by Randy Meyers and Brian Willis
Those among us who take pride in our performance often spend many hours practicing our skills. Learning a new skill or mastering an existing one takes repetitive practice. Finding the time for this practice can be a challenge in today’s world of hectic schedules. Time and time again we do drills breaking them down in an effort to identify and eliminate trouble spots. We are continually seeking to improve areas of our performance that seems to be less than perfect; areas that detract from our over all performance.

Countless hours are spent training with our goal being to perfect every aspect of the skill. This is true of any professional whether it be law enforcement officers, wrestlers, boxers, competitive shooters or public speakers. There is always something in our performance that we are seeking to improve for the next time. Regardless if the person is considered one of the elite in their field, or a novice just starting out. Everyone who takes pride in their performance is always looking to improve. For many this has meant hour upon hour of physical practice.


Physical practice is important and will always be important, but there is a problem that can never be completely overcome when we are talking about physical practice - time. Time is something that no one seems to have enough of. There is only so much time to spend on the range, on the basketball court, at the batting cage, or to spend rehearsing a speech. No matter what you chosen endeavor, time is precious. So what else can be done? We have squeezed every possible second we can out of our schedule. The answer does not lie in better time management. The answer can be found within our own mind.

Our mind is our portable training environment. It is available anytime we need it, no matter where we are, and no matter how little time we have at that particular point in our day. It is available to us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And the best thing about this training environment is that we can always win there.

In the privacy of our own mind we can always perform at our best. In his book Cloud of Sparrows, Takashi Matsouka talks about this portable training environment when talking about a gunfighter who did not have access to his guns or a range but needed to keep his skills sharp. “The only place he could be sure of privacy was his own mind. So that‘s where he practiced. Draw. Cock the hammer on the upswing. Sight the heart. Squeeze the trigger. Cock the hammer on the recoil. Sight the heart. Squeeze the trigger. There was an advantage to this. His mind was a portable room, he could practice anywhere he was, anytime.”

Think back to the last time you practiced your shooting skills on the range. There was likely a point where one or more of the following happened during the course of your physical practice session. Your performance was good, maybe even excellent at some points, but less than stellar at others.

After a large number of repetitions you became fatigued, began to lose focus and your performance began to deteriorate.
When this happens we often wind up ending the day on a less than positive note. The last thing you remember from the session was the less desirable performance at the end. The high points seemed to fade into the background while the negatives stand out. No one can physically perform a physical skill or task perfectly every time under ideal conditions. And as time wears on during a training session we become less focused, less interested, and less physically adept.

Physical practice is important to skill development and maintenance. It is a way to measure our skill level, our progress and to set benchmarks for improvement. In our mind we can perform perfectly each and every time. We never miss, we never tire.

We can mentally practice the entire skill package, or only a segment that we wish to give particular attention to such as a magazine change. Over and over we can imagine ourselves doing it flawlessly. We hit the magazine release with our thumb while our other hand is retrieving the fresh magazine from our pouch. The exchange is seamless as your hand firmly grasps the fresh magazine, smoothly removing it from the pouch with minimal movement.

Your index finger falls along the edge of the magazine and it begins to move upward. The dry magazine falls free from the magazine well as pistol is canted slightly towards the new magazine. Your trigger finger remains indexed. The old magazine has barely cleared the well as the new one is fed home. Your loading hand slides right up into its support position as the pistol rotates back to your presentation position and you quickly re-acquire your front sight. You are smooth, fast, and efficient.

The execution of this mental drill was flawless, expended no physical energy and can be done while driving to the store, taking a shower, walking up the stairs, sitting in a chair, laying in bed, flying on a plane, or while you are out fishing. You can be anywhere and can take 10 seconds or 10 minutes. With this type of mental training there is no need for a range, a range officer, a gun or any ammunition. It is extremely safe, and extremely beneficial as a tool for performance enhancement. How many times a day can you do this? Literally hundreds, if you so desire.

Try doing a couple hundred physical reloads a day, let alone do them perfectly each time. If you noticed I said “imagine” yourself doing the particular skill as opposed to “see,” or “visualize”. Why? Visualization for most people only involves one sense - sight, and not everyone processes information visually. Everyone however, can imagine.

Imagination involves all the senses and the more senses that you involve, the more realistic the experience and the greater the effect. Let’s use the reload example again. If I tell you to see yourself doing it you may have some sort of visual image of the process. But if I tell you to imagine doing the reload all of your sense can come into play. You hear the report of the weapon, you are aware of your sights and feel the weapon recoiling. You imagine the action of the slide and you become aware that the slide is locked back. You feel the magazine release and experience the pressure you exert on it.

You feel the baseplate of the new magazine and notice the difference in texture from the magazine itself and the pouch. You can feel the drag as you pull it from the pouch and can feel the edge of the magazine on your index finger, maybe even the nose of the top round. You can hear the click of the magazine being disengaged from the pistol at the same time you feel the loss of pressure on the magazine release as the magazine drops free.

You imagine the new magazine going in to the well as the old one drops free, you can feel it sliding up inside the pistol and the butt of your hand hitting the butt of the weapon while at the same time you hear and feel the click as the magazine locks into place. On the palm of your hand you can feel the release of pressure as you remove it from the magazine floor plate.

Your hand moves up and over and grasps the slide behind the ejection port. You imagine pulling the slide fully to the rear and releasing it forward chambering another round. You feel it, see it, hear it. Your support hand regrasps as the pistol rotates back towards the presentation position. You imagine the pistol moving out and up and you quickly pickup your front sight. Perfect!

Changing anything from that performance would not improve it. It could not have been done more perfectly, more smoothly, or more quickly. How long does it take you to do this? That is completely within your control. You can imagine yourself going very slowly concentrating on every detail, or you could imagine yourself doing it real time.

The bottom line is you could have done it in your mind at least twice in the time it took you to read this paragraph, maybe more. And you would have done it correctly both times. Performance Enhancement Imagery has been around for some time. It has been used by athletes at the elite levels, musicians, shooters, people undergoing surgery, etc. Limits to its use are tough to find. There are two keys for the best results:

Involve as many senses as possible. The stronger the image the better the result. One famous professional golf champion stated that he imagined his performance on the course before actually playing it. He recalled his imagery was so strong that he could actually smell the grass and feel the breeze.

Practice. Just as in the physical realm, one time does not make you a champion. The key is repetition. The beauty is that you are not limited to practicing when the range is available. And, like the actual physical practice, the more you do it the better you get.
Our minds are divided into two parts; the conscious and the subconscious.

The subconscious is the larger and more powerful part. If we were a physical computer the conscious mind would be the random access memory, or RAM. It is the part of memory that is used for working on a project, etc. The subconscious would be the hard drive. Much larger, and much more powerful.

The conscious mind will always analyze and try to come up with a “why.” The subconscious processes information literally and cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality. Once something is programmed it will work through the neural pathways to make the body respond in the way you imagined resulting in improved performance.