Yes, we have talked before about the importance of reviewing your shooting year, but we thought that it was time to, well, review that. So the mid-year review is the main topic for this Coaching Hour, especially the topic of adjusting to unforeseen circumstances. We discuss the issues that normally pop up this time of year and get into the specifics of shooting longer targets.
The Spring Review
Gil: It’s the second week of April. We talked earlier this year and last month of last year about how important it is for you to make your goals and to make some overall goals not only for the year but maybe for three or four years and also make some short-term goals, some specific short-term goals as far as training and practice and tournaments that you wanted to go to that would enable you to achieve your goal for the end of the year and how that goal fit into your overall goals for the next two or three years.
We also talked earlier this year about how when your overall goal is learning and enjoyment, performance seems to increase. You don’t go on nearly as big of a roller coaster ride of emotion when you go to train and you go to practice or you go to shoot tournaments with an overall goal of learning and enjoyment.
I think I talked about some of the talks that I had with Brad Alford and some of the talks I had with Tony Morrow and some with several other of you where we centered on learning and enjoyment. And when those two things are the primary goal, you’d be surprised at what you might open yourself up to. I got an email from Mark Landry today. He just returned from Florida where he went down to learn to fly an airplane. He did a four-day course down there, and he said it was fairly extensive. He passed his check ride with flying colors. Did a cross country. Passed that with flying colors. Did his solo. Passed that with flying colors.
And he said: I have to tell you, Brother Ash, that being congruent and learning how to visualize and the things that I have learned in shooting with you and Vicki and everybody else on the Coaching Hour and everybody else that we meet that shoots with you certainly helped me get through that intensive session.
Quite a bit of it was fairly intense for him. He’s not the calmest person in the world, but he was able to handle it without a problem.
We find that people continue to write us letters, similar to the one that Mark wrote us, about how much they have not only learned about shooting and how to shoot better and about the mental game of performance in shooting but how that transfers to their everyday life and what they do at their office and what they do at home and what they do on the freeway. And we’ve often talked not only on the Coaching Hour but in our last book about how you can’t just do it on the sporting clays course. It’s got to be a total life commitment.
So, hopefully, you’ve got your goals down December to January, but we’re into the shooting year. It’s April and in no time flat things are warming up and people are going to shoot more. It’s something that we always recommend that people do this time of year, and that is to revisit your long-term goals for the year and revisit your short-term goals for the year and make sure that you’re on track. And if you’re on track, make sure that you’ve gotten your practice schedules correct so that you can stay on track.
Hopefully, you’ve reviewed your log. We would recommend that you review your log for March and April of last year, maybe even February, and look at where you were then both last year in ‘06 and the year before in ‘05. Look at how you practiced. Look at how your game has changed. It’s important. I think it’s particularly important that you pay attention to where you were at the end of the year in ‘06. That would be the last time that you were shooting a lot because that would be something that you would want to have as a goal to get back to as quickly as you could this year.
So you want to review your logs, constantly review them; and if you’re not keeping a log, shame on you. And if you’re on target with your goals this year, that’s great. If you’re not because something has happened, hey, change your goals. Don’t continue down the pathway without being able to make that same commitment that you’ve talked about making.
Remember that Nationals is going to be the first of November this year and I’m going to keep reminding you of that. You need to remember to set aside some time in August for a break and give yourself plenty of time to get back into training and get back into your game before mid October comes around. You don’t want to have to be fumbling around at the last minute. So as of this time you should have shot some tournaments. You’ve got some results now, and you need to look at your game as a whole. You need to reflect on your performances, and you need to ask the question of the good performances why were they good. Of the performances that were not so good, you also need to ask why and attach changes based on the answers to those.
And in looking at your overall game, it’s important that you look for your strengths and your weaknesses. And remember that your top score that you can shoot is not the goal. Consistently higher scores is the goal. The goal is to push the lower scores up, and as the lower scores come up, they will push the higher scores up consistently.
Remember that peak performance is not where your game is. It is where you were that day you had the peak performance and how well you were able to control your emotions and your thought process that day. It’s also a product of how many other things came together that day that were out of your control in a good way for you to have that peak performance. And peak performances, I think you’ll have to admit, are a result of the foundation which is a result of your strengths in your game and the foundation that you built.
