As coaches, one of our favorite parts of the job is getting to know all the interesting and talented people that we come across. And we would certainly classify Vinny Hancock and his father Craig as interesting and talented people. We met them in our studies of Neuro Linguistic Programming, and we are very happy to have them join us on the Coaching Hour. We’ll let the discussion speak for itself, but we think everyone will find these two just as enlightening and engaging as we did.
Vicki: Okay, Vinny, since this is really about you, let’s hear some things about when you started shooting this wonderful game that you do, International Skeet. I’ve heard a story that there was a reason that you decided not to do team sports. I think it was after a baseball game or a basketball game and everybody was concerned because y’all had not won. Could you kind of express what you told your team on team sports, that it wasn’t all that important to win? Do you know the story?
Vinny Hancock: Not really.
Vicki: Okay. Craig, do you want to talk about it?
Craig Hancock: Yeah. It was after one of the basketball games. And everybody went into the locker room, and some of them were crying. Some of them were beating around on the lockers and stuff, and they got mad at Vinny because he wasn’t acting the same way. And the comment that he made when they asked him why he wasn’t upset about the loss: “Well, there’s nothing we can do about what just happened. The only thing that we can do is not let it happen again.” You know, so there was no sense in crying about it.
And it really made them all mad, and so that was kind of the beginning of the end, I’d guess you’d say, because they really couldn’t deal with it. And then he was at the point that it was time to move on anyway, you know, and take the next step in the shooting sports.
Vicki: And find something that he could do and excel at.
Craig: Yeah. He was doing
well already, and we had been working
with our NLP techniques, and that was the reason
why. He knew there
was no reason for the wasted energy,
you know, after it was over, it was over. You can’t fix it. All you can do is
learn from it.
Vicki: So that you can go out and fix the problem and make it work the next time. So you guys have been doing NLP for a while.
Craig: Quite a while.
Gil: How did you get interested in it?
Craig: Well, I can’t even remember who I heard it from – somebody had just made a comment about NLP one time, and it was a couple of years back. So I came home and started researching, and that’s when I found the books, like the book I just turned Vicki on to. And I started reading it and I realized, you know, I said to myself: “You’re Vincent’s worst enemy at this point, and you need just to keep your mouth shut until you can say the right things.”
So that was what I did. I went ahead and finished reading the book, and then I went back and studied it. And then I started coaching him again but with a whole different insight on what I was doing. And that made a big difference for us.
Vicki: Well, Vinny is the most poised young man that I have been around and very unaffected. I was watching him shoot when we were over there. And when he gets in the station, nothing else matters but killing that target.
Vicki: Vinny, why don’t you tell the folks out there how you get into your zone and how that works for you and how you know when you’re not staying in your zone and what you do to get back.
Vinny: I –
Vicki: Or do you know? (Laughter)
Vinny: It’s kind of hard to explain because it varies in every situation – when I step into the station and I close my gun, I say a few words to myself. And that’s when I say to myself, “Go back to the target” to my hold point. That’s when I really go into the zone. And I know from right there – because right when I go back to the hold point, I call pull and I zone in on those targets the whole time. And I can tell when I’m not in the zone basically because I don’t break the targets.
And I mean, it’s not really that hard for me anymore to get in the zone of breaking targets, but it’s still kind of hard to get in the zone and stay focused for that long. I don’t know how to explain it any more than that.
Vicki: That’s fine. I was just wondering. When I was over there with you guys and we were talking about the zone and as soon as you get to the course you need to get into your zone. And then talking to Craig – and he said that you were learning to go in and out of the zone. Is it easier now to do that when you get on your station, like station two, you get in there, do your deal and then get out and then kind of relax; or do you stay focused the whole time?
Vinny: Yeah. And I mean, I’m only focused for those few seconds that I’m saying the words, “shoot the targets,” and that’s all I’m in the zone for.
And I’m out of the zone before I step in the station and I’m out of the zone when I step out of the station. So I’m only in for just a couple of seconds every round, however long it takes me to shoot that station.
Vicki: Right. Let me ask you something. They changed the format this year for International Skeet, so how did that affect you—apparently it didn’t since you’ve done so well.
Vinny: It has affected me a little bit. I’ve had to practice it quite a bit more just because I became so accustomed to the old sequence. It’s hard to change your habits because after a while it does become habit.
