Practice Champion, Competition Shooter
A 17-year-old 10 m air rifle shooter scores 578/600 in practice but 545/600 in competition. In competition she reports a racing heart, sweaty palms, a dry mouth and stomach upset on the morning of the match, and a loud internal voice repeating 'you always fail in the last series'. She has started asking to shoot first so she can 'get it over with', and she sleeps about four hours the night before. In practice she is relaxed, chats with teammates between shots, and her scores are stable; her per-series average is 96–97. In her last competition she opened with 94, held 92 in the middle, and closed with 88. Her coach's response is to increase practice volume by 50% and to tell her to 'just relax and think positive'.
1. Diagnose the problem using the concepts of cognitive and somatic anxiety and the arousal–performance relationship, and explain why the coach's response is unlikely to help.
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Diagnosis
- Somatic anxiety: racing heart, sweaty palms, dry mouth, stomach upset - the physiological component of anxiety.
- Cognitive anxiety: the internal voice ('you always fail in the last series'), the fear of the last series, and the wish to shoot first to escape the situation - the worry and negative-expectation component, with early signs of avoidance.
- This is state anxiety specific to competition, not trait anxiety: in practice the same athlete is calm and her scores are stable, so the anxiety is produced by the competitive situation, not by her personality.
Arousal–performance reasoning
- Under the inverted-U idea, shooting is a fine motor skill that deteriorates quickly at high arousal: increased muscle tension and tremor, narrowed attention, and over-thinking the trigger release.
- The individual zones of optimal functioning refinement is more useful here: she does not need minimal arousal, she needs her own moderate band - the level she has in practice. Competition pushes her above it, and the 5.7% score drop (33 points from 578) follows.
Why the coach's response fails
- 'Just relax' addresses only the somatic side and gives no skill; telling an anxious athlete to relax often increases self-monitoring.
- 'Think positive' without replacing the specific negative thought is empty reassurance.
- Adding 50% more practice trains the technical skill that is already excellent and leaves the competition response untouched; it also adds fatigue before a match.
2. Design a four-week psychological intervention, stating what each technique targets.
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Week 1 - Awareness and physiological control
- Keep a brief pre-competition log: sleep, heart rate, thoughts, first-shot feeling. This makes the pattern visible.
- Progressive muscle relaxation: tense and release muscle groups (16 → 8 → 4) daily, 10–15 minutes. Target: somatic arousal and the muscle tension that shows up as rifle movement.
- Breathing: slow 4-second inhale, 4-second hold, 6-second exhale between shots. Target: somatic arousal and a stable hold.
Week 2 - Cognitive restructuring and imagery
- Self-talk replacement: change 'you always fail in the last series' into a process cue such as 'same routine, same trigger, one shot'. Target: cognitive anxiety.
- Imagery: 5–10 minutes daily, from inside her own body, including the competition hall, the crowd, a bad shot and her response to it. Target: familiarity with the stressful setting and reduced catastrophic expectation.
Week 3 - Routine and simulation
- Build a fixed pre-performance routine (stance, breathing pattern, check, shoulder, settle, trigger) and use it identically in practice and competition. Target: attentional consistency.
- Simulation training: practice matches with an audience, scoreboards, and a final-series scenario where she must shoot last. Target: graded exposure to the feared situation and reduction of the avoidance behaviour.
Week 4 - Consolidation and lifestyle
- Process goals for the next match, sleep hygiene to reach 8 hours, and a short pre-match plan agreed with the coach. Refer on if stomach upset and sleep loss persist or worsen.
3. Interpret the series-by-series data (94, 92, 88 versus a practice average of 96–97) and explain how goals should be set for the next competition.
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Reading the data
- Practice average is 96–97 per ten-shot series; she opened at 94. So the drop had already begun before the last series - she was below her practice standard from shot one. This argues for a pre-competition arousal and expectation effect, not only a late-match collapse.
- The further fall to 88 is a 6-point (about 6%) drop within the match. Two explanations should be considered together: arousal and negative self-talk accumulating after early lower shots, and genuine fatigue from a long match. The pattern fits the 'you always fail in the last series' belief becoming self-fulfilling rather than a physical limit.
- The 94–92–88 sequence is more informative than the total alone, so the coach should record series scores at every competition from now on.
Goal setting
- Process goals, not outcome goals. 'Follow the routine on all 60 shots', 'use the breathing pattern between shots', 'call each shot and release it' - all directly under her control, unlike a score or selection.
- SMART framing. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound: for example, 'complete the full pre-shot routine on at least 55 of 60 shots at the next match'.
- Shift the focus from the last series to each shot. A short-term goal of 'one shot at a time' breaks the catastrophic narrative.
- Review against the process, not only the score, in a short debrief with the coach, and keep the score goal as a secondary, later indicator once competition scores approach practice scores.
- Agree the maths with her: the realistic target is not 578 in competition immediately; closing from 545 towards the mid-560s would show the intervention is working.