Don’t worry or give great emotion to your weaknesses, but do look at them for what they are because you’ve got to face them and dominate them. Don’t be concerned to look at something as a weakness and something that needs to be improved on. Don’t give it a lot of emotion, but you do want to look at it realistically. It’s something you’re going to have to train through and make a strength. And remember that the better your weaknesses the better the foundation, and the better the foundation the higher your peaks, and you must build your game from the ground up. I’ll say it again. The goal is to push your lower scores up.
Quite a few of you, in talking to us in the last three or four months, have remarked in looking at last year that not only were your higher scores up and a little bit more consistent but your lower scores were up much higher and they were much more consistent. That’s the goal, and the only way you’re going to get your lower scores up is to face your weaknesses. Face them. Be determined to dominate them and turn them into strengths. But don’t misunderstand. I’m not telling you to play down your peak performances. Just the opposite. You need to enjoy them. You need to savor them. You need to remember how they felt, but just understand that just because you’ve really had an outstanding performance one time doesn’t mean it’s going to happen every time. Don’t fall into that expectation trap.
Your foundation enables you to have a peak performance. Some peaks will be higher than others. The more solid and well-rounded your game is the higher and more frequent the peaks. Do what it takes to let the peaks occur. Control the things you can. When it comes together, enjoy it. Some of you have already shared some of the things that have come together for you well this year, and that’s great. We’re happy for you. Remember what it felt like. Continue to visualize yourself doing well. Remember what it felt like when you had a peak performance. Remember your zone DNA. What did it actually feel like physiologically? What was the state of your congruency when you had that peak performance? How did it feel? Use your log to give you a realistic, honest view of your overall game. Keep filling out that log. That’s critical.
Quite a few of the people that have given us feedback have remarked at how they would do journal entries and do log entries on every other part of their life, but they never thought about doing it in sporting clays and how when they started doing it things were not near as dark as they thought they were. (Laughter)
Things seemed a lot better than they thought they were because when they started keeping a log, they started to remember as much of the good as they did the bad, and that was a good thing.
Gil: Pay particular attention to your practice routines. Review your practice routines from last year. Pay particular attention to your practice routines, what’s going on when you train and what’s going on when you practice. Is your practice preparing you for your tournaments. That’s a big question. How are your pre-shot routines and your post-shot routines and your correction routines. How consistent is your move. When you’ve been to a tournament, did you have the first station jitters? Were you able to correct and run out a station? This is a big one: Are you subconsciously congruent? Are you using the NLP techniques that you used last year so effectively?
Remember, you can have all of the tools in the world in your toolbox; but if you have to consciously implement them, they’re not going to help you nearly as much as they could. The exercise “walking with grace and power” is something quite a few of you have done. I know Brian has done it. I was talking to Tony Morrow earlier this year about one of the tournaments that he went to early on and how he hadn’t had time to practice and really hadn’t read his log and hadn’t done a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about on the Coaching Hour, and he just remarked at how unconnected he was and how he couldn’t get congruent enough. I said: Well, did you walk with grace and power?
And he said: I forgot all about that.
So it’s reviewing all of that stuff and implementing all of the things that you had working at the end of the year last year that will allow you to get back to where you were at the end of last year mechanically and mentally; and it will also allow you to go beyond that based on your commitment to train and whatever lessons you had with us or other people or whatever things that have happened to you in your training.
Gil: I want to talk briefly, Bob, with you a little bit about self-talk. I think that’s something that people forget about until maybe mid to latter part of the year, but I think it’s something that is of great importance at the beginning of the year.
I was talking to Bob earlier today about how I was going to talk a little bit about self-talk, and he remarked that he felt that self-talk was a crutch, and I don’t think he really understood the way that I was talking about self-talk. Would that be a fair statement, Bob Palmer?
Bob P: Yes, it is.
Gil: Okay. And why don’t you review briefly the kind of self-talk that you think turns into a crutch, and I agree with it, so that everyone can kind of be on the outlook for it.
