HOW YOU THINK AFFECTS WHAT YOU THINK

BY: JOHN D. SHIMA SAN ANTONIO, TX | PHOTOS BY: MATTHEW GAY

When accomplished clay target shooters are feeling the stress of competition, I believe their ability to concentrate and focus ultimately determines the outcome of their performance. Therefore, I proposed, “What you think affects the way you shoot”, as the subtitle to my second book, A Method for the Magic. A shooter's mastery of concentration determines how his or her eyes will focus on each target, which directly impacts the outcome of each shot.

I briefly touched on the topic of thinking in a previous Clay Shooting USA article, Be Wary of What You Think. In this regard researchers concluded that great athletes differ from good athletes in two ways. “Great” athletes are better than “good” athletes because they relentlessly practice, to enhance their skills, and have learned to think differently.

In 1597, when Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “Knowledge itself is power”, commoners were generally illiterate and seriously lacking in knowledge beyond their immediate circumstances. Today, everyone has access to scientific knowledge, so it is the proper application of appropriate knowledge that determines greatness.

All clay target shooters have the capacity to store knowledge somewhere in their brain. A shooter's ability to properly access, select, and apply his or her accumulated knowledge during competition, is what determines the shooter's level of performance. The key word is “properly”.

Cognition is a term that refers to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehending the meaning of that knowledge. Cognitive processes include thinking, knowing, remembering, judging, and problem-solving. Cognitive skills include attention, memory, reasoning, and processing accurate information transmitted from the senses. Obviously, clay target shooting requires various cognitive skills.

Cognitive distortions are habitual ways of thinking that are often inaccurate and negatively biased. A common cognitive distortion is emotionalization. This distortion occurs when a person attaches a negative emotion to a random thought. For example, even though a person's spouse has demonstrated only devotion, negative emotional reasoning might lead an insecure spouse to conclude, “I know my spouse is being unfaithful because I feel jealous”. Sadly, emotional reasoning usually trumps rational thinking.

Some experts suggest that cognitive distortions are part of an evolutionary survival mechanism that enables humans to cope with stressful situations. Magnification of a potential threat immediately triggers the primitive “fight-orflight” response, which is essential to survival.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a widely recognized form of talk therapy in which people learn to identify, disrupt, and change the unhealthy thinking patterns created by cognitive distortions. Since, how you think affects what you think, shooters who struggle with choking during competition must understand how they think so they can rationally manage what

they think during moments of emotional distress.

Memory refers to the processes within the brain that are used to acquire, store, retain, and eventually retrieve knowledge. Since most people do not possess a “photographic” memory there is potential for everyone to misunderstand, misinterpret, misremember or simply forget things, which corrupts the knowledge retrieval process.

Athletes who understand how their brain stores, retrieves, and applies their shooting knowledge have a distinct advantage during competition. An exceptional shooter's ability to avoid “choking” during critical moments in competition is undoubtedly the advantage that makes him or her great.

In her recent book Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, research psychologist Sian Beilock revealed why some people perform better under stress while others perform poorly. Beilock discovered that people who choke under pressure store, retrieve and apply their knowledge differently than people who seem to seem to thrive under pressure. In fact, she even demonstrated with functional MRI images that different parts of the brain are used to store knowledge so it can be efficiently retrieved and applied for specific tasks. Beilock explained that knowledge is stored as implicit, explicit or working memory.

n Implicit Memory - The knowledge in implicit memory supports the adaptive unconscious, which controls habitual responses to a cue or stimulus. Sport psychologists call this procedural memory because it links complex visio-motor movements together to accomplish a specific task. I like to think of this as the center of muscle memory because it stores the pre-planned moves that a shooter programs through training and practice.

n Explicit Memory - The information in explicit memory is necessary to support conscious thinking. Some experts refer to this as conscious memory. New information is stored in the explicit memory bank along with all preexisting knowledge to help shooters analyze circumstances and improve their shooting technique. Highly repetitive processes, like pre-planned moves, are transferred from explicit memory to the implicit memory bank when they are ready to occur automatically.

n Working Memory - The information in working memory is only held for a short period of time. Whereas explicit memory is similar to a computer hard drive, working memory is like random access memory (RAM). It holds information for the purpose of multi-tasking, which means to accomplish two or more independent tasks at relatively the same time. Working memory is one the major building blocks of a person's IQ and plays an important role in all conscious activities. Beilock described working memory as cognitive horsepower.

