2002-02 February 2002 Coaching Hour – Slumps and Plateaus

…….February – Slumps and Plateaus…….

 – Review of Target Setting

 – Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde

 – Slumps and Plateaus

 – Slumps Are Self-induced . .

The slumps and plateaus section is probably going to take up most of the evening, but while I’m going through some of this I want you to be thinking about what your definition of a slump or a plateau might be because we’re going to talk about that. But I’ve got quite a bit of information on the differences between slumps and plateaus, how to get out of them, how to recognize them. And I think it’s going to be a very valuable 20 or 30 minutes that I spend talking to you.

And if we get through slumps and plateaus then I’m going to talk about selective amnesia and anxiety and doubt confusing the subconscious.

That having been said, I think I’m going to start with a review of what we learned last month from the target setters. Number one: Always watch the flight path of the target. Steve this goes with skeet too. To look at the effect of the wind on high one or low seven, you understand what I mean?

 Steve: Yes.

 Gil: Whether it’s going inside the stake or whether it’s gusting, always watch the targets all the way to the ground and notice any change in the trajectory of the flight path. This doesn’t apply to skeet as much, but you always want to know where they’re coming from. That means you always want to know where the trap is. And if, in sporting clays, you can walk along the pathway and you can get behind the trap and look at the target come off the trap, a lot of times you can see things about the flight path that you can’t see from the stand.

So if you ever have the opportunity to walk along the pathway and see what the bird’s doing from behind the trap, that’s another good way to read the target. Another thing that I heard when I listened to the CDs again is that the target setters will try to set a wide distance between breakpoints. When Neil was talking about that, and he was talking about those little flop birds, and he was talking about how the forward lead decreases as the under lead increases, I wanted so badly last month to talk to him about staying out of the circle and letting the target come to the gun, and why we teach people to learn to break targets in different spots.

That’s one of the reasons our system works well with sporting clays, because we always admonish you to practice single targets and even when you’re practicing pairs to move the breakpoint. Because if you can move the breakpoint, you can make the targets easier by keeping the breakpoints closer together therefore there is less risk of the eyes and the gun having to travel too far.

I was having a lesson with Dean Olson, out at Westside Gun Club this last weekend and we had a quartering pair of birds. One trap was 10 yards to the left and the other trap was 10 yards to the right. The left one was a midi, the right one was a 108 and they were crossing about forty yards in front of us. And he was trying to break the left target real quick so he could have time for the second target. But what was happening to him, he was breaking it so quick that he was having to go so far to find and go to the second target. I said, “Man, break the first one out there almost where it crosses with the second one.” And he said, “pull,” bap bap, and he almost stacked the breakpoints. So quick is not necessarily good. Everybody with me on that? It’s really important.

Another thing that target setters are using is, they’ll throw a flat bird with a curling bird, a fast bird with a slow bird. They talked about using a midi and a standard at the same time. Remember that? And always when you get in the cage be sure and ask what the targets are. Standard and a midi? Two standards? Because the midi can be very deceptive if you don’t know it’s a midi. You’ll think it’s twice as far away and you’ll miss it in front. Something else that occurred to me when I was working with Dean this last weekend was about targets that can be shot either way. A true pair of targets that can be shot either way, can sometimes be confusing to people because they’ll get the monkey see monkey do syndrome. They’ll see other people shooting it a certain way, and their gut tells them to shoot it a different way. But just because everybody else is shooting it that way, they’ll go in and shoot it the same way rather than trusting their own gut. When your gut is telling you to break it a different way, make your own plan and stick to it.

About speed tendencies of targets, the standard target: normal ride, normal rate of deceleration, you’re used to it because that’s the target you see the most. The only time that a standard target does not decelerate at its normal rate is when it’s thrown from a tower. Typically rather than decelerating and floating, gravity will take hold of it and it will pull it to the ground therefore the target will not decelerate unless it’s thrown into a wind. That’s why we tell you: All tower targets take lead. Remember that. Rarely will you ever shoot a tower target in zone one. They’re going to be in zone two or zone three. All tower targets take lead.

