This session, we’re continuing with the visualization discussion, getting deeper into the details and responding to questions that came out of the last Coaching Hour. Vicki talks about the negative effects of visualizing misses as well as her own visualization routine. Shooters Don and Carlos share their most recent visualization experiences, and we hear from Tom about two very different tournament performances. The last half of the hour is dedicated to the topic of “feeling your swing,” something that sounds much more abstract than it is.
Gil: Last month, right at the end of the show, Todd had a question that was a good question. Do you ever visualize in slow motion?
I would answer that question in this way. No, because when you visualize you should be visualizing in real time. When you’re visualizing, you’re preprogramming neuromuscular responses that you’re actually going to use when you perform. If you’re visualizing in the stand you should be visualizing in real time because you’re telling your subconscious what you are asking it to do and it is already setting up the firing sequence to bring about the desired response.
If you’re visualizing at home, you should be visualizing in real time simply because you’re going over actually breaking targets in your visual process. I would tell you that visualization in slow motion. I don’t think would be nearly as beneficial. I don’t think you’d be doing what I think visualization is made to do.
The only time I would do it in slow motion is if I was preprogramming a swing move. If I was practicing my mount at home, and I was pre programming a certain move in my swing, slow motion would be bene- ficial because I would want to feel the part of the move I was programming. A lot of times when you’re practicing your gun mount, if you can move the gun slowly in your hands you can feel each little movement of the gun. But as far as visualization with slow motion, when I was visualizing breaking targets, I would probably keep it to real time. Anybody have anything to add? Did I answer your question Todd?
Todd: Yeah.
Gil: Okay, Vicki, you have a few things to add.
Vicki: Right. The only thing I would add to the slow motion thing is: If you’re going to visualize in slow motion, then that’s what you’re programming. We did a school a couple years ago when someone said: Well I visualize but I visualize myself missing the target. I went: why would you visualize yourself missing? Well to prepare myself. To me that’s not the right answer. Visualize what you want to happen, that’s what you’re programming.
As Gil and I were preparing today’s program, I said: I get to talk to everybody, so this is what I am hearing from the people who are calling and emailing. Some of the calls say: this is the best thing since sliced bread. I can feel it. I can feel it all of the way down to my toes. And some of you are calling and saying: I’m confused, I don’t know if I’m doing it right.
I use visualization a lot, this is a very hard game for me, so I use it a lot and it programs everything, but I don’t think there is any right or wrong for anybody. What’s right for you may not work for somebody else. But make it right for you, don’t get caught up in too many details. Go for: I can feel it. Or: I can see that target breaking.
When I visualize, I say: Okay this is where I’m going to see the target and this is where I’m going to break it. As I see the target flying in the air, it’s got an orange dome and I see it breaking into a thousand pieces. That’s what’s right, as long as you can find a place to see it and then go to that breakpoint and see that target break in a million pieces, then it is right for you. If you can add your hands to the process, then it becomes more of the feeling part.
I think that most women don’t feel like you guys do, I know you find that hard to believe, but we don’t. It’s very hard for most women to feel. If you could hear the many conversations that Gil and I have had over the years of: well don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel it? Well, umm, no. I’m an emotional person, but I don’t feel like I have that target in my hands. But if I sit there and visualize here at my desk and I feel that target in my hands and I see it, I know it’s going to break.
I was telling Gil about a little story that happened a couple years ago. Brian, our son, wanted to go to the U.S. Open. And I said: Oh my God. I had not shot a tournament in four months. And he said: Oh mom, please. So mom says: oh of course, I’ll go and embarrass myself severely, let’s go.
So we went to the U.S. Open and I went in with no expectations. But I will tell you that because I visualized every day for four months or six months or however long it was since shooting my last tournament, the targets were so slow and as big as trash can lids. And then it was real. I was walking on a treadmill at that point for 30 to 40 minutes a day, and everyone knows how boring that is.
So I would visualize breaking targets at different trajectories. I did that every day. Then I would change the trajectory. When I went to the
U.S. Open that year, there was nothing that they could throw that I had not seen break in my mind.
