2004-10 October 2004 Coaching Hour – The Importance of Setting New Goals

After reviewing the September 2004 Coaching Hour, we decided that we should talk a bit more about playing away from the target, and we start this hour off with that topic.

We discuss the reasons that good shooters let the bird get too close and how that affects the performance, and then we dive into the meat of the session: setting goals. We look to the example of Ron Schaffer, a shooter who has experienced great success in achieving goals, and one who knows the challenge of setting new goals after big goals have been accomplished.

Letting the Bird Get Too Close

Gil: I know Brad, and you too Brian, the last lesson that I had with both of you, letting that bird get too close was an issue. I know for sure Brian, the last time we got together the bird was getting too close on you and it just kind of crept back in, didn’t it?

Brian: Yeah.

Gil: I was working with Brad about a week ago and we looked at his game and talked about not letting the bird get too close. The big thing with Brad was that we were working with a nemesis target for him. I believe that was the right-to-left target wasn’t it Brad?

Brad: Yeah, that’s right.

Gil: Yeah. And we worked on making his eyes move to the front of that bird and he shot it with amazing consistency. But like it or not, because of the game we play and because of the variety in it, letting the bird get too close to the gun creates a lot of risk. I know we’ve talked about that a lot, but I think it’s something that we can’t talk about too much. I know that Vicki and I deal with it in our teaching every day.

Last weekend in Georgia, I had a group of five men who were fairly good shooters, 78 to 85, and when I told them about not letting the bird get too close to the gun, I got the deer- in-the-headlights look. By 10:30 that morning they were jumping up and down because they finally understood what I was talking about. It certainly was amazing to them how much easier it became and how much slower everything became.

Because Vicki and I deal with it every day I think we pretty much take for granted the problems involved with it, but for some reason it just keeps sneaking in. Brian, in your teaching and in your shooting … have you figured out how it slips back in? Do you figure it’s just a mental thing, or do you think you’re lazy or what do you think it is?

Brian: No, I think you get to your progression where you’re hammering targets and then you get to the point where you don’t want to miss any and you start, not necessarily checking up, but you just slow it down a lot more than you normally would and that bird just comes up on you and you’re not ready for it.

Gil: Well I guess I’ve never really thought about it that way but it makes sense. You’re shooting well and blowing up targets and everything feels good and all of a sudden you start shooting not to miss and then it creeps back in, doesn’t it?

By the way we were going to talk about the visual circles tonight, but Stevie Ray had an opportunity to go get his foot operated on today and when I talked to him at about five o’clock this afternoon he felt like he was still on the drugs and couldn’t be coherent talking about the visual circles. He said he could probably talk about them but he didn’t know which circle he’d end up in. So he’s agreed to be with us next month and talk about the visual circles, which is something that we’ll probably talk about for two months because we’re constantly learning new things about that.

Suffice it to say that if you play too close to the bird, the opportunity for visual interference increases dramatically. And when visual interference occurs, the obvious cause of the miss is rarely the real cause, which leads you to think that it’s your eyes taking over or the lead’s wrong or any number of things. And Vicki and I deal with this every day. People are so mystified when they find out that all they have to do is play a little further away from that bird and things slow down and the reasons for the misses become a lot more obvious.

Brad and I talked about how the confusing thing to him was that everything looked and felt right. But it still didn’t break. And I guess that’s the thing that really throws you off your wheels because when you know it oughtta be breaking and it ain’t, then it’s gotta be visual interference. More times than not that visual interference is caused because that bird got too close. And I think that was a great point you made last month, Brad, about how, when you missed it, you said, “Okay, I’m going to get the gun out of the way so that I can get both eyes registered on the target and then get the gun to where it needs to be when it gets to the breakpoint.” And even that was confusing to one of our students.

I was working with a guy named Bo Huggins a couple of months ago and I kept telling him, “Meet the bird in the breakpoint but let the bird come to you.” And whenever he’d do that, the bird would go right by him. And I kept telling him that, and then he would start doing it on his own and he would start hitting it. And I’d say, “Yeah, just like that, meet it in the breakpoint.”

