2007-03 – March 2007 Coaching Hour – Balancing Your Personal Life and Competition

…….March – Balancing Your Personal Life and Competition…….

 – Changing Ammunition Before A Tournament

 – The “Muzzles Ain’t Your Friend” Song

 – Witnessing the Performance Triangle

 – Participant Thoughts on the Advanced School

 – Suggestions for Shooting Less While Still Competing

I felt like I was a little comfortable with it. Well I bought those loads, but they had changed something in it because they would rattle your teeth.

 Gil: That means they kicked more, right?

 Brian: Yes, they did and it was noticeable for me. So I struggled through three Parcours. I was missing teal shots, incomers, and not necessarily my crossers or my quartering targets.

They had enough of a variety out there that I felt like I was tanking on them. And I was questioning myself, a voice of self-doubt starts to come rolling in, and I was doing everything I possibly could do to try to stay in it.

So the next day, I didn’t have to shoot until 2 o’clock. So I had time to go practice at one of the practice parcours, and I took the same load, went out and shot. And then I shot a 17 on it, and I said: This is not working. I just don’t trust what I’m doing right now.

So I go back and exchanged the loads, and got back into the Competition Loads, which were 1220 feet per second and I go out there and I shoot a 23 right off the bat.

Everything just felt better, I wasn’t getting abused at all. I was no longer herky-jerky. So I go out there and I wound up with two 20s and a 23, and the 23 was challenging. And all of my squadmates that I shot with, they shot really great on the first two; but on that last one none of them got over a 19. So I felt like I was coming around.

The next morning, because of the time change I missed setting my watch; and consequently I was down in the breakfast room eating at the motel, and my roommate came up to me and said: When are you going to shoot? Don’t you shoot at  9:00?

I said: Yeah.

He said: Well, you’ve only got 25 minutes.

Well, we’re only two miles from the course anyway. So I just didn’t rush. I just went upstairs, brushed my teeth, grabbed my gun, and off we went. And he dropped me off at the road, and I started walking to the Parcour. Got there on time and everything, and I never was frazzled about it. All I wanted to do that day is see the targets hard and kill them. That’s all I wanted to do; and, consequently, I did a good job of it.

So out of 50 targets, the remaining of the 250 targets, I wound up shooting a 48. I dropped one on each one of the parcours and wound up being third place in Super Vets.

Gil: Are you ever going to shoot those hot loads  again?

 Brian: I don’t think so. It would be a cold day in hell. (Laughter)

 Gil: Well, good. I think there are a couple of things that can be learned from that.

Find something you like to shoot and shoot it. Right before a tournament is not a time to change something. What do you attribute to your ability to just leave the hotel without panic and go and  shoot?

 Brian: Well, I felt like each day at the end of the day I was finishing well. I was beginning to start finishing it. When I have a pretty decent Parcour, I know I’m headed in the right direction. In other words, I feel like I’m going uphill. Last year at this same course I had a hell of a good score going in compared to what I had this year and I tanked.

That’s what happened to my roommate. He had a score equal to mine, and he wound up tanking. That was another goal for this year, is to finish well. Well, I know that I need to start well now. (Laughter) So I’ve been working on that.

 Gil: Well, I think if you hadn’t been messing around with those Rhino Rollers and needing to go to see the dentist to make sure all of your teeth were in your mouth that you would have probably shot better.

 Brian: Yeah.

 Gil: Don’t you feel that way?

 Brian: I do. I really do because targets are targets, and there was nothing that was absurd. Everything that first day was very visible. You didn’t have to squint or duck underneath a tree, or hold your hand over your head to get the sun out of your face. Everything was facing north. You had the whole course facing north. So you had no sun problems at all. So that was not an excuse at all. It was a good tournament. And it didn’t have the attendance. It never has had the attendance. But you see stuff that’s 80 feet underneath your feet and you’re shooting stuff off of ridges. It’s really nice.

Gil: Well, good. So you’re going to stick with your normal load and not do any changes. You know, we’ve talked about how recoil has an accumulative effect and we’ve talked about it in a lot of places, written in the magazine about it. I think that you have just emphasized what we’ve been saying all along: shoot something you’re comfortable with that doesn’t make you uncomfortable because if you shoot stuff that has a lot of recoil, eventually it’s going to keep you from scoring well because it’s going to take you out of your zone. I mean, that’s just all there is to it.

