With the National Sporting Clays Championships over, we take a look at the year-end, and how a log pays big dividends at this time. Themes at the year-end include gun maintenance, rewarding yourself and setting a start date for the next year. Three shooters share their Nationals experience. Danny Cummings discovers the beauty of letting expectations go, Brian Brewton shows us how far the trinity of “focus, feel and trust” has propelled his game, and Dean Olson tops it all off with a recount of how he peaked at just the right time.
Year-End Review
Gil: It’s that time of year where you have to look at the year-end, and I thought I’d go over some of the things that we went over last year, briefly. If you want the whole thing, refer to your October CD from last year. Then I’m going to talk to Danny and then Brian and hopefully Dean will be on here in just a minute. I’ll talk to him about his year and his performance at Nationals. It was a “stellar performance” as Jeff Kruger would say. After that I wanted to talk about goals and expectations and how they’re alike and not alike and about possibly setting some new goals. I think we’re going to get into some pretty good discussions on the log.
I was talking to Vicki three or four weeks ago when we were taking a little time for ourselves and kind of reviewing what we had done on the Coaching Hour. This year we’ve talked a lot about self-talk.
Next year, and every time I say this it’s always wrong, but I had this feeling that next year we’re going to talk a lot about the log and how it impacts your performance and your ability to stay on your goals and stay on the course to achieve those. I know that the people who have been keeping logs have remarked to us whenever we’ve talked to them individually at how helpful the logs were in helping them get past a failure, or get back on track, or just reading it and looking at it prior to going to a big shoot helps settle them down. So if you’re not keeping a log, please do. In our opinion, based on the successes of quite a few of you and some of the people who aren’t on the Coaching Hour, we feel like it’s almost a necessity if you’re going to create a goal and achieve it.
So it is the end of the year. This would be an ideal time to read back through your log and look for patterns. You should make a year-end entry into your log and summarize your whole year. Summarize the ups and the downs, emphasize the ups and figure out what sort of emotional rollercoaster you were on if you got down. Make that log entry very specific.
If you had trouble with a certain aspect of your game, it’s important that you enter it in your log, and if you overcame it, enter in how you overcame it. I think you’ll find that just going back through it now while it’s still fresh in your mind before you stop shooting things that break and start hunting, or go play golf, or go fishing or do whatever you want to do in the off-season for however long you want to do it, I think it would be beneficial for you to go ahead and summarize your year and have that be an entry in your log.
Also, it’s very important that you have a date to begin for next year. When you pick that date to begin, you need to think about when you’re going to start practicing, how often you’re going to practice. You need to look at your tournaments and how you’re going to schedule them. And when you want to come see us or if you’re going to go see somebody else or whatever it is that you want to do. We hope that you want to come see us, but if you don’t, that’s fine with us. We want you to shoot better, regardless of what it takes.
It’s important that you get your year in perspective and choose a date to begin next year. You can do your year-end entry and not really establish goals for next year. You can just analyze your year based on what’s been going on and get the things down that you did well and get the short-term goals down on paper. If you didn’t achieve your long-term goals, it’s no big deal. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. But it’s important, even if you don’t have a long-term goal that you summarize in your log how you shot this year, and the good points, and the things that you accomplished. And you can leave it blank at the end there and leave some room for some new goals.
Because a lot of times, when you achieve your goals, new goals aren’t the first thing on your mind, especially if you’re going into the off-season. Especially if you’re going to go play a little bit and get away from shooting, which Vicki and I definitely recommend.
When to Back Off
Gil: We’re going to Birmingham tomorrow on our last road gig for the year as far as sporting clays goes. We’re looking forward to going over there and teaching for three days and coming back and getting away from the teaching aspect of our lives and going and playing down at the 74 Ranch, or going fishing one afternoon and taking some time off. We’re just looking forward to it, and we recommend all of you do that. Even those of you who are in the warmer climates who can continue shooting.