And he finally stopped and said, “Gil, when I try to meet the bird in the breakpoint the bird gets too close at the last minute.”

And I said, “Well, what’s your concept of what you’re doing right now because you’re smashing the bird and you can see the bird come.”

He said, “Well, my thought is, the gun has to be in the breakpoint before the bird gets there.”

Now, I think we’re playing more with semantics than we are with anything else, but I’d never heard it referenced like that. The gun has to be in the breakpoint before the bird gets there. Now we’re probably talking about a hundredth of a second, maybe a tenth, but it seems like a hundredth of a second to me.

And so I began to shoot the way he was describing. They were both the same to me, but to him it was easier to understand letting the bird come to the gun and meeting it in the breakpoint if he understood the concept that the gun has to be in the breakpoint before the bird gets there. Now I’m not saying it’s got to be in the breakpoint for a second and a half before the bird gets there, but it obviously has to be in the break- point before the bird gets there in order for the gun to be ahead of the bird when the trigger is pulled. So that’s just another way to look at that.

I was talking to Willy earlier today about some of the things that he was going over in the last year and he had a couple of shots that caused him a little concern. One of them was a window shot and anoth- er was a long rabbit, something where you have to be well in front of the rabbit to hit it.

Normally when he shoots rabbits just like we do, when they’re within 25 yards you just look at the rabbit and shoot the rabbit and it goes away. But when that rabbit gets out there 35, 40, 45 yards like we saw at the Browning/Briley, and there might even have been one at the Open, it just seems to give him a problem. And he said something that  I wrote down. He said, “This not letting the bird get too close and letting the bird come to us needs to be a basic fundamental that we practice all the time just like foot position and tempo and rhythm and focus.” And he said, “I believe if I were to do that, most of my problems would go away and whenever there was a problem, in doing that it would be much easier to correct. And I agreed with him. Willy, is that a fair assessment of what we talked about?

Willy: Yeah, that’s it exactly … I think you said it better than I did.

Gil: Well, flattery will get you everywhere. It’s just something that, although we take it for granted, once we say it one time we just take for granted that it happens, but it just sneaks back in there. And I think Brian was right when he said it was the fear of failure. Shooting not to miss. You just let that sucker get in there too close and nothing good happens.

So I wanted to review that a little bit tonight. Just remember that the left-to-right target for a right-handed shooter and the right-to-left target for a lefty–I’m talking about you now Gary–if the bird gets within the lead, you’re in trouble. It’s just a matter of when you see the bird moving to the breakpoint and letting the bird come to you in the breakpoint. Whether you view it as meeting the bird in the breakpoint or having the gun get to the breakpoint before the bird gets there and kill it, to me they’re both the same but I must tell you that it wasn’t the same to Bo. So if any of you are having trouble with letting the bird come to the gun and being away from the bird … if you can just try looking at it from the standpoint that the gun has to be in the breakpoint before the bird gets there, you’ll always be ahead of it.

So the left-to-right bird for the right-hander and the left-to-right for lefties, if the bird gets within the lead, you’re going to have trouble.

Talking Tempo

Gary: You asked what else causes problems when you’re letting the bird come to the gun? When I started to feel like I understood that and was getting a handle on that — it took a while to figure it out, but you get in this nice rhythm and I’ve heard your comment before about how every move looks the same and feels the same.

Well, I got into such a mindset of trying to make every move have the same tempo as I move my breakpoint back closer to the trap and tried to use the same move, I would occasionally get that as somebody described a couple times ago: that yucky feeling that everything looks right, but it’s not breaking. You’re ahead of the bird … you’re getting to the breakpoint first, but you don’t realize that, as you’ve worked the breakpoint back toward the trap, you’ve worked into a bird that has so much more tempo that you end up with such a slow move and short swing on a fast bird. And you’re getting to the breakpoint first, but you’re doing so with such a slow tempo that I think the bird closes in on you. As soon as I realized that and said, “Hey, this tempo is different, it’s the same move but it’s gotta be a little faster” then that problem goes away.

Gil: I agree with that 100 percent. Starting where you are in your curve, that is a normal progression for you to have to go through.