I did rather well and surprised a lot of people, but more important- ly I surprised myself because I went in with no expectations. But I was comfortable because they could not throw a target that I had not seen break in my mind a thousand times. And if you can go in with that kind of confidence, everything’s wonderful. You’re so relaxed and confident.
And this is a perfect time of year; the off-season is the perfect time of year to use this tool because it’s such a powerful tool. Take those six trajectories: the left to right and right to left quartering and crossing, the teal going up and the teal going down, and you shoot them in three different places and make them break in a thousand pieces and put those hands in motion and I’m telling you, you will feel it to your toes. And if you can feel it in your toes, that sucker is going down.
So that’s what I have to offer. I think it’s a powerful tool and as Gil always says, I would admonish each of you to use it. If you can’t go every day and take five minutes of your day, then take 15 minutes once a week and take a trajectory and practice it.
Carlos: I’ve got a comment on this after last month’s conversation. About a year ago I read an article that touched on visualization and it’s funny because it’s exactly like what you guys had mentioned and what Vicki just mentioned now. I used to replay tournaments that I’d shot in my mind, kind of like a VCR, and the funny part was I would always replay the ones that I missed, rather than the ones that I hit.
But after last month’s talk and reading a couple articles on practicing, I started going out to a skeet field and getting a manual trap and throwing myself some specific target presentations like teal or a bateau and chondelles and practicing those. I got really good at smashing all of them.
I could sit at home and replay those hits in my mind just like I did my misses, and that really helped me a lot. It really got me in tune with what you were talking about last month. But my big question is: Last month you mentioned holding your gun and visualizing a target. I’ve been sitting in a chair while I’ve been visualizing and have been able to visualize well the targets I just mentioned. Now that I’ve tried it standing up with a gun in my hands, making a move with the target that I’m visualizing it’s not the same. Maybe I’m jumping ahead of what you’re probably going to talk about, but I’ve done it with a gun in my hand and it’s night and day.
Gil: Meaning you don’t visualize as well with a gun in your hand when you’re visualizing, or you do?
Carlos: In the beginning it’s tough, because I think I’m focusing consciously too much on the mechanics of moving the gun. I’ve got my eyes closed.
Gil: Agreed.
Carlos: You’re trying to flash this picture in your mind. But I did notice that with that weight in your hand, it’s like a familiar weight and it’s comfortable and the mount just happens. It’s just tying the two together.
Gil: I will tell you that, what will tie the two together the quickest is just experience. The fact that you said it feels good with the weight in your hand tells me that you’re kind of on the precipice of being able to visualize with feel. I will also tell you that any time you can visualize with the gun in your hands with the eyes closed and just feel yourself moving with that target with the gun you’re beginning to be able to visualize with feel. Once you have done that enough then whether the gun is in your hands or not you will be able to visualize with feel, which is really where we’re going with all this. Don didn’t you practice with the gun, visualizing? Tell us a little bit about what you did.
Don: Two or three times a day for maybe five minutes a time, visualiz- ing the targets, gun in my hands, eyes closed. I wanted to enhance my eye hand coordination. And just visualizing the target alone seemed like a waste of time for me so I wanted to tie my hands into it, like the gentleman just suggested, either with the gun in my hand or visualiz- ing the gun barrel and trying to get some sort of a feel feedback with my closed eyes as to what my hands or what my body’s doing.
It’s wonderful. Something that I’ve mentioned, you know, I’ve been shooting for ten years and taking lessons for five or so with Gil and still when I get tired I have a very sloppy mount which is too much right hand. The only reason I know it is my shooting buddies will tell me, “Jeez that looked terrible. You’re right hand’s going too fast and the muzzles are bobbing up and down.”
I sort of look around rather stunned, totally unaware of it. But since we’ve been talking about visualizing and I’ve been working with my eyes closed with the gun in my hand, boy, I picked it up immediately and that was something I could never do in the field.
Gil: So what you’re saying is the problem that you would typically have with gripping the gun too tight and having a real choppy mount has seemed to go away now that you’re visualizing with the gun in your hands.
Don: I recognize them in the field more. The mistakes are unconscious and I can correct them by visualizing.
Gil: Okay. Carlos I would tell you anything new is going to feel strange until it becomes old. I think that if you just continue to try it, don’t force it, just play with it a little bit two or three minutes a day. Pick one of the trajectories you’ve been practicing and just close your eyes and just feel what the gun does. Just start feeling how the move feels. Feel how the timing feels.
