Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

Book excerpt: There is one thing that all marksmen—whether they're soldiers, cops, hunters, or competitive shooters—agree on: only hits count. Depending on your role, it may be more important to be faster or it may be more important to be ­precise, but in the end it's the shooter who can achieve perfect shots on demand, all the time, who wins. To fire a perfect shot, you need to bring together a mix of very specific conditions into that single moment when the trigger breaks. Some of the required conditions are technical, some of them are physical, but the requirements that are most important—and most elusive—are the mental skills. Once you have mastered the mental skills required to fire the perfect shot, you will find they're the same for any gun, any time, anywhere. Secrets of Mental Marksmanship is a detailed guide to developing conscious and subconscious powers that will elevate your ­marksmanship practice, training, and performance to the level of expert shooters. Keith Cunningham and Linda Miller—both champion shooters and master instructors, with decades of experience in the field and on the range—provide a set of tools that can be used to acquire and access the mental skills needed to perform to the best of your ability. True ­stories from military and ­l­aw-­enforcement professionals, seasoned hunters, and world-class competitors illustrate key points about marksmanship in the field, on the range, and on the streets. By mastering the tools, skills, and ­lessons ­outlined in this book, you will be able to get into "the zone" and produce the perfect shot under pressure and on demand, whenever you look through the sights of a gun.