Gary: You could have told me that.

Gil: What’d you say?

Gary: I said, you could have told me that before I spent two or three weeks figuring it out!

Gil: No, no. I could have told you that, but you wouldn’t have understood it.

Gary: Probably true.

Gil: You’re going to learn to give in sooner or later. But you can’t ever replace tempo. And you’ve got to find your own tempo for those short little quick moves that you have to have. The better you get, the closer the gun will start to the breakpoint and the less move you’ll have to have to be in sync with it and the slower the move can be. That’s just something you can look forward to.

Now I’m not ever telling you that you can move extremely slow breaking a bird 30 feet out of the house. You can’t do it. But the better you get from the standpoint of being able to feel the target coming to you, the slower and more precise the move can be. To a certain point. There is a certain point that you’ll reach where you have to react from where you see the bird, where there is no way you can do it slowly.

And the less reaction time you have to a bird … say a window shot like we were talking about with Willy or in the first third of the flight path, the less reaction time you have, the quicker your tempo has to be just to get there. But that is just something you’re going through right now and you’re going to experience a little bit of a change in that with a new gun. With a heavier gun — you went from a 20 gauge to a 12 gauge — and with your heavier gun, you’re not going to be able to move as quick and controlled. Even though that 20-gauge had 30-inch barrels, you’re still not as quick and therefore your move will have to be a little slower and more precise. But that is something that you’ll have to work through as you keep letting the bird come to you. Would you not agree though that once you came out of your funk on letting the bird come to the gun, everything has slowed down and everything has a more similar move?

Gary: No question.

Gil: Now when I say similar, I don’t mean the same. They are more similar in tempo simply because you can choose a hold point so that the bird doesn’t jam you too early in the shot. Your move will be more similar and more controlled, however there will be times based on the presentation and the breakpoint that you choose, that the move is much quicker. The benefit to all of that is because most of your moves are more similar and more controlled. When you have to make a quick move, it will be a more controlled quick move as opposed to just a stick it out there, poke and hope kinda thing. Does that make sense to you?

Gary: Yeah. I think what I found was: when moving the hold point closer to the breakpoint stops working, it’s usually a tempo  issue.

Gil: Yes, and I will add something to that. It is a tempo issue, which is a lack of feel. Are you talking about shooting a bird quick, or shooting a slower bird with the gun too close to the breakpoint?

Gary: Well, let’s just say we’re shooting a 30-yard crosser. And if you’re going to break it in the sweet spot, you might have a move that’s, let’s say a foot-and-a-half from the hold point to the breakpoint, the muzzle travels maybe a foot-and-a-half. And it’s nice and slow and you’re just kind of moving to the breakpoint as the bird is coming there, but what I’ve been doing is, if I want to break it halfway from the trap to that sweet spot, I can shorten that swing and still keep that same tempo and break that bird. But there comes a point as I move it back closer to the trap where shortening the swing or moving the hold point closer to the breakpoint stops working. And at that point in time after a couple of rounds, it usually hits me that okay, I’ve moved close enough to the trap now that my tempo is too slow and it doesn’t matter how short I make the move, I’m not going to be in sync with that bird.

Gil: Uh-huh. And that will probably manifest itself more to a person who, when they see the bird, does not move immediately upon focus. Be aware of that. When you’re out there playing and you’ve got all day, when you focus on it, start the move. We see that a lot. Wouldn’t you agree Vicki?

Vicki: Oh yes.

Gil: On those longer birds like that 30-yard crosser you were talking about, hell you could move when you see the bird and you could move when the bird is out of the house 30 feet and still have time to get in sync with it. But that doesn’t help you when the breakpoint gets closer to the trap or when you have a window shot. Because when you have a window shot or when the breakpoint gets close to the trap, when you see that bird … you better be moving. Now if you do that on all targets regardless of how much time you have to kill it, if you’ll go ahead and start moving when you see it, then you won’t be out of your comfort zone when you get back to the point you just described. Does that make sense to you?

Gary: Yeah it does.