Bob P: Well, the whole notion of self-talk for me is you’re coaching yourself; and I see that as a coaching tool while you’re doing your training, when you’re doing your practice. Ideally you want to get totally into what we’ve described as the zone when you’re actually competing. At that point if you talk to anyone who’s been in the zone, there is no self-talk. It just happens.
If you need self-talk, then you should definitely use positive self- talk or some kind of self-talk that distracts your conscious mind so your unconscious can do what we want it to, and that is shoot well.
Gil: I can accept that. As Bob and I’ve talked about that, I began to share with him some of the things that we have talked about, and we began to talk a little bit more in detail about self-talk. And I will tell you that the self-talk things that I was talking about would be the things that you would say when someone says something in a negative way that just kind of comes out of your mouth and you counteract anything that they might have said.
Things like: The wind is horrible today. The weather is bad. The sun is in your eyes. The targets are hard.
Any of that kind of talk, if it gets in, you’ll need to be able to counteract that. And you-all have worked on some of those phrases. And I will tell you that a lot of that happens in the parking lot. Brian, wouldn’t you agree a lot of that happens in the parking lot?
Brian: Hell, it’s the first thing they want to do, ask you what did you miss or how bad are the targets?
Gil: And when you’re in your zone, you really don’t hear any of that; but if it does get in, you’ve got to have certain self-talk phrases that you’ve practiced. And we’ve talk about this before about what these self-talk phrases are for.
I hate to have to use this word. It came from Milo Abercrombie at the 74 Ranch, but you have to have a self-talk phrase that you can use to “negify” the negatives that somebody else might have put in your mind by saying something bad like that. (Laughter)
Because a lot times you can’t not listen to it. It’s going to get in. Well, would you agree with that, Bob? I mean, if something gets in you’ve got to have a way to deal with that and turn it into a positive.
Bob P: Well, first of all, you have to know that it gets in.
Gil: Right.
Bob P: I mean, if someone is paying you a compliment in a backhanded or kind of in anegative way, then it gets in and you don’t even know how it got in. I really take a dislike to one phrase or to a couple of phrases. For example, if you ask someone how they’re doing and they say “not bad” and you have to wonder what’s going on. I mean, it’s a throw-away phrase that a lot of us use. But what’s it saying about that person?
Gil: They’re defeated.
Bob P: They’re defeated, and they don’t even realize it. And another one is when you help somebody or they or somebody helps you and they say “no problem.” (Laughter)
You’ve just been helped by someone and they’re calling it a problem, because the subconscious doesn’t understand the word “no”. They would have no notion that they’ve even done that, but it’s kind of a window to the soul. And we do that. If someone gets paid a compliment “you shot very well” and they’re genuine and you said: Well, you know, it’s my new gun or I had some good coaching, you kind of underplay it rather than just saying: Hey, thanks. It did feel kind of good today. I appreciate the compliment. I’m glad you noticed.
I used to be terrible at accepting compliments. Just outside of my office I have a bulletin board that I put up; and I’ve got a nice golf scenario there now and trying to track some of the golfers in my building, and some guy didn’t know and walked by and said: Boy, nice bulletin board you got. And I genuinely turned around and said: Gee, thanks.
It’s just that I’ve transformed that way. I’ve been catching myself and now I don’t have to do that self-talk to coach myself anymore. It’s just nice that it comes out genuinely now. But it is a transformation.
Gil: And it’s something we’ve talked about this on the Coaching Hour in the last couple of years and helped quite a few of you with it. When someone gives you a compliment, you need to accept it and say thank you and say thank you genuinely.
I have used this and quite of few of you have used this. If someone says: Man, you shot great today.
Thank you very much. Thanks for noticing. I want you to know that my routine really worked well today or I really focused well today; and, man, when I focus that well, I always shoot well.
And to be able to attach to the gratitude and saying thank you for the compliment, that allows you to credit that performance to something which builds up your confidence not only in yourself but in that thing that helped you get there.
