This is the last Coaching Hour before the 2004 National Sporting Clays Championship, so the focus is almost exclusively on practice leading up to a big performance. We talk with some of our Coaching Hour regulars about their preparatory practice. An important part of that is assessing the current state of your all-around game, to strengthen any weak links.The session ends with a discussion of the voice and how it constantly evolves as you learn to deal with it.
Gil: Brian, what are you going to do with your practice regimen leading up to Nationals? Do you have anything planned out?
Brian: Well, I’m going to do a lot more true pairs because they throw so many damn true pairs there. Also, they like to get two up there in your face, so I’m working on targets like that so I have a good sense of how to deal with them.
Gil: Okay, Don, do you have any particular thing that you’re going to do leading up to Nationals?
Don: I’m going to shoot three separate courses in rotation and not focus on one course. I’m not going to work particularly on simultaneous pairs, but I’ll try to shoot report pairs, breaking them in two and three different places. Just for the confidence and flexibility that can give me.
Gil: I think that’s a good idea. Not seeing the same targets over and over would be a really good idea. I would tell you that you can expect true pairs, and that’s just what they have thrown historically. When you’re doing your practice before Nationals, I know you all are doing this obviously, but I want to emphasize it. It’s critical that you do them all with a routine. We talked about this last year, about bringing your practice to a higher level, and I would think that you’re going to be shooting what, 75 targets a day for four days at Nationals? That means you’re going to have to put four days back to back.
Instead of going out and shooting 100 birds, you might want to go out and shoot 75 birds in a tournament environment. Maybe shoot three pair on each station, and at a couple of stations shoot four pairs, but if you have trouble with a pair, don’t stop. Continue and face that scorecard. Try to make it a tournament situation.
As Stevie talked about last month, when that voice comes in, you gotta learn not to resist it, but give into it and laugh at it and get focused on whatever swing thoughts that you like to have. And if you don’t have any, it might be a good time to develop them. We talked a lot about that last month with Steve and maybe we’ll talk about that some more tonight if he comes on.
Steve: I’m here, Gil.
Gil: Oh, you’re there. Okay. Did you get your plumbing done?
Steve: Yeah, buddy.
Gil: I think that’s important when you’re practicing for the Nationals. Steve, I’m talking about practice before Nationals and if you have any- thing to add—or Vicki too—if you have anything to add, just jump right in. I think it’s important that you always go back to fundamentals. The fundamental quartering move and the fundamental crossing move.
I was spending some time with Craig Hill last month before he went to the World Shoot, which he did quite well in, by the way. He was in the top five in the last 25-bird shoot off and we were talking about what he was going to do to prepare because he didn’t have enough time to devote to it. And he said, “Gil, it’s always fundamentals. Every time I come back to you and we go out and shoot, I think I’ve got one problem and you may not say something for 100 targets but every correction you ever make with me is about the basic, fundamental move. Grip pressure, lateral move, playing away from the bird. That’s a big one.”
That’s so big guys, I just can’t emphasize that one enough. Try to get that gun away from the target and let it come to you. The point is not to eliminate all of your lateral move. I think Vicki and Steve will agree with this, but I think more targets are missed, especially in tournament situations, because that bird gets inside the lead of that gun, and the gun gets in the way, and the target drops out of your primary circle of vision, and you miss the target. It’s confusing.
If you’re a right-hander, remember, on the right-to-left targets, anything from the right you need to play twice as far in front of that bird because it’s coming to you. You have to look across the gun. Bring the hold point out a little more than you would on a left-to-right. Bring the hold point down a little bit, so that it doesn’t matter what the bird does. If it does get too close, at least the gun will be in the bottom part of the circle, and you can easily come up in front of the bird.
Of the two moves, I would tell you to practice the right-to-left move more because the picture is so confusing because you’re having to look across that gun. Anything you can do to look at that right-to- left trajectory on crossers at 25 to 35 yards. I think that would be of great benefit to you because your hands are going in the same directions, but it’s a very easily confused picture.
As a rule of thumb we always tell people that if a bird gets inside the lead on a left-to-right you’re sunk because the gun is in the way. If it gets inside of twice the lead on a right-to-left, the gun is going to get in the way, so you have to be real careful and practice playing as far away from the bird as you’re comfortable playing, and let it come to you in the breakpoint. Critical, critical, critical.
