2008-09 – September 2008 Coaching Hour – Enhancing Balancing & Feel

…….September – Enhancing Balance & Feel…….

 – The Hurricane Congruency Test

 – Shooting in the Rain

 – More Balance Cushion Talk

 – How Thoughts Affect Outcomes

 – Insights into Flinching and the Subconscious

At 6:00 p.m. we were to have 25- to 30-mile-an-hour sustained winds and gust of 54, and that doesn’t sound like much. At 9:00 p.m. 35- to 45 miles an hour, gust at 73. At midnight 45 to 55 sustained winds, gust of 91. And then at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00 a.m. our sustained winds would be 50 to 60 miles per hour, gusts up to 110 and 111.

That didn’t mean much to me, but it does now. The sustained winds weaken you and the gusts break you. Thank God; we made it through. And it got to be 7 o’clock, and my goal was to make it through with a positive mind set. At 7 o’clock I had two safe rooms with a backup safe room, and I had Vicki’s mother and Vicki on the southerly side of the house. The storm was coming in on the northwest part of the house; so they were sheltered as they can be and my biggest concern was flying debris. All of our windows in our house are rated to 135 miles an hour. It’s a very solid house. It’s all brick construction

So we made it to 7 o’clock. That was my target. If we made it to 7 o’clock, all of the wind projections were going to go down and be less and less and I felt like that 7 o’clock was the hump hour. We made it to 7 o’clock. So I decided to go into the bedroom and take my shoes off and lay down on the bed and get some rest because I was awfully tired. Worrying makes you tired. We say that stress takes it out of you quicker than actual physical assertion, but I learned that lesson over and over again that night.

I was listening to the radio because our power had gone out. At 4:00 a.m. the eye of the hurricane was over Galveston Bay, and it was 45 miles wide. And if you know anything about hurricanes, the eye is typically not but about 10 to 12 miles wide; but one of the things that made this hurricane so unusual is that it had an eye that was 45 miles wide. It was moving northwest at 14 miles an hour at that point in time. Anyway, I’m going down and I’m getting ready to lay down, 7 o’clock. Hump time. Everything’s great.

The wind had shifted around from the northeast to the northwest because we were catching the tail end of the hurricane as it was going away from us, and I heard this limb crack; and the limb ended up being about 16 inches in diameter, and it was just twisted off and cracked. And as it cracked it was a big, loud cracking noise, and it hit the deck right outside the window.

 Vicki: About a foot away from the windows is where it landed.

 Gil: I’ll tell you what. That thing hit the ground, and I not only  heard it but I felt it more than I heard it. I learned something from the earthquake victims; and, that is, if you take your shoes off to get in bed, be sure to have your shoes right there by the bed because if there’s an earthquake there’s going to be glass all over the ground. So, needless to say, my shoes were right there, and I don’t know how I did it, but   I jumped from the bed into my sandals and back to my room of first response and probably didn’t touch the floor but twice after that thing hit the ground. I realized that it wasn’t over. I did realize real quick that it wasn’t over, but we were committed, and I just kept checking off those hours. I just kept checking off those hours and anytime that I had any kind of a doubt, if I wasn’t focused on my plan, if I wasn’t focused on what I was going to do at first light, if I wasn’t focused on what I was going to be doing and I wasn’t focused on my plans, boy, that doubt voice could get in there. And it was just a great testimony to how fragile this confidence and trust and the positive attitudes and the congruency that we talk about – how fragile that is when you get in a situation where you are completely out of control of everything.

And finally I woke up about 9 o’clock, and the winds had subsided substantially. I went out and I did a damage assessment, and there was no damage, and there were limbs down but I could see outside, and things were a lot better. They were just a lot better.

A lot of the planning that Vicki and I did I feel like that all of our plans came together real well; and it was a result of, again, something that we were able to use, that we learned in teaching sporting clays and shooting sporting clays. We were able to learn that and use that in our everyday life.

We could both sit down and we could both talk about the sequence of events and the situations and what was going on and where we were going to do this and where that was going to be. And we had our lights and we had different rooms, and we knew where to go regardless of what happened. And we had contingency plan after contingency plan, and everything worked out just fine. We didn’t have to test many of the contingency plans. Even down to where we were going to store ice in our freezers, we have an ice machine, and I started bagging ice in Ziploc bags, gallon Ziploc bags and putting it in the freezers. And in the inside freezer where we had most of the stuff that we were going to try to save I put six, one-gallon bags of ice on the top shelf, thinking that if I just left the freezer door shut that whatever cold that the ice would generate would filter down and keep things in that freezer frozen longer.

When we finally opened the freezer yesterday morning to retrieve that ice because we needed it, the stuff in that freezer was still frozen. It was an amazing thing.

Vicki and I were able to talk about all the scenarios, both of us back and forth. We didn’t feel good about being in a hurricane, but we really felt good about what we were going to have to do to survive the situation we found ourself in, and I don’t know how many of you have ever faced a hurricane straight on.

We were in a home that we lived in before where we moved where we are now, and in the 80s Alicia came over; and the eye of the hurricane came right over our house, and it was an eerie feeling. So, anyway, it’s the planning things that really got us through.

Shooting in the Rain

 Gil: And, Bev, I’m sorry. You’re having to deal with Ike and the aftermath. That thing, once the eye cleared Galveston Bay, that thing picked up steam; and it took off at about 15 to 18 miles an hour, going right up there to see you-guys. And did you shoot in the Ike rain; or did you shoot in the cold front rain?

