Confidence counts
Sporting Shooter|May 2020
Don Brunt looks at how you can build your confidence when it comes to busting clays... even with an audience!
DON BRUNT
Confidence counts

Focus on your shot and watch it break

Look around any clay ground and the chances are you will see a huge spectrum of confidence levels on display from shooters. Some will serenely take on the toughest targets as if they were stationary dinner plates hanging in the air, others might be overconfident with a somewhat inflated understanding of their own ability, while some might be so scared of missing, or being seen to miss, that they seem to have no confidence whatsoever.

If you fit into the latter category, there are things you can do to make your shooting more enjoyable and build your confidence.

There are plenty of people who are absolutely terrified of having people stood behind them watching them shoot – as soon as they have an audience, their concentration disappears, their confidence melts away and what might have been a relatively easy target for them now becomes armour-plated and impossible to break.

To get over this, it’s important to understand that everyone misses! Yes, everyone, even multiple world champions make mistakes. This means that hardly anyone takes any notice of whether someone is hitting or missing targets – most people are too busy working out what they are going to do themselves when they get in the stand.

This story is from the May 2020 edition of Sporting Shooter.

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This story is from the May 2020 edition of Sporting Shooter.

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