Greg Ellifritz: Coaching the Struggling Shooter

Greg Ellifritz of Active Response Training:

I’ve known for a long time that the words we use when coaching a shooting student can affect how quickly that student grasps a certain concept.

One important concept I’ve used over the years is to express all of my coaching cues as positive statements.  If you use negative statements, the brain doesn’t process them well and will often focus on the very habit you are trying to eliminate.  An example of this is when a coach says “Don’t jerk the trigger.”  The brain tends to focus on the last part of that statement (“jerk the trigger”) and negate the negative.  The student is programmed to think about jerking the trigger and the problem gets worse…

Continue reading at Active Response Training