I was talking to Tom Kirchmer the other day, and he was complaining about missing so many easy incomers at Nationals, and he was so driven, he was going to go out there and shoot every day until he got them. I tried to slow him down a little bit and get him to relax, but he’s a fairly driven person, a Type A personality, and I backed him off a little bit. He’s going through a battle right now. He’s left eye dominant and shooting right- handed and he’s having trouble with the thin-line quartering birds that are incoming. And I told him that was going to be the last thing he was going to conquer. I told him to approach it slowly and not try to conquer it in a week, and he agreed that he’d back off and give it four or five weeks and not attack it quite as hard as he was planning to do.
Gun Maintenance
Gil: It’s the time of year when you need to take your gun in. Send it to somebody and have them overhaul it, have them check it. Take it apart, fire it for function and that needs to be done now or sometime in the next thirty to sixty days. And remember, when you get it back, shoot it and pattern it for impact. Shoot at a pattern plate, make sure the gun still performs as it should. And that will be one of the first things you’ll do next year is to pattern your gun in your initial session. You need to write that down in your log. It’s a good time of year to check out your eyes, even if you don’t think you’re having problems. It’s a good idea to have a yearly visit with the eye doctor. By all means, put the gun down, and get away from it. Reward yourself, do something nice for yourself and do something nice for the people around you that have been putting up with you training and practicing and going to all these tournaments.
Tallying Targets and Practice Sessions
I think it’s important that you take a count of the total number of targets that you shot this year, both registered and total number. I think once you begin to look at how many times you were out there in the arena and how many times you were out there in the practice field pulling the trigger, that’s an accomplishment in itself. But you need to know what kind of volume you were at so you know next year, if you’re going to make the same kind of commitments, you know about what kind of volume you’re going to be expecting to attack to achieve your new goals.
I would also tell you that you need to look at your practice sessions this year in retrospect. Look at them from the standpoint of: Did they improve in quality over the year? I know that quite a few of you have said, based on what we’ve talked about this year, that your practice and training sessions have improved in quality. You need to write those things down in a year-end assessment so that when you begin next year, you’re fully aware of the kind of practice sessions you’re going to be looking for next year and the frequency of practice sessions. Look for patterns in your practice this year, the timing, the frequency with your training sessions and your tournaments. Look to see when you shot your best and when you didn’t shoot your best, and see if there’s a pattern there. Each one of you is going to have certain things that your body and your mind like to do prior to a big shoot, and knowing what those are right now will help you dramatically in getting ready for next season.
If you had a weight gain or a weight loss, make note of it. That will affect your gun fit and any significant changes resulting in improved or poor performances. See if you changed the way you practiced, if you changed the chokes you used in practice, if you changed what you did the day you practiced. Anything you can put a finger on that becomes a pattern in a poor performance or a good performance, but don’t just look at your good performances. Anything you can do to look back through your year in retrospect to establish what it is that makes your body and your mind perform the best, I think will be of great benefit to you going into next year.
Other things you might want to look for are turning points during the year. When I say a turning point I mean, you might have been a little bit discombobulated at the beginning of the year and all of the sudden it just kind of turned around and things started clicking. Go back and look at what led up to that turning point. I know it sounds like I’m redundant about this, but there are so many things you can learn just from reading your log.
I was talking to Dean a week or so ago and he had told me that he was not quite as up to date and specific in this year’s log as he wished he had been. He even went back and read last year’s log and it helped in his performance. So this is a document that’s going to follow you, and I’m sure you’re getting more used to writing in it now, and I hope that you’ve been reviewing it every month or every other month. Be sure that you go back through that thing and summarize your year and leave a blank page for goals if you haven’t made your goals for next year. You also need to look at your tournament schedule from this year and determine whether or not you’re going to duplicate it or change it, and write down the reasons why you either want to duplicate it or change it. Because I promise you, in three or four months when the snow stops falling up north on Danny’s place and it starts getting spring down here in Texas and Louisiana, you are going to be glad that you wrote those things down because it will take all doubt out of the purpose for your shooting next year.
Reward Yourself
Gil: I can’t say enough how important it is for you to reward yourself. You have to do something in the shape of a reward. I know that my lovely wife is rewarding herself dramatically, I might add, for a year’s worth of hard work by buying lots of new furniture. And I’m getting some enjoyment out of it too, because I told her not to tell me what any of it costs.
Brian Brewton: Get the good stuff now, girl.