 Brian: Like I said, when you start missing, you’re hearing that voice of self-doubt. But then you find yourself saying: Well, damn, there’s nothing to that target. You start questioning yourself and that was the wrong place to be, but it happens.

The “Muzzles Ain’t Your Friend” Song

 Gil: Well, good. Thank you very much. We had a great advanced school down at the 74 Ranch last weekend, three-and-a-half days. We had 11 people and a pretty strong contingency from Kerrville. I think we had five people from Kerrville come this year; and we had six people come from different parts of the country.

The three instructors, Vicki and I and Steve Brown were there; and we were fortunate with the weather. Had a little wind one day and it got hot on another day, but we had a good time. There was a lot of learning, and it was a really strong course for us. In fact, Stevie came up with a verse to a song, and I’m going to sing it for you here in just a minute. It just shows you when that many people get in the zone a lot of good things happen. And the song goes like this:

“A little bit of lateral in your move. It can’t hurt to be too soon. Slide your focus at the end because you know the muzzles ain’t your friend.” (Laughter)

So there you go. I had a group of hunters the weekend before  and had a fellow in it named Paul, least of the talented people in the group, and he got it real quick and started focusing and moving and trusting it.

The morning of the second day we went out to the first stand there at the ranch, very simple stand, and he shot about 12 times and never scratched a bird. And I eased up behind him and said: Pretty gun, isn’t it? He hung his head and shook it, came right back up, head held high, loaded the gun and said: Gil, just throw me anything you want to throw me.

And I started throwing targets on his call from four different machines, and he proceeded to ink ball every one that he shot at. He opened the gun, blew the smoke out of the barrel and turned around to the group and said: The muzzle is not your friend. So that was pretty much the theme of the weekend.

As I said, everyone learned a lot. We talked a lot about being early in the breakpoint. We talked a lot about being soft at the end so the subconscious could make a correction if it needed to and also talked about being soft in the beginning because if you’re soft in the beginning, you have to have soft hands, and a soft beginning typically will give you a very soft ending.

A lot of amazed people talked about getting rid of the occlusion and just letting it go and get to that breakpoint and let it happen. We talked a lot of about feelings and how things feel and how to emphasize in your post-shot routine, how it felt when you hit the target as opposed to how it looked.

Witnessing the Performance Triangle

 Gil: I got to watch the performance triangle that we talked about two months ago. Performance is at the top. Learning is at the bottom left, and enjoyment is on the bottom right foot of that triangle. I got to watch that happen a lot. When people were having fun, a smile on their face, and they were enjoying the learning curve and enjoying what they were learning, their performance increased.

But without exception when they began to concentrate more on performance, when they began to give missed targets emotion, it took them out of the enjoyment and learning phase and they began to place too much pressure or too much attention on their performance or their score and their performance decreased immediately.

It was a fun thing to have someone in that position and get up in their face and talk to them and say: You know, relax a little bit. This is a game you’re supposed to be having fun.

And to see the smile come back on their face and see them in some instances laugh at what they were doing and then instantaneously start hitting the target again, I can’t stress that performance triangle too much. Again, we stole that from Tim Gallwey in his book, The Inner Game of Golf, revised edition.

When you focus on the enjoyment and the learning process, performance always increases; but when you focus on the performance side of it, start looking at your score, you stop learning and you stop having fun and tension increases. We talked about that last month.   I saw the default goal come out several times. The default goal was the author of a lot of the excuses that were made until people became aware of that default goal, and then they will begin to laugh at it and not go there.

A lot of people were taking notes. All of them left with a realistic view of their game, what they needed to practice to take their game to the next level. And had a lot of ah-has. The group jelled really well. I think Steve made the comment in our last meeting Sunday morning before we went out and shot that it was amazing to see the dramatic results and the dramatic improvement by the people who had been there for the last two or three years. Steve wasn’t able to be there last year, but he came back and helped us this year and is planning to come back next year, but he was just really shocked at how people had taken what they had learned there and implemented it and how it really improved their game.