Vicki: And they changed it, I guess, at the beginning of the year?
Vinny: Yes ma’am. Or right after the Olympics, they announced that they were going to change it.
Vicki: So you had some time to get back into the groove, I guess.
Vinny: Yes, ma’am. Gil: I’ve got a question. Vinny: Okay.
Gil: Vinny, when you say you get into the stand or get onto your station and you say some words to yourself, what do you say? Can you tell us that; or is that something like some private little mumbo jumbo that you’re afraid that you will lose your edge if you let anybody know?
Vinny: No. No, I don’t have any secrets. (Laughter)
What I say to myself is – it kind of goes back to an old thing that I used to have to do, because when I was practicing my mounts, I would practice the slow mounts at night, you know, 100 or 200 times a night to get my mount perfect. And I would say to myself, “Okay. Good mount.” And I used to say that until about the middle of last year, and now it’s just kind of like my subconscious says it to itself, and I don’t actually have to say it anymore. I already know that’s what I’m saying to myself.
Gil: Okay. So when you get into the box, the words that are said are really said by your subconscious. So that’s part of your routine.
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: And it’s not a conscious thing that you do. That could more or less be called the trigger in your routine that separates conscious planning from subconscious function?
Vinny: Exactly.
Gil: Okay. And you’ve done it so much that the trigger – even though it’s words that you say to yourself, the trigger is now subconscious.
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Craig: Now Gil, we used to say those things like that out loud when we first started doing those things, he would actually say them out loud. He would say things like that to himself, and then he just gradually has worked it. Like you say, it’s more of a subconscious-type thing now because it’s habit. It’s been done so much.
Gil: Okay. But the point I’m making and we teach a lot of routine as you well know, Craig and Vinny; and we teach that a routine must have a trigger, and the trigger can be an action. It could be a word. It can be squeezing the gun, closing the gun. You can say something to yourself. You could take a deep breath.
Whatever it is, it has to be there every time because that trigger is the key to turn off conscious planning and release subconscious function.
Craig: Yes. You need to have your ritual.
Gil: Yes.
Craig: It’s called a ritual too, when you walk onto the stand you do everything the same every time up to the point that you actually pull the trigger. So, you know, you perform your ritual with your anchor points.
Gil: What’s an anchor point?
Craig: Well, you’ll notice – a lot of people have anchor points that they really don’t know they have.
Gil: Vicki, am I getting ahead of you?
Vicki: No, no, no. You’re fine. I’m just marking off my list. (Laughter)
Craig: With an anchor point you’ll notice some guys that will step in to the stand. The very first thing they’ll do is dry their hand on their towel, wipe their hand right down there on their towel. I can give you some examples, you know, of people that do that; but some people are so perfect with it every time that you can watch them and find it. You can find their anchor points. Some guys will step in and actually – you know, they look like a bull scratching their feet in the pad every time.
Gil: Would it be fair to say that an anchor point would be much like a cue to begin the station?
Craig: Yeah. It’s the cue. The anchor point usually is the cue to begin the ritual in the station.
Gil: Okay.
Craig: That’ll be basically the very first thing they do when they step into the station.
Gil: Okay.
Craig: And you’ll see them hit that anchor point, and then off they go with the rest of their ritual. And then it goes right on through to the shot. A lot of times that’s the point where a guy enters the zone. Whether he knows it or not, that’s where he enters the zone right there. And some people are quicker at it than others are from what I watch and see, and from coaching people and then watching other shooters shoot.
Gil: I’ve got another question for you, Craig. You mentioned earlier that you realized once you began to study NLP that you were Vinny’s worst enemy.
Craig: Yep.
Gil: And I would like for everyone on the line to hear the contrast and the difference in the way you were trying to coach prior to your learning about NLP and how that changed your coaching approach after you understood more about NLP.
Craig: The number one thing that I see the most – that most people do, and what I was doing, was when he dropped the target, the first question was, “What did you do wrong?” We had to turn that around to, “What did you do right and what is the correction?” “What do you need to do to make it right?” and get them thinking forward instead of behind themselves. If they’re looking back at what they did wrong, they can’t move forward. It’s hard to walk straight ahead when you’re looking behind you, and that was where I was at the worst, right there. That was my major, number one change right there, I had to actually program him and program myself to go the right direction. Forward thinking. In other words, outcome and not what happened behind us.