Vicki: Of course. Always.
Gil: But she’s having a ball doing that and I rewarded myself this year. I went and bought me a little side by side twenty-eight gauge to go and hunt quail with this year, and I’m looking forward to doing that. I’m looking forward to getting away from shooting a little bit. It’s more important than you realize. And if someone asks you about it, tell them, “It’s a reward I’m giving myself for the commitment I made to my shooting this year.” And your wives and your families need to be rewarded too. Make sure to take some time out so that they can feel good about your commitment, so you can do it without any reservations. So make sure and do a year-end log entry. If you want to do any experimentation: new chokes, different ammo, new practice, now’s the time to do it.
Nationals Performances
Gil: Dean, are you out there?
Dean: Yes.
Gil: Okay, good.
Danny: A celebrity.
Gil: Dean, Danny made the comment that he saw you on TV last night.
Danny: They had the Shotgun Journal on with the Nationals talking about him and a couple other guys shooting.
Gil: So you’re a celebrity now Dean.
Dean: Apparently.
Gil: Well, I’m going to talk about Danny, about his shooting and his log and talk to Brian about his shooting and his log, and then I’m going to talk to you about your shooting and your Nationals experience if that’s okay.
Dean: Yep.
Gil: Danny, talk to me a little bit about your year and what role having a log played in it.
Danny: I basically started out the year in the D class and I had two goals: one to get to B class and the second was to win my class at state. I wrote those goals down, set them on the side of the desk and I knew that just writing them down wasn’t going to do much for me. From that point it became a schedule of practice. The goal there was every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday go out and shoot 100 targets of whatever type I wanted to work on. I did that religiously. And the log probably wasn’t a traditional log, it was more of, “Okay, what did you work on in practice?” “This is what you worked on.” “Okay, how did you do at the tournament?” “This is how you shot and if you were having trouble with a certain shot, go back and practice it the next time. Just keep going down the line.”
I had a listing of probably eight to ten different types of shots, whether they were left-to-rights or right-to-lefts or going up and down or incomers or whatever. And I went through the whole series of those and basically kept checking it off as to how I was doing in practice and how I was doing in the tournaments and on down the line. I had a pretty good year. I actually finished in A class and I guess I should have been a little more specific in my goal because I actually didn’t win the main event in my class at state but I ended up winning three other events in my class.
So I was really happy. I didn’t have what I felt to be any really poor performances this year. And when I did have a poor performance, the low scores were much higher than they had ever been. The one thing that I did notice really comes from keeping a log as far as tracking information from different shoots and when I travel. I found out that I shoot much better in the afternoon than when I start in the mornings, and I didn’t really know that before this year. I went to shoots and I always wanted to start at nine in the morning because I get up early and that’s when I enjoy shooting, but all my performances seemed to be better when I shot in the afternoon. So I kind of rearranged it so if I have the opportunity to only shoot in the afternoon, I do. Or like the eleven and two squad, something of that sort.
Gil: Let me ask you a question.
Danny: Sure.
Gil: When you practice, is it only in the afternoon?
Danny: That’s an interesting thing. Most of the time when I’m practicing it’s after work. So I’m coming home and it’s generally around 5:30 or 6:30 that I get the trap out and turn it on. I’m not generally out there shooting at 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. I’ve got some neighbors that are close so I’m fairly courteous to them. But yeah, most of the time if I’m shooting on a Saturday it’s 10:30 or 11:00 am.
Gil: So do you only practice on your own trap? You don’t ever go to a club?
Danny: No, I do. Last year I went a lot to the gun club, but it seemed like I kept getting caught up with guys wanting to shoot, and it was a little more difficult to just go out by yourself and shoot targets that you want. You know, if you were headed to the skeet field there might be other people out there, so I ended up buying my own trap and putting it here at the house, and it really allowed me to focus on the things that I needed to work on here in practice. Unfortunately, it’s getting to the point for next year that I need another trap now so I can throw doubles from different directions.
Brian Brewton: I got one for you.
Gil: It never ends does it?
Danny: No, pretty soon I’ll have a whole course out here. But again, with the log, one of the things I discovered was all I need is a minimal breakfast. A donut and a glass of iced tea is about all I need. If I eat a big breakfast, it doesn’t do me any good.