Participant Thoughts on the Advanced  School

 Gil: I’m wondering if anybody that was there is out there. Gary, Greg, Brad, Driscoll or Snowflake, any of you out there?

 Gary: This is Gary. We’re here.

 Gil: Tell me a little bit about what you thought about the advanced school.

 Gary: I think you summed it up pretty well, but I’ll repeat one thing   I said while we were there. The thing that kind of has struck me the most, and I think will probably in the long run do me the most good coming away from the school, was this concept of the correction routine. Instead of automatically going to something that is mechanical in nature to fix whatever you see the problem with the shot to be, go to something that was feel oriented in nature.

As I played with that, it doesn’t happen automatically. It’s something we’re going to have to work at because we spent too much time thinking mechanically in making corrections, but I just have a feeling that’s going to be one of the bigger things that I end up retaining out of the school.

But there was a lot. There were a lot of things that we worked on and, of course, the emphasis on being farther out and still eyes and routine. All of that stuff just is ingrained deeper than it used to be.

Gil: Yeah. I think you even mentioned to me one afternoon that there were a lot of targets last year that would have given you a lot of angst, but they didn’t look near as bad this year. In fact, you were a lot more comfortable with them.

 Gary: Oh, I don’t think there’s any question about that, but I’m happier with the fact that not so much that I can hit the targets—and some of them were a lot more comfortable than they were last year—but I’ll tell you what I’m really happier about is that the ones that I miss don’t bug me like they used to. I’m probably more pleased with that than I am being able to hit more of the target.

 Gil: Well, hitting the targets will be a result of being able to control your emotion in a miss and stay congruent and think clearly when you have to face that miss because that correction will come around.

You know, it’s one thing for a person like you to be able to go to feel because your fundamentals are really ingrained; but some people here are still having to work on fundamentals, may have to stick with a little bit of a fundamental correction, but it’ll make it easy for them to move into that feel correction.

I have to confess that I had a trap lesson yesterday with a young man from Illinois who was in town, and we worked on relaxing his hands and getting hold points and focal points down. And he’d really been struggling, and his dad had been trying to read everything in every magazine he could and was having a hard time communicating with him.

So I said: Okay. I’m just going to do what I think needs to be done. He said: That’s fine. And so we changed his stance a little bit and changed his grip pressure. And about halfway through the lesson I said: How does that feel?

He said: Well, it feels great because this is the way I was shooting last year before my dad started coaching me.

So I got permission from the dad to keep going. And the kid got tired after about an hour and 45 minutes, and we were working on rhythm and routine and he missed three or four. And I told him just to stop, close his eyes and remember what it feels like to break that target and just take your time and remember what it feels like. Remember what the routine feels like and what it feels like when you see the bird, just to go to it and pull the trigger, and he smashed the last ten that he shot at just because he remembered that feel thing.

Maybe what we’ll do is get Steve to come on, and we’ll talk a little about that in the next couple of months because I agree with you. That was a big thing. That was a big thing.

Is your partner, Greg, there?

 Gary: Yes.

 Greg: Yeah. I’m here, Gil.

 Gil: What did you learn?

 Greg: One of the things I’ve been working on is doing the pre-shot routine and really reinforcing the routine. And something that is not in my routine all of the time is that emphasis on head to the target, whatever that might be.

But that was big, and then so was focusing on being early in the breakpoint. It’s something that I do occasionally. We really reinforce that on some targets. And then on the longer targets the focus is on shortening the move and being smoother both start to finish.

Suggestions for Shooting Less While Still Competing

 Gil: Well, all right. I’d like to talk to some other people, but we need to move along. It’s March and your goals have been set and you    have gotten back into the gun. There is a possibility that there are unforeseen things that have come up and it might be a good thing to rethink your goals and expectations and commitments. I’m going to turn it over to Bob Palmer right now, and he’s going to talk to you a little bit about that and some other things. And then if he gets through and we have some time left over, I’ve got something else that I’d like to talk to you about along these lines. So, Bob, it’s all yours.

