2003-06 June 2003 Coaching Hour – Self-Talk

 We begin with a review of the Mick Howell interview, specifically his comments on shooting with a mounted and unmounted gun. Moving on, we talk with two of our shooters about a challenge they have in common: learning to take a compliment. It seems like an easy thing to do, but is often one of the most difficult. It leads into our self-talk on and off a shooting range, and the importance of directing our self-talk in a positive way.

Reactions to Mick Howell Interview

 Gil: Anybody have any comments about last month with Mick  Howell?

 Carlos: Yeah, one question that I had asked him that I’m not really clear on. I asked him about using two different mounts, one for FITASC and one for sporting, and I was wondering about that because I’ve seen a lot of people adopt one mount for both. I guess it’s easier because you don’t have to think about it, it becomes ingrained.

 Gil: One of the things that you may have missed, and I’ll try to paraphrase: he started shooting sporting clays for three years and then he took a three-year hiatus to shoot trap. Then he came back to sporting. And during his early sporting and trap shooting days, he began to get very comfortable shooting with a mounted gun. Then as he began to progress in sporting he began to implement a little bit lower gun mount, and when he started shooting FITASC he had to implement a lower gun mount.

So coming from his background, he was more used to having a mounted gun, but I took notes on the CD today and the way it actually came out was: On any trap type shot, he always shoots with a mounted gun, because from his trap days he was used to shooting those kinds of targets with a mounted gun.

On our new DVD that will be out soon, we talk about when to shoot with a mounted gun and when not to shoot with a mounted gun. And we agree with what Mick said, whenever you’re shooting a trap type shot, it’s a diminishing speed, diminishing lead target. The further it goes, the narrower the angle gets. And you want to retard gun movement on that shot, so any extra movement you give the gun when you’re mounting it in sporting clays can sometimes increase risk. So we would recommend that if the target is five to eight yards or further in front of you, shoot it with a mounted gun. But if the trap is back even with you, the target will fly almost two to three times further right to left or left to right depending on where it’s coming from, and you need the movement in that quartering shot to mount the gun. You follow me?

 Carlos: Yeah that makes sense because I’ve had trouble with trap type shots on like true pairs, and I’ve noticed that I don’t have enough time with a low gun to take that trap type target first, depending on the presentation. Lots of times they’ll throw that trap type target in a true pair, so you see it first. The other one is hidden somewhere and then comes into view. So you’ve got no choice but to take that trap shot first, and then my mount on that kind of target is a little too slow to move to the second shot and I wind up missing the second bird. I don’t like to shoot with the gun up, I don’t know what it is, just something in me.

 Gil: I understand that, and some people hate to do it, but I will tell you that in sporting clays, you should learn to do it. Maybe when we get together for a lesson sometime I’ll show you how to do that. The trick is not looking down the gun, looking off the side of the gun, and I think you’ll hear that if you’ll listen to that CD again. I asked him, “When you shoot with a mounted gun, are you looking down the rib or are your eyes off to the side of the rib so you can see the target?” He agreed that that’s what he did.

 Carlos: I found that out through bitter experience. I usually just mount the gun and focus my eyes to where the target’s coming from.

Gil: Yes, and another unique thing that he said, was that on a crossing target he’ll have the gun an inch or two out of the pocket, because that allows him to eliminate over 50 percent of his blind spot, which is under the gun on each side. And he’s able to see the target more, and he’s able to acquire that target and feel the move, the tempo of that target better, just from mounting that gun that subtle little one to two inches. So on a crossing shot he gets the gun a little out of his  shoulder, and if he’s got a long incomer or a long floater, he wants to get the gun completely out of his shoulder so he can feel that target in his mount and the gun doesn’t spend too long in his visual circle on a target that doesn’t have any movement.

 Carlos: Yeah I find that first portion works good for teal.

 Gil: Oh yeah. Anybody else have any comments about what they learned from the Mick Howell tape?

I would like to briefly review six or eight points that I thought were monumental, or at least very unique to the whole hour. The first one is, I asked him the one thing he’d like to improve about his game, and without hesitation, he said his gun mount. Now, I know we harp on you guys to play with your gun every day, to put the flashlight in the barrel and practice your gun mount.

You remember when we were talking to Nate earlier this year, and he does his gun mount practice every night. Every trajectory that he thinks he might need to shoot and he does it ten times every single night. And you see the kind of scores that he shoots, and you see the kind of scores that Mick shoots. It’s something that we can’t say enough, but it seems as though regardless of how much we say it, not everybody does it. And I agree 100 percent with him that everybody can always improve their gun mount. He also followed that comment up, saying you can do a lot of work away from the shooting range. You need to put the gun in your hands daily. You don’t have to spend 30 minutes on it, just play with it so you get used to having that gun in your hands.

