to endlessly tweak because consistency is important. When you start using a routine you’ll find it time-consuming and alien to the point of being distracting, so keep practising it until it becomes second nature.
Though pre-performance routines are primarily concerned with improving focus, other benefits have been reported. Some athletes believe that these routines strengthen their self-efficacy, which is the confidence in themselves to successfully complete a task – self-belief, if you like. In addition, many athletes report a reduction in anxiety levels and some routines give competitors a chance to reinforce and/ or rehearse a plan of action. But, for the sceptics out there, do they really work?
Routinely successful?
Yes. A 2021 study by researchers in Austria (Anton G O Rupprecht, Ulrich S Tran and Peter Gröpel (2021), The effectiveness of pre-performance routines in sports) explored the efficacy of pre-performance routines and concluded that they promoted a measurable improvement. The research is too complex to visit in any great detail here (well worth a Google), but the Austrian team found that routines had a moderate to large effect on performance when compared with a control group that wasn’t using them.
Interestingly, the benefits were still significant whether tested in high-pressure or low-pressure environments, proving that they’re not just for high-end competition use. The researchers also discovered that even single-step routines can be just as effective as more complex multi-step sequences.