The midi target has the slowest rate of deceleration, which means it retains its velocity the longest: It’s fastest and it’s fast a long way. The size is deceptive if you don’t know it’s a midi. Always ask. The mini tar- get has a very rapid deceleration. Let it go and when it slows down, just shoot at it. Two other targets I want to talk about: The bateau target accelerates as it gets close to the ground, the higher up when it turns  the faster it’s going to get as it gets closer to the ground. And the rab- bit target, when it’s thrown as a bateau, or a rabbit in the air, I think has the fastest maintained velocity of any target, because it has no drag. It’s heavy. It’s got a lot of mass. It’s going to gain velocity coming down, and it will maintain its velocity a long time. It’s going to take a lot of  lead.

Another thing that Mike talked about was backing the spring off. We call that one a slow flopping target. It’s very important on this one that it has a constant transitional line, that you be even more specific with your breakpoint. Always try to let that target come to you. It takes the curl out of it.

Something else we talked about last month was the color of targets. Any time you have an all orange target in a milky sky, it’s very hard to see. Hopefully in the next couple of years, the range owners will realize that if it’s in the air, they should always throw black. But until then, if you have an orange target against a milky sky, meaning the sun is kind of coming from the direction of the target, the sky’s not blue, or if it’s an overcast day, it’s of extreme importance that you select a specific focal point and keep your eyes still so they’ll pick up that little glimmer of movement. Look for a point in the flight path where the target loses speed. This is typically one-half to two-thirds of the way out of the house. That’s when the target becomes more vulnerable. Whenever you can take them in that area, take them there. Less speed, less lead. Remember: Speed creates the largest difference in lead than any other thing. If it’s fast, it takes lead. If it’s not fast, it doesn’t take lead.

Does anybody remember anything else from the target setters besides what I mentioned? Then I’ve done a great job of summarizing that. Okay, blondie, what are you going to talk about  tonight?

Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde

 Vicki: Okay, I’m taking on the third personality that we see. And because I put names to all of these, this is the Doctor Jekyll/Mr. Hyde personality. This is the person that’s either really too up or too down. Okay, the Dr. Jekyll of this group is great before the round starts and as long as he’s hitting the targets, everything is great, he is euphoric, he has been to the mountaintop. But then he starts missing. The evil Mr. Hyde emerges and this person goes into utter distress and helplessness.

He’s easily discouraged and gets down on himself. What he needs to do is concentrate on the hits and forget the misses. How many times have y’all been out and I’m using myself because I’ve done this, you’ve gone through two or three stands and then said: “Oh my gosh, I’ve missed two at every stand. There are twelve stands, I’m going to drop at least 24 targets.” And you know? By golly you do. You drop at least 24 if not 26 or 30.

So you can’t think about the misses, you have to concentrate on the next hit. The evil Mr. Hyde instead of looking at the misses as things to practice, he looks upon the misses as failures in his life. Each failure means that his self-esteem goes down. I don’t think I would want to be this person and have to rely upon my round of sporting clays to make me feel good or bad. Don’t make sporting clays something that controls your happiness in life. Competition is a measure of what you need to practice, what your strengths and weaknesses are, not your failures as a person. What is this person’s solution? You’ve got to take the failures and the misses and practice on improving your game. You’ve got to stay in the present. Don’t think about score during the round, because then you’re thinking about the misses, not the hits. You’ve got to stay focused on hitting the target at hand. Learn from your misses, but don’t dwell on them. Don’t take the misses or failures personally. Let them go, and stay like the good Dr. Jekyll, not the evil Mr. Hyde. And that’s it. I know you guys have all seen this person.

Slumps and Plateaus

 Gil: In preparing this I went to my little book of -isms and found three that go with this. The first one is: “Failure has a habit of repeating itself.” The next one is: “Failure is a temporary state that seems to last forever.” And the third one is: “The inability to forget is infinitely more devastating than the inability to remember.” You’ve got to leave them in the past guys.

