S2 E2: Process Vs Performance - Timothy Cunningham
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- By Timothy Cunningham
Finn Sisu Blog. S2 E2: Process Vs Performance.
The GRP at SoHo on race day
Hello folks. It’s the end of September and the GRP is heading to Utah for our annual altitude camp/ biathlon team trials. Trials races are the 4th and 5th of October, and for a season that starts at the end of November that is crazy early to have qualification events. Not to mention we will be using roller skis to make selections about ski speed on snow. At least the skis are new and all the same exact speed (thanks to Finn Sisu Store). The topic I want to approach today is the transition from training to performing. All spring, summer, and early fall are spent training aspects of our competitive processes, but not necessarily performing. Let me break that down a little bit.
Performance on race day is determined by one’s ability to maximize their sport’s performance criteria as much as possible, mixed in with some small degree of luck depending on the sport. Biathlon’s performance criteria include: ski speed, technical economy, specific fitness, tactics, shooting speed, and hit rate. Each of these can be further defined into minutia which aids in planning out training goals on a session by session basis. The luck is introduced from having other capable competitors and variable snow/wind conditions in biathlon, after all, we can’t ethically control how our competitors do in their race, nor can we normalize snow/wind conditions. However, spending time improving the different aspects of performance will help minimize the amount of luck in our results on race day. The catch here is that we don’t spend all summer and fall “performing” biathlon.
What I always found interesting was the focus during the training hours of the off season; shooting in particular was never about the hit rates, but about emphasizing how to consistently execute aspects of each shot. Intervals are done to increase fitness and economy, drills improve technical economy and shooting skills, range games challenge our procedures on the shooting mat, all with the goal of coming together just before races start such that our performance is elevated over the previous season. We spend months thinking about trigger squeeze, holding on target, exhaling in repeatable ways just to build consistency in the process but with limited focus on how many targets we are hitting. Then trials season comes early (compared to the rest of the world) and actually executing biathlon well suddenly matters a great deal. The focus shifts from improving the individual aspects to consistently executing at the level of the sum of the parts. To make matters more “exciting” the transition for Americans happens in late October, after we finish qualifying for the season opening races! Now nerves come into play, adding more pressure to execute a quality performance to start the season off well.
Reviewing the shooting process before a hard effort.
So how do we transition from skill development and process focused training sessions to simultaneously hitting targets quickly and skiing fast?
It’s a great question, if you have any answers please tell me; I’m still developing a complete solution myself.
In my experience, the largest part of the transition is mental. Hitting targets is a simple thing on paper (no pun intended): Set up your shooting position so the barrel is pointing as close to the target as possible, relax your body, breathe, fine aim, and make sure the trigger goes off while you are aiming at the center of the target. These are exactly the components of our processes we work on all summer, and it’s a recipe so robust a robot could do it. Of course the mind might jump to “but Tim! When you ski two miles as hard as you can and then have to shoot it’s really really hard!” Yes, the duality of biathlon is exactly why it’s such an exciting sport to watch, and a unique challenge to perform, but the principles of shooting during a race are the same: relax, aim for the middle, let the shot fly and the target goes down every time. It is a simple process, challenging to execute in the chaos of a heated race, but ultimately the part of the shooting game that is hardest is keeping your head in the right place to do what you learned over the entire training year. Just because the process is simple doesn’t mean it is easy, but if you can hit one target, you can hit five.
To help this process I give myself a cue or two to remind me of my process in the heat of the moment. One cue decouples me from my anxiety during the race, usually “make this a race you’ll be proud to remember,” which has enough meaning to me that I can understand how to anchor myself in the moment. The second cue gives me a specific, process based focus for when I’m on the mat. If I’m struggling with prone shooting I think about “painting the target” or in standing, “aiming for the prone target.” To each their own of course, but I believe it is important to have some phrase or readily available process goal handy for when you get tired mid effort and can’t think straight.
The physical side of biathlon is also important. Training with Sean Doherty ensures I get worked pretty hard.
I don’t mention ski speed as a difficult aspect of performance to harness on race day, because skiing hard is the only part of biathlon that we are usually too good at doing. Skiing hard, maxing out your body’s systems is demanding and daunting at times, but it’s much more routine and predominantly not the part of biathlon that holds performance back at the international level, although it is definitely advantageous to have a technique cue to hold onto depending on the demands of the course. However, the half a second of hesitation that causes a target to be missed adds 30 seconds of penalty time to your race; not having 1% more fitness might slow you down by just as much or more, but it is not a factor you can correct on race day. Spend your energy strengthening the weakest link first.
I hope this finds you well as we approach the racing season! Looking forward to seeing you out there!