VISUALIZATION AS A TRAINING TOOL

Bill Toy, Instructor

So, money is tight, gun prices and ammo are skyrocketing, and most of us are finding it difficult to find the time and resources to head to the range for training. How can we keep our edge and hopefully improve our capabilities in today's state of the nation?

Chappy and Jeremy have posted some excellent advice on improving your efficiency through video taping your range visits and dry fire drills. In the next few articles we will be taking a look at some other ways you can keep your edge without cutting into your already tight budget.

The first thing I would like to discuss is one of the most overlooked yet highly effective training techniques, Creative Visualization. Professional and Olympic athletes, competition shooters and tier 1 military units use this technique to improve outcomes under stress. Simply put, it is using your imagination to visualize a specific action or scenario in a very detailed manner in order to replicate a desired level of performance. While visualizing an act, you want to include every available sense (Sight, sound, feel, and even smell). You can slow the act down or execute it in real time. The key is that every single mental repetition is executed PERFECTLY.

How effective is Creative Visualization? A paper written by Charles A. Garfield Ph.D titled "Peak Performance-Mental Training Techniques of the Worlds Greatest Athletes" cites a study which matched 4 groups of world class Soviet athletes prior to the 1980 Winter Games.

• Group 1 - 100% physical training;
• Group 2 - 75% physical training with 25% mental training;
• Group 3 - 50% physical training with 50% mental training;
• Group 4 - 25% physical training with 75% mental training.

The results? Group 4 showed significantly greater improvement than group 3, which was followed by group 2 and finally 1.

We have all heard the term "Practice doesn't make perfect, PERFECT Practice makes perfect." By including Visualization into your training plan you will make the most of your limited range time and ammo budget. In the next post I will take a look at how to conduct visualization and incorporate it into your training plan.