Gil: This is a good time, you’ve got a good solid three weeks before Nationals, but you’ve got time to look at your game. Of all of the six trajectories, which one are you the strongest on? Which one might you be a little weak on? The trajectory that you are weakest on, whether you know it or not, whether you admit it to yourself or not, the trajectory that you’re weakest on will give you the greatest amount of fear. That is where the voice starts talking to you. It says some stupid, silly things. But if you know which trajectories you’re weakest on, if you work on those in the next couple of weeks and imprint those moves, if you get a little bit more confidence in those moves, then it’ll be harder for the voice to get inside of you and make you say those silly things that we were talking about.
Again, work on close targets. Work on curl, speed, different speed changes, and different line changes. I don’t think there will be a lot of window shots, but you need to be able to break those targets in breakpoints.
After you’ve shot your 75 tournament pairs, then go back and work on different targets. Work on single targets moving the breakpoint like Don was talking about. He was going to shoot more report pairs, working on his breakpoint, because the breakpoint sets up how easy or difficult the pair is. And if you have a certain breakpoint on a trajectory that’s giving you a problem, work it out. Move up closer. Get to where you need to be so you can break it and then move back.
Just be aware that the longer birds require a much slower move. Look for feel. I don’t think we can stress looking for feel enough when you’re training, when you’re practicing, and when you’re performing. Feel is the thing that allows vision and trust to come together in the breakpoint. If you can’t feel it, you can’t fix it. If you can’t feel it, you can’t reproduce it.
We talked last month about how important the touchy-feely things are to the subconscious. If you can feel it, the subconscious not only totally understands it, but the subconscious is in total command. That lateral move when you see that bird is critical. Keep that bird from overrunning the gun. It’s just absolutely critical to have decisiveness in your plan. Your commitment to the breakpoint is super critical. In my own shooting, if I’m committed to that breakpoint and I feel the move, the bird is dead when it’s halfway there. There ain’t no voice; there ain’t no nothing. It’s just a bird that’s getting ready to run into a brick wall of shot.
And when you’re training, you need to be aware of how easy it is for you to trust that breakpoint. You need to get really comfortable just letting it happen and keeping that emotional voice just as silent as you can keep it. Don’t resist it, like we talked about last month. Steve we’re going to talk about that in a minute, when I talk to Brian about what he redefined and how you helped him with that. But I just think it’s critical that you shoot your 75 birds and that you’re decisive with the plan and with your correction.
You might want to work on your correction routine. We talked about Don Yost’s correction routine several months ago, and I’ve worked with several people on that. I know it has helped them. And when you’re doing your 75-bird practice, you should work on that plan. Get to where you trust it. Get to where it actually happens without you thinking about it. You analyze the things in your game that you need to analyze and in the certain order that you need to analyze them in to determine why the target didn’t break. Don’t be as consumed with the fact that it didn’t break as you are consumed with why. And then make a decisive plan to correct it. I think it’s really critical that you realize that the decisiveness of the plan is more critical than the correctness.
Gil: Now’s not the time to change something. I was talking to Ron Shaffer a while ago. One of our students up in Illinois, and he called me up. He was having trouble with teal and curling targets. I told him what to do on the phone to correct those targets. Well, he won the super vets at the Wisconsin State Shoot, which had over 500 competitors. He won the main, he won the prelim and he won the five stand. But he told me he was still having trouble with teal.
I asked, “Ron, why are you having trouble with teal?”
He said, “I’m trying to shoot it where it’s coming down about three feet past where it crests.”
I said, “Did I tell you to do that?”
He said, “No, but this buddy of mine, he told me that’s where I ought to be shooting it.”
I asked, “Can you hit it there?”
He said, “I’m having real trouble hitting it there.”
I said, “Well, can you hit it after it’s been coming down about a fourth of the way?”
He said he could ink-ball it every time.
So I said, “Why are you trying to shoot it up there?”
He said, “Well, I don’t see many people shooting it like I do, and this buddy of mine, he told me I ought to shoot it up there cause it would be easier.”
And after about five minutes of going back and forth with him, he was still convinced he needed to shoot it up there.
I finally said, “Look, if you can shoot it 20 feet past that, then why are you worried about shooting it up at the top?”
He said, “Well, this friend of mine…”
I said, “Okay, then you need to get your friend to coach you. Now is not the time to be playing with something like that. If you want to learn to shoot something like that, then the next time we get together, I’ll show you how to shoot it, but right now you need to be imprinting what you do well as opposed to trying to change or tackle something that you don’t do well.”
Bob: I think the visualization of repairing whatever it is–the gun breaking or a mistake–whatever it is, that really is critical. But you said something that I didn’t have a good feel in my mind about how I’d go after it, and yet it’s happened to me. That is, at a particular stand, I just lose feel. What would you visualize to get the feel back? It has to be something very obvious and I’m just missing it.
