With Winning in Mind: Do You Remember Poor Performances?

Written by Walt in Firearms,USPSA

With winter setting in, I’ve decided to dramatically up my off-season game. Part of my plan includes reading a variety of books that cover topics such as Shooting Fundamentals, Skill Building, and Mental Management.

This evening I picked up With Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassham and began reading. Within the first 60 pages I’m finding that it is much more than I expected. There have been three portions that have given me pause and forced me to re-read them a second time, thinking hard about how they apply to my shooting performance.

One of those portions has been included below. Taken out of context, this can appear to be tremendously cocky (trust me, it isn’t).

With Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassham

When a match is finished, be it USPSA or IDPA, I always take a hard look at what I did poorly. The objective was to identify what I did poorly and build on it going forward. The clip above appears to advise doing the opposite. Rather than remembering that botched reload, perhaps I should instead remember how smooth my draw and press-out was leading up to all A-Zone hits?

This book has a number of thoughts swirling around in my head. I’m taking that as a very good sign at this point. While I don’t doubt the author’s advice, I’m curious what your thoughts are on this subject? How much emphasis do you put on what you’ve done wrong versus what you’ve done well at a given match?

Walt

My name is Walt White and I've been riding motorcycles on and off since my early twenties. After more than a decade away from the sport, I came back - and I've been making up for lost time ever since. Based in Southeast Pennsylvania, I write and create videos about real motorcycle ownership: the bikes I ride, the gear I test, the roads I explore, and the community I've found along the way. I ride a 2022 Yamaha MT-09 SP and a 2023 Kawasaki Ninja 400, and I try to give you the honest take you'd get from a friend rather than a press release. I'm also a husband, dad to three girls, and a pitbull owner - which keeps life interesting off the bike too.

One thought on “With Winning in Mind: Do You Remember Poor Performances?”

  1. Bobby Jones, the championship golfer, once said that he never learned a thing from matches he won, but he learned everything from matches where he got drubbed. This seems to contradict what this person says.

    On the other hand, I recently went through some team training that encouraged us to build on our strengths and abandon our weakest traits. In a team setting this makes sense if we can rely on others to pick up the slack.

    But for an individual I don’t know how this would work. I think a coach or mentor would really help but I would have to work through it to see how to do it alone.

    Maybe that means I need a coach. Hmmmm.

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