For me to be able to do that, when I do it, it’s like I don’t have to make an excuse. I don’t have to be humble. I can say: Yes, I did shoot good today. Thanks for noticing. Man, I’ve got to tell you. I really saw the targets well today, and it felt good. I felt in control. My routine was good. Those kinds of things need to roll off of your tongue without any thought, but for most of us to get there, it takes some practice at self-talk.
And I know that about a year ago Vicki’s father died, and going to the funeral and going to the viewing I knew that I was going to be one of the ones that was going to be the rock in the crowd of all of the family people; and I kind of went away to myself and I wrote down five or six things, phrases of gratitude in response to what people might say at the body viewing and at the funeral, and I rehearsed those things.
I have to tell you that when you’re in an emotional situation like that, to have rehearsed certain sayings and certain phrases and gratitude in anticipation of some of the things that people will be saying, certainly made it easy on me to say something that not only needed to be said; but it enabled me to genuinely thank the people who were saying it, and it also made them feel good at the same time. So it really turned what might have been an emotional situation where I might have been stumbling over my mouth and caught up in the emotion — it turned that into a very relaxed situation, and I was able to more or less be the rock in the room that evening and the next day at the funeral.
Just rehearsing those phrases made it easy for me to talk to different people, say basically the same thing but in different ways. We’ve talked about this in the past. You need to rehearse your self- talk phrases so when you get a compliment or when somebody says, man, you missed that one a mile, you’ve got something to come back to counteract that.
I know that at the Browning/Briley last weekend I was shooting pretty good on the hard course and I’d just run three pair in a row, and I completely missed the last pair because I didn’t stop and do my routine. It’s just lack of training, and I just took the targets for granted.
And one of the guys in the crowd said: Oh, man, you just can’t stand prosperity. I stopped and I looked at him and said: Yes, I can stand prosperity. I certainly can. It’s just that I need to train a little bit more and that kind of stuff won’t happen.
And I just kept going. I think that’s probably one of those phrases that you were talking about, Bob, where people might have been saying something that was kind of making light of something that happened to someone; but if you don’t turn around and address it, there’s a possibility it could get in and do something in the next stand or the next stand. Would you agree with that?
Bob P: Yes, absolutely. A thought occurred to me when you were describing accepting gratitude. There is a good place to start and it could be a question to everyone listening. Do you ever thank yourself?
Gil: I’ve never thought about that. (Laughter)
Bob P: Okay. Because I do. Here’s an example: You’re working through a routine and all of a sudden you find that you’re doing it unconsciously.
Gil: You’re doing your routine unconsciously?
Bob P: Right. You’ve trained and trained in a pre-shot routine and all of a sudden you notice that it’s happening unconsciously, which is your goal. And in a situation like that in my experience with the martial arts or something I’m doing in a workshop when I just pull off an incredible answer or help someone through an incredibly tough situation that they’re in, I will thank myself. That was cool, Bob. And I thank my unconscious for doing it unconsciously for me.
I get a little charge from that because it’s sort of an encouragement to my unconscious to keep on doing that. That was cool. We’re doing it unconsciously. We’re there. Gee, thanks.
Gil: Well, I know that several times in my career after a day of teaching I’ve said to myself you were as good today as you’ve ever been.
Bob P: Well, that’s exactly the same thing.
Gil: That felt good. I had a good delivery today. I know that Vicki and I talk about that. After a day of teaching, we talk about some of the things that we came across and might have learned. And she will be the first to tell you that I’m not ashamed to say I was really good today.
If you don’t blow your own horn, ain’t nobody else going to put their mouth on the mouthpiece. Okay? I never really thought about it, thanking yourself for doing such a good job or letting yourself do such a good job.
So, anyway, self-talk. You need to start thinking about it. You had your own self-talk phrases last year. Was it the same as the year before? Have they evolved? We’ve talked about several different ways to think about self-talk. As you get better, as you begin to compete at a higher level, I promise you your competitors will begin to say some things to try to get you sidetracked or get your thought process off in a different direction.
And you need to be aware of it, and you need to have your own little self-talk phrases so that when something does get in that you have the tools at your disposal to deal with them. When you are in your zone, it’s hard for you to even hear what people are saying. Vicki was talking about someone that we had seen each day at the Browning/ Briley. And I said: Baby, I don’t even remember seeing those people.