Gil: What happens to me when I lose feel, either my eyes were moving when I called “pull” and I didn’t see the bird well, I didn’t see the front edge of the bird when I went to the breakpoint, or it got too close. If you had feel on the first two, then something has broken down. Either that or the voice has gotten a hold of you. Has the voice gotten a hold of you?
Bob: No. And the only thing that comes back to me when it has hap- pened is I suddenly feel very stiff, like I can’t move.
Gil: Steve and Vicki talk about it too, but when you feel tension in your hands, it’s already in your body. Your hands are the last place you’re going to feel tension. That’s where deep breathing comes in. Trying to relax your whole body.
And if you’re tense in your hands and tense in your body, then you’re going to be tense in your eyes, which makes it hard to focus. One of the easiest things that I’ve found to get that feel back is to squeeze the gun as tight as I can for two or three seconds, and then relax. I let the gun lay in my hands and then come back to my neutral grip pressure. You won’t feel it immediately, but when you go back to your neutral grip pressure, you’ll feel the muscles from the small of your back and all the way up to your ears begin to relax and come back to that neutral. It’s imperative that your hands (delete be), both of them, be equal and in that neutral position when you start the move. Otherwise they’ve got to relax before you can move. Does that make any sense?
Bob: Absolutely.
Gil: Steve, do you have anything to say about that?
Steve: Gil, I think early on in your answer, you said it could be getting ahead of the barrel. Nothing brings on anxiety, or a tense feeling, or tenseness, as much as something that I can’t understand. I had the feeling and then all of the sudden, something is not right.
I would recommend that if something is not right and that feeling disappears, get the gun out ahead of the bird, because what has probably happened without you knowing it is that the gun has occluded the vision in your shooting eye and all of a sudden it doesn’t feel right and that translates to you in more of a conscious kind of way, that you’ve lost the feeling. I’d say that with 95% of the misses I see from the better shooters, that is the situation.
Gil: And would you not also agree that that scenario is created by the gun moving vertically when they see the bird, as opposed to moving from the breakpoint laterally and controlling it from in front?
Steve: I think that usually causes it, Gil. You’re out of tempo with the bird. If that front hand doesn’t start toward the breakpoint, if that front hand comes vertical on you, or if the backhand is pushing in a kind of seesaw motion, then that timing and that feel is just accentuated by the fact that it all looked good. Say in a right-handed shooter, your left eye sees it, it looks good, and then you shoot it, and this icky, yucky feeling comes on. You say, “God, I thought that was the feel, but it wasn’t.”
Gil: Guys, I cannot tell you how many people we have worked with in the last two or three years, how we’ve worked with them on getting that gun further out there to the breakpoint so they have plenty of time to acquire the target without rushing and making a soft initial lateral move with the muzzle to the breakpoint. I can’t tell you how many people have experienced such a great calm and such incredible feel. Some of them have finally felt it for the first time. And what ends up happening, Bob, is you’ll feel the first two, but then you’ll go back, and instead of playing the breakpoint, you’ll try to play that damn bird. And when you’re playing the bird and not the breakpoint, the bird is going to close in on the gun. And it’s going to bite you. Does that make sense to you?
Bob: It helps a lot.
Gil: So just remember, it’s all feel and trust, and when you’re working on your game coming up to Nationals, I want you to work on feel and trust and just let it happen so that you can do the best you can when you get there.
Gil: I had to interrupt Stevie Ray last time because he was talking about a story between he and Brian. Brian had come to him for a lesson and Brian wanted him to teach him how not to think of his score. And we stopped this story where Stevie Ray had thrown the pull head down and was walking back to the camphouse. Now I’ve been on the edge of my seat, wanting to know what happened. Stevie, will you continue the rest of that?
Steve: By gosh, I feel like Paul Harvey. (laughter) Well, I left Brian standing there in the heat of the sun, and I walked about 20 yards back to the five stand and I sat down on the benches. I think Brian can tell you, but I believe he was concerned that I might be mad at him or feeling bad, but after what seemed like 10 minutes, he came over and said, “Hey coach, are you okay?”
I said, “Oh yeah, Brian, I’m fine.”
You just have to know Brian, as you do Gil, but he was really con- cerned, but I told him he would just be wasting his money and my time. He might as well go on back to Louisiana cause it was impossible. I think that left an indelible impression on him. That’s what I was trying to do. You just cannot stop thinking about where you are. What you’ve got to learn to do is just get it out of your head for two or three seconds.