I also thought it was interesting when we were talking about the shoot-off for the World FITASC, how he was four birds ahead going in, and he ended up tied. And you remember him saying that, when he went into that, he was trying to protect the lead. Which tells me, I mean it’s easy for me to say this, but I feel like if he’d just gone in there and shot the birds like he did in the final eight, in the sudden death shoot off, then he probably wouldn’t have had to go to the sudden death shoot-off, other than the fact that Willie just shot lights out. I felt like he was not 100 percent in the present because he was thinking about protecting his lead, and that’s exactly what he did, he protected his lead right down to a tie.

Another thing I found interesting was when he said, when it was all tied up, the pressure was off, and he just went out there and started shooting, which leads me to my previous conclusion. So you see what I’m saying? I’ve already told him this, and he said, “You’re probably right, I should have just got in there and shot just like I always do, and I probably wouldn’t have had to go to the shoot-off.” But that’s how fragile that conscious voice thing is. You have to believe in yourself, believe in your plan and trust it.

The other thing that I thought was unique was this: he said that he felt like all he had to do was stay level and let the other guy make the mistakes. And he mentioned that everyone is just as nervous as you are. I’ve never heard it said that way. If you remember we talked about dominators last year, and the dominators’ goal was to play their own game and be a constant, and let the other guy make mistakes. They know that the other guy is eventually gonna rush and make a mistake, and their job is to stay in their routine, stay in their game and be the constant. They let the butterflies in the other guy’s stomach be a weapon on their behalf.

Another thing I thought worthy of mention: I asked him what one thing he would change if he were starting over, and he said that he would adopt a minimum movement, lower gun mount. And he felt like that breakthrough was going to carry the game to a new level, which are some of the things that we’ve been working on with all of you.

Also, he felt like the ideal practice scenario was a hundred targets or so a day, three to five days a week, as opposed to two flats of ammo, once or twice a week. And I understand that we all can’t do that, but whenever it’s possible, if you had a day to spend at the gun club, perhaps you could go out and shoot five boxes in the morning and go have lunch and shoot five boxes in the afternoon. And break that practice up a little bit, because, I believe that he feels, as we do, it’s the frequency and quality of the practice, not the quantity of the practice that pays the biggest dividends.

He also said that he felt like his best 100 targets in a practice session occurred after his 30th shot and through his 130th shot. He felt like those were the best moves that he had. Let me put all this in perspective guys. This guy’s been doing this for 27 years, he’s one of the top shots in the world, and a lot of the things that he’s saying and a lot of the things that he’s doing with his gun mount, Carlos, those things have been well ingrained in him for the last 18 years. He’s pretty much been doing the same thing. That doesn’t mean that it’s right or wrong for him, or that it’s right or wrong for you.

Be careful when you try to adopt some of the things that a great shot does, because we find that the great shot can do things that may seem like a shortcut to you in the beginning, but they can do that because of the volume of shooting that they have done, both in practice and in competition situations. So when we talk to all these great shooters, take everything with a grain of salt, and it’s okay to try some of the things that they’re doing, but realize that they might be able to do that because they’ve shot train cars full of shotgun shells, and most of us who have real jobs will never be able to do that, so it may or may not work for you.

Another unique thing he said: On the world shoot, on the first day, he did not miss an easy target, and on the second day, he only missed two easy targets. So out of a hundred birds he only missed two easy targets, and he won. He just reconfirmed what we’ve been talking about on this Coaching Hour, and what we’ve been doing when we coach you. And that is, the tournaments are won and lost on the easy targets, and you need to spend more practice time on them, than anything else.

The last thing I’ll talk about is when Cindy asked him if he changed the lead when he missed, and he hesitated for a minute and he said, “No, I focus harder.”

And that’s something that I’m guilty of, that we’re all guilty of. When we miss, we immediately want to change the lead, but when you get to a certain level, and especially on the easy birds, rarely is it the lead that’s wrong. It’s the information that was going into the computer that made the lead wrong. Which I think is what he was saying. He tends to focus harder and I think he said 80 percent of the time, focusing harder on the bird corrects the problem.

Learning to Take a Compliment

 Gil: Next segment I want to talk briefly to Phil Bartash and then to Marty Holt a little bit. Phil and Marty have one thing in common, and that is it’s hard for them to take a compliment on their shooting. Phil, why don’t you summarize what we were talking about this afternoon?

