If I had to guess, I’d say that more shooters have asked me about the mental game than any other facet of our sport.  It doesn’t matter if it’s someone trying to break through on the regional level or trying to make it into B class – they all want pointers on the psychology of shooting.

I think too many shooters worry about this too soon in their shooting career, so this column is about simplifying your mental game to achieve optimal results as you’re learning how to compete and making your way through the classes.

First, a definition.  In my book “Straight Shooting,” I defined the mental game as “the skill set that allows you to perform under pressure at your highest possible level.” I think that’s as good an explanation as any, and it will help you understand the points I’m going to make.

I’ve read a ton of sports psychology books, and they basically agree on many things.  Above all, you need confidence to perform under pressure.  Lanny Bassham, who wrote a shooting-related book called “With Winning in Mind” among others, calls this your self-image.  To have the sort of confidence we’re talking about, you’re going to have to work not until you hit most targets, but until you know that you’re going to hit them.

Not long ago, I had an A-class shooter come to me for a lesson. He’s shot a lot and can point his gun well.  He hit a few targets that 90 percent of my students would struggle with, but his scores don’t even come close to matching that ability.

We came up to a true pair of going-away targets, the type you’re likely to see in almost any tournament.  The student’s first comment was, “oh, these targets are the bane of my existence.” Right away, he revealed that he had no confidence on those targets, and his first few pairs reinforced that.  In a tournament, that’s the kind of station that could put him in a tailspin and ultimately wreck his score.

I got him hitting the birds after a while, but unless he went home and worked on that presentation, his mindset won’t change.  His overall results and his lack of practice combine to psych him out.  He believes he can’t hit those targets, and so he doesn’t.

What’s the solution?  He needs to build his ability to break those targets until he believes he’s going to break them every time.  At that point, his skill set on those pairs will be rock solid, and all he will need to do after making his plan is to remind himself to look at the bird and let the shot happen. In other words, he would be performing in his subconscious mind, which is the optimal way to shoot.

If you don’t have your skill set down pat, then you’ll lack the necessary confidence and you’ll have more in your conscious mind. For that reason, I don’t believe shooters in the lower classes should worry so much about the ins and outs of the mental game.  They haven’t fully ingrained their skills to execute the shot repeatedly, and that makes it physically impossible for them to shoot subconsciously.

Therefore, as you practice and build your skill, you’re going to build your confidence, and as you do so you’ll build your mental game as well.  If you can build your confidence to the point where you almost always execute subconsciously in competition, then you’ll have a stronger mental game than 90 percent of the people who shoot sporting clays.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to understand the mental game as you progress, and you don’t need a shooting professional’s advice to do it.  Pick up Bassham’s book or any other top-rated sports psychology book, and you’ll find that in essence, building your confidence through dedicated, structured practice is the key.

There are other things to consider, and they’re all related to gaining experience.  You’ve got to learn how to think about the things you can control and not worry about the things you can’t control.  You must get used to shooting with strangers, and traveling to competitions.  Ultimately, you must learn how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. It’s hard to shoot your best otherwise.

At the end of the day, most of the pressure we feel is self-induced, and frequently based on wanting to shoot a particular score or achieving a particular result. If you can convince yourself that your goal is to do what you’re supposed to do and to go out there and hit every shot you can, you’re on your way.  Remind yourself that you’re going to be happy if you succeed and you’re going to be happy if you fail, so long as you’ve done everything in your power to control what you can control.  And if you don’t do all that, you’re going to start over and try again on Monday.

Let me leave you with some of my own experience with the mental game, which I think illustrates my points very well.

When I was growing up and taking lessons from Dan Carlisle, we didn’t discuss the mental game much at all.  We talked about building essential skills like shooting the target where I saw it best, how to insert the gun relative to the clay, controlling the target by matching the target’s speed with the gun.  I remember Dan telling me over and over that there was no way that I could be great until I mastered those skills – which still apply today.

So I worked and I worked until I could do those things every time without conscious thought, even when I was feeling the pressure of competing at the highest level.  I knew that if I made a good plan and executed those three skills properly, then all I had to do was look at the bird and let it rip.

That was the extent of my mental game.  For more than half my shooting career, until I was 25 or so, all I did to perform subconsciously was to plan my execution and remember to look at the bird.  I could do that because of the confidence I had built in my own skills.

It worked. I won both the national championship and the US Open in 2008 just by reminding myself to look at the bird.  I also won world and national titles as a junior shooter, and I made it to the podium at the World FITASC several times with that simple approach.

Today, I work on deeper aspects of the mental game, but it still boils down to gaining confidence and experience.  I’m looking to pick up two or three birds over the course of a tournament, because that often is the difference that puts you on top of the podium.  Our game has evolved significantly and shooters are better than ever.  That’s forced the people at the top of the game to learn more and more about sports psychology.

Most of us don’t need to take it that far. If you can practice and build your skills to the point that you can break most target presentations by making a good plan and reminding yourself to look at the bird – the same mental game as I used all those years ago – then you’re going to be pretty darn good.  The finer points can come later.