Magazine Review Shotgun Sports – 2021 July There are two articles this month on hearing protection for the shooting sports. Lowell Strauss provides one in this issue and Garry Gordon wrote one for the latest issue of TrapShootingUSA. Both provide good explanations of the impact of shooting on your ears. Mr. Strauss provides a listing of several manufacturers and their products. Dr. Gordon’s has an in-depth guide on questions to ask when purchasing your protection. ————————
Mental training is a skill and requires focused practice. Michael J. Keyes, M.D. asks the question this month, how do we quantify our mental training? Using score to quantify your mental skills is fraught with problems. How can you compare scores when one may be from an event where you were trying out a new skill? Obviously, this score would have nothing to do with your mental state and more to do with improving your technique. It also doesn’t ac-
count for the fact that time and practice will improve your technique, becoming better as an eventuality with little to do with mental training. So how do we use score to measure our mental game progress? Michael suggests using a moving average as a guide to measuring performance. Take the average of the last ten matches you have shot and start tracking your average. After the next shoot drop the oldest score and recalculate your average. This is a more realistic way to track if you are showing improvement. In this way you calculate a new average after only your last ten tournaments. This assumes quite a wide range of assumptions: consistent and timely entering of tournaments, consistent practice sessions, and focused mental practice sessions. 12