Anybody got a guess on when the past and future are the same?

 Audience Member: When you don’t learn from your mistakes.

 Gil: That’s a good guess. That’s not the answer.

 Audience: Right now.

 Gil: Pardon me?

Audience: Right now. The present.

 Gil: When you are in the present you control both the future and the past. The only way you can control either the future or the past is to always, “Wherever you are, be all there.” Lenny Basham said that. “Wherever you are, be all there.” That’s the only way you can control the outcome and that’s the only way you can control the past is to control the only thing you can control which is being in the present. That’s great. Good, thank you dear.

Now to the main part of the show. Somebody take a stab at defining what a plateau is. Who wants to try that? Come on it ain’t going to hurt you.

 Phil: It’s a retrenchment of your learning curve.

 Gil: A what?

 Phil: A retrenchment from your learning curve.

 Gil: What’s a retrenchment?

 Phil: Your skill level continually climbs in a non-linear fashion—

 Gil: Wait a minute, wait a minute. ‘Retrenchment’ and ‘linear’ are not allowed Phil.

 Phil: Well you’re backing off on your skill a little bit. You have a certain amount of skill and you’re advancing at a known rate and for whatever reason you stop.

 Brian: You’re tapped out.

 Gil: Tapping out okay. Tell me what a slump is.

 Phil: A slump is— well, it’s pretty much the same thing. A slump when it continues for some time it starts to affect you mentally?

 Gil: Okay, anybody else got a stab at what a slump is?

 John: Well, my definition would be when you’re not even able to attain your average on a consistent basis.

Gil: Very good.

 Willy: It’s a real pain in the ass. (laughter)

Gil: Willy, I can understand that. The first thing I’d like to talk about tonight is plateaus.

I want to share with you several of the plateaus in sporting clays that we tend to see. I promise you, if you haven’t already passed all these you’re going to get to them. And Vicki and I have come up with things that we see help people get through all of these plateaus.

A plateau, for our discussion this evening, I would like for you to think of it as this: it’s when your scores level off due to a lack of knowledge or experience. I think you all hit it right on the head. I think Brian said you’re just tapped out. Based on what you know, you’re performing at the best level that you can based on your knowledge and your score tends to fluctuate only two to three birds in either direction, I think John Martin said that. “You’ve gone as far as you’re going to go, given your knowledge and experience and the quality of your move.” Change at this point in time is inevitable in order for you to move on.

Now, you must always look forward to plateaus. Because with every plateau you reach, there is always something great around the corner.  But it’s  critical that you realize when you’re at a plateau that you  should get help, or it’s probable that your plateau will  turn  into  a slump. We’ll talk about this a little later. Phil kind of mentioned that when he said it was more   self-induced.

Now I’m going to go to the score plateaus that people reach in sporting clays. First of all they start at a 50, then they go to a 65, and then they fluctuate between 72 and 78. The reason they’re there, the reason the greatest number of shooters in this sport are always stuck there, is because they’re in the conscious competence phase of learning. When they started out they were in the unconscious incompetence phase. No approach, no guesses as to how to do it. They get in the stand, load the shell, call “pull” and they shoot at the birds. Then they get hooked, and they start thinking about foot position, and hold point and breakpoint, well, a little about breakpoint, and focal point. And then they start having fun, start reading everything, they go through the American Express curve of buying everything they can find to try and get another target. But they’re still operating in the conscious mind and I am here to tell you, we have yet to see anybody shoot better than 78 when they’re in the conscious competence phase, unless they’re at a fluffy corporate shoot.

