Zen, Flow, Peak of Performance

September 8, 2011 Leave a comment

I would like to share a few statements from a discussion with my current student. I think it can be beneficial to anyone who is looking for progress in their score performance (Free pistol, air pistol, 50m pistol).

Zen, Flow, Peak of performance… (23×10 in your case) Here are a few points of concerns… To perform at this level you have to effortlessly perform at a different mental stage. Your body, mind, equipment, and tool (Olympic pistol, grip, & ammunition) have to be trained and adjusted to this level consciously during the regular practice time. If you are doing everything in the correct way, sooner or later you will start to experience short episodes of this (Zen, Flow,  Peak of performance) routine. You can’t force the appearance, but you can create an environment of possible cause for this event. If you will start to notice what you do to develop this short episode, you can create more chances to keep it longer. The critical point is to have it start happening when you think less about it.

Keep records in your shooting diary. It will help you develop this stage faster. You can try to practice meditation with professionals who can teach you the way to do it properly under supervision. Yoga practice is the bridge to a faster mental part of development in our case. A Yoga exercise is always a good preparation stage toward successful meditation. You can’t avoid this development without the awareness of it in the first stage.

This is the topic of my next level of discussion and development: Level One (Intermediate Olympic pistol). I separated this level for the reason to initially develop a “Perfect single shot development”™ model   https://midwestacademyconsulting.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/%e2%80%9cperfect-single-shot-development-class%e2%84%a2%e2%80%9d-2/  and to achieve groundwork progress. Without initial development and real elevation of existing performance, there is no point to go deep in discussion of: Zen, Flow, Peak of performance.

“Drastically wrong”?...

Nothing is wrong. You are in the right way to overcome your problems. At least you are able to describe it consciously or subconsciously and become aware about them. It is all good! I like your questions. Some of them are representing your old routine and you just feel uncomfortable to proceed with it any longer.

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

 I explained to you before; to have a spoon of black caviar is very healthy in one day, but to have a bucket of black caviar can make you very sick, although it is the most expensive and nutritional product in the world. I do remember as you told me about the one coach, who did not want to speak to anyone who could not score 570 in AP. I understand his position. His job is to select the best athletes , 570 in AP and 545 in FP has a very low value associated with  Zen, Peak of Performance (POP), or Flow. To perform at this level, you only need knowledge of the perfect single shot development.
 If you fail to make an elevation in your performance from the proper execution of fundamentals. Jumping to the subject of Zen, POP, and Flow, will not get your performance any stronger.
 This subject is important!
 By the way, you have to perform very strong fundamentals initially!
One more thing, how many thoughts can you process in your head during one moment? My son, told me a person can process around 27,000 thoughts in a 24 hour period, but the question is still the same. In one particular moment, how many thoughts can you process?
 A person cannot think about two subjects in a particular moment! Do you have a better ability than other people?
 Probably not. The complexity of target shooting is: to take care of  6 fundamentals  during a single moment. Two of them are most important. It’s still only two of them, not one. If you have strong knowledge and the ability to execute it properly, 570 in AP and 545 in FP, then it will not be a problem to perform in a regular basis.
 I can tell you about that because I did it for over seventeen years by myself on a much higher level.
Take care!

Filed under Olympic Pistol