She said: I know. You were just in your zone. You were just out there, and you were just doing your thing.
So when I’m in my zone and when I go into it, I’m just kind of there and I’m a member of the squad; but I guess that my self-talk phrases when people talk to me come out automatically. But I just don’t remember things that happened. But I have to tell you. When that guy said you can’t stand prosperity, I remember turning around and going right back to it and taking care of that problem. Yes, I can stand prosperity, especially after I’ve trained a lot more. I’ll run a lot more eight in a row. In fact, I ran the next station and the next station.
So be aware that self-talk phrases are important to you. They’re the things that when you get a little bit out, they can help you get back in. I think that all of you are going to experience good performances this year. And being able to accept a compliment and tie what you did well that got you the compliment to the “thank you” makes it easier to say thank you, and eventually “thank you” will be kind of rolling off of your tongue.
Some of you haven’t been able to because of unforeseen circumstances, but if you’ve trained properly, you should be closing in on where you were as last year ended. Be very specific with your practice and your training. You need to be sure that you train both the mental and the physical at the same time. We’ve talked about this last year and the year before last.
It’s easy to just focus on mechanics because you’ve got to where you are working on swing mechanics. But you’re all beginning to evolve into much better shooters, and the mental game is something that needs developing just as much as your basic move and mount. So be sure that you train both of them at the same time.
You might want to try something that we’ve suggested in the past, and that’s working on one target, different breakpoints with the same target, working on feel, knowing that it’s dead before it gets to the breakpoint, grading the move and working on your routine, each shot being a shot of its own.
Gil: As we go through the next few segments, I’m going to be saying some things that I feel are some of the mechanical slippages that we see in people each year about this time.
And, Vicki, I haven’t prepped you on this, but you can add to it. These are some of the things that we see that we have to correct this time of year. First, the reciprocal move has become sloppy. That means your hands aren’t moving in opposite directions. A reciprocal move is the left-to-right target for right handers and just the opposite for lefthanders.
Second, we see your hold point slipping back toward the machine. It’s not staying out at the 70-yard line. These are the blind-side birds that we’re talking about, typically quartering birds, coming from your blind side as you turn your head back to address the target with your eyes. A lot of times you’re going to creep back which will enable that bird to trap you.
Third, the hold point is too high. Right-to-left targets for a right hander. Just the opposite for a left hander.
Fourth, not making the “J” move by getting on the line too early. Getting on the line too early and occluding the target. Being early but not early enough.
Fifth, here’s a big one. Tight hands, having an initial move too fast and not moving when you see the bird. Remember that soft beginnings create soft endings. Be sure that when you’re training or practicing, or shooting tournaments for that matter, that every shot has all three routines in it and be very specific with your breakpoints.
Gil: Remember Dean’s approach a couple of years ago? Remember he shot each of the six trajectories every time he went to train? He didn’t shoot them a lot, but he visited each one of the trajectories each time.
Then he’d shoot a hundred targets for score, and then he’d work on anything that was a problem from the 100 targets or even go back and train on some of the fundamentals.
Be very non-judgmental. This is the time of the year where it’s easy for you to let yourself get under pressure because you’re training your move back. You’re getting back. You’re coming back. It’s easy for you to become judgmental about things, like: Damn it, that wasn’t good enough. That’s the first step to the downward spiral: creating a hesitation. So be neutral or happy.
Remember we’ve talked about with Bob Palmer it’s all feedback. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s all feedback, and you need to look at it that way.
Gil: You need to be honest with yourself about your goals and expectations and all of those unforeseen circumstances.
I’ve talked to several of you about this very thing, and it seems like every year people have bouts with this. They plan their year with tournaments and training and business and family; and, hell, all of a sudden in January and February or March something happens business- wise or family-wise or health-wise or something that keeps them from being able to go for the original goal that they’d set. And we call these things unforeseen circumstances.
I know I was talking to Martin Lyons two months ago, when we first started doing some training this year, he said he wanted to be able to try to do well at the Browning/Briley and at the World Shoot. And I noticed that I hadn’t heard from him in about three or four weeks, and this was the day before the coaching hour last month. I called him and I said: Hey, man, what’s going on?