From 78, they go immediately to an 81. The way they get to an 81, is they realize that they have to improve their move and they begin to be aware of breakpoints on targets. Then they go to an 84 by beginning to work on their routine. They go from an 84 to an 86, because, through the move improving and their routine, they begin to feel and they begin to be more aware of the breakpoint. And then they begin to control the voice. Then they go from an 86 to an 88, because they have more feel and more feel yields more trust. Then here’s the big jump. They go from 88 to 92 or 93 based on one thing: trust. They begin to realize that if they give in to the voice, they’re in the conscious mind. Trust is the thing that gets you into the last phase of learning and performance called subconscious competence. Steve Mancinelli, we talked about trust a lot when I was there last, didn’t we?

 Steve: Yes.

 Gil: And trust is the thing that turns 97s, 98s and 99s on the skeet field into 100s. You’ve got to control that voice. But the only way to control the voice whether it’s skeet trap or sporting clays, is through feeling the move. The subconscious mind only feels, it doesn’t reason. And as the move gets better and when you feel your move better, your trust increases. So in sporting clays they go from an 88 to a 92 or a 93, that’s a four to five target jump and the reason they can make that jump and stay up in the 90s is because they’ve finally learned how to conquer the voice, they can feel the breakpoint and they can feel the target dead before the gun gets to their face and they pull the trigger.

I will tell you, we have seen these curves happen many, many times. Rarely is there an exception to these curves. When you go back and listen to the CD I want you to write all these things down, because I’ve just given you the answers to the test based on where you’re at in your performance. Not many people know this, guys. Because not many people are out there doing it like Vicki and I are.

 John: I have one question Gil.

 Gil: Yes sir.

 John: I don’t know how to say it, but I believe, based on what I’ve seen in the last five years, that the targets have become more, I guess they’re harder in a sense, because we’re using more transitions and curves, but these  curves  have  stayed  the  same  even  though the targets and presentations have gotten stiffer.

 Gil: Precisely. Precisely. And where are you in that curve? 88 to 92?

 John: Yeah, I’m an 86 to 88 guy, 84 to 88 somewhere in there.

 Gil: Okay, now, I’m not kidding you, when you get this CD, put it in your computer and write these things down. If you keep a log, this needs to go in your log because this tells you what we have seen that has helped people conquer and go from one plateau to the next plateau. The answers to the test are right here guys.

 John: Well I know it’s in the feel. It has nothing to do with anything else.

 Gil: Agreed. It’s in the feel and the quality of the move. Because if you can’t trust it, if you can’t feel it, Tim Gallwey in his book, The Inner Game of Golf, the revised edition, says, “If you can’t feel it, you can’t fix it.” And he’s talking about the peak of the peak performance. It’s now more about feel than anything else.

Slumps Are Self-induced

 Gil: That’s enough about plateaus. On to this thing they call slumps. Slumps are self-induced. Can you all agree with that?

 Audience: Yes.

 Gil: You make a plateau a slump. There’s just no doubt in my mind. I have a little -ism here. The guy in the slump looks in the mirror one morning while he’s shaving and realizes he’s in the declining years of a mediocre career as a clay target shooter. (laughter) Nobody likes to be mediocre, you know what I mean? He looks in the mirror one day and says, “Why do I do this?”

 John: I think that’s why a lot of people quit.

 Gil: I agree 100 percent, John Martin. Most people get into this  game

— they’ll get into the range of 72 to 78 and won’t get any better because they won’t turn loose of conscious control. And Steve it happens in skeet too, doesn’t it?

Steve: Yeah, it sure does.

 Gil: They get into A class or just into AA, and they can’t win any more, but they won’t make a higher commitment to get better, and then they quit, don’t they?

 Steve: They sure do. The largest number of people who quit are the ones that just break into AA and they can’t win anymore, so they quit. The most populated classes are C to A because they’re still learning and coming up.

 John: Well, I hear that a lot in sporting clays. Like a friend of mine got into master class and he goes, “Well, you know, I can’t win anymore because I’ve got to compete against the Krugers and the Fowlers and the guys who do this for a living and there’s no point in me doing this anymore.” And I go, “Yeah, but you can always get better.” But for him, if he couldn’t win, he didn’t want to play the game.