Carlos: With the gun or without the gun?
Gil: Do it both. If you can do it with the gun it will enhance two things.
It will enhance your ability to move and mount the gun more consis- tently, and number two like Don said, it will help you recognize a swing flaw when you’re competing because you have been visualizing with feel. You know what your swing is supposed to feel like and when it doesn’t feel that way, it will make it easier for you to recognize what part of the swing didn’t feel right.
Carlos: Yeah, because I’ve noticed when I mount the gun and go after a target, I know it’s going to break before I pull the trigger.
Gil: That’s where we’re going.
Carlos: You just know. You just know as soon as it touches your face and you pull the trigger. It’s gone.
Gil: It’s a dead bird flying. And just be patient with yourself. Stay with your normal visualization in your chair but continue to interject the gun into it if you can buy standing up and moving and mounting the gun while you visualize. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. And it may not work for you. Visualization’s like buying underwear, man. It’s whatever feels right. There’s no right and wrong, I think that was the point of Vicki’s topic. There’s no real right and wrong to this, it’s whatever you can get out of it, but the more you can do it and the more you can combine any type of feel in your visual process the better it will be for you in the long run, from a performance standpoint and from a problem solving standpoint when a miss occurs.
Gil: Tom, briefly tell us about learning from your last tournament experience.
Tom: The first tournament obviously went very well for me. I went to the next one, I didn’t want to have expectations but it’s sort of like Craig said, in my mind I already went there. I wanted to sort of match the previous performance. I drank a ton of coffee before I went there, and I know you talked about that issue, but never having dealt with it I didn’t think about it.
But boy, my wife’s comment driving there was, “You are really wound up.” And I was. When I was there I was in overdrive the entire time. I rushed everything I did. I was sprinting up to the stand, everything was rushed. I guess the bottom line was, as my wife said: I was just pissy. And that’s probably an accurate description.
So in debriefing from that I went over all the things I’d heard in the CDs and all the things you had said, and all the things the other partici- pants had said. But prior to that not having participating in a tournament, I mean I heard the advice but it didn’t mean that much to me. Now all of a sudden, having made those mistakes it meant a whole lot. So the next day I went to a second tournament and actually shot very well and the only thing I tried to do was be cool and be calm. Don’t walk fast. That’s all I tried to do. And the difference was remarkable. So I thought the CDs were very helpful in that I was able to identify the problems and correct them very quickly because I’d heard those com- ments made, but until I made the mistake, it probably didn’t mean a lot.
Brian: That’s what makes this program so good.
Gil: In talking to Tom this afternoon about his experience. I gave him a little phrase: technical expertise has little to do with intellectual understanding. Technical expertise is always preceded by experience. You can intellectually understand the process but until you’ve experienced it, all that understanding, in my opinion is worthless. It’s all about doing it, and having been there.
And Tom’s a retired heart surgeon so if somebody’s going to work on my heart, I want them to be experienced, I don’t want them intellectually knowledgeable about how to do it. Good thank you very much for sharing that. I will tell you, every time I hear of someone with an experience like that it emphasizes what we have said all along as shooters and coaches, you learn more from the failures than the successes. You shot two tournaments back to back and you learned more from the bad experience than the good one.
Tom: No question about it. During the good experience, I was in the zone and I didn’t learn much else about it. The bad experience, I learned like 15 items that I did wrong.
Gil: You always learn more from defeat than from success. And we are going to continue to let you guys share this with everybody else because the unique thing about sharing is that when you share it, other people learn but you become much stronger because you’ve shared it.
Which brings us to our main topic tonight; learning how to feel your swing. This is something that we teach individually. I’ve never talked about it on the air or addressed it publicly before but I think I can do it. And Carlos, listen to the first four or five minutes of this and I think it will help you with your problem.
A lot of times when we ask people: Do you feel your swing, some people say I can’t feel what I’m doing wrong, or I can’t get back the feel- ing I used to have yesterday or last week or last month or last year. And some of them say I can’t feel anything. To those who say that they can’t feel anything the first thing we ask them is to shut their eyes and make their move, and mount the gun. Once they do it we have them open their eyes and we say, did you make your move? And they say yes and we say, well how did you know? Did you see, smell, taste or hear it?
