Lanny Bassham, Olympic gold-medalist in small-bore rifle competition,
tells what concentration does for his marksmanship: “Our sport is controlled
nonmovement. We are shooting from 50 metres - over half a football field - at a
bull's eye three-quarters the size of a dime. If the angle of error at the
point of the barrel is more than .005 of a millimetre (that is five
one-thousandths), you drop into the next circle and lose a point. So we have to
learn how to make everything stop. I stop my breathing. I stop my digestion by
not eating for 12 hours before the competition. I train by running to keep my
pulse around 60, so I have a full second between beats - I have gotten it lower,
but found that the stroke-volume increased so much that each beat really jolted
me. You do all of this and you have the technical control. But you have to have
some years of experience in reading conditions: the wind, the mirage. Then you
have the other 80% of the problems - the mind.
Sports Illustrated, August 2,
1976, pp. 31-35, quoted in How to Profit from Bible Reading, I. L. Jensen,
Moody Press, p. 80
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