Top competition pistol shooter, BJ Norris, blogged about his 2011 goals.

Note. BJ is in the elite of competition pistol shooters, with numerous Open Junior National championships and also a World and National Steel Challenge SteelMaster title. He’s fast, he’s accurate, he’s good at what he does.

So notice what his goals are about:

• Dry fire 15 minutes daily
• Group shooting
• Physical readiness

What do you notice? It’s all fundamentals and working those fundamentals on a consistent basis. It’s also very calculated: shaving 0.1 seconds off his draw adds up to 3.1 seconds over the course of a match, and that’s HUGE at his level of competition. He wants to repeat the World title this year, and that will be all about speed and accuracy. So he’s doing what he can to go faster and do it in a calculated manner. Working group shooting will help his accuracy and work those fundamentals of sight picture, sight alignment, and trigger control.

It’s always interesting how we journey through something. As a beginner we learn the fundamentals but want to get on to learning the advanced skills because they’re fancy and exciting. But once you get to that advanced level, you realize that you need to go back to the fundamentals if you want to become a master. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, it’s all about fundamentals. They’re never sexy, but you’ll never get anywhere without them… nor the goals to motivate you along.