One of the easiest things to remember from a practice session is the thing that went wrong.
You can perform four clean reloads, fumble the fifth one, and walk away thinking about the magazine you dropped. You can shoot an excellent stage except for one poor target and spend the drive home replaying that target in your mind.
That reaction is understandable, but I do not think it is particularly useful.
I would rather identify what went well, understand why it worked, and deliberately reinforce it. In With Winning in Mind, Lanny Bassham describes the importance of positive imprints on your self image. That concept has become an important part of how I approach shooting practice and competition.
The basic idea is simple: focus on what you do well and do more of that.
What Is a Positive Imprint?
A positive imprint is a deliberate recognition of something you did correctly or improved during practice or competition.
It does not have to be spectacular. Maybe you had your best transition of the day. Maybe you trusted a called shot instead of looking for the hole. Maybe your movement into a position was better than it had been the week before. Maybe you stayed with your stage plan when something unexpected happened.
The important part is recognizing the behavior you want to repeat.
Many shooters do the opposite. They finish a session and immediately catalogue everything that went wrong. The dropped magazine, the Delta, the missed steel, or the stage plan mistake becomes the memory that dominates the session.
That gives an unusual amount of attention to the exact performance you do not want to repeat. Positive imprints shift that attention toward the performance you do want.
Positive Does Not Mean Ignoring Problems
This is an important distinction.
Positive imprints do not mean pretending that mistakes did not happen. They do not mean convincing yourself that a poor performance was actually good.
If you made a mistake, you need to recognize it. The difference is what you do next.
Suppose you fumble a reload while running. You can replay the fumble repeatedly and tell yourself that you are bad at reloads, or you can identify what needs to change and turn the mistake into something useful.
Maybe the solution is to practice more reloads while moving. Maybe you were looking at the next target instead of the magwell. Maybe your magazine grip was inconsistent.
Once you identify the solution, the mistake has served its purpose. Your attention should now move to what you need to do, not what you need to avoid.
That is a recurring principle in my training:
Focus on the problem long enough to find the solution. Then focus on the solution.
Your next repetitions should reinforce the action you want rather than continually reminding yourself of the error.
One Good Repetition Matters
Suppose you are working on a skill and only one out of ten repetitions goes exactly the way you want.
It is easy to look at that session and think you failed nine times. I would look very closely at the successful repetition.
What did you see? What did you feel? What did you do differently? Can you repeat it?
That one good repetition proves that the performance is possible. Your job is to understand it and create more repetitions that look like it.
Eventually one good repetition becomes two. Two becomes four. Four becomes eight. That is improvement.
This does not mean the unsuccessful repetitions contain no information. They help reveal what needs work. But once you know the correction, the successful repetition becomes much more useful because it shows you what the solution actually feels like.
Record What Went Well
I recommend keeping some form of shooting journal.
After practice or competition, write down at least three things that went well. They do not need to be major accomplishments. In fact, some of the most useful positive imprints are small improvements that might otherwise be forgotten.
You might write that you called every shot on a particular drill, that your reloads felt smoother, or that you entered a position without the extra settling step you normally take.
Be specific enough that the entry means something when you read it later.
Instead of writing:
“Transitions were good.”
you might write:
“I consistently got my eyes to the next target before the gun moved, and the dot appeared near the spot I was looking at.”
The second version tells you what you actually did well. That gives you something you can deliberately repeat.
I also like recording what I learned or what I want to practice next. The key is to phrase that in terms of the desired action.
Instead of:
“Stop fumbling running reloads.”
write:
“Practice running reloads while keeping my eyes on the magwell during insertion.”
The problem identified the training need. The journal records the solution.
Competition Gives You Positive Imprints Too
Positive imprints are not just for practice.
A match gives you excellent evidence about which parts of your training are transferring to performance. Maybe you executed a stage plan exactly as rehearsed. Maybe you called a questionable shot and immediately made it up. Maybe you moved aggressively where you previously would have hesitated. Maybe you handled an unfamiliar problem without becoming distracted by it.
Record those things.
Competition can make this especially important because it is easy to judge the entire day by the final placement. You may finish lower than you wanted while still doing several things substantially better than you did a month earlier.
Those improvements matter.
The result tells you where you finished. The positive imprints help tell you how you are becoming a better shooter.
Mistakes Are Part of Improvement
If you are pushing the boundaries of your ability in practice, mistakes are going to happen.
That is particularly true when you are trying to become faster. At some point you have to experience what a faster draw, transition, reload, or movement pattern feels like. When you begin exploring that edge, not every repetition will be perfect.
That does not automatically make the practice unsuccessful. You need enough judgment to separate a useful training error from careless repetition.
If the purpose of the drill was to experience greater speed, a mistake may tell you where the current boundary is. The next question becomes: How do I retain the speed while improving the execution?
That is a much more productive question than simply labeling the repetition bad.
Steve Anderson teaches this distinction through Speed Mode and Match Mode, a framework we will explore more fully in a separate article.
Build Evidence, Not Empty Confidence
There is another reason I like recording positive imprints.
Over time, you create a record of things you have actually done. That matters.
Confidence is much stronger when it has evidence behind it.
If you have repeatedly made difficult shots in practice, called your shots accurately, performed clean reloads under movement, and executed good stage plans in competition, you do not have to manufacture confidence before the next match.
You have evidence.
You can look back and see that you have done these things before.
That is different from pretending you are capable of something you have never demonstrated.
Positive imprints are not about telling yourself that you are perfect. They are about accurately recognizing the evidence that you are improving.
Your shooting journal can eventually become a record of that progress.
Train Yourself to Notice the Good
Something interesting happens when you repeatedly look for positive imprints.
You begin noticing them more quickly.
Instead of finishing a practice session and asking only, “What did I screw up?” you also begin asking, “What did I do particularly well today?”
That changes the way you evaluate your performance.
You still identify areas that need work. You still measure results. You still correct technical problems. But those problems stop defining the entire session.
You begin looking for the behaviors that produced success so you can reproduce them.
That is exactly what we want from training.
Do More of What Works
Improvement requires correction, but correction alone is not enough. You also need to recognize success.
When something goes wrong, identify the solution and train it. When something goes right, understand why it worked and reinforce it.
Write down the good performances. Remember them. Repeat them.
Over time, you should accumulate more and more evidence of the shooter you are becoming.
Focus on what you do well and do more of that.
That is the purpose of positive imprints.