Gil: We see that a lot. We see it a lot in good shooters. They’re good enough to recover from not starting when they see it because they’ve got such incredible feel. But when it comes time to when they have to move when they see that bird … shooting that bird really fast, they’re not as calm and in control of their move and the target because they’re not doing the same thing they’ve done all along.

That is why we encourage you, regardless of how far away the bird is or how long you have to shoot it, when you see it, start moving. Now if it’s giving you a problem and you don’t want to pick it up till a little further out, I don’t have a problem with that. Some people can look at an 80-yard incomer that drops at 30 yards, and they can start moving with it and be with it the whole way and shoot it 15 feet off the ground. Some people can’t do that. That’s just the way people are wired. There was a point in time in my life when I thought everybody could do what I could do, and that is just not true. And if you need to look off the trap to pick it up later, that’s just great. But regardless of which bird you’re shooting … when you get the visual input, begin to give the output. And the output needs to be really soft and lateral.

Now, right-to-left targets for right-handers, and left-to-right  targets for left-handers. This is the bird that you have to look across the gun on. Make sure that the hold point is out away from the trap, closer to the breakpoint and below the line. And when you see it, make sure that the move is straight left or straight right depending on whether you’re right or left-handed. Make sure that move is straight to the left and straight to the right and let the gun merge upward, into the line      at the last minute as the bird begins to approach the breakpoint. Because on those birds, if the bird gets within twice the lead, you’re in trouble because you have to look across the gun to see the  bird.

That’s where most right-eyed right-handers and left-eyed left- handers get into trouble. On these birds they get the gun up to the eye too early and then the gun occludes their off eye. Or it occludes their shooting eye depending on how their mount is. You want the gun to come into the line in the last three to five percent of the shot. No earlier. We talk about that in the book and we’ve referred to that on the Coaching Hour as the ‘J move’. It means that the gun moves laterally toward the breakpoint ahead of the bird and I’m telling you, you don’t have to think about moving it up there, as the bird approaches the breakpoint the gun will just shift right up there and ease into the line and you take the shot at that point in time.

The longer the gun is on the line, the more apt you are to interrupt the visual input to the brain. Your goal, of course, is to see the bird coming at a slow pace because you’re moving with the target. When you see it, you begin the move. The birds slow down. Your goal is always–because you’re starting ahead of the bird and the bird comes out at speed–for you to start soft and lateral, and gain speed as the bird approaches the breakpoint then you make your merger into the lead at the breakpoint. You’ll see the bird coming more on crossers than on quartering birds. You’ll be aware that the bird is closing more on slow targets than fast targets. Slow targets … curling birds … slow crossers … slow quartering birds … you’ll be able to see it coming. You won’t be able to see it as much on some as others, but you will be able to see it coming. Faster targets–you will not see it all or you’ll only be able to see it a little bit.

That’s what you were talking about Gary. On a real fast target like shooting it right out of the trap or shooting a window, you won’t have the luxury of time to see that bird coming that long. That’s where you have to rely on your focus and your feel and your commitment to the breakpoint to make it come together.

Choosing a Goal

Gil: I talked to Ron Schaffer a little earlier today and he was kind enough to be with us last month on the Coaching Hour and tell us about choosing a goal and what a goal did for him. I called him today and ask him and he said, “Gil, I gotta tell you, I was absolutely exhausted after Nationals.”

He said, “Focusing on all them targets for that many days, I was just exhausted.” And Brad Alford, I think you said something similar to that didn’t you? Weren’t you exhausted also after  Nationals? 

Brad: Well no, what I said was, because I registered late I didn’t shoot every event and so it paced me a lot better than I would have paced myself.

Gil: Oh, that’s right. Well anyway, Ron was telling me that he hadn’t shot a shoot for three weeks, he went out and shot a shoot and just did terrible he said. Then he went out the next week and shot another tournament and did a little better. And then he went to the Pro Am and he won the Supervets in the Main, he tied for first in the Supervets in the FITASC and he won second in Supervets in the Prelim, he said, but there wasn’t enough good competition there.