Gil: How long did it take you to master that, Craig? Have you mastered it?
Craig: I caught myself many times just having to bite my tongue and go: “No, don’t say that. You go the other way here.”
Vinny: Yeah.
Craig: You know? Get it back out in front. And I would catch myself at first, and you can get in the habit of it, and you program yourself to do and say the right things; and that’s what it’s all about right there – that inner coach that you guys always talk about. That’s the inner coach right there.
Vicki: Making him say the right things rather than the wrong things or the negative things.
Craig: And think the right things and think the right way. In other words, who cares if you missed a target behind? What does it take to fix it? And he’ll do that because the last thing you tell him is the first thing he’s going to do. If you tell him, “don’t do that again,” that’s the first thing that’s going to happen because he’s going to be standing there thinking, “don’t do that, don’t do that, don’t do that,” instead of thinking, “Pull further ahead, further ahead, further ahead. And they’ll keep doing the same thing all the time. So it makes a big difference, a tremendous difference.
Bob: Craig?
Craig: Yes, sir?
Bob: Would you ask him to identify where the miss was and then the solution?
Craig: No. We don’t talk about where the miss is at all. We really don’t care where the miss is at all. We always just look for the solution. That’s all we care about because all we’re doing if we talk about the miss is retracing old ground that did us no good anyway. If it didn’t break the target, we don’t want to talk about it anymore. All we want to do is find a solution, move forward. So like if a guy is missing behind constantly on a target, I just tell him, “Get your eyes to the front of the target and follow through.” And if you keep their mind thinking in front of that target all of the time, they’ll change it; but if you keep telling them they’re behind, they’re going to shoot behind because they’re trying not to shoot behind. It’s really hard to explain, but it works. I mean, it works. It’s flawless.
Gil: Craig, you’re among front edge friends here. (Laughter)
Craig: Oh, I know that.
Vicki: This is the land of the front edge, right?
Craig: That’s right.
Gil: Interesting. Vinny, are you there?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: When you miss a target, what kind of ritual do you go through? Do you have a miss contingency plan? I mean, it’s so seldom that you miss in your game. When a miss occurs, what thought process do you go through?
Vinny: Really there isn’t any. I just kind of – it’s just another target. All I do is just shoot one target at a time.
Gil: Right. All right. So you’re shooting high two, you call pull, it comes out and you miss it.
Vinny: I do the same exact thing as if I would have hit it.
Gil: Okay. But will you tell yourself to focus harder on the front? Are there any cues that you give yourself? I know that when we coach people and we tell them if you don’t know why, always focus harder.
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: Do you do anything like that or do you just keep going?
Vinny: Basically what I do is nothing.
Gil: Okay.
Vinny: If I miss a target, all I do is – I already know how to break the target. I know that. In my mind I know that. I know how to break every single target out there every time.
Gil: Right.
Vinny: So why think – this is my perception, why think about it any harder when you’re already doing it as hard as you possibly can? So if I miss a target, I drop it down, put another shell in the gun, call pull again.
Gil: All right. Now, are there any options in your game?
Vinny: No, sir.
Gil: So if you miss high two, you’re going to immediately go to the double, right?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: All right. So you have to think about the next set?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: Okay.
Bob: So, in essence, you do totally let go of the event?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Bob: It’s in the past. It’s unfixable. And, therefore, it’s not worth any more effort.
Vinny: Absolutely not. I only think about positive.
Bob: Got it.
Craig: Another thing now that we’ve done a lot, that makes a tremen- dous difference, is a lot of visualization. We do a lot of visualization before matches and during matches. I can give you an example. We were at the Zone Match at Fort Benning in May. We had actually driv- en all night and gone to Prom, came all the way back down and only got about three or four hours sleep before the match the next morn- ing, and it had rained out. So we had to shoot 150 targets that day instead of just 100 to finish up the match. He got on station four in the last round. He was tired. Everybody was tired and everybody was falter- ing. I look over and he’s standing behind station four before he stepped in for all of those pairs on four. He’s got his eyes closed, his head down. I can see his head moving and his trigger finger moving; and he’s visu- alizing breaking the target –– a perfect break. He shot his singles in his visualization. He shot his pairs in his visualization. Then when it was his turn, he stepped up and ran the station.