 Steve: Well I’ve felt that, and I classified into AAA last year, knowing that means competing against the top guys around, knowing the wins are going to become infrequent. But I had to do something to step up my game to be able to compete at their level.

 John: I think that’s the challenge of life, really.

 Gil: Let me give you something to think about guys. Great athletes, winners, grade their performances against their commitments and goals. Losers compare their performances to someone else. That’s why it’s important to read and update your reasons for doing this. It’s like Willy said, “You’re competing against yourself.” It’s you against the course. When you start comparing your results to other people, like it or not, you’re on a losing streak.

 John: Well I’ve found that people compare their worst traits against somebody else’s best traits, and then you really look like a loser. (laughter)

 Gil: You talk about self-destruction, holy cow.

 Brian: Pull the pin and let the grenade go off.

 Gil: Well, what we typically see in a slump, rather than your scores topping out in a two to three bird deviation, what sets it apart from a plateau is, rather than scores topping out, we see a decrease in score by ten to twenty percent.

If they’re shooting in the 90s, in a slump they’ll go to 80s or mid 70s. But typically, if you’re a 90 percent shooter, a slump is about 10 percent, you go to 80. If you’re a 60 percent shooter, you go to 50, which is a 20 percent slump because of the difficulty of the targets that you have to break to attain what your average is. Typically we see that slumps are caused by giving great emotion to failure. They’re caused by high expectation, low commitment, because you’ve not identified why you   do your sport. Now we talked about writing down why you do this in November and December, we talked about it in January and here it comes again.

One of the major causes of slumps is not having a clear picture of why you’re doing this. Your dreams have  become  your  expectations with no commitment to achieve those expectations. You don’t understand why you’re where you are, you don’t  understand  why  you’re in a slump. Now, there are two kinds of slumps. One that I call a ‘mini slump,’ which means, “Damn I can’t buy a rabbit, can’t buy a teal, can’t buy a low five.” That’s a mini slump. It’s one thing. Steve would you not agree that in skeet, one of the most frequently missed targets  by advanced shooters is low   five?

 Steve: Yes.

 Gil: Okay, you and I are going to talk about that when I see you. I’ve got something I want to share with you on that. But that’s a mini slump to me. A major slump, man it comes from a deep emotional connection between score and self-worth. Phrases like, “Why do I do this?” come out of your mouth.

On a humorous note about this, John Gibson, a student of ours, called up one night and said, “You know, this sporting clays game is the only game I know of that you can pay $1,500 to $2,000 to go to a shoot, have your name put up on a board and be publicly humiliated and do it again next week.” (laughter)

You’ve got to be really careful when in a slump about who you ask for help. Typically we see people go to anybody who can hit the birds they can’t. Be careful. Other people’s opinions of why you missed the target are usually founded on where you missed, not why. Be very careful who you listen to. Typically, they get you to fix it by shooting like they shoot. That’s a dead end street. Even if they fix it for a while, it’s short term, because they haven’t addressed the problem, they’ve addressed a symptom.

 John: Exactly, Gil. I’ve been shooting for five years and I know of nobody, except your students and yourself who really understand why they miss. Everybody else says you’re over it, you’re under it, you’re in front of it, but they don’t understand why.

 Gil: Agreed. Now I want to tell you, we’ve got an 800 number, pick the phone up and call us. If you can’t get a hold of us, or if you don’t want to do that, if you’re embarrassed, like Willy said last week, get with somebody who’s had a lesson with us and have them watch you. But be really careful when you’re in a slump about who you listen to. If they’re dealing with where you are and not why, then move on.

Remember that fear exacerbates the slump. Emotion deepens the slump. The slump’s self-induced guys. You make the plateau into a slump. Now, slumps shouldn’t be feared. If you fear it, it will consume you and grow larger. Your emotion will make it larger than it really is. It’s just a game. Go back to why you do this. A slump is simply a wake- up call that there is something wrong that must be corrected to get you back on track. That something is nothing major.

