I really enjoy talking mental skills training with anyone that will converse on the subject! Luckily, I am surrounded by lots of fellow amateur athletes that enjoy the topic as much as I do! One of those athletes is Grant O’Neal.
If you don’t know Grant personally, but think the name sounds familiar, it just might be because he contributed to an earlier post on goal setting. You can check out that post HERE. A month or so ago, Grant and I got into a discussion centered around the use of pre-shot routines by the Olympic athletes. The discussion ended with Grant offering to submit an article for the blog – which I eagerly accepted! Grant is a gifted writer and has really managed to bring the topic to life. Many thanks also to Gil Ash of the Optimum Shotgun Performance Shooting School who was so kind as to provide additional insight which Grant incorporated into the article. You can learn more about OSP HERE.
Without further delay, here is Grant’s article in it’s entirety. My contribution to the effort was simply the addition of some pictures.
If it Works for Olympians…
Many of the athletes at the 2020 (in 2021) Olympics use what we in clays shooting sports would call a pre-shot routine. The sprinters and hurdlers provide good examples.
After stretching and warming up, the entire lead up to the firing of the starter’s gun is carefully choreographed.
When called to the starting blocks, something like this takes place with each athlete:
- Last check
- Shoelaces/straps adjusted. Tuck in anything that needed tucking, putting necklaces and such inside the jersey. Any last clothing adjustments. A final drink of water, etc.
- A look at the starting blocks to confirm they are locked in and ready to accommodate the desired foot positions.
- With the “Ready” command, they step in front of the blocks, stretch, and shake out their legs.
- Carefully put each foot in the right place on the block.
- Kneel and put their hands precisely on the back edge of their lane’s starting line.
- Take a focused look down the track. (Visualization)
- Take a deep breath and relax.
- With the “Set” command, they raise their rear end in the air, push themselves up with their weight on their hands and bow their heads. The adjective that comes to mind is “cocked.”
The gun goes off, and they explode out of their stance. In a few powerful strides they are running faster than most of us can even imagine.
The sprinters’ pre-race routine is ritualistic. If there’s a false start, it starts all over again with the recall to the blocks. A repeat of the cocking process.
What Do Pre-routines Accomplish?
Modern neuroscience is discovering an astonishing number of things about how our brains work. In neuroscientist David Eagleman’s books, TED talks, and YouTube lectures, he expresses the idea that our brain is constantly changing, sorting, and reorganizing itself to efficiently take care of the many tasks involved with what he calls, “Being you.”
In his book, “The Brain,” Eagleman explains how his team conducted a test using EEG technology to compare his brain activity to that of a ten-year old boy named Austin Naber. Austin had recently set the Guinness Book world record for cup stacking. Cup stacking competition involves stacking cups into precise pyramids (three), then unstacking and restacking them into two taller pyramids, and finally again into one tall pyramid. The competitor who does it fastest wins.
Eagleman practiced for 20 minutes beforehand after getting a lesson from Austin. With the EEG’s nodes connected to their heads and cups placed in front of them, the whistle blew, and they started.
As expected, Austin beat him handily. But when Eagleman examined the EEG readouts, he was thoroughly surprised to see that Austin’s brain activity was a fraction of his. Equally surprising was they were using completely different brain waves. Eagleman was exercising his brain furiously using high energy Beta waves, normally associated with intense and conscious problem solving. Austin’s brain was operating in Alpha state, normally seen with the brain at rest. In layman’s terms, Eagleman was trounced by a ten-year old whose brain was running in sub-conscious cruise control.
Eagleman explains that Austin’s unique skills had become “hardwired” in his brain through his early years of practicing. His brain had built a set of neural networks that strengthened and insulated his cup stacking skills. It helped that he learned cup stacking as a very young boy, when his brain was in its most receptive and adaptive state.