He said, “I shouldn’t have won those.” And I said, “Sooner or later you’re going to have to realize that a win is still a win. And it doesn’t matter how much competition is there, you still had to show up and you still had to beat somebody.” And he and I are working on that mental problem that he’s got. He’s such a humble person that he lets his humility get in his way sometimes and we’re working with him on that right now. The one thing that he did tell me he was having a little trouble with was, he said, “Once you start doing all this winning, all your buddies and all your friends and everybody expects you to win all the  time.”

I said, “Don’t go there, because you can’t control what other people think.” He said, “The other thing about that is, there are some people I’ve known for a long time, and they shoot in the same class that I shoot in and I think they’re jealous of my success. Because they won’t say nothing to me, and it’s like they don’t like me anymore.” I had a long talk with him about that and I explained to him that you can’t control what other people think. In fact, sometimes you can barely control what you think about yourself and what you say about yourself.

And he needed to not worry about that and control only what he can control. And that’s what he’s doing and what he’s thinking. And I related to him a conversation that I had with Craig Hill yesterday. We were talking about some things and how his attitude had changed since he’d been working with us. And he said, “You know Gil, if there are five people in a room and I walk in the room and all those people are complaining and moaning and are negative, I’ve made my mind up that I’m going to be the only positive person in that room. I’m going to be positive and I’m going to be up. I am going to be in control of the things I can control, which is what I do, how I think and how I act.” Well, Ron kind of accepted that reluctantly but it’s something that I’m going to be working with him on and I’ll keep you apprised of the progress.

Being Flexible With Goals

Gil: Back in July, I had a lesson with Craig and I want to preface what I’m about to tell you with a couple things. We’d made the comment on this Coaching Hour that anybody can handle success, it’s how you handle failure that’s the key to improving and feeling good about yourself. Improving your game. And I just really didn’t know what to expect at this lesson I was having with Craig, but I met him there at the practice field and he got his gun out and started talking. And he just said up front that he came mainly to talk to me. He didn’t really want to shoot a whole lot, wanted to shoot a little bit, but he wanted to talk to me. And I could tell that there was something on his mind.

He said he was at a crossroads. He said, the announcements came out the other day about a month ago that he’d made Team U.S.A. FITASC, which was one of his long-term goals. And he said: I was elated.

I was excited. I got the letter and read it again. I made Karen read it back to me. He said: I was just jumping all up and down and when I got the vest and the shirt and the sport coat that they send to you, when I put that Team U.S.A. Vest on, it gave me chill bumps.

And I said, “Your point  is?”

He said he didn’t know what happened.

I said, “Well, what are you talking about   Craig?”

He said, “Since I’ve put that vest on, I’ve experienced a loss of desire to prepare at the intensity level that I had to make the team.” I asked him to tell me more.

He said he actually had to make himself train before going to Europe for the World FITASC. He had to make himself train, which is something that he’s never had to do. Well he trained and he trained well and he shot well. He went over and I think he was fifth overall or something like that but that is not important. He said since making the team he had found himself not as committed as he was before he made the team.

Well, just like when the red flag went up in my mind when I was talking to Ron Schaffer about how he’d lost the desire to practice, a red flag went up in my brain and I told him he needed to make himself a new goal. He said,  “I know that.”

“Well, why haven’t you made one?” I asked. He said, “It’s not that easy.”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

He said, “Choosing the goal is not that hard. I want to be the best in the U.S.A, if not the world.”

But he was having trouble committing to it. He said, “I can’t go to shoots anymore and not go to win. Going to shoots and having fun, I just can’t do that anymore. If I’m going to go to a shoot I’m going to win.”

And he said he knew what it took to win. He said, “I’m in my early forties. I’ve developed the talent to get there. I’ve got the resources and the time to do it, but I also know what it will take for me to do it.” And he wasn’t sure he wanted to make that commitment to achieve that ultimate goal. To him, he began to realize to be on his game, he would have to have an intense training practice session three times a week. Now that doesn’t sound like much until you start putting it on the calendar. Takes you an hour to get to the club. Takes you two hours to practice and it takes you an hour to get back. So that is four hours three days a week. A half a day, three days a week. You gotta train with a coach once every two to three weeks periodically, more if trouble comes up. You’ve got to go to the gym and workout. You gotta watch your diet. You gotta shoot at least 10 out of town major shoots plus go to the Open, the State, the Zone and the  Nationals.