He said: What’s going on? He said: What do you mean?
I said: Well, I hadn’t heard from you. Have you been shooting?
He said: Shooting? Man, I sold my business last year, as you know, and it took about three months to get that sold; but I’m having to work for the people for three or four more years. Our business is up 60 percent. I’m finishing a new house in a week and a half. My son’s getting married two weeks after that, and other than that I’m not doing a damn thing. (Laughter)
So he went from wanting to do well at the Browning/Briley and the World to just pretty much being overwhelmed with some of the things in his life, and he’s had to redo his expectations and his goals. I talked to Tony Morrow about a month and a half ago. The same thing happened to him and he has been really overrun with work. Hasn’t been able to devote the time to practice and training, and he’s had to redo a lot of his goals.
I know Brad Alford had the same thing happen to him. Brad is going to have to hang it up after the World because he’s got a new job coming up and he’s got some new things that he’s doing. I know that Dean Olson had to almost quit shooting because of his new business endeavor. Robert Ruckert came to the advanced school this year and had a great time, had a lot momentum when he left it, but he hadn’t been able to work on his game because of a lot of the work things that he’s been doing.
So when unforeseen circumstances happen, it’s just something that you have to step back and take a look at and adjust to. So just be aware that when things change, you’ve got to change your things, and that’s one of the benefits of keeping a log. It helps you keep things in perspective. So just go ahead and make some good adjustments based on your personal and business life.
Gil: So by now you should have a realistic overview of your game, the physical and mental side of it and how those things compare with your mental and physical game last year. You need to develop a practice and training regiment for each and how much practice should you be doing. A lot of that practice, how much you should be doing, is going to be determined by your schedule and your unforeseen circumstances. Ideally I would say two to three times a week. If you can only practice once or twice a week, I’d shoot a hundred times, maybe 200 times. If you can practice three or four times a week, maybe 50 to a hundred rounds each time; and then work your tournament schedule as you’ve planned it.
Be sure to have some weekends off so you can spend time with the family and time for yourself; but I have to tell you if you’ve made the commitment to really do well in shooting, your family is going to have to make a sacrifice, and you’re not going to be there a lot. You need to make some specific weekends that you’re going to spend some time with your family to make sure that you have your family life in order so when you go to a tournament, you’re all there. So don’t forget about your family.
If you don’t have a tournament on the weekend, and you can sneak away early in the morning, it would be a good opportunity for you to shoot a hundred birds early in the morning just to see how well you’re shooting early in the morning. Some of you shoot better in the afternoon. Some of you shoot better in the mornings. It would be a great opportunity for you to try eating some different things prior to shooting, eating at different amounts of time prior to shooting.
It’s a good opportunity, when you have an off weekend, to set yourself up as if you were at a tournament and eat the things that you think you ought eat at the times and the amounts and just see how you react to that.
Depending on where you are with your games, what you practice has a great bearing on how well you’re going to shoot in the tournaments. And what to practice and ratios are outlined in our new book. I know you all have it. So you might want to review that.
Gil: Eventually you’re going to have to practice longer targets, and I wanted to address this tonight. It’s something that we have talked about in the past, and we keep preaching the fact that it’s the close, easy targets that cost you the tournament. Sooner or later as your game progresses, though you’re going to have to start practicing some longer birds.
And the Tony Morrow Gag Factor exercise would be a great way to practice longer birds. I know we did that. We talked about that on the May 2006 Coaching Hour. And if I have time tonight, I may review that. If I don’t, I would advise you to review it; and we’re probably going to review that next month if I don’t have time to review it because I’ve worked with a couple of people on that, and it still gets amazing results.
But if you want to practice longer birds, it’s okay to do that. Just don’t have a steady diet of it. I will tell you if you practice longer birds, it sure makes the closer birds look a lot easier; but if you only practice longer birds and have just a steady diet of longer birds, sooner or later you’re going to end up missing the closer birds because you’re going to miss them in front. That’s something that we have seen over and over and over and over again. People that shoot lots of long targets, who are infatuated with long targets, when they come back to shoot closer birds, they inevitably miss those birds. They don’t miss them all, but they inevitably miss them in front.