Nobody else was doing that, but nobody knows that. We’ve studied it. We’ve worked with it. You know, visualization and relaxation exercises. Those are really important and a lot of people think that’s a waste but it’s not. Research has proven that you can increase your scores by 11 percent with visualization techniques.
Bob: Yeah. Perfect practice makes perfect.
Craig: Right. And when you do your visualization, you visualize a perfect break, not pieces. I mean visualize breaking that target into a puff ball when you visualize.
Vicki: They say if you visualized it, then it’s happened – because if the brain has seen it, it will happen again. And I think people discount the visualization, and it’s interesting to see that in your game they discount it also just as they do in everything, I think. I know when we were shooting competitive skeet, we would do the whole round of skeet every morning or three or four times a week. And you can groove it. You can see everything. And then after years of not doing it, you can go and shoot a round of skeet and still shoot 25 out of 25 because you’ve seen it break so many times. So interesting.
Craig, I know when I was over there, you had told me you’re working with the kids and coaching a bunch of them. And you were telling me about the story of Emma, and I think it would be nice if everybody on the Coaching Hour heard about Emma and how you got her out of her unzone-like experience.
Craig: You know, her problem was she was trying to stay in the zone for the whole 25 targets from the moment that she stepped on the field until the time she stepped off the field. And at that point it becomes a job, and it’s not fun any longer. I watched her because she wanted to know, “What am I doing wrong?”
I went over and watched her, and technically she was great. But from the time she got up there, she was like she had walls built up all around herself, and she wouldn’t look around. She never used her peripheral vision at all, and she was very intense the whole time. And by the time she walks off the field, she’s just worn out. So what I did with her was I told her, “Number one,” I said, “You’re not having fun. So we got to make it fun again.”
So what I made her do was is in between each station I made her look back at me, look up, look around everywhere and look back at me. And I stood there and smiled at her, and she would smile. She would break a smile then. And I told her to pick a song of the day and sing her song to herself. Listen to something on a tape or whatever and then sing that song to herself during her rounds, and that picked her scores up tremendously. She ended up finishing one target out of the match finals.
And she hadn’t even been close the week before down in Rome. So it’s working for her, and she’s learning to shorten the time that she’s in the zone now. She’s working on that. So that’s starting to help her.
Vicki: Good.
Craig: Because you can wear yourself out. You can wear yourself down trying to stay so intense so long.
Vicki: When you think about all of the people you see out on the course, no matter what discipline they’re doing, and it’s like they have to be so tense and so aggressive the whole time. And, like you said, you just cannot physically do that. You just wear out, and you have to learn to turn it on and turn it off.
Craig: And a lot of guys, you know, they are so intense that nobody can even talk to them. And they just about drive themselves crazy over it, and it doesn’t have to be that hard.
Vicki: Right. And the other thing that you just said, “You realized that she was not having any fun.”
Craig: Right.
Vicki: And we all know that you must have fun at this game, or in anything that you do, or you’re not going to shoot well and if it’s not fun, you’re not going to have a good day so you might as well have fun. And I remember you telling this story and how she was going from station to station bopping her head, going with the flow of the music and stuff. So if we see y’all out there bopping your heads and singing a song, it’ll be a whole lot better off. (Laughter)
You know? I think that the key to a lot of this NLP is: you must relax and you must concentrate but not for an extended length of time. So that’s great.
Craig: You’ve got to learn to let it happen. You can’t really make it happen. But it will happen. Well, you remember some of the techniques that Bob teaches. You can actually visualize yourself having your best day ever before you step into each station. If you need to, visualize. You know, I tell Vincent, “visualize yourself on the podium, visualize yourself standing there holding the trophy over and over in your head.” And that’s your goal.
Vicki: Well, and if you visualize it, it will happen. Maybe not this time, but it will eventually, and it’s just making that positive stuff to your brain. To say this is what’s going to happen. And you at least got a chance of it happening if you’re visualizing it correctly, otherwise you don’t. So it’s interesting.
Craig: So you’ve got to think it’s possible. And to visualize it gives you the realization that it can be possible for you to do it, in my opinion.
Vicki: I agree.
Bob: Craig? Did you ever read the story about the women’s skeet champion in Olympic Skeet in 1984?
Craig: No, not that I can recall.