They look at us with that perplexed look and we tell them, you had to feel something. What did you feel?
Then they’ll say a little something about well I felt this or I felt that, and that’s a beginning point to feeling your swing. There has to be a starting point for feeling your swing. They might say well I was a little tight here or too loose here, either it was fast or slow, jerky, unbalanced or balanced. There are any number of things that they’ll say, but those are just the first things that they become aware of in their swing. What they have to understand is, you can’t be judgmental with how you reflect on your swing. You never reflect on your swing when you’re trying to feel it as: well that was good or bad. There’s really no right or wrong when you’re trying to learn to feel your swing. Just feel it. See what it feels like.
Carlos: Yeah I had a friend of mine who kind of taught me a little bit. He played a lot of golf and he watched me shoot. He had me shoot the same presentation about half a dozen times and he told me to try and break it in the same spot every time. Actually at first he just said break the target, and I broke it each time, but I broke it probably three out of six times in different spots.
And he said: Your gun mount is like a swing or a stroke in golf with a club. And you want to be consistent with that and you’ve just got to feel how much time it is from the time you start your swing to the time it comes to your face and you pull the trigger on a given presentation. If you can get that consistently then you can really feel, he says, everybody has a stroke like in golf. You pull the club back and then swing it down and hit the ball. No matter what shot it is: chipshot, putt or driver, you have a certain stroke. And that’s what he says: you’ve got to feel your stroke.
I was thinking of that analogy when he shot with me that day as I swung at different targets and he was right. I even had a buddy of mine time me one time and I found that I on the average take about three seconds depending on the presentation—or actually two and a half— from the time I start moving the gun to the time I pull the trigger, depending on the presentation and how far it is. And that feels right, because when I’ve shot a lot of targets depending on whether it’s a close quartering or crossing bird or something that’s got a little distance behind it or some speed, you maybe stretch that out a little bit, but it’s about the same. Because the only difference is, you may start your mount a little later on something that’s farther away as you would on a closer bird. But that period of time, that window is the same and it’s pretty consistent. And I’ve noticed that over time. It was phenomenal.
Gil: Well, what you have to understand is, you have to be able to move and mount the gun at different intervals in our game. Different lengths of time based on the amount of time you have to kill the first bird in a true pair. So it’s about developing the ability not only to make it consistent in the move and mount but also to make it consistent in the amount of time you have to break the target each time so that your break point is in the same spot. It’s more about feel than anything.
Your friend was exactly right. You just feel it for what it is. That’s kind of where you’re going right now. You’re just trying to feel it for what it is. A lot of times people have trouble correcting their swing because they can’t feel their swing. If you can’t feel it, the corrections are hidden. You’ve got to be able to feel it to fix it. And once you become aware of how it feels, the corrections become very obvious. And more often than not, they correct themselves once you become aware of the problem. Awareness in and of itself is a curative thing.
Any number of times Vicki and I have been with a student whose coming out of the gun right as he pulls the trigger. And we’ll say, on the next shot just kind of be aware of how long you are in the gun after you pull the trigger. Do the same thing but just be aware of how long you’re staying in the gun. And all of a sudden they’re shooting when the gun comes to their cheek. Or we tell them: be aware of how fast your back hand is moving on the shot.
And just by being aware of how fast the back hand is moving on the shot, the back hand all of a sudden begins to come into sync with the target and begins to finish the mount when the bird is in the break point. Be aware of your initial move. Be aware that the muzzles are moving laterally. Just be aware of moving the muzzles laterally to the break point this time. Just the simple fact that we’ve told them to be aware of something that we see as a swing flaw, it works. Whatever issue it is, just by being aware of it, usually it will correct itself. The body has an innate ability to correct itself. Balance is another one.
Jeff: Gil, if I could interrupt just for a second. The thought that struck strongly in my mind listening to what you just touched on is to start moving the hands to the breakpoint when you see the bird. One of the things that really helps me to feel the connection between my gun and the target is to shoot a real long target that’s coming in.
