Optimizing performance in an élite level shooter

Action-oriented methods have been recently developed and applied in sport to help athletes improve, stabilize, and optimize their performance during practice and competition. For example, Hanin and Hanina (2009) proposed an action-focused intervention procedure in top level athletes closely interrelated to emotion-focused coping. Drawing on this perspective, we applied an action-oriented individualized approach in a preliminary study on an élite level, small bore pistol shooter (a 20-year-old woman), who was involved in a four-step procedure. First, the participant was requested to accurately and extensively describe her usually optimal sequence (i.e., the chain of actions) of a single shot from start to follow-through. Second, the shooter was asked to identify from her “chain” a small number of the most important “key points” (three or four) deemed fundamental in order to optimally perform. Third, the performer was engaged in several shooting sections and requested to assess herself by rating the accuracy of each key point on a Likert-type scale ranging from 0 to 11. Key point ratings were linked to shooting scores classified as good (10 and above) or poor (less than 10). Logistical ordinal regression (LOR) analysis was then conducted to identify the probability levels of optimal/poor performance associated with the key point ratings. Path analysis was also executed to examine the full links among key point scores and the full range of shooting scores. Finally, the most influential key points identified through LOR and path analysis were applied in competition.