 Bob P: Thank you, Gil. What Gil has asked me to talk about comes out of an article I wrote for Trap and Field magazine. I get people writing me in response to various articles, and I got a gentleman from Carolina asking me to write on the topic of what a working professional does in order to remain shooting and to deal with other commitments, such as family and work and you name it.

So I gave it some thought and ultimately it came time to write the article, and I sent him a questionnaire and got his response back to about 20 questions. And from that I formed this article and made suggestions as to how he might better deal with some of the stresses that were causing him actually to quit shooting for a while so that he could, do the important things in life, such as raising his family.

One of the things that was difficult for him was he was very competitive; he couldn’t accept diminishing his performance, i.e., practicing less and competing less and watching his scores drop and find himself lower on the list than some of the people he knew he was better than. He just was not prepared for that, and he just felt rather than let that happen that he quit competing. And he kept practicing and would do mock competitions in his mind, and he had a computer program that extrapolated it. So he kind of his kept his hand in, but I don’t think it was as satisfying or he probably wouldn’t have written me.

So I put together an article with some ideas on how he might still compete but not compete the ten or so times that were prerequisite in order for his scores to be counted by the National Sporting Clays Association. He might, you know, compete fewer times and prepare for them as if they were the Olympics.

I compared it to other sports, such as the martial arts or figure skating, where they only have maybe two or three competitions a year and the rest of the time is spent training. So with that in mind and not worrying so much about that fact that he might be bumped up a few levels, I set about to give him some ideas of how he might go about integrating his work and his shooting and his family. Because if it isn’t enjoyable, why do it?

If it’s causing you more stress to go out and practice and shoot and it’s detracting from family, from work, and you become miserable, you might as well find another sport or go do something where you don’t have to be as competitive.

So the first thing that I suggest that he do was to cut back the number of competitions, although he had already stopped. So I suggested that he start a number of competitions but really go after the training aspect of it in a way that was very practical.

One of the things he could do was figure out how he could integrate the things into his work life that would also benefit him as a shooter. So he could take work-related courses, even a normal public- speaking course that might be related for sales or something like that, which would build confidence, which comes in very handy when you’re on that line. When you’re in the station and you’ve got to shoot, it’s nice to have that confidence.

So one of the first things I suggested was he look into some cross training so that everything he did applied to other areas of his life.

You know, simply learning some interpersonal skills will help him shut off those irritating things, especially in sporting clays where everyone has experienced those kinds of irritating people that can pull you out of the zone. If you can learn to shut them down or shut them off without being rude and right there you’re going to experience quite   a difference in your score. I know from the game of golf how quickly I can fall out of my zone even if someone just says to me: you’re having a great game. What are you doing different in your  swing?

And right away I start going conscious and immediately it goes into the woods. And we talked about this.

So it would be good to go about learning to deal with those    kinds of people, and that is something that might even be paid for by work. So that kind of cross training can be very useful. Even leadership seminars might qualify. Get out and attend leadership seminars just simply because you can’t be an elite shooter and be in that winner circle if you’re not a leader. Right? Otherwise if you’re not a leader, you get into a group of other men and they start missing and you feel bad about them and they starting leading. You’re toast. So any kind of leadership training is ultimately going to help your shooting.

Another suggestion is that you don’t always have to go to the range to shoot. The suggestion I made here is that you can watch a number of Gil and Vicki’s videos. They’ve got the great flashlight drill. Those kinds of things can work miracles and get you in the proper rhythms even though you’re not out at the range. Gil has expounded on this and I probably can’t add anything more to it; but, you know, that kind of practice doesn’t take any time at all. After your family has gone to bed, you spend 15 to 20 minutes doing that, and it actually can be probably very relaxing and your brain is now working for you as you sleep; and it’s taking over the training during that period of the evening. As well as some of the other videos, just reviewing them and using Gil and Vicki as models.

 Stan: Gil? Can I put in a plug for my hometown organization? It’s called the Center for Creative Leadership. Bob was talking about taking leader- ship courses, and this is one of the best organizations in the world.

It’s the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina.

 Gil: Good. And if anybody would like to know more about that, I will be more than happy to get you in touch with Stan. We’re going to do one of those leadership courses next week, I believe. So continue on, Bob.