 Phil: Yeah this weekend has been a roller coaster of emotion. I started out shooting sporting clays and the five stand, and I just couldn’t put it together. I was just emotionally devastated because I’d worked pretty hard, and it just wasn’t working. I felt like I was shooting as poorly as I had ever shot all year.

Then I came back in the FITASC and not only won the class, but I was runner-up in the state, which was a complete turn around. The emotion involved in that was pretty intense, and there was a lot of confusion involved. Instead of focusing on my successes I was still struggling with why my performance was so bad in the five stand. And then later when I looked at the scores I realized that even though I felt my performance was the worst I’d done all year, I still managed to shoot in the middle of my class. So I had to deal with that issue, it seemed like, even though I had a bad performance, my bottom performance has gone up but so have my demands on myself and my expectations.

 Gil: Yeah it’s that expectation thing.

 Phil: Big time. So I had all these people congratulating me on my FITASC, and it was hard for me to accept that because I had this gnawing—I call it my toothless dog—I had this gnawing, toothless dog chewing on my ear telling me how much I have to work on my five stand and my sporting clays.

 Gil: So you’d just beat everybody but one person at the Texas state shoot in FITASC and you were walking around with a mule lip, bemoaning how well you didn’t shoot in the sporting  competition?

 Phil: Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

 Gil: Would anybody out there like to have been runner-up in FITASC in the Texas state shoot?

 Audience: Hell yeah.

 Gil: Well, in Phil’s defense, I did talk to him a little bit this afternoon, and I just kind of broached the subject and let him talk, and I felt like I struck on the real problem. Phil has always had a problem with expectation and wanting the performance to happen right now. And believe me, if there were a way for Vicki and I to give that to you, we would. No one would be happier. But I would tell you that, when you began to shoot your sporting round, the targets you knew you could hit, you missed them and when that began to happen, your thoughts through the round went to “Jeez, I’m on station seven and I’m already down fifteen birds.” Did they go there, Phil?

 Phil: Yeah, you know, I was just trying to finish the shoot. I just wanted that bad boy over.

 Gil: I don’t know if you remember, but in September I did a little blurb on when you feel like you’re losing it. I want you to go back to that CD, and I want you to listen to that little blurb. Because when you feel like you’re losing it, the overwhelming part of that was, everything you do tends to speed up. And the way to overcome that is to slow down everything you do.

When it begins to speed up, your mind begins to race and you leave the present, you’ve already left the present for the future because you’ve looked at your score and you’re fifteen down halfway through and you’ve multiplied that by two and you’ve already given yourself a score of seventy and you’ve got half the stations left to shoot. It’s that expectation thing that pulls you right out of the present.

Nate was talking about this problem a few months ago and he’s had tournaments where he’s on the third station and he’s already down six birds and for him that’s a lot. And he said, “You’ve got to look at yourself, and from within you’ve got to take responsibility for what’s already happened. Say ‘Yes it’s happened, and go on and be even more focused and more determined to slow down, look harder at the bird, wait to see the bird and let your hands do the work.’”

I’ve got to tell you, everything we tell you to do just ensures the probability that you’re gonna shoot well. It doesn’t guarantee it. There are going to be days where you struggle. I mean, I struggled the whole weekend and it wasn’t until we were leaving that first day and Vicki said, “Well now, wait a minute. What happened to you at the Zone shoot last year? You were tired going in, you lost your focus both days and we realized you hadn’t got enough rest, when we just got in from an eight day road trip?”

And I shot a 41 on the FITASC and I couldn’t see the edges on the target until the doubles on the second to last peg.

 Audience: Are you saying you are your own worst student?

 Gil: (laughs) No. I’m saying the older I get, the harder it is to remember these things. Now, Phil also shared something with me that I want to share with you. Nadim Nassir came up and congratulated you, didn’t he Phil?

 Phil: Yeah he did, and he said he was amazed at how I’d progressed because he’d been shooting sporting clays for 10 years, and I realized that I’ve only been doing it for little over two and a half. I just sort of stood there kind of numb. It’s like I’m not capable of giving myself  credit. I’m always just looking at the underside of things, and it’s like, “Okay, I placed second here, that’s fine, but let’s get back to what I need to work on.” And what he said was profound. Intellectually I understand it, but emotionally it doesn’t, it’s like I block it out or something. It’s like, “Of course, but let’s get back to what needs  work.”