Nobody teaches that mistakes are always made

Speaking today with a young clay target shooter, specializing in Olympic trap, the difficulty in accepting mistakes emerged. This happens because they start from a mistaken assumption: since I’m in good shape and make many sacrifices to train, I should therefore make very few mistakes and, most importantly, win more often.

This is a typical mindset for many young athletes, not only those in precision sports. There are countless examples to illustrate why this approach is wrong. The first is to look at how many world records have been set in the past 30 years. In Olympic trap, it has happened 17 times, indicating how many times the maximum score of 125 targets hit out of 125 has been achieved in an international competition. In essence, over 30 years, only 14 athletes did it (since 3 of them achieved it twice). So, aside from this small number of athletes who have done it once, even they and all the other top athletes in the world haven’t been able to repeat it.

So how can I think, not belonging to this small group of shooters, that just because I’m in shape, I should make very few mistakes? If we are rational, it’s quite clear that I’m thinking something foolish, a belief many hold because no one teaches how to think about what you’re doing, while everyone asks for your score at the end of the competition, as if that were the most important thing to know about an athlete’s performance.

It’s a hard myth to dispel, the one that associates physical shape with the result you want to achieve. What’s not understood is that being in shape is essential to knowing you’ve done everything possible to put yourself in a position to perform well—it’s a prerequisite for performance. You shouldn’t participate in important competitions if you’re not in shape, but this is only the foundation for your competitive performance. The next step is to demonstrate your skill in handling the stress of competition, especially in a sport where a blink of an eye can compromise the shot.

It’s easier for coaches to teach technique and then tell athletes, “You’ve learned how to break the targets, now it’s your job to do it in competition!