Bob P: That’s excellent. I mean, have you taken the course   there?

 Gil: No, I haven’t, but I plan on  it.

 Bob P: Okay. Those help, those kinds of exercises or strategies that would be applicable to any kind of sport and especially for shooting sports.

The other side is to make the most of it when you do get out to work and shoot on the range. Be smart about it. There’s some great ways of planning your shooting so that you go and work on the basics. Make more efficient use of your practice time on the range even though you don’t get as much as you used to.

I know when I went for my black belt I spent a lot of time in my basement in a small room working on the basics. And when I eventually got into the dojo and was performing, it was so easy. All of my muscle memory was there, and it just came out.

 Gil: I have to share this with you. If you’re in a situation like this, although it’s good to practice all six trajectories, you will find that if you feel good about all of your six trajectories, if you’ll find one target and shoot it over and over and over again, looking for feel and using your routine, and take all of the variables out of it just by shooting one target, you will be absolutely amazed at what it will do for your confidence, for your routine, and for your feel. Would you agree with that, Gary?

 Gary: I couldn’t agree any more. I’m going to get a chance to shoot once this week. And we have a local tournament on Sunday, and I’m going to get a chance to practice once before then. I’m going to shoot no more than two types of practice targets and maybe just one, depending on how much time I have. I did it last year before a couple of shoots, and if you go back and look in the log, I did well in both of the shoots where I did that before a tournament.

 Gil: And that would be this year that you did it?

 Gary: Yes. I did that, but I think we got together the first weekend in February. And I did that at least two, maybe three times in January where I just shot a single target focusing on the basics, and I’m sold.

 Gil: It seems too simple and it seems like it can’t work, but I’ll stake my reputation on it.

I stumbled into that probably six years ago. We were down at the ranch doing some stuff, and Martin Jones came out to have a lesson with me, and I was talking to him about how to be early and quit chasing the bird and whatnot.

I said: Vicki and I are going to train this afternoon. Would you like to come watch us?

He said: I’d love to. I’ll even pull.

And so we went out to the 5 stand. I shot one target for almost  a flat of ammo. I’d shoot a box. Vicki would shoot a half of a box or   a box. I’d shot a box, and we just kind of rotated back and forth, but I’d move the breakpoint on that target. I’d look for feel. And after probably three or four boxes, I began to pick a spot in the target path where I knew it was going to break, and the misses left. Every time I called pull, I knew the bird was dead before the gun ever got to my face. And Martin was shocked and he just said: I just knew the bird was dead before you even got the gun to your face. And we tried it again at the beginning of the next year.

Willy came over to Houston and we did the same thing. Willy and Vicki were working on different targets, and I was just working on one. And all of a sudden once it clicked and I got that feeling every time I called pull that I knew I was going to break the target. I did that for a hundred, 150 rounds after I got the feeling, and I got back into my timing computer, my feel computer, my focus, my trust, my routine. And then I said: Okay. I just want to go and shoot different targets when it’s my turn to shoot again.

They just started pulling me different targets, and I was absolutely, as were they, flabbergasted, or as the British would say, gobsmacked, at how consistent I was and how relaxed I was and how calm I was and how consistently I could break the target at any breakpoint that I wanted to.

So if you find yourself in this condition, in the situation that Bob has described, you might want to go out and shoot one target. I’m not telling you not to practice on the other trajectories, but if your practice time is limited, you would be absolutely shocked if you’ll go out and shoot one target and get back into that feel database.

Did you go through the same thing, Gary, when you started shooting one target; all of a sudden you knew it was dead before you pulled the trigger?

 Gary: Yes. The thing that I noticed about that in shooting one target time after time: Starting off the year you will get out of the mechanical thinking mode a lot faster and start getting into the feel a lot quicker than, I think, you otherwise would.

 Gil: Yeah. It ultimately is a game of feel and rhythm and timing and focus and trust, and if you can’t feel it, you can’t trust it. And, of course, you want to do every one of those shots with a pre-shot routine and a post-shot routine and a correction routine when necessary; but it just goes back to, in our game, whatever practice time you have might not necessarily be well spent if you try to do too many different things in a small amount of time in a practice session.