Beilock's research on choking revealed how pressure induced performance hiccups depend on what skill we are attempting, and the type of memory that is driving how we execute that particular skill.“ Beilock emphasized that different skills rely on different types of memory. Hence, the manner in which a shooter relies on his or her three types of memory during daily living tends to correlate directly with their tendency to choke under the stress of shooting in competition.

Working memory plays a dominant role in everything people do in their daily lives. Successful people tend to rely heavily on their cognitive horsepower. Coincidently, this reliance on working memory is the primary reason many successful people who become clay target shooters seem to choke under self-imposed pressure to perform.

Beilock's research demonstrated that students with higher cognitive horsepower performed better during low-stress situations because they had adequate time to consciously use their working memory. However, when these same students were forced to perform under highstress situation a majority of the students with higher cognitive horsepower (higher IQ) choked while the lower-powered students who relied on their procedural memory performed the tasks without choking.

How you think relates to which type of memory you access to accomplish specific tasks. Deliberately managing visual perception to correctly transition from expanded soft focus to hard focus uses working memory. Therefore, watching a moving clay target while responding automatically with an appropriate pre-planned move also requires the use of procedural memory. Shooters who are confident in their cognitive horsepower (working memory) find it difficult to trust

their procedural memory during the stress of competition.

When the task at hand relies on procedural (unconscious habits) memory, all attempts to use working (conscious) memory to accomplish the task takes too much time. In other words, working memory interferes with efficient eye-hand coordination, so the clay targets appear to be smaller and seem to move faster.

The results of Beilock's research suggests that shooters who exhibit a strong desire to break targets activate their working memory to analyze and execute every shot at a clay target, which makes them more susceptible to choking under pressure. Conversely, shooters who trust their procedural memory to make the appropriate preplanned moves while they just focus correctly on the target tend to perform more consistently under pressure.

Many of my mature clients are professionals or businesspeople who have used their higher cognitive horsepower to achieve success in life. They become frustrated when their powerful working memory doesn't serve them well when they try to break clay targets. They are perplexed by the fact that they perform very well under high-stress situations in their profession or business, yet seem to perform poorly when the pressure to perform increases on the shooting range.

Although these clients hear me say, “The desire to break the target must be replaced by an intention to watch the target break,” they really don't comprehend what I'm telling them. This aphorism means that the desire to break the target activates working memory and the intention to watch the target break allows procedural memory to enter the game.

I've written extensively about the watching reflex and the shooting reflex. The watching reflex is managed by conscious behavior and utilizes working memory. The shooting reflex is dependent upon the shooter's adaptive unconscious, which relies on procedural memory to automatically execute consistent pre-planned moves to the targets. Working memory is not designed to manage automatic behaviors.

Beilock's research supports the basis for the Shima Shooting Method sm , which emphasizes the importance of proper concentration (thinking) and optimal focus (watching) during each shot. Shooters must become very aware of how much they are thinking, and what they are thinking about during each shot, so they can achieve consistent performances.

What you think involves the correct application of working and procedural memory. Memory is task specific. The shooter's powerful working memory must be devoted exclusively to managing their watching reflex so their amazing procedural memory can be allowed to automatically manage the shooting reflex. n

John Shima is a former five-time World Skeet Champion and was high average in 12 gauge for two years. John is the leading authority on detection of visual deceptions and prescribing appropriate visual training to unleash the power of reality for clay target shooters. For more information about the Shima Shooting MethodSM, the Clinic Schedule, his new Shima Shooting ExperienceSM, or to arrange a Private Consultation, contact John via email at john@johnshima.com To order his books or view previous articles go to johnshima.com/publications