Bob: She visualized every single target break. She visualized being on the podium. She visualized her national anthem. She visualized her tears. Everything.
Craig: Yeah.
Vicki: Well, if you can visualize in clear color and, I mean, make it as vivid as you possibly can and then you have made your destiny, rather than just letting it happen because other people may have missed. You make it happen, and that’s what’s important about visualization. So, Vinny, do you visualize every day and keep it constantly in your mind? I know you practice all of the time, but do you visualize when you can’t practice?
Vinny: Yes and no. But most of the time I’m practicing, but when I’m off of the field and can’t practice, then I do visualize at least one round.
Vicki: In between stations – once you come off of a station and you have, you know, a couple of minutes, what do you think about? Like Emma, do you sing a song or do you just kind of look around? What do you do in between stations?
Vinny: Look around. Have a song playing in my head. (Laughter) Plenty of things. Playing with stuff in my pockets.
Vicki: Anything but shooting.
Vinny: Basically I just sing to pass time. (Laughter)
Vicki: Just to get your mind off of it for just a few minutes, huh?
Vinny: Yes, ma’am.
Vicki: Cool.
Craig: He told me one time at one point there he was actually looking at his wood on his gun and just thinking how pretty it was. (Laughter)
And that keeps you from the problem with the crowd because a lot of times at International Skeet there are big crowds watching you shoot when you get in these match finals. And anything like that, that can take your mind off of your surroundings so much, you know, you can look at that and just little things like that.
Vinny: Hey, yeah, because when there are big crowds, like in the match finals, then I try to keep my focus in tighter. Then I do like looking around because I mean, it’s not necessarily that people make me more tense, but there’s more pressure. Because I actually like to feel the pressure. I like people watching me. But I don’t like to make eye connections with people that I don’t know. It’s just kind of a weird thing.
I don’t like to make too much eye connection with people that I don’t know, you know, people that are hoping that I’m going to miss or something. Like I’m wondering if that guy is thinking I’m going to miss or something. But I just try to keep to myself during the match finals. When I’m not shooting match finals I’m looking about, you know, chasing butterflies. (Laughter)
Vicki: Taking it all in. Well, that’s great. You’ve got to keep your mind off of it at some point so you can get back in and get in your zone, I suppose.
Gary: I’m curious. Vinny, you got a song in your head or you’re just kind of happy-go-lucky when you’re out of the stand and you have a trigger point – if I remember, I think you said it was when you close the gun where you kind of go into your zone. But when you’re in the stand and you’re in between shots and you’ve got to unload and you’ve got to reload for the next shot, do you have something that you focus your conscious mind on there? Or is it kind of free at that point as well?
Vinny: Well, I don’t really tell myself much when I’m shooting, but I’ve been told that I break my gun open after I shoot a target and I reload very fast. And between those minute little amounts of time, I don’t even think about anything. My mind is completely blank. I mean, all I’m thinking about is open the gun, punching the shells down on the ground, putting more shells in there, close my gun, call pull for the next target.
Craig: He wastes no time, believe me. (Laughter)
Shells pop out, he slaps them to the ground, and he sticks two more in there, and he immediately goes right to his hold point and calls. I mean, a lot of guys say, “Yeah. I’m tired because I’ve been running behind Vinny.” (Laughter)
But that’s something that he’s done, and I think that that doesn’t allow him time for anything else to enter in his mind. He doesn’t give it time for doubt to enter. Do you know what I mean?
Vicki: Right.
Bob: Vinny, how long have you been shooting skeet?
Vinny: International Skeet? For about four years.
Bob: And regular skeet?
Vinny: Five. I started American when I was 11. Without any shooting experience at all. It’s five years in general.
Gil: So he shot American Skeet for one year and then wanted some- thing with more challenge and then went to International Skeet. Is that correct?
Vinny: American Skeet and Sporting Clays. I won two Georgia State Junior Championships in Sporting Clays, and then I just kind of switched over.
Bob: Had you been doing any eye-hand coordination-type sports for a few years before that?
Vinny: I started baseball when I was about three and a half, or four. I played that for 11 years straight.