Sorry to interject, Bob, but I needed to get that out because that needs to be emphasized this time of year. I’ll turn it back to you.

 Bob P: Well, I was going to refer back to another Coaching Hour when you talked about that golf ball drill. You feel wonderful being able to stand over the basket and drop it in.

You move back, the further you get back, you get a little uneasy about it, and you drop it in and feel fantastic. So you get a notion of how that feels as you back away and maintain that wonderful feeling, somehow that golf ball keeps hitting the basket even as you move further back.

 Gil: Right. I think I did that with Tony Morrow, and we called it the Tony Morrow Gag Factor. In fact, that’s the name of the CD, The  Tony Morrow Gag Factor. And that would be a good thing to do now because it’s at the beginning of the year; but, again, like you say, that emphasizes feeling.

 Bob P: That emphasizes the feeling and when you pick that target and gain that feeling and it just becomes so ingrained in you, you can’t lose it when you go tackle the other targets. It is as much the feel as anything. You’re hardwiring your internal computer.

 Gil: It’s a big deal. I know it sounds too easy to believe, but going out and just shooting one target is a phenomenal thing, phenomenal thing, especially if you have limited practice time.

 Bob P: Now, the next thing on my list is this: do a lot of visualizing. And that, as far as I know, doesn’t interfere with a lot in life. I mean, it can be done in ten minutes. I don’t know if you get caught in traffic jams on the way to work or if you commute with somebody else or allow your spouse to drive, but you could do it then. Or you can do it in the evening before you go to sleep.

Visualizing yourself performing, putting yourself in a competition to the point where you feel so comfortable with that notion. And then when you get to the competition, it’s deja vu; I’ve been here before. I can’t emphasize this enough. When I went from being scared in competitions to the point of winning handily my first major event, it was literally eight weeks. I mean, I was a competent technician, but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I had fear of losing and a fear of embarrassment, and I’ve been there many times in my life.

So to experience walking into this tournament when I had done most of my visualization at night and maybe once or twice a day and owning it, I knew I was going to win. It wasn’t ego. It’s an incredible feeling. One of my friends came up beside me and tugged onto my uniform and said: We’ve got to hang on to you because you’re going to fly away. I just exuded it, right?

 Gil: Well, what types of things would be good for us to visualize? When you say “visualize doing well,” does that mean visualize us shooting stations that we’ve previously shot? Because if we were visualizing trap or skeet, it would be really easy. I’ve shot rounds of skeet in my head over and over because they’re all the same, but in our game nothing is the same. Do you have any suggestions as to what we could visualize more specifically?

 Bob P: You can be very specific on what you visualize. I tend to make it a little more general and go for the feel. For example, I’ll take it just outside of the sports realm for a second. I remember my first trip to Georgia to work with a skeet shooting team there. And for me going to Georgia, you know, a Canadian kid, I didn’t know much about it. As far as I was concerned the Southern U.S. dialect was a foreign language. (Laughter)

And much of my knowledge about the South came from “Gone with the Wind.” (Laughter)

So, I mean some of the racial issues and all of that kind of stuff,   I got it all from, watching Buffalo TV, ABC, and NBC; and that’s what  I grew up with. So I didn’t have a clue. What I started doing before I went there was to visualize that workshop, knowing the outcome. So  I got to the point where I knew they would all walk away from that workshop ten-feet tall and having had a fantastic time and learning  a lot of stuff. And I visualized them able to go down on the skeet field and just being on top of their game.

I even got a theme song, Georgia On My Mind; and I’ve got the lyrics for it and I’ve had it on my computer. And I did this over and over and over because it was my first major U.S. workshop, and I wanted it to succeed. When I touched down in Eatonton, Georgia, I felt so fantastic it was amazing. I had reviewed it. I knew my future before I went there.

The same thing can apply to you to shooting. You can just know by the end of that tournament or that competition that you feel fantastic. You can see yourself walking off the last station. It was a hoot.

You can see yourself missing a few targets and absolutely being spectacularly congruent with that. You can see yourself in a group of men who are hangdog because they’re missing and you’re the bright light of the group, right?