For instance, we can all close our eyes and we’re going to walk you through a real good visualization on a target. One hundred yards out behind a tree there’s a trap hidden, its throwing a long lofting, belly- on incomer and its going to plop just a little off to your left about thirty yards. It’s coming in from front right quartering to the left. Whenever you see that bird and you begin your move, you feel that muzzle moving, fading to the break point, just barely moving. You’ve got all day. That target’s not going anywhere fast so just barely feel that muzzle moving to the breakpoint and you will feel that feeling. There’s such a strong feeling of connection with that kind of target, that if you start losing the feel of your shotgun, that’s the kind of target that I think for myself, and for most of us, would be the first place I would go to get the feel back.
Gil: Agreed. I agree that a bird that’s in the air longer really enhances your feel with the gun. I personally like a left to right or right to left crossing chandelle from about 60 or 70 yards. Because that puppy goes up and it slows down at the top and starts floating down, and I love to just stick that gun out there and let that bird come to the gun, all the time being in sync with the bird.
Jeff: On those kinds of targets, that I described and you just described, after shooting two of those targets you can just close your eyes and continue with your mount and when it hits your cheek pull the trigger. That sucker’s right there, it’s right in the money, you’ve got the bird with your eyes closed.
Gil: I will tell you a story. Tim LeNeave was in the first clinic he ever had with me and we were on a skeet field at River Road sporting clays backed up about 15 yards behind the number six station. And I said: I can break that target with my eyes closed if I get connected with it before I close my eyes. He called me on it. He knelt down in front of me, and guys I got to tell you I had never done this before.
I closed my gun, held it out, he’s kneeling down in front of me to watch my eyes. The bird came out I began the move, I closed my eyes in slow motion, I visualized the target, I finished the gun mount and I blew the target up two times in a row, with my eyes closed. Some of you have done that with us before. Vicki is especially famous for getting people to hit targets with their eyes closed. That’s absolutely how powerful feel really is. When you feel that connection to the bird, like Carlos says, you know it’s dead before it gets to the break point. Learning to feel your swing is critical, because you can’t fix it if you can’t feel it. You guys know how much we talk about feel. The more you try to learn to feel your swing and the more you actually feel it, the easier it is to know what to fix when things go wrong.
Carlos: I’ve got one. How many people have started to move on a target, lose it in the sun and then pull the trigger?
Gil: —and then you break it. You bet you do. There are a million examples of it. You’ve all been there. It’s like you said, you’re moving on a target and just before you pull the trigger, all of a sudden the gun makes a move out to a correction, you pull the trigger and the target blows up. And if it happens one time it can happen every time you do it. But this is one of the advantages of being able to feel your swing and being in sync with the target.
You position yourself so that your subconscious can come in and put the gun where it needs to be. It takes the conscious mind completely out of it. For example, if I were to say: I was aware that I was behind or over the target. More often than not I was behind or over the target because I wasn’t connected to it through feel in the first place and you become aware of those things after you’ve pulled the trigger. Now, knowing that you were behind or over it is completely different from feeling behind or over.
When you consciously analyze behind or over a target, it is a lead or line problem. But when you feel your swing, you begin to feel over or feel behind and more often than not, there is a subconscious correction that is instantaneous and it happens as you finish the gun mount and the target breaks. What a great feeling!
What I’m saying is: If you’re so connected in feel to your swing, that when a target is launched, when you begin your move, you know you’re behind it and you feel that you’re behind it. Then, more often than not, your subconscious will go ahead and correct that thing and get it out there. But even if it doesn’t do it on that shot, the correction on the next shot becomes more obvious because you can feel your swing.
A feel correction is a subconscious correction, because the subconscious only understands feel and pictures. Analytical corrections are conscious intellectual speculations, they’re nothing but a guess, but when you feel, you know instantly. Just like when you come out of balance. When you come out of balance, you know instantly and your balance mechanism puts you right back in balance. And even though the correction might not happen on that shot, the correction is very clear when you can feel your swing!
Feeling your swing does not mean trying to feel the way your swing felt when you shot a 93. You can only feel your swing the way it is now, not the way it was or the way it should be. You can’t feel “was” or “should.” They don’t exist. You’ve got to be able to feel the swing when you move your gun. The more feel, the better your timing and the better your overall swing is, and the greater your ability to subconsciously correct a bad swing. Willy, you talked to me about some things you’ve been feeling.