I was listening to the Astros game the other day and they were talking about how if the Astros didn’t win the game it might be Roger Clemens’ last game to pitch and the guy said, “Heck, I don’t care how old he is, he can still throw the ball.”

The other guy said, “It’s not playing in the game that is tough. It’s getting ready. Going through the physical training to get ready to play in the game is the hard part.”

And he wasn’t sure that was something Roger wanted to go through. And that is what Craig’s talking about.

Craig said he’d been shooting for seven years. It took a lot of hard work to get there and it was probably going to take twice as much work to go to the next level. And he wanted to do other things. And this guy, this guy loves to fish. He’s always in town two days before the full moon and two days after the full moon because you’ve got more tides on those days and he loves to go down and saltwater fish on those days because you can catch more fish easily. And he’s eaten up with it. And he said, “You know, there’s just more to life than sporting clays. I like to fish, I like to hunt. Do things with my family. My business. I’ve got to keep going with these things and there’s just more things than sporting clays.” And we battered that back and forth for about an hour and I finally asked him, “Well, what are you doing here? Are you asking me to tell you what to do?”

And he said, “No I just needed to talk to somebody I trusted about it.” And I said, “Well, to me, you’re wrestling with one of four goals. Number one: total commitment, go for it, be the best you can be, be the best in the country. Number two: a three-quarter commitment, maintain what you’ve been doing, hope to make the first team All- American. Number three: a half-commitment. Maintain what you’ve been doing, play a little bit more and hopefully make second team All-American. Number four: go to have fun and play a lot.”

Well he nixed number four immediately. He said, “I ain’t going to do that.” We talked a lot about each one of these goals and I knew that he needed to have a break because he’d been working real hard to achieve his goals. But we talked about it and after our discussion, this is what I told him to do; “I think you oughtta make a half-commitment. Maintain, play more, go fishing, try to make the second team for the rest of the year.” He already had enough points to make All-American second team. I said, “Wear this goal and see how it feels. If the desire is there for total commitment, it will emerge as a result of you wearing this goal.”   In the years that I’ve been coaching Craig and been his friend, I’ve grown to know him. And I knew in my gut that he wasn’t going to do that. He’s never been satisfied with second place in anything. If he’s going to do it, he’s going to do it 100 percent. But he’s at a crossroads and as I said before, he’d exhibited symptoms of needing a break. Because he’d achieved his goals, he could not settle on one goal. There’s too many things going on. There’s too many things in his idle thought process, which created an inability to focus on any one. And I felt like he was better off with a less ambitious goal than with no goal at all. And this is why goals are so important. They continue and will always control your idle thought process. And we’ve talked about that before and I want to keep going back to that because the more I think about it and the more I study it, as Craig says, “People don’t give it its due.”

Goals are important because they control your idle thought process, which in turn creates a greater desire to achieve those goals by eliminating distractions, which cloud the clear picture of your goal. When Craig achieved his goal–making Team U.S.A FITASC–he didn’t make a new one. He had no single desire. He had many. And he needed a break. Same thing happens to you when you shoot too much. You get to a point that nothing   works.

My conclusion to him was: take goal number three and wear it for a while. Go fishing more. Be satisfied with second team All-American, and let’s just see what happens. And I talked to him about two weeks later and I asked how it was going. He said, “Well, I’ve been fishing but I’ve made my mind up that I’m going to train hard, I’m going to Minnesota this weekend to shoot a FITASC selection shoot and then I’ll come back and fish a little bit and then I’m going to train hard for the English World Sporting Championships.” Which he did well in by the way. “And then I’m going to come back, train hard for Nationals and then I’m going to take some time off. And like you said, the answer will come.”

He said, “I’m going to let it happen. I’m going to stop trying to make it happen. I’ve also got the calendar out and I’ve looked at scheduling my tournaments.”

And as silly as this sounds it means a lot to him.