 Gil: So the visualization doesn’t have to be as realistic. It can be more of a play-like visualization.

 Bob P: Absolutely.

 Gil: And just put yourself not necessarily in the position of actually breaking all of the targets, but reacting well to the things around you that are out of your control.

 Bob P: Absolutely, and feel it. You will get the results similar to what you’re feeling when you’re visualizing. This goes for something like doing visualization in a half stupor, half sleep. That’s what you’re going to get when you actually go to the event. I’ve had kids do that. They told me: oh, I know how to visualize. And they do the visualization and I stop them and they said: Why did you stop me?

I said: Well, you fell. And it was a skier. They said: How did you know? (Laughter)

Because there was nothing there on his face until he fell, right? So when you visualize you engage all of the muscles of your body if you do it properly, and you can actually feel the moving. If you’re visualizing, you know, calling pull, you’ll feel your arms wanting to rise and do the shot for you. You’ve got to be engaged in that visualization process.

In one of the articles I talked about the need to control your adrenaline and make sure it’s not a rush. So you monitor it. You build it. It’s very much linked to congruence. When you visualize you can engage your adrenaline, as well; and that will kick in as soon as you step into the station on your first event or arrive at the competition site. It’s really cool to feel that happen.

 Gil: So you could even visualize yourself getting out of your truck and getting all of your stuff together and being very congruent and very confident, in control of everything, look at the people around you, look at what they’re saying and listen to what they’re saying; but you stay where you are in your own place. Between stands visualize yourself   in your routine shooting consistently. Visualize yourself using your self-talk phrases to stay in your zone when someone says something negative. Oh, gosh, the wind is blowing. You hear yourself saying that you’re already in the breakpoint so the wind doesn’t matter. You’re actually seeing yourself using the tools that you’re going to use that day mentally and some physically so that you’re better prepared when you get there because you’ve already been through that.

 Bob P: And feel it. I don’t know if there’s time now to take you through a short visualization as I would do it with an athlete.

 Gil: We’ve got 12 minutes.

 Bob P: Okay. I’ll describe it first. It’s a two-step process. The first step is to actually see yourself at the event and be watching it on an imaginary TV and be excited about it and watch the whole thing play out or abbreviate it. It depends on how much time you have.

The second part is as if there’s a stage and you are performing  all of the actions instead of watching it on an imaginary TV. Like you described, you get out of your truck, get all of your equipment on. Get your gun. And then go up to the different stations with the group of guys you’re going to be with, with the judges, with the scorekeepers, whatever, and you shoot beyond your wildest dreams. It just feels good. And at that part you will actually feel your muscles moving as you visualize yourself doing those different stations. You’ll feel it.

Gil: By the way, it would be a great time to visualize yourself going deep in your routine.

 Bob P: Oh, absolutely. You could feel your routine happening. You can work it over and over and over and over and not expend the rounds. Then when you get out there your economy of movement and your economy of thought is just fantastic.

Gil: I know I did that when I shot skeet, and I did it when I shot sporting clays, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, I’d get my gun two or three nights a week sometimes, and I’d go in the backroom and  I’d just go over it myself with my eyes closed, shooting stations and walking up and what I would do and my gun would be open and I’d  do my breakpoints and do my routine and close my gun and call pull and just shoot.

And if I didn’t have my gun, if I was at the office, I’d do the same thing. But, like you say, when you really visualize yourself actually being there, your muscles do react to your thoughts.

 Bob P: Yes. Your adrenaline reacts. Your muscles react. Your breathing reacts. Your heart reacts. It’s training for the actual event, and it wires you so that you step into that station. Then go. You’re there. Is there anything else you want to add to that?

 Gil: No, I think that we’ve covered it. That’s good.

 Bob P: Okay. So that visualizing portion is just so important.

The next significant thing on the list is to ensure that you get the other people in your life on your side, get them to support you. I have a number of friends who treat it a little bit differently. They’ve been told to set boundaries. So they set boundaries and say something like this to their family: I’m taking my karate you won’t interfere with it and I won’t interfere with you, right?

