Deliberate Practice

Definition

Deliberate Practice is geared specifically for leveraging the most out of every practice session.  Take target practice, for example, it is not just shooting the weapon and hitting your target but using specific scenarios in mind. You need to already have planned out in your head what it is your training for (scenario/tactic,) and have your weapon and magazines already loaded accordingly.

Effort vs Talent

When you combine effort with talent your practice sessions improve. What you get out of each practice session depends more on effort than it does talent. You can be innately gifted with a certain ability, but it does you no good if you don’t put the effort required into improving.

Support Systems

Deliberate practice is much more efficient if you have someone who is already skilled in that area to go help you along the way. Two brains are always better than one, especially when it comes to improvement. Working together to reach a goal provides you with numerous benefits. They may see areas where you can improve on that you may have otherwise missed.

The bottom line is if you want to achieve a certain goal, who better to learn from than one who already has? Want to be successful? Then hang out with the people that are successful. Want to be smarter? Then spend time with those that are smart. Join clubs, take part in competitions. Surround yourself with those you would like to learn from.

Motivation

Deliberate practice is all about being properly motivated. Have you ever tried learning something that you thought was boring? Your mind wanders, you have trouble focusing, it is harder to stay on task and much easier to come up with excuses not to follow through. Unless you are properly motivated, you are destined to fail. Even if you push through and practice on a regular basis, it will not get you as far as you would have gone if you were more driven.

Find someone who has the same goal as you do and work together to achieve those goals.

Train to Failure

When we train in the army, we train to failure. Nothing works. The radio is down, men are “dying” left and right, our medic dies, our leadership dies, the truck breaks down, weapons malfunction. It goes on and on. The NCO in charge of the training drills doesn’t stop throwing problems at us. Yet we are fully expected to improvise, adapt and overcome.

Live by Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Use that line of thinking in all aspects of your life, especially when it comes to shooting and . Push yourself as hard as you can, especially in the weak areas. Cover every possible angle so efficiently that when the real deal happens, your mindset is already geared to handle much worse and overcoming the attacker is much easier than any training you’ve done.

What do you do to improve? Share with us your methods in a comment below.