Do they show Ms. Reese running in slow motion? That's all I really want to see this season.
Missed the first episode(s?) and these threads are ruining it for me!!
And that's why those sports are so boring.
Preach...
They need to make a reality show about a real exciting sport, like chess. Haha
And that's why those sports are so boring.
They are indeed boring to watch. However, a GOLFER made more shots than our national champions. They are making all of us look bad. You remember what Col Cooper said about a golf course, don't you?
Relax Mike. All you missed was USPSA shooters missing all their shots at a billiards ball and a guy crying at the end of the show. If the Speaker of the House can cry in public, then a shooter can too. I'm gonna watch the World Series of baseball next year so I can someone cry in it also.
I am not saying anyone of the Grandmaster/National Champion type shooters are bad. My observation is based on last season and so far this season is they as a whole have preformed horribly. A golf instructor hit more pool balls than the professional shooters. In the elimination round Chris owned the guy he went up against. I dont know him personally but my wife made the comment and I did agree after I looked that Chris seemed more annoyed than anything to be there. His body language was horrible.
Well I never had him offer to buy any guns from me, but the few times I have shot against him in 3-gun matches I can attest to the fact that he come with an "attitude" pre-installed, and he sure takes a whippin badly and to make matters worse he is also a horrible winner. I am glad he has one person that likes him cause from where I was standing he must have been getting mighty lonely. Trouble was he got real good young and then started buying his own press and now comes with a sense of entiltlement...in short I agree with Loudshirt and his wife.
I think this is the heart of the matter in a show like Top Shot.
A while ago I spoke to a former world chess champion who is now competing in jiu-jitsu at a tournament and he was commenting how under-developed the mental game is in many sports and how he had been able to apply the intense pressures of chess to other activities.
I think sports like USPSA, Multi-Gun, and a number of other non-shooting sports may be new enough that the majority of competitors, including the best ones, are still focusing on the physical and technical aspects of the sport i.e. the Leatham/Enos style grip and modern iso stance that dominates the action shooting sports were only popularized in the last 25-30 years. Golf and chess techniques/strategies have not changed in the last two centuries.
Bullseye shooters have been doing largely the same thing physically and technically for several hundred years so the sports developments have been inside the mind rather than in the hands.
The only thing that has really changed in sports like bullseye and archery is the equipment.
This tends to affect an athlete more than most would attribute and may be at least partially responsible for some USPSA shooters not displaying their true talents in this show.
This is not to suggest that any particular group of shooters are weak mentally, but it is suprising how far one can go in a sport despite have less than an optimal mindset i.e. Mike Tyson's difficulty coping with anyone who could handle his punch.
Just some thoughts........
Michael Brown
Mental toughness, acceptance of being unsuccessful, and dealing with consequences waived bye-bye as soon as our society decided to make all kids winners and with the "everyone gets a trophy for competing" theory.
Chess as you mentioned should be required in schools IMO, it skills people in those things I mentioned above that are seriously lacking today.
ps: I am fond of the saying: "If it was easy, everyone would do it and then it would be worthless"
I think we're talking about different concepts.
Mental toughness i.e. the ability to continue through adversity, varies from athlete to athlete and while I will agree is reduced from years past, is still present in enormous amounts in a number of sports including USPSA, multi-gun, etc.
What I am referring to is the ability to be "present" in a task.
Very few people without a psychology background or without extensive study on the matter have some understanding of what it takes to be "present".
Various societies have names for it i.e. Zen in Asian culture but it's really the same thing: the ability to focus on nothing but the task at hand to the exclusion of all else.
The great Col. Cooper referred to it in personal protection matters and provided what is probably the most easily observed example of it when he described the act of a quarterback making a precision pass when a linebacker is bearing down on him.
The conscious mind recognizes that he will likely be hit, but does him no good in completing his task, so he simply continues to focus on the task of completing the pass rather than focusing on the unimportant things i.e. the liklihood that he will take a rib-shattering hit.
Because a sport like chess requires future computations well in excess of two moves ahead, it requires the player to see the whole board yet focus on the task at hand i.e. the very next move.
This has become so advanced in the chess world that players spend more time trying to get inside the head of their opponent than they do actually moving pieces.
This is what I am referring to, despite the fact that I agree with your premise that society is much less mentally tough today and has become so because we have chosen to reward mediocrity.
Michael Brown
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