Reddit reviews With Winning in Mind 3rd. Ed.

Production M here—been shooting USPSA for less than two years.

The talent pool here in ATL is rough—it's not unusual for three or four Production GMs to show up for a local match—so cracking top five (which I've done) requires a solid M-class performance.

Start off by ordering the Ben Stoeger combo pack along with a couple mini targets and working out of that for your live- and dry-fire practice . Also read With Winning in Mind at some point. Your mental game is worth a couple of places in the final standings at a major match

You ask specifically about live fire, but you'll never manage to do enough of that to get beyond mediocre unless you live next to a range and have an unlimited ammo budget. Cranking out 30–60 minutes of dry fire a night is what's going to do it. You don't need to pop off live rounds to practice your draw, movement skills, target transitions, reloading, table starts, handling props, and all the other critical skills. Dry fire is where the majority of your skill development and wiring these things into your subconscious should occur.

When I hit the range for live-fire practice, a big part of it is validating dry-fire development with the gun going off in my hands. The impact of recoil and how it disturbs sight alignment is the big change in live fire, and it slows down drill times. And the harder the targets, the greater the difference. There's also more room to set up mini stages and move around, so take advantage of that. Also learn how good a sight picture you need to make various shots. You can punch Alphas at 5 yards with your front sight off on the side of the notch, but everything needs to be perfect to hit a mini popper at 30 yards.

Shooting three matches a month is probably too much unless you're practicing during the week or it's match nerves/understanding how to shoot a matches that's holding you back. You just don't put enough rounds downrange at a match for it to be good practice, and you also don't have control over the skills being tested.

Check out With Winning In Mind By Lanny Bassham, that book really helped when I was going through similar issues. Best of luck to you in Juniors, remember its a game not life or death.

Theres a really good book called "with winning in mind" its from a former olympic gold medalist in Shooting which is an extreemly mental game. It all comes down to being perfect as many times as you can all the while if you get overly excited and your heart rate gets out of control it will throw off the shot.

This guy has gone on to train many other champions, olympic gold medalists and the book/audiotapes are studied religiously at the Navy Seal sniping school to help solve the mental game of high performers. It basically describes how to condition yourself to be high functioning. I really can't recommend it enough.

Probably a mental issue, as a comp shooter I see this all the time from both junior shooters and experienced shooters. best way to get over this kinda stuff is literally just to out train it but reading books like With Winning In Mind (book that focuses on mental training for shooting) can also be very helpful.