So if you’re going to practice longer birds, and it’s okay to do that, practice them with specific breakpoints. Practice them with your routine and take frequent breaks. And if you miss more than four or five in a row, move closer and/or take a break simply because just shooting a steady diet of longer targets is not a good thing. I know that once you start breaking longer targets on a consistent basis that you’ll want to shoot them more, but just be aware that the game is lost on the close targets. You’ve got to be able to bank everything they give you.
Just remember that longer birds take softer hands. They take softer beginnings and endings. You want to slide your eyes smoothly, and you want to make sure you get there really early. And it’s okay to get there early.
It’s important to remember how it felt, but always, that means without exception, always, after a long bird training session, go up and shoot at least 25 targets that are close and easy, always after practicing longer birds.
Brian: Gil, I’m a shooter of long birds, but I also had to start shooting shorter birds. But what I found that’s really working for me is to shoot my long birds first. I’ll shoot, you know, maybe a box or so at them. Then I find me another target, a shorter target, something where you really have to get back close into the target. And that seems to work real well.
Gil: And you just don’t shoot one or two of those short birds before you wrap it up. You shoot some of them, don’t you?
Brian: Yeah.
Gil: Because if you don’t, you’ll end up going to a tournament and missing those birds in front, won’t you?
Brian: Absolutely.
Gil: I know Brian, as a coach, has seen it; and he’s just reiterating what I just said. Eventually you’re going to have to face the longer birds, especially if you shoot much FITASC; and some of the sporting clays targets now are getting pretty long. But it’s okay to go practice them. Like Brian said, after he practices his long birds, he always goes back and shoots a fluffy bird, something where the gun has to get back a lot closer to the target and he finishes up on that because that’s your bread and butter. That’s what you’ve got to have. You’ve got to bank everything they give you.
Do you agree with that, Brian?
Brian: Absolutely.
Gil: How often do you practice long birds, Brian?
Brian: Oh, I’m about three days a week; but, you know, that’s not my training routine right now, and I’m not really doing it real hard right now. And I don’t have another shoot until The Zone, and then I don’t have any more until really June.
So I’m just kind of easing into it, and about two weeks prior to shooting the tournaments I’ll get back to four to five days.
Gil: And when you shoot four to five days a week, how many birds do you shoot in a typical session?
Brian: Normally a hundred and a quarter, something like that.
Gil: So what I was talking about a while ago, if you only shoot twice a week, maybe a hundred or 200; but if you’re shooting three or four times a week, maybe 50 to a hundred targets is all you really need to do because otherwise you’ll get burned out pretty quick. That seems to be what you’d found.
Brian: Well, yeah. Yeah. You don’t realize when you go to a tournament you’re already tired.
Greg: Hey, Gil?
Gil: Yes, sir?
Greg: What did you mean when you said “sliding the eyes”?
Gil: We’ve talked about this at the advanced school. It comes from the fact that a normal person can only hold sharp vision on a moving object for about three-fourths of a second, and the longer targets are typically in the air for a longer time than three-fourths of a second before you break them. If you come out with sharp focus on the front of that bird in the beginning, by the time the bird gets to the breakpoint, which is typically about a second and a half after you’ve seen it, your brain is tired of the input. So what you want to do is you want to come out and look at that whole bird and begin your move, but then slide your eyes to the front of the target as it reaches the breakpoint.
Different people have different perspectives on this. I’ll look at the whole bird, and I’ll tell my eyes to go to 3 o’clock at the end; and about two-thirds to three-fourths of the way to the breakpoint my eyes go from the whole bird to the front of the bird. I want my eyes to slide to the front of that target at the end, therefore, the visual information to my brain is getting more precise at the end of the shot as opposed to falling apart at the end of the shot. I know that when Dean was talking about it, his perception was soft focus, hard focus. Some people say go from the back to the front, from the top to the front, some from casual focus to sharp focus at the end.