Craig: Now, you’ve got to realize, too, he sat in a stroller and watched his older brother and I shoot, too. So he was always around it. I mean, at five years old I would get on low seven and stick the gun against my shoulder, and he would put his arm over the top of the gun, and actually I’d help him hold it up; and he’d pull the trigger and break loose of it at five years old. So, you know, he’s been around it, and he had shot some before that, but he started competing at actually about 11 years old.
Vicki: My. And it’s still fun.
Vinny: This is the best thing that ever was. (Laughter)
Gil: How old are you now?
Vinny: Sixteen.
Gil: Sixteen. I got a question to ask you, Vinny. When you’re shooting and, now, we all understand that your game is a very regimented game; and the targets that you shoot, albeit they might be a little different because of wind and background, they’re virtually the same everywhere you go. Would that be a fair statement?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: And when we are trying to do our game of sporting clays, would your approach be different walking up to a sporting clays stand. What would your approach be like if you had not shot the pairs before?
Vinny: Basically, my approach is that I can hit the pair no matter what it is because somewhere down the line I’ve shot a target like this target and I’ve put it in my library and I can just take it and draw it out from that library when I get on the station.
Gil: Okay. So you look at the pair. Then you have to determine where you’re going to break the first bird to make the second bird easy, right?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: And you would do all of that prior to – what did you call it? Your anchor?
Vinny: Yes, prior to that.
Gil: And prior to beginning your routine?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: Okay. And if a miss occurred in sporting clays – let’s say you missed the same bird on the first two pair. Would you stop to analyze why you missed it or to make a correction? Or would you just keep doing the same thing and expect it to break?
Vinny: I’d make a correction only if I missed two or three in a row because I know that most of the time my library and my subconscious are always going to be right, and if they’re not right for some reason, then the problem probably is just going to be me anyway. So I need to stop, and think, “Okay, this is what I need to do,” and reset it in my library that this is what I have to do on this target and go ahead and break it the next time around.
Gil: And you feel that your library is so full because you’ve shot so many targets?
Vinny: That definitely helps. (Laughter)
Gil: You think?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: Okay. But you feel so confident in your library that you wouldn’t stop after the first miss and analyze it?
Vinny: No, sir.
Gil: You’d only do it after the second or third miss?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: Okay. And I can understand that attitude. I really can from you because you’re in a game that’s very finite, and you’ve got a lot of volumes in your library. I know that for some of the guys on the phone that have not shot as much as you do, their library doesn’t have quite as many volumes in it, and they might have to stop and analyze: “Okay. Now, did I see it? Was I moving with it? Did I feel the gun come to my face? Did I shoot it in the breakpoint?” Those kinds of things to help them get back in that target. Craig, would you feel that that would be a normal sequence for the normal shooter in sporting clays? Craig: Yeah. Did you hear the key word, though, what he said? Gil: What did he say?
Craig: “What I need to do to fix it.”
Gil: Exactly. Exactly.
Craig: He didn’t say, “I was behind” or anything like that.
Gil: Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I understand.
Craig: Yeah, key word. That was the key word right there. “What do I need to do to fix it?”
Gil: Right. Now, there are some people on the line who are so analytical and maybe have not had enough experience to know what it is to “fix it;” people who might have to go through their little checklist, and each one of them has got a little checklist of frequent problems that they might have. And we teach our people that there are only three reasons that you’re going to miss a target in this order. You either didn’t focus on it or you need to focus on it; you need to be in tempo with it or the gun has got to come to your face. And those are the three reasons you miss. Where you miss is irrelevant, and they would have to go through that checklist just to make sure because – Vinny, you probably shoot more practice targets in a year than they shoot in five years. Do you understand what I mean?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: So they’re going to have to approach it from a little bit more analytical standpoint, but that’s where having a good routine comes in because you can consciously think about it and say: “Yep, I need to focus on the front edge in the breakpoint this time. I need to trust that breakpoint right there. I’m going to shoot it right there at 9 o’clock.”
Craig: Yeah, get on that front edge and follow through. That’s what I tell them a lot of times. A lot of times that will give them, it seems like, what they need; because usually it’s focus. Usually it’s that their eyes never made it to the front edge of the target.
Gil: Either that or there was an occlusion.
Craig: Either that or there was an occlusion. (Laughter)
Gil: We learned about occlusions this last weekend, didn’t we? (Laughter)
Craig: Yes. And I’ll tell you what. Vincent and I are playing with that a little bit right now.