Gil: While the target is in the air.
Steve: That’s right, while you’re shooting. Don’t be working so hard and expending all that energy on fighting the things that you don’t want to think about, because you’ll wind up losing the feeling.
Gil: Big time. Now, after last month’s session, Brian called you the next day, I think. And he asked Steve to explain some things in more detail. Brian, what did you ask Steve? And Steve, what did you tell him?
Brian: I don’t remember all the particular details but it was all ringing bells for me because we had covered this ground before. I just wanted to get clarification on what he was saying by letting the voices have their play, and then they would just dissipate and you’d go on and do your thing. I wanted to see if that was what he was really saying. Anyway, it worked for me. Like I told him Sunday when I was coming back from the Zone shoot. I had such a good experience with that. It was like somebody was giving me permission to go shooting again. So it worked for me.
Gil: And Steve, what did you tell him?
Steve: Gil, more than anything I just reiterated what I said that Tuesday night. He was a little confused about maybe what to say. And like I said, that is a personal thing.
Gil: When you say, “what to say,” what does that mean?
Steve: What to say to occupy the voice.
Gil: And give us some examples of that.
Steve: In my experience, what works good for me is to tell myself, just as I call pull, I start telling myself to move that front hand toward the breakpoint. When I feel it moving toward the breakpoint, I then concentrate on the front edge of the target. Like Willy was talking about, I scream “five o’clock” and pull the trigger.
It’s more of a feeling than a conscious thought. But I am giving my voice something to talk about in a feely kind of way, occupying that voice for the two or three seconds that I’m moving to shoot the first bird in a pair. That is a very critical time.
I’ve spent this last month with a stopwatch. I’ve been timing two things: golf swings, and the time between when you call pull and when you shoot that second shot. I think I alluded to it or touched on it last time a little bit about why I suspect that one of the reasons why we can’t silence the voice as recommended in some of the golf mental help books, is that the time that evolves in a golf swing is on average 2.2 seconds. The time that it takes for some of our targets to get to us, like a long incomer, is 4.6 seconds. Coupled with a following bird, that can run a total of eight or nine seconds in a pair. I think that the difference is this: we as shooters are going to have to find a way to occupy the voice. I don’t think we’re going to silence it until we get to a very advanced level.
To me, that’s where committing to the breakpoint really helps.
Steve: That’s right. And that is where I believe–if I recall correctly–that is what you told me that you feel. After you call pull and you’re in that feel mode where you’re feeling something that you predicated.
Gil: Yessir.
Brian: Also as you said there, we started talking about a chant that would occupy that time between calling “pull” and pulling the trigger. And I’ve used that on a long, high tower shot. When I called pull, I could count to one, two, three and at three I could pull the trigger in the breakpoint that I wanted. So it was just developing that time. It was occupying that time because I could see it so damn long.
Gil: Now, to me, when I see a bird that is a long ways off, when I see it, if I begin to move slightly and I feel that connection with that bird, then it’s not as big a problem for me as not moving. If I see the movement and I’m not connected through feel to that bird then that’s the end of me, buddy. But that’s me. And as Steve mentioned, all this stuff we’re talking about is going to evolve into something personal for each and every one of you. And you’ve got to be willing to get out there and experience it. It worked well for you at the Zone Shoot, is that right Brian?
Brian: Yeah, it did. I had a practice round one day and shot a 91. I shot the prelim and shot an 81. I shot the main event and shot 88 one day and then the next day I shot a 76, wound up with an 83 on five stand and a 44 on FITASC, and I won the FITASC veterans and the five stand veterans. So I had a good outing.
Gil: Did that voice say anything silly to you?
Brian: Oh, yeah. Sure it did.
Gil: And you just laughed at it and went on?
Brian: I know that some people thought I was crazy over there, but I was carrying on a nice little conversation. (laughter) I was real at ease with myself. I mean, of the whole course I thought FITASC targets were the best targets they had, because I like FITASC anyway. I was so relaxed and calm about it I never got really mad because there were three or four shots there that I really just didn’t connect with. But I stayed with it and ended up having a good score out of it.
On Sunday’s course at the main event, it was really a bear of a course. A lot of good shooters bombed on that course. Some of them didn’t, but I think 84 was the high score. There were targets out there that had a lot of length on them. They also were edgy and hard to see. Plus, they had a lot of targets that were real quick and slammed into the ground. So they really took you out of your comfort zone. The course had a lot of built-in failure.
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