Whether it’s a slump or a plateau remember this: There’s always something great just around the corner. I was privileged to coach a guy by the name of Dave Miklosevich, some of you guys from California might know him. He was a scoring guard for the basketball team. He said: “The first slump I went into I was terrified, because I had a scholarship and that was my job. Coach started me out within ten feet of the basket and told me to shoot ten in a row until I could do it from five different spots. When I could do that he moved me back five more feet. When I could hit ten in a row from five different spots he moved me back five more feet, and all of the sudden, there was no slump anymore.”

Slumps are usually indicative of very small problems that manifest themselves on different targets on different days. All of the sudden, “I can’t hit a rabbit, I can’t hit a quartering bird, I can’t hit a slow crosser.” Now somebody take a stab at what the common thread is among a rabbit, a quartering bird and a slow crosser as to why you would miss it. Any guesses?

 John: Too much gun speed.

 Gil: Hello, baby! Excessive muzzle speed. So, if all of a sudden, one day you can’t hit a rabbit, the next day you can’t hit a quartering bird and the next day you can’t hit a slow crosser, your game isn’t going to shit. Vicki and I see this every day, there’s typically one little fundamental that you’ve gotten away with ignoring for just so long, and now all a sudden it’s come up and bitten you in the back. It’s just one little thing, but the trick is to figure it out.

The rabbit target is easy, easy, easy to get excessive gun speed on because if you don’t see the center, you see the whole flight path of the rabbit. If it comes out and hits a bump and goes up four feet and comes down four feet, and the two places it hits the ground are only six feet apart. Your eye doesn’t see the six feet; your eye sees the six feet, plus the four feet up and four feet down. So now instead of going six feet, it looks like it’s going 14 feet. And that’s why the gun moves fast. The quartering birds are the same way. If you move too fast, you’re going to miss the target, but the lead’s gonna be right. A slow crosser is exactly the same way. If the target’s lost its speed but typically you mount the gun a little too fast. The eye sees all the speed in the picture and you miss the bird in front.

 Steve: Gil, isn’t that losing the feel of the shot?

 Gil: There is no doubt.

 Steve: Could you then simplify that and say that a lot of slumps are induced by losing the feel of the shots?

 Gil: You are getting ahead of me. Yes sir, there is no doubt. That’s exactly where I’m going. Now, it’s obvious that there could be a lot of other problems in the scenarios I just lead you through, okay, but just for illustration of slump purposes, it is usually some small fundamental. Just remember: The more emotion and the more fear you give it,

the more it derails the train of performance. If you’re having trouble with a certain target, Steve, if you’re having trouble with low five, low five is not the thing to practice. Practice low six and low four. Get the feel back and then go back to low five. And for you sporting clays guys, if you’re having trouble with rabbits, don’t shoot rabbits, go shoot some slow left to right crossers and get your feel back. If it’s a left to right rabbit, go shoot some slow left to right crossers.

I was talking to Tim Laneve, who was in California with us, and he called me the other day and said, “I’ve got it. I’m back.”

And I said, “What are you talking about?”

He said, “I went somewhere and I shot a 91 and almost everything was smoke. It’s back.”

I said, “What was the real problem?” He said, “I lost my routine, I lost my timing.” And all of that comes back to a loss of feel. A loss of feel.

So when you go into a slump, the last thing you want to do is go to the target that is manifesting the slump to you. Go back and practice your basic, fundamental move. Slow, easy, dinky, cupcake targets, but look for feel in your move.

Steve, ever been in a slump in skeet?

 Steve: No.

 Gil: You’re fortunate. Do you know anybody who  has?

 Steve: Yeah.

 Gil: Did they get out of them?

 Steve: Well, they quit. (laughter)

 Gil: Why do you think they quit, because they couldn’t separate their self-worth from their score?

 Steve: Actually, I’ve got to back that up, Gil. I’ve been shooting for so long, I would say, I did go into extended slumps when I was a collegiate shooter. Going back to that time, it’s obvious that the reason they were extended is because I didn’t have anybody to learn from. Instruction was not like it is today.