At some point, Austin’s brain assigned those skills to what Eagleman calls “procedural memory.” Procedural memory is where our sub-conscious skills reside – the skills we use so much and have done so many times that we are barely aware when we use them. When we walk, for example, we do not actively contemplate what each of our feet is doing with each step, how much to bend our left knee, or the fact that we’re 32 inches ahead of the last step we took. We just do it…perhaps while talking to a friend on our cell phone and imagining the dinner we’re going to have at a favorite restaurant. The “do it’ part of our brain is fast, efficient, and astounding in its ability to manage hundreds of actions and sub-commands at once.
While the brain conducts much of our life in the sub-conscious continually every day, our conscious brain is also continuously engaged in making observations, analyzing, making decisions, weighing choices, and sorting considerations of what to do next and why. Eagleman likens our conscious brain to the CEO of a large corporation. That mental CEO is not involved in every minute activity or function within the company but is helping to make the decisions and choices that direct the company’s next steps and future plans. It takes in, translates, and assesses new information constantly. It is the analyst, judge, and guide for our daily and lifetime decisions. It is the “think about it” part of our brain function.
Let’s turn to the sport of golf for a neat concept that aligns these different brain functions and gives us a picture of how they collaborate.
Think Box, Play Box, and Memory Box
Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriot founded an innovative and now world-renowned golf training company named VISION54. It helps the golfer move toward achieving their perfect golf game – that golfer’s equivalent of the lowest score possible (hypothetically 54 strokes). In the program, they consolidated tried and proven golf training techniques with new research in psychophysiology, neuroscience, nutrition, and cognitive training methods.
In their book, “Be a Player”, they describe three mental states that comprise what they call the “performance routine.” The word “performance” in this context refers to playing for score, live competition, or structured/deliberate practice designed to replicate competitive conditions. The serious stuff.
The “Think Box” they describe is the period before a shot, which, in this case is golf but can apply equally well to sporting clays. This is when the “think about it” conscious brain is in charge – observing, assessing, evaluating, and making decisions about what it thinks is going to happen in the near future.
The “Play Box” is the golf club (or shotgun) in hand, pure executional focus, present/in that specific moment mental state. They describe this as a “sensory state” where the action is turned over to the “do it” brain to execute. The “do it” brain uses imagery (e.g., the last visualization), procedural memory, and feel/input/visual stimuli of that precise moment to do its job.
Last, the “Memory Box” is the post-shot state. It is the athlete’s process of recording and updating his or her database of made shots, corrections, and types of targets experienced. It is where Eagleman’s procedural memory is built and stored. (Note: this post-shot process is worthy of further review. It’s essential to the skill learning process.)
A Critical Transition
Nilsson and Marriot’s concept of mental “boxes” points out the essential objective of a good pre-shot routine. Simply stated, it is to flip our mental switch from the conscious “think about it” brain to the sub-conscious” do it” brain.
It is a change in responsibility from the slower, more deliberate step-by-step conscious brain’s analytical and functional perspective of a future act to doing a specific desired imminent action. The sub-conscious uses the trained/practiced/experienced procedural memory. Relative to sporting clays, it employs predictive and physical skills honed by practice to produce a fast and optimal response to visual stimuli. We can say that the specialized realm of the sub-conscious brain is the here and right now.
Eagleman’s test with Austin showed us what the end result of that mental switch looks like within our brains. A task done in the sub-conscious brain is smoother, faster, and considerably more energy-efficient than one done in the conscious brain.
The Core Elements of Pre-shot Routine
Anyone that has shot or trapped in sporting clays tournaments has observed a variety of pre-shot routines. I.e., how shooters look at show-me targets, ID breakpoints, rehearse their moves, test their stance or balance, etc.
Gil and Vicki Ash of the Optimum Shotgun Performance Shooting School wrote a book entitled “You Gotta Be Out of Your Mind” which delved deeply into the mental aspects of sporting clays. They devoted a chapter just to the pre-shot routine. Here are just a few quick take-aways from among the deeper discourse you’ll find in the book:
1. It needs to be consistent. They make the point that a consistent routine and rhythm helps the process of transition from conscious to sub-conscious. The simple initiation of a consistent routine alerts the two brain functions that it’s sporting clays, and it’s about to happen. However, if the routine changes at every station, we risk sending mixed signals and erratic messages which can confuse the brain about when and what we’re doing and why.