He said, “I’ve looked at scheduling my tournaments and my practice sessions around the moon phases so that I may not be able to fish as much as I want to every month, but at least I can fish two or three months as much as I want to and I can get my fishing in at the best possible times and I can still have time to train for the big shoots that I need to shoot.”

Now, I don’t know what his final answer is going to be, well I do, in my gut I know what he’s going to do. But whatever it is I’ll support him. I think he’s going to go all the way. But he would never have been able to make a total commitment to go all the way until he became dissatisfied with a lesser commitment. So I guess the moral to the story is, always be flexible with your goals. Never marry them. And don’t be afraid or ashamed to increase or decrease commitment to your goals.

I wanted to share that with you guys tonight. As you well know, Craig is a very dear friend of mine and Vicki’s and we’ve been with him for a long time. I don’t have to coach him nearly as much as I used to, and I’ve encouraged him to go out and work with other people and try different things. God knows we don’t have the answers to all the questions on the test, but he has always come back to us and has always talked to us about his goals and how to get to where he wanted   to be. I wanted to share that with you simply because you look at what you’re trying to do and you get there and just in case this ever happened to any of you, when you achieve a big goal, just be aware that if you don’t make a new goal after you achieve one, after you’ve savored it, and after you’ve rewarded yourself for it, if you don’t make another goal, you’re gonna be what we call wallowing in indecision. There’s too many things in your idle thought process. You don’t have anything to consume your idle thought process, therefore you think about many different things at many different times during the day.

And you become less focused.

I’m thrilled to death for Craig and I went duck hunting with him a couple of weeks ago and we talked about it a little bit and he said he was going to do it.

I asked, “Do what?”

He said, “There you go again making me commit.”

I said, “I’m not making you commit, I just asked you and you said you’re going to do it. Are you going to do  it?”

He said, “Yeah, I’m real close to making that commitment.”

Because you understand that the commitment you guys are making, and I’m not diminishing your commitments, but what he wants to do will take an even greater commitment.

And in the duck blind we were talking. And I said, “You know, you may find that you shoot better now that you’ve achieved what you  have mechanically and mentally–you know how to compete, you know how to win, you know how to handle the voice. You handle it well most of the time. You have your good days and your bad days but your bad days are so much closer to your good days than most people could ever dream of. You might find that you shoot better taking a little time off two or three times a year and relaxing. You might find that you can overtrain. And you might find, based on your database of what you’ve done so far, based on your computer, that you may not have to shoot three days a week on every week that rolls around. And you may not have to shoot every tournament. There’s a lot out there and there’s a lot more to it besides sporting clays.”

So I wanted to share that with you guys tonight. People end up looking at success in different ways. And I know that just from my own standpoint, not having the luxury of time to practice and the desire to compete any more, when I say I don’t have the desire, I’ve got the desire. I want to win. I’ve been there, but I know that I don’t have the time to prepare. And it’s even hard for me to accept an underperformance. But just be aware of that, even though you might be successful in achieving your goal. Enjoy it. Savor it. Reward yourself. And make another one. And don’t be ashamed to lower your commitment a little bit. Don’t be ashamed to raise your commitment. You might want to do what I call: the always bite off more than you can chew commitment. But whatever you do, have a decided goal in mind. And this is the time that you look back at your year. You look back at it, and see what you did. More often you look at the failures than the successes but don’t forget that you’re supposed to be having a little fun out there. This is supposed to be fun. And if you think too much about getting better, if you think too much about winning, a lot of times the fun goes out of it. So anyway, I just wanted to share that with you guys, I don’t know whether you were shocked by it or not, but do any of you have any thoughts about that?

Brian: I go through that all the time.

Gil: Do you really?

Brian: Yeah. I have to reevaluate goals because we do have a lot of things outside of us that require us to put some of that time that we want to put on shooting but it just can’t happen. The demands of life are going to be tugging at you. But that is one of the giants that you have to slay.

Gil: Yeah. In fact, I was talking to Gary just before we went on, he was saying, “I know you tell everybody to take a break in the winter time, but I just got this new gun and I want to shoot it some.” I told him, “Okay, shoot more but take some time for yourself.” And I think Gary just started getting competitive about mid-year. Isn’t that right Gary?