 Gil: Agreed.

 Steve: The best I had back at that time were books. That was it. I just had to work it by practicing more and practicing harder.

 John: That doesn’t work all the time.

 Steve: No, it doesn’t.

 John: Somebody told me this a long time ago. It was some great shooter I think, but the thing I always remember when I get into a slump is, “The best way to get out of a hole is quit digging it.” I don’t know where I heard that.

 Gil: Hmm. I wonder where you heard that?

 John: I don’t know.

 Gil: Well, I will tell you something. The typical reaction we see when people go into the difficulties of a slump is that people go conscious with their correction. Instead of looking for feel, rather than going and shooting really simple targets, they go conscious with their correction. The more conscious you are with your correction, the more mechanical- ly you shoot and the more you’re a product of the voice.

So the way to overcome a slump, is to back off on the difficulty of the presentation and look for the little fundamental that is not there. I will tell you, like Steve said a minute ago, 99 times out of 100 if you go into a slump, you’ve lost your felt connection with the target. It goes back to that feel thing. Without feel, you cannot trust.

But take heart. Every time you go through a slump or a plateau you will be stronger when you come out of it. And that’s the thing that I learned from Dave Miklosevich. He said: “Once I went through my first slump, when I came out I had one of the best scoring hot streaks that I’ve ever had in my life. And my coach took me aside and said, ‘Look, never fear a slump, because when you come out of it you will be much, much stronger.”’ Everybody understand that?

 John: But isn’t that true Gil? It’s just a part of life, even at work there’s just days when you can’t do certain things. It’s just part of life. If you learn to recognize it I think it’s easier to deal with.

 Gil: Agreed. Learn to recognize it, but don’t attach anxiety and emotion to it. Because it’s the anxiety that you attach to it that makes you push harder and under-perform. I know that when I was taking pictures for a living, I would show up on a set and we’d typically get seven to nine photos a day when we were doing annual report photography, where we had to string lights and set everything up. And the art directors would always push us to get ten to twelve shots and I would get to a point at about two in the afternoon where everything was not going as smoothly as it had been. I’d say: “Look guys, I have to take a 20 minute break, get away from this and clear my head. If you’ll just let me do that, when I come back we’ll get three or four more shots in the can. No problem. I guarantee you.” The ones that would let me go take a break, go outside, watch the birds, get my mind off of it and let me come back and do my job, they got their money’s worth. The ones that kept pushing, no matter how hard we tried, the pictures just didn’t come together. Because I went conscious. I lost my feel. I couldn’t see into the third dimension. So when you get into a slump, look for feel and trust. Don’t go conscious with your correction, that’s the worst thing you can do.

 Chris: I have a question. I’m in that first 78, and one of the reasons why I took this class was I wanted to learn how to perfect the move not only in sporting clays but in live bird shooting, and I’ve found, and I think an instructor once told me, I don’t know if it was Vicki or you that said, “You should never attempt a shot you don’t know how to shoot.” So what do you do when you come up against a target you haven’t seen before and you can’t hit it after a few times. Do you just back off, skip that station and move on to something else? Is that what I hear you saying?

 Gil: Yessir. Chris. The worst thing you can do is say, “Dammit, I’m going to go get a case of shells and stay here until I hit this thing.”

 Chris: Gotcha, okay.

 Gil: Because if you do that, you’re programming more misses than hits. And if you’ll listen to the tapes that you can get from our previous discussions, when we were talking about commitment versus expectation, Willy talked about it. There are several times when he goes out to shoot, he’ll come up on a station and for some reason, he just can’t hit the target. If he misses it, what, seven or eight times Willy, you just move on?

 Willy: Yeah.

 Gil: You just move on and what you do is you invoke the psychological principal of a break. You just take a break away from it. Get your mind on something else and typically what will happen, if you’ve seen that one before, when you come back to it you’ll break it. Now, if you come up against one that you don’t know or don’t have a clue how to break. Make a plan. Don’t be concerned about whether or not it’s right, if it’s wrong eliminate one possibility.