Gil says, “The core purpose of our visual processing system is to predict what is coming next. The brain is not happy when it does not know what is coming next. The instant you begin your (consistent) routine, the brain can anticipate when you are going to ask it to act on the plan you have just committed to. That consistent rhythm allows the brain to know exactly when you are going to ask it to act – no surprises.”
2. It can help to have both a “cue” and a “trigger.” The cue marks the completion of the shooter’s planning work. It is a physical signal to his two brain functions that it’s time to switch responsibility from the conscious to sub-conscious brain. Examples are loading shells into the gun or a definitive final point at the two chosen breakpoints.
The “trigger” is the very last thing done before addressing the targets, setting the eyes, and calling “pull.” This is often closing the gun or switching the safety off. The trigger is the final physical signal before action, the equivalent of the sprinter’s “get set” command. As with the sprinters, this is when the sub-conscious is getting “cocked” in the blocks, while the conscious brain is seated on the sidelines as an observer.
The Ashes also recommend that the time between the trigger and the “pull” call be limited to 1.4 – 2.4 seconds. Why? Because it is hard to remain completely poised, still, and focused on the proverbial starting blocks of action for much longer. Our attention begins to waver after a few seconds. Our still eyes shift away from the visual pick-up point to the trap, the gun barrel, or the breakpoint. We might suddenly become acutely aware of a conversation behind us. Or a subtle intrusion of doubt may slip in from our conscious brain as it decides to jump back in with another “helpful” idea about the break point for the B target.
The Ashes have continued to pursue the latest neuroscientific studies as they purposely explore the topic of our brain and how it impacts our performance in sporting clays.
The major point: a good, consistent pre-shot routine facilitates and completes the handoff from conscious thinking to sub-conscious doing.
Everyone is Different
I watched the All-England Sporting Clays Championships on YouTube recently. I saw elite level shooters with very complex pre-shot routines and some with almost no apparent routine at all.
I recall one shooter who ritualistically touched his hat, pushed his glasses up on his nose, checked his shooting vest, loaded shells, pointed at the two breakpoints, turned the gun to see that the safety was off, slowly put the gun up, and then called “pull.” In contrast, I watched another who stepped in the cage with his gun open and held casually. He looked briefly at two imaginary breakpoints, plopped two shells in his gun and literally called “pull” as he was closing the gun. Both were very successful.
Let’s surmise that the first shooter needed a few more steps to disengage his conscious brain – each successive step in his routine was closing a conscious brain door and opening a sub-conscious one. The second shooter may have watched a handful of shooters go before him and stepped into the station already in a sub-conscious “cocked” state of mind.
Where is Your Pre-shot Routine Going?
On clay shooting forums and podcasts, master class shooters frequently mention how their pre-shot routines and planning processes have become more compact and simpler over the years. I believe there are two factors at work.
First is that their database of clays’ experiences and shots taken has grown and now provides their two brain functions with a voluminous storehouse of mental representations of shots and targets. Now when they see a show-me target, their brain can immediately access the right data file and put it in front of them. The message is an immediate mental, visual and emotional affirmation that, “You know how to break this. You’ve done it hundreds of times. Just do it.”
Second is the increased ease with which the handoff from conscious to sub-conscious can happen. Instead of a complex multi-check point mental process from the conscious brain, the message is, “Shoot the first one there, and the second one there. You know what to do.” The sub-conscious “do it” brain then uses the procedural memory bank to put the plan into action.
As a shooter’s competence improves, confidence rises which helps to keep the conscious brain calmer and less prone to hyper-analyze or over-think things. As that occurs, the pre-shot process often gets simpler and faster.
The Finish Line
Back to the Olympic athletes we enjoyed watching in Tokyo in 2021. They’ve put years of training, practice, and preparation to work as they competed for medals against the best in the world in their sports. At that level and for those incredibly high stakes, they left nothing to chance.
That so many Olympians have developed and use carefully perfected pre-event routines is a testament to the effectiveness of them. It offers solid proof that we also have the opportunity to enhance our performance by building and refining our pre-shot routines.