Willy: This whole thing is just so interesting to me. I’ve been going in my gun room and moving the gun, but for me it’s more interesting to go to the range and see a target and then just close my eyes and practice feeling the move to the target, practice visualizing a target that’s going to be there.
And what gets more interesting to me is the feel of all the other things that happen other than the gun and the move to the target. What I’m doing with my head, how much tension is in my arms, how much anticipation I have toward the second target, how much tension I have in my body. Am I coiled up and making a bigger move with my body than I need to? It’s paying attention to those background pieces of information and then going okay, I’m going to do the visualization again and see how many of those things I can strip away, and get it down to just the movement of my head, the focus of my eyes and my hands just matching up with the target.
The more of those other things I eliminate and take out of the picture through visualization, the better. When I open up my eyes, and call for the bird, I make the move to the target, it feels great! There’s so little participation by the rest of me and such a clear move to the target. I mean, I’ve never broken targets this way so consistently. It’s really exciting to me.
I knew you were going to call on me because I went out Saturday after not shooting for a couple weeks and I shot really well. Then on Sunday I tried to go out and recreate the feel of the day before and I shot miserably until I went okay, I’m going to give up what I did yesterday or my thoughts of what I expected the feel to be and just stripped it down again. It was kind of exciting to shoot that badly and be able to fix it and connect it with what we’re doing here which I feel is so valuable.
Gil: So what you were trying to do the next day was duplicate the day before?
Willy: I was looking for the same feel. I actually went up to the stations and said, okay, I remember how this feels.
Gil: That ain’t the way to do it.
Willy: It didn’t work at all.
Gil: You’re in that “was” thing. This is the way it felt, in the past tense. What you have to understand is, you can’t duplicate that feeling. What you can do is duplicate the things that brought the feeling about: focus, rhythm, routine and looking for a felt connection to the target. This is a really important point guys, don’t go out there and look for the way it felt the day you shot a 93, you’ve got to learn to score with the swing you bring to the course today.
I daresay, I think I said this one time before: You’d probably be shocked if you heard me say don’t trust the rhythm. When you start trusting the rhythm, the rhythm that you’re in when your shooting well, when you start trusting that rhythm, you’re setting yourself up for failure. What you’ve got to do is hold on to the things that create the rhythm your feel; focus, tempo and trust. It all comes back to focus and tempo. The better you’re feeling the swing the easier all that becomes and the easier it is to get that back.
So what you’ve got to do when you go to the range is drop the expectation and drop what you did yesterday. Deal with how you got there yesterday, which is dealing with focus and tempo and trust. And tempo is kind of a catchall phrase that we use to talk about timing: your timing hand, your tempo hand and how they all work together. Like Carlos was saying with the amount of time you have to get the gun from the hold point to the breakpoint, it’s all a tempo thing. And that’s kind of a catchall statement, but the only swing you can feel is the one you’re doing right now.
The more you focus on and pay attention to the swing that you’re doing right now, the easier it is for you to do that again. The deeper in your computer it is, the easier it is to get back to feeling and knowing what it is that you do to get there. So guard against trying to go back to what happened yesterday. What happened yesterday is gone.
There are many things that being able to feel your swing will do for you. You’ll be able to feel your grip pressure and you’ll be able to keep your grip pressure on the gun soft and equal. Maybe you will be able to feel the pressure of the comb on your cheek. Be aware of what it feels like when the gun’s on your cheek and you break a target. You can feel your hands moving back and forth on the left to right and right to left crossing move. On the left to right bird the hands have to work in opposite directions, on right to left, they both in the same direction.
That’s a good thing to practice with your move. Feel your balance, work on the crossing move and the quartering move and remember that the quartering move is a push move. In my opinion one of the most important things that you can practice with feel is the initial move, because the muzzle movement to the breakpoint in the beginning must be so soft and subtle. I think that’s one of the biggest things that helped you Jeff. Was it last year or the year before last?
Jeff: Year before last. I just work on it all the time.