Different people verbalize it in different ways, but it all comes back to the phenomenon that as we age our ability to maintain sharp focus on a moving object for longer than three-fourths of a second wanes dramatically.
It’s been our experience that that three-fourths of a second default is pretty common to everybody that we’ve tested. There are some people who are a little bit shorter than that, but rarely do you find people that can maintain fixation for longer than three-fourths of a second.
I would tell you that if we were to line ten people up and have them come out on the front of a target, maybe a 35- or 40-yard looping crosser, and the instant their eyes came off of the front of that bird, point to the spot in the sky where their eyes came off of the bird because that’s where the bird has been in the air for three-fourths of a second because the brain has gotten tired of it and the eyes will come off of the target, when we call pull and that bird is launched, within three feet in the flight path of the bird everybody in that line is going to point to that one spot where their eyes came off of that bird.
I know for me personally anytime that I shoot a target that’s been in the air a long time — and typically, you know as well as I do, if you’re shooting a 35- to 55-yard crosser that that sucker is going to be in the air for probably a second and a half before you break it. Would you agree with that?
Brian: Absolutely, if not more.
Gil: Yeah. I mean, typically that longer bird is going to be a curling bird.
It’s going to have a little belly to it. So it means it has got a little loop to it which means it’s going to be up there for a while. And if you come out sharp on that bird in the beginning, your brain will get tired of the visual input on or around the duration of three-fourths of a second. And if you hit it, it was because you were really early and you had a lot of trust, it wasn’t because you were focused real well on it.
I think you’ll find that that’s one of the biggest things that you’re going to need to train if you’re training on longer birds is training your eyes to move your focus from the whole target to the front of the target and to be able to talk about where you want your focus to end up in the terms of a clock. I’m going to look at the whole bird, and I’m going to be at 3 o’clock when it goes into the breakpoint; or when it gets right there, I’m going to move my eyes to 3 o’clock so that I’m on the front of it as it goes toward the breakpoint.
Typically that point of transition in your focus from the whole bird to the front of the bird is going to be somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of the way to the breakpoint. It’s also important that your eyes don’t jump there. If your eyes jump to the front, then your hands are going to jump with your eyes. Everything that you do on a longer bird, because of the distance and because of the air being magnified at distance in any mechanical flaw you have, has to be done smoother and more subtly and much more softly.
Brian: But the key word you said earlier is training. It’s something that you’re not going to do overnight, it took me over 6,000 rounds to get there.
Gil: Yeah. You just have to remember that whenever you’re shooting a target at 40 to 60 yards the gun is going to have to move about a third as much and about a third as fast as it would if you were shooting a target at 20 yards.
Would you agree with that, Brian?
Brian: Absolutely.
Gil: And that’s the hardest part about mastering it. Your brain
knows where the gun needs to be, but it’s the tempo and the softness of the
finish that’s important in training that longer shot.
Brian: Well, that’s what makes the long birds shooting so hard because if you’ve been shooting sporting clays and you’ve been on a stand where you’ve had some sharp wind and stuff where you really had to slash the gun and really move, and then you step over one and where it looks like it’s forever getting to where it’s going, and you’re just still cranked up and you have to unwind and you just have to almost go to sleep on it.
Gil: Well, maybe what we’ll do next month is I’ll talk to you, Brian about some of the high points in training for longer birds and some of the things that you’ve had to go through in training for longer birds. I’ve already got a little segment made for longer birds, and I’ll just have to find it, and then will go over the “Gag Factor” and how to train for longer birds.
Who was it that asked that question about sliding your eyes?
Greg: It’s Greg Moats.
Gil: Okay, Greg. Yeah, sliding your eyes. And if you’d like to talk a little bit more about that, why don’t you pick up the phone and call me and we’ll talk a little bit about it. Okay?
Greg: All right.
Gil: All right. That would be something you might want to write about in an article sometime because it is a physiological fact, and you will see it when we come to Powder Creek.
Next month we’re going to talk a little bit more about longer targets and the Tony Morrow Gag Factor. So until then read your log, adjust your goals if you need to. If not, stick with your training and your practice and send us an email and let us know how you’re doing, and we will talk to you next month.
