Saul Kirsch: Mastering the Mental Game
I was recently invited to lead a discussion about mental performance in competitive shooting. Many of you know me as an athletic coach, others as a salesperson, some even as a cyclist, but very few of you know me as someone who participates in action shooting competitions. There are a lot of ex-military and law enforcement who go to these matches, but some of us are just civilians who have practiced enough to no longer be considered larpers.
Anyway, a long-time shooter who runs a Wednesday night practice session announced that he wanted to run a mental performance session. Upon hearing that is what I do, he invited me to lead the discussion. He then proceeded to invite me to his house to watch an 18-year-old DVD by a high-level shooter named Saul Kirsch entitled Mastering the Mental Game.
I faux-humbly agreed, even though I was privately confident that my modern techniques would outshine those of a nearly two-decade-old DVD. I was wrong. I was surprised and truly humbled by the quality of the workshop.
For those who don’t know, Saul Kirsch is a giant in the world of practical shooting. Before he was a run-and-gun Grand Master, he spent a decade as an Olympic-discipline rifle shooter for the Israeli National Team. He took that precision discipline and applied it to IPSC, where he became a multiple-time European Steel Challenge Champion and a silver medalist at the European Handgun Championships. Today, he is best known as the founder of Double-Alpha Academy (DAA), where he designs high-end competition gear. In short, when he talks about the mental game, he isn’t guessing; he has but in the time to learn it (mostly from Lanny Bassham) and he has lived it on the world stage.
The Conscious, Subconscious and Self-Image Framework Kirsch’s framework posits that there are three aspects of the mind related to peak performance: the Conscious, the Subconscious, and the Self-Image. He broke it down into a race car metaphor that is imperfect, but I’ll run with it, anyway.
The Steering Wheel
His concept of the Conscious Mind was straightforward. It is the part of the mind we directly control and use to control our bodies, like a driver uses a steering wheel to control a race car. The conscious mind is great at logic and strategy, but it is slow and incapable of doing two things at once. One great distinction Kirsch made is that the conscious mind works in pictures. Going forward, I will use the word “images” to include all senses, but the principle remains: we often try to control our performance with words, but the brain craves images.
I think of Kevin Costner in Bull Durham standing at the plate mentally reciting, “Quick bat, quick bat.” He is using words to try to force a result when what he really wants to do is have the image of a quick swing in mind. In mental performance coaching, we teach that the mind doesn’t process negatives. If you say, “Don’t miss,” your mind drops the “don’t” and focuses on the image of “miss.” Why? Because you cannot imagine "not doing" something. You can only imagine the action itself. So, if you scream "Don't miss!" at yourself, you are inadvertently flooding your system with vivid images of missing, stiff muscles, and anxiety.
The Engine and Suspension
When Kirsch spoke of the Subconscious, he wasn’t getting into Freudian analysis. He was referring to the complex motor-control ability of the human neuromuscular system. He likened that to all of the machinery that makes a race car go fast and perform.
Basically, we learn skills slowly using our conscious mind. Since the conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time, we must learn one simple skill at a time. Over years of practice, we internalize those lessons skill upon skill, relegating them to the subconscious—what many call muscle memory.
Michael Jordan was born helpless, just like the rest of us. But over twenty-five years, he stacked simple skill on top of simple skill until his subconscious could execute a free-throw line dunk while his conscious mind did nothing more than look at the rim and say, “Go.” The subconscious is capable of performing thousands of micro-calculations at once, but it has two weaknesses: it can only be as good as it has been trained and it takes its orders from the conscious mind.
This is why the quality of practice matters so much. In the shooting world, we say, "It doesn’t do any good to practice missing." If you push your speed in practice to the point where you are fumbling and missing, you are literally training your subconscious to fumble and miss. You are better off slowing down to a speed where you can guarantee the hit so you let the subconscious learn the correct feeling. The subconscious likes to go fast, so speed will come of its own accord.
That is, IF the conscious mind lets it. The conscious mind likes to interfere. Sometimes people consciously push themselves to go faster. That is a conscious override of the subconscious that interferes with its ability to effectively and efficiently coordinate movements. The opposite is also true. If a shooter has a couple of misses, their conscious mind tries to slow them down which also mucks up the subconscious.
There is a concept in sports where Performance = potential - interference. In this context, the potential is the sum total of the training that the subconscious has received and the interference is the “improvements” that the conscious mind tries to make on the fly. Kirsch tells a brief story about one of his best matches where he finished a long stage that required firing so many shots that he must have reloaded his gun, but he had no recollection of actually doing that. That’s what happens when the conscious mind lets go of control and trusts the subconscious.
The Gas Pedal
That brings us to Self-Image. I really liked Kirsch’s framework on this. He defined self-image as "how you feel about yourself in relation to a specific activity." In the racecar metaphor, the car will only go as fast as the gas pedal will let it.
Simply put, you cannot outperform your self-image. It acts as a governor on your potential. As Henry Ford famously said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t – you’re right.” Self-image is built by your past experiences, your thoughts, and the words you use.
In conversation, most people tend to be self-deprecating because they don't want to appear cocky. If asked how a match is going, most shooters will rattle off a list of their mistakes rather than their great shots. This creates a self-defeating echo chamber. To change your self-image, you must curate your memories and care for your words and thoughts. You have to discipline yourself to leave the mistakes behind and vividly recall the successes. It feels unnatural at first, but over time, you build a new "truth" about who you are as a competitor.
Summary
The triumvirate of Conscious Mind, Subconscious Mind and Self Image is a powerful and simplified framework to think about mental performance in any discipline. All of the practice that athletes, salespeople, dancers and performers of all types undertake is there to train the subconscious as well as to build self image. The conscious mind runs the show in practice but must be carefully controlled to make sure it is feeding the subconscious good training and the self image positive reinforcement.
I got a lot out of Kirsch’s DVD. It proves once again that there is no such thing as wasted time when pursuing what you love—there is always value to be found, whether it be in learning something new or reinforcing what you already know. Kirsch’s DVD was a nice helping of both.
Below are some links to Saul Kirsch’s content.
Saul Kirsch interview on competition mindset
This video features an interview with Saul Kirsch where he discusses the realities of professional competition and the mindset required to succeed at the highest levels.
Being a Sponsored Competitor in USPSA or IPSC | Saul Kirsch of Double Alpha Interview