Gil: And when you’re going to work during the week is that pretty much what you do?
Danny: That’s exactly what I do.
Gil: Hello?
Danny: It’s a donut and a bottle of iced tea that I carry to work in the morning.
Gil: There’s the pattern that I was talking about from the segment before. It’s those patterns that you have to look for. And you guys who aren’t keeping a log, if you’re serious about this, the patterns that Danny has found, those kinds of patterns are what you’re looking for.
Now let me explain something else: You not only want to be aware of those, but you also can look at that as something you can go out and work on. For example, for Danny, it might be to improve his performance in the mornings. You understand what I mean? By going and practicing at the gun club, even if you’ve got to shoot the round, at least start going and practicing shooting at nine o’clock in the morning.
Danny: Yeah, it’s gotten to the point now where in a lot of these smaller local shoots I purposely schedule myself in the mornings just to get into the groove of that.
Gil: Do you have any feeling for why the morning performance is sluggish for you?
Danny: I don’t know, because like I said, I get up early. I like to get out there and get going earlier in the morning. Generally it’s cooler. I haven’t figured that one out yet.
Gil: Have you tried eating some fruit for breakfast in the morning?
Danny: No.
Gil: Try eating some fruit and carrying an apple or something like that along with you to eat on after the third or fourth stations. Maybe an apple and a banana, and after the third station eat the banana and after a few more stations eat the apple. It might be that, even though you shoot better with a donut and a glass of iced tea, it might be that you’re just running out of gas. Where I would look for that is in not being able to close. More misses at the end of the tournament than the beginning, you understand what I’m saying?
Danny: Yeah.
Gil: Because when the adrenalin starts pumping after you get in the first stand that really takes the nourishment out of you. It takes all the stuff your body is depending on to get through the morning, and it begins to burn it up at a much greater rate. I know that the apple has an imperfect molecule of sugar that gives you the sugar that your body needs, but it doesn’t give you the sugar high. And it’s a great fruit to take with you when you’re trying to perform.
Danny: I’ll try that. The other thing that I found, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but—
Gil: I’ve been sounding crazy most of my life, it’s okay.
Danny: Yeah, well when I’m traveling to shoot at a hotel, I’ve been taking my own pillow with me. And I sleep much better and feel much better when I get up in the morning.
Gil: Now that’s interesting.
Brian: I do that same thing.
Gil: Do you, Brian?
Brian: Yep. Absolutely.
Danny: Yeah, and I started doing it after a shoot. I can’t remember which one. But I went down to Sears trying to find the same pillow and couldn’t do it, but I didn’t sleep well. After that I said, “The heck with that,” and I just packed my own pillow.
Gil: It’s the little things, isn’t it?
Danny: You know, it’s almost like you said, just keeping your routine the same as it is when you’re at home and moving on from there.
Gil: Well, congratulations on achieving your goals.
Danny: Thanks. The other thing I kind of got over this year, and you’ve said this many times, but I just got it in my mind that I’m not going to shoot perfect every time I go out there. And if I have a bad performance I don’t really care about that. Yeah, okay, I’ll do it, but the next time I may shoot my best round ever, so move on and don’t worry about it. And that was big.
Gil: It’s not so much the score or having a good performance that you need to concentrate on, it’s the journey of learning and the fun of learning new things that’s the real goal. I was reading a book about a guy who made pottery, you know one of the mud wheels that turn around and they stick their hands in it and make vases and stuff?
Danny: Uh-hmm
Gil: Well, he said there was a little kid around the shop there, and there was a pot he had just finished sitting on the table and it was hard and dry. The kid picked it up and dropped it and the kid just almost cried, but the old man said, “Don’t worry, because the pot’s still there.” It wasn’t the pot that was the goal, it was the joy the potter had making it. And too many times we look at our goals as something that we hold on to, but a goal is just something to get you from one place to another. It’s just a roadmap. We’ll talk about that next time if we get the chance, but for now let’s move on. Brian, tell us about your year and how the log helped you. Thank you, Danny.
Log in or become a member to read the rest of this article.