Gil: To me that’s one of the most important things you can work on. The soft lateral movement of the gun at the beginning of the swing is critical for consistency. Mounting the gun to your shoulder and swinging the muzzles across the sky like a paper bag in a tornado is just stupid. Insert the muzzles like your threading a needle. I just think that’s one of the most important things you can do.
The more you practice feeling your move, the easier it is to let it correct itself. I just can’t stress enough how important it is for you to practice feeling your move. Practice at home on the feel of your gun in your hands. Try to get an enhanced feeling of what it feels like to swing your gun. Be aware of the things that I listed a minute ago about your reciprocal move, the tight grip, the initial lateral move, finishing in balance.
Just try to have a heightened awareness of the feel that you have in your hands when you’re moving the gun. A number of times Vicki and I have helped a student fix swing problems just by making them aware of a certain aspect of their swing. And when they shoot the next bird or the next pair it just miraculously fixed itself. I just can’t stress enough how important it is for you to spend time practicing your gun mount with feel and visualization, and also for you to practice feeling your swing. The better connected you are to your swing the better you’re going to be able to correct it and the more likely you will correct it while the bird’s in the air.
Don you were talking about some of your visualization. How is it going with you?
Don: I’ve been doing it probably three times a day, no more than three or four minutes at a time. I’ve been visualizing pairs at stations that I had shot the week before. I was telling you before that I’ve been corrected by shooting associates with my right hand movement and the visualiza- tion has helped tremendously in working that out. That’s something I’ve not been successful with in the past. I mentioned to you that my goal for the year is to shoot fifty pair with my routine on every pair.
Presently I get about halfway through the course down two, three, four targets with the routine and without realizing it I lose the ability to do the routine on quite a few of the remaining fifty pair. I usually don’t realize what has happened until I’m done shooting. I don’t know whether it was caused by missing a few birds and going mechanical without realizing it, or if it was caused by not being able to solve the problem quickly enough and getting deeper and deeper into the conscious approach. I get back and sit in the car on the way home and I remember station seven, no routine, station eight, no routine, station nine, measure, measure, measure. And I can find it after it’s all over and talking to you about a way to fix it, you made a pretty strong suggestion to me.
Gil: After asking Don a few questions I asked him about his routine, I asked him to tell me what his routine was. Now tell me what your routine is Don.
Don: Prior to that conversation my routine was find the target make a plan, get in the stand, get ready to shoot, relax take a breath, visualize, focus my eyes hard, call for the target and attempt to move, mount, shoot it.
Gil: Okay, now when he told me that, I asked him what his trigger was for the routine: and he said focus. I’ll just go ahead and talk for a minute, I know that is so unlike me, but I’ll do it anyway. What I told Don was, this is a classic example of someone with a good database of movement, lead pictures and everything else necessary to shoot well including a good routine, but there’s no trigger in his routine. The trig- ger has to be there to separate conscious planning from subconscious action.
My trigger is to close the gun. What I will do when I get in a cage, I have an over and under just like him. I’ll load the gun, and have the gun in my hands. I’ll do my visualization, see it there, break it there, see it there, and break it there. Once I’ve made my plan, I’ll go to the first break point for two seconds, all of that’s a conscious effort. I am consciously focusing in the breakpoint. I see the bird blow up. Right there I tell myself. I know I’m going to kill it when it gets right there. When I know it’s right, at that point in time, I’ll close the gun, address the bird and call pull.
Now, closing the gun is my trigger, when I close the gun that’s a light switch that turns off conscious planning and turns on subconscious function. And without it, you get what happens to Don. You go into a tournament and you shoot anywhere from 40 to 60 birds and you’re shooting lights out, but all of a sudden for any number of different reasons, the conscious mind begins to enter into the picture.
It’s still in the shot and you begin to check the lead, you begin to flinch, you begin to lose your feel, lose your connection, you’re not killing the birds in the breakpoint. It’s not because you can’t do it, it’s because you haven’t stopped the conscious thought process so the sub- conscious action can take place. It’s just super critical. Every routine has to have a trigger. Without a trigger, the conscious mind is eventually going to get in.
Brian: You’ve got to close the door.