Gil: Are you really?
Craig: We’ve had our discussions about it on the field yesterday even, a little bit, and we’re studying how we want to try to approach that to see if that’s a problem; and he agrees that that could be a problem. He sees that. We both see it, and we think we’ve got a good correction, especially on the right-hand side of the field for a right-handed shooter.
Gil: Yes, sir, lower gun.
Craig: We had him look across the barrel like we talked about.
Gil: Right.
Craig: I feel like that’s the spot right there, you know, like low five, low six.
Gil: Yes, sir.
Craig: I believe that even low four could do it, too. (Laughter)
Vinny: Lord knows I know that I had my troubles with that one before.
Gil: Well, I’m going to tell you something, Bubba. Every time that I’ve ever
taught skeet and Vicki has ever taught skeet, and we teach this in sporting clays, anything that for a
right-handed shooter that comes from the right, your hold point needs to be a little bit further
out to the breakpoint, depending
on where you normally
hold. But, more importantly, the muzzle needs to be below the line, and the first move you make needs to be straight lateral
to the breakpoint and let the muzzle come up to the line at the end.
Craig: Yeah. And that’s basically how we work it. The shortest distance to the target is the diagonal.
Gil: Right.
Craig: But you always have to hold that barrel a bit below that flight line. It has to be, because if it ever does get close to your barrel, you’re going to lose it.
Gil: Yes. It’ll look right, but it won’t break.
Craig: Yep. It’ll look right. And then, like you say, you know, over the top is behind. (Laughter)
Gil: Have you learned that one, Craig?
Craig: That’s it. I mean, it is. There’s no doubt. (Laughter)
Gil: Oh, that’s amazing. Craig, from a coach’s standpoint, when I was talking about analyzing a miss – you know, in our game, because the targets are not the same, it’s so easy to get fooled by a subtle line change. And we talk to our students all of the time about: “Okay. When you miss a target, just stop. Visualize in the breakpoint what happened. Then figure out what you’re going to do to change it and change it and change the result.”
Now, we tell them as long as you don’t begin to verbalize what you did wrong, it’s okay to think: “Okay. Look, the target got too close. There was an occlusion. This time I’m going to get to the breakpoint early. I’m going to get away from that target to stop the occlusion. I’m going to be there early, and I’m going to be on the front edge with my eyes.” Positive remarks like that, to make a correction after you miss, I think, are a good way to handle a missed target.
Craig: Oh, yeah. I think that once you’re seasoned at it – so here’s the thing. If Vincent or you or I drop a target, and you immediately know if you are behind, you don’t have to say it.
Gil: That’s the key phrase. Don’t attach any emotion to it.
Craig: Yeah. You don’t have to say it. You know where you were. Just say to yourself: “Okay. My focus wasn’t good to the front edge, and I need to follow through here.”
“And I’ve got to set the breakpoint right and go for it.” And you don’t have to relive everything that went wrong. In other words, you don’t have to stand there and say: “Oh, I was behind. Now I’ve got to do this.” I don’t think you should relive that part.
Gil: No, never relive it, but in our game with the variety of targets and the variety of distances, directions, and speeds, if you misread something and you wait three or four pair to analyze it to try to fix it –
Craig: Yeah, you’re done.
Gil: You’re toast. Okay? And I’m not discounting what Vinny said because I know in his game – Vinny, in your game, it’s a game of finite targets. You know what low three looks like. You know what high four looks like, and you know when you break it, you know you know how to break it. You just got to get in your library and focus on the front and let it happen, right?
Vinny: Yes, sir.
Gil: But, in our game, I’m telling you what, these target setters now are throwing targets that are so deceiving it can deceive your library. And to be able to stop and replay that in your mind with your eyes in the breakpoint where you missed that target, just replay it. You don’t attach emotion to it; you’re replaying what happened, and you’re analyzing: “Okay. Oh, man, it got too close. It got too close. Okay. So this time I’m going to pick it up there, and I will be in the breakpoint before it gets there.” And as long as you give emotion to the solution, then you haven’t given any emotion to the problem. Do you agree with that, Craig?
Craig: Oh, yeah. That would work. That would work. I mean, to stop and think about what you need to do to break a target is not a problem. To stop and think about what you did wrong is the problem.
Gil: To stop and relive how you missed it – ain’t good