But if you don’t at least commit to a plan and if you’re not dedicat- ed and decisive with your plan, there are so many variables in your shot,

you’ve got nothing to correct from. And typically the plan needs to be centered around the breakpoint. “When it gets right there, I am going to kill that bird, right there.” Committing to the breakpoint will be the best thing you can do.

 John: Yeah, that’s the most important thing right there.

 Gil: And as you go along in your curve, Chris, you’ll find that committing to the breakpoint will be the greatest thing you ever do. Now, you can’t really do that with live birds. I assume you’re talking about box pigeons or something like  that?

 Chris: Oh, just something like duck hunting or dove hunting. Yeah, you can’t commit to a breakpoint, but at least you can commit to a zone or an area? I don’t know if that’s the right approach.

 Gil: You bet. You use that approach. We were in Mexico last week hunting doves. It’s a dirty, nasty job but somebody’s got to do it, and we were shooting some birds that were coming into us over some trees. And Chris, I’ve got to tell you, the first four or five birds that came over were on a tailwind and they were really going fast, and they got by me and I killed them on the third shot. And I realized when I stopped for a second and watched them, if I’d made the commitment to pull the trigger as soon as the bird went over that tree in front of me … I had a break zone, an imaginary line in the sky, that means I have a destination to go to with the gun, and I started dropping the birds right at my feet.

 Chris: Gotcha.

 Gil: I quit letting the bird play me, I took control of the bird.

 Chris: So there’s even a break zone for a bird as well?

 Gil: Yeah, and in sporting clays, a breakpoint gives you a deadline to get the gun from point A to point B, and it keeps the voice from coming up in your head. The voice that says, “Check the lead, is it enough? Is it right? Should I pull the trigger now?” That breakpoint is what ties the voice up. That’s why when you go from 81 to 84 to 86, it’s the awareness of a specific breakpoint that makes everything come together. Does that answer your question?

Chris: It does.

 Gil: Great. Just remember guys, whenever you’re faced with a slump, always relax into a slump. Because if you relax into it and don’t resist it, you’ll come out of it quickly. Typically when you reach a plateau, you’re going to have to come get a lesson, but I promise you our system is so strong that if you’ll just call us, nine times out of ten we can solve it right over the phone. And we can tell you what to practice to get out of it. Has that ever happened to anybody out there?

 John: Absolutely.

 Gil: I mean, this system that we have is so strong and so simple that if you have a problem with a certain target, if you’ll just call us and tell us what the target is and tell us what type of problem you have, I guaran- tee you we can figure out how to get you out of it. Just remember that slumps and plateaus are just setbacks along the road to your best per- formance. And your attitude has more to do with success and failure than any other one thing. It’s your attitude that keeps emotion out of plateaus and keeps them from becoming slumps.

Remember that the one common thread of all great athletes regardless of their skill is that they have a higher ability to tolerate failures, to allow them to become opportunities to grow instead of a setback. Well, I’m sorry I talked so long tonight.

 John: Did you watch the Olympics last night?

 Gil: I did.

 John: Did you watch the five hundred meter skater?

 Gil: I did not.

 John: Okay, this guy was from Canada. He was supposed to win the gold medal and he fell ten yards out of the start and you just went, “Oh my gosh.”

 Gil: Okay, let me interrupt you real quick, I’ve got five minutes. You have on your TV set every night, an opportunity to see the best athletes in the world answer questions about their successful and unsuccessful performances in positive ways. Take every opportunity to listen to their answers. The commentator will say, “Well, it didn’t go your way tonight.” The athlete will answer, but he will not even go there. They always stay in a positive frame of mind. They’re always upbeat and they always share in their competitor’s successes because they always complement their successes. I admonish you all to watch the Olympics, but listen to what the athletes say. They don’t let the commentators get them down in the emotional garbage that creates slumps. It’s happening right before your eyes guys. It’s your choice to look at them or not.