Gil: Yes sir, Brian, you’ve got to close the door. Don and I talked about this a lot guys. And Don’s been working on his routine for two or three years anyway. And it wasn’t until now until the problem really surfaced that we began to dissect his routine. I guess this is a perfect opportunity for you to say it’s my fault— (laughter) but I’d rather you be excited about the fact that we found the problem, you understand. But every routine must have a trigger.
If you have an automatic it might be clicking the shell out of the magazine to get ready, it might be touching the stock with your index finger, it might be taking a deep breath, I would rather see it be something after the deep breath because you can also hurry the deep breath if you know what I mean. I’d rather it be some conscious function whether it’s a weight shift, whether it’s coming up on your toes and coming down, it needs to be some conscious function that acts as a light switch to turn off the conscious planning process and turns loose the subconscious action process.
Don: One other thing that we talked about is the trigger serves a great purpose in conserving the peak concentration time bank you have each day.
Gil: Exactly. It helps you to use that 28 to 38 minute time bank you have of peak concentration, three to five seconds at a time, instead of concentrating 100 percent of the time when you’re in the box. Now there is another important thing that a routine must have and it is equally as important as the trigger: Every routine must have a rhythm after the trigger. I’m going to give you my rhythm. I’m looking at the break point for two seconds I know I’m going to break the target there. I close the gun … address the target … and call pull. You hear the rhythm? I close the gun, address the target and call pull, in a rhythm.
And 1.7 to 1.9 seconds after that gun closes, I will call pull every single time.
If, at any time during that time after the trigger, if any kind of conscious thought comes into my head, any kind of a doubt thought, any thing enters my brain. I will open the gun and start the routine again. That keeps me from doing anyways. (I can break these in my sleep, I don’t need a routine. I’m going to go ahead and call pull anyway). So it’s important that every routine have a trigger to separate conscious thought and conscious planning from subconscious action, and to use the time bank more efficiently. And it must have a rhythm. The reason it must have a rhythm, is so that you can feel it, so you don’t have to count one thousand one, one thousand two. If it doesn’t have a rhythm it’s going to be instead of close, address, pull. It’s going to be close, address … … pull. Or close … … address … pull.
You understand what I’m saying? It must be consistent in its form. It’s got to have a rhythm after the trigger. Once you develop that rhythm it’s your own personal rhythm. I would tell you that the rhythm needs to allow you to call pull some time between one point four and two point four seconds after the trigger. If it’s sooner than one point four seconds, you haven’t given your eyes and your body long enough to return to its neutral state and be ready to act. If it’s longer than two point four seconds the voice will be there. I assure you, the voice will be there. And there’s doubt. You’ll start thinking: “Okay, are my eyes still? Okay, I’ve got to move high left on this one, it’s a rising quartering shot.”
Mechanical thoughts will enter the computer and it will not be pretty. So, Don you’re going to try your new routine this next month. Are you going to be able to shoot at all?
Don: If it doesn’t rain this weekend I’ll get in a 200-target tournament.
Gil: Okay, good. A tournament is probably not the best way to implement a routine, but I would tell you this: you’ve got enough time to practice your routine in your visualization process.
Don: I’ll do my best.
Gil: That would be a great thing to see how it works. You’ve got two or three days, so in your visualization process, rather than just practic- ing visualization with feel, what you might want to do is practice your routine. You can stand there with your gun open, visualize the shot, close the gun, address the target, say pull and make your move. I will tell you that if you could do that 250 to 300 times between now and your tournament it would probably begin to imprint. Do you think you can do that?
Don: I’m going to call in sick tomorrow. (laughter)
Gil: Okay, well good. I was going to talk to Don about some flinching problems and shed a little light on flinching. Tom Kirchmer wanted to talk about that too, but we’ve run out of time again. Vicki and I both wish you a Merry Christmas. Thanks to all the shooters for participating. Thanks for asking your questions. Please feel free to ask as many questions as you want.
Next month we’re going to talk about planning your year, visualization. Some of the topics for next year include: Self talk, how to hold onto the lead when you’re there, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about routine. If there are any other topics you’d like to see us cover, we sure would love for you to let us know and we’ll be certain to work up something on it. If you have any questions, please email us ahead of time. And just remember, until then, always view obstacles as opportunities. Merry Christmas to everybody. We’ll see you next year.