Whereas I much prefer a notion where you negotiate and you get your spouse or your kids or whatever to buy into it, that, you do a sales pitch. Let them know that this is good for you, it’s good for the family; because, you’ve reduced the number of outings you’re doing but you do need those outings because that’s where you go and to refresh your mind, to refresh your body. You build up stress at work. This allows you to de-stress.

You’ll be inventive, but get your family to support you. If going to one or two competitions or three a year requires you to take a day off of work, then get your boss to buy into it or if you’re the boss, you can find a way to do that.

 Gil: Yes. I’m sure some of us already have. (Laughter)

 Bob P: So that is so crucial, to get the people around you to buy in to what you’re doing.

Gil: Yeah. I think it was Dean that said a couple of years ago that you’ve got to get your family, business and personal life in balance, and I think you make a good point of getting the significant people in your life to support you in this. If it’s a passion, and it is for everybody that’s on the Coaching Hour; then it’s important that the people who are immediately surrounding them realize how important it is to them and that they want them to do well.

Along with that goal goes the responsibility of not overdoing it and not putting the people who care about you as the last priority.

A good thing to do at the end of the year is to always do something with them and express to them how much their support of you during the past year has meant to you and thank them very much for that. That’s something that’s often forgotten.

 Bob P: Take them for dinner.

 Gil: At least for dinner! I’m telling you, when it gets a little tough  and you’re having to be out there doing a lot of stuff, you can send    a bouquet of flowers to your wife and just tell her thank you for letting you chase your passion in shooting. And that goes a long way. Realize that whenever you’re dealing with women and you send them something, it just means one. It doesn’t matter how much you spent on it; it’s just one thing, one time. (Laughter)

The frequency with which you do that will enlarge your freedoms to go and chase what you want to chase. (Laughter)

My wife educated me to that years ago. And, guys, you’ve got to accept that. That’s just the way it is.

 Bob P: Exactly.

 Gil: But do it. Take them to dinner, and do a little something that shows them how you appreciate their support. If you’re going out of town to a tournament, stop at the gift shop, buy the kids something,

The more attention you give them and the more gratitude you give them throughout the year the easier things will be, but there comes some responsibility with that. Payback is not the right word, but they have to know that you’re aware that you’re taking away time from them to chase your passion. And a little constant reassurance and reaffirmation of how much you appreciate that goes a long way to having them accept the time that you’re away.

Bob P: And the final thing you really need to do is to make sure that you keep your job and your shooting and your family and everything else in your life separate, i.e., when you’re at work you can’t be thinking about competition so it distracts you. When you’re shooting you obviously can’t be thinking about, you know, your accounts at work. And when you’re with your wife or with your family, you can’t be running off to check the scores. You can’t be scattered.

 Gil: Or you can’t be talking to one of your shooting buddies on the cell phone about the tournament y’all shot last weekend when you’re supposed to be having family time with your family.

 Bob P: Exactly.

 Gil: Not that anyone out there would do that, you understand. (Laughter) And it is little things.

 Bob P: Yes. One of the things that really, upset John Cafferty was the fact that he’d be at work and just could not focus on his work because he was getting all anxious and excited about the competition on the weekend. And when he was in the competition, he never thought about work or anything else. I mean, he was truly passionate about that. So the way I like to look at it is almost as if you’re an actor. You know, you’re on stage.

You’re playing multiple roles and you’re passionate about all of them. And as an actor you have to switch perfectly from role to role to role and maybe very quickly; and you have to maintain that role because the audience doesn’t want to see two roles coming out at once. And the idea is if an actor can do it, why can’t you?

As long as you’re aware that it’s possible, then you can correct yourself when you’re starting to get scattered or too many things    are coming into your mind. And it’s almost within this model, and it’s maybe a little bit difficult to explain on the Coaching Hour because it is a workshop for me.

The idea is to kind of have a stage director there helping you, and the stage director’s only job is to make sure that those actors or those roles you play are only played when you want them to be played.    So, you want to really set the outcomes; and if your outcome is to  be with your family, that stage director is just cracking the whip and keeping the other people in line, the actors in line. It’s a very powerful exercise.