 Bev: I shot in the cold front rain.

 Gil: And then you were coming home and you ran into the Ike  rain.

 Bev: It was cold front and then it was Ike. There was a cold front across the country, and there was an upper level low up over the lakes; and that was causing the rain, and then here comes Ike, and it ran right up in that trough. It picked up a lot of speed. There was a lot of flooding around St. Louis. Friday shooting the prelim was good. It was overcast. It wasn’t too windy, but we knew the rain was coming with its first lull. Saturday it rained, about four or five inches worth.

 Gil: Let me ask you a  question.  We’re  not  going  to  stop  talking  about this. But we’ve all shot in the rain. We’ve all had our own rain experiences. Is that the first time you’ve ever shot in a rain like that? What  did  you learn?

 Bev: Some of my golf stuff is not as dry as I think it is.

 Gil: There you go.

 Bev: I  got  some  grief  for  wearing  a  DryJoys  golf  cap.  It actually worked pretty well. It was just managing everything. I’ve played the competitive sports and I’ve played the golf tournaments where I’ve had to be out in the rain, but it’s been awhile since I’ve done it. But I’ve not had to manage keeping the gun dry, keeping the shells dry, trying to get out from underneath the umbrella, get in there and tolerate the rain hitting you like it was. Concentrating on that; and the types of target they threw that first day were very tough. It definitely played on your mind.

 Gil: A lot of edgy targets?

 Bev: A lot of edgy targets, a lot of distant targets. They had low visibility, lots of rain, gray overcast skies, and they threw orange targets above the tree lines.

 Gil: That’s a target shooter’s nightmare, isn’t it, Brian Brewton?

 Brian: Oh, yeah.

 Gil: You got that orange target with no black on it against that gray sky.

 Brian: Well, if you’re interested in being invisible, that is right   on.

 Bev: That’s what we had up there. It was almost like nobody paid attention to the weather forecast. But everybody had to shoot them. High score that day was 86. John Kruger turned in an 80. That was reflective. I was down a lot lower than I ever had been.

This was only about my third what I would call competitive tournament, and really the first one since going down this path with you-guys. The first one was Big Kahuna about the first year. I mean, I had my lunch handed to me then. But this was the first from start to finish.

I tried to do the best I could. I never got upset. It’s good. The mental management, I think, was as good as possible considering    the circumstances. It was raining so hard. I was wondering about my electronic ears, you know. If I was going to ruin them, should I just take them out and just put in some earplugs.

 Gil: There’s something to be said for going out and testing your rain gear. You don’t have to take your gun out there, but just go out and walk around and take a 2-mile walk in a driving rainstorm with your rain gear and see if it works. Our Pack Jac rain suits are the first thing that Vicki and I put in any traveling suitcase. If you don’t wear it for rain, you can certainly wear it to cut the wind and stay warm.

 Bev: It was warm enough. It was in the low 70s. And it was bad on Saturday. Sunday was dry in the morning, and I had the afternoon rotation, of course. We knew Ike was coming. There was a huge push to try to get it done. We had the first five stations dry, and then it started to rain. And as bad as Saturday was, this was worse. This was just downpour with a couple of flashes of lightening but nothing close.

Finally I just said, okay, it’s not a problem. Shooting was actually much better. They set a much better target, and my score almost doubled.

 Gil: I think Vicki talked to you about it another night. And you can ask anybody on the phone right now; it’s a matter of repetition. It’s how many times have you done it over and over again. How many times have you faced the dragon, whether you’ve won or lost, but how many times have you done it; and the more you do it the easier it becomes to handle any adversity because it’s not the people that can shoot well in fair weather. It’s the people that can shoot well in any weather that are going to be the consistent winners.

Rain is not fun. I just got to tell you. And I’ll tell you something else that I learned. We’ve been doing this for almost 25 years. I learned this probably 15 years ago. Quit trying to keep the gun dry. Let the damn thing get wet. You’re not going to keep it dry. I don’t care what you do. You ain’t going to keep it dry. Now, I’m not telling you to lay it down in a puddle of water. Okay? But whenever we have to shoot in the driving rainstorm, I’m not going to try to keep it dry. That’s a full- time job, but you set yourself up to fail because you can’t do it.

Now, you may make a towel and towel it off so you can grip the gun; but as far as keeping it dry, you’re going to have to take the butt stock off of that gun, blow it out with some air, put a little oil back on it, let it dry overnight and then put the stock back together. Brian, would you agree with that?

 Brian: Oh, yeah. You’ll take your mind off on what you’re supposed to be doing if you’re trying to take care of the gun.

 Gil: Yeah. And that’s a hard thing to do because you got a lot of money in your gun; but when you realize that one of the reasons that you bought a Beretta, which you did, and you like, that gun is not going to rust. I mean, it’s got chrome-lined barrels. It’s going to function, and you need to know how to take the butt stock off of that thing so you can blow it out with some air or at least take a Q-Tip and soak up all the water spots in there. You’d be surprised at how little water is going to get down in that action.

 Bev: I took it apart. It’s fine. It wasn’t the concern. Being able to hang on to the gun when the water is running down your forearms and your hand, that was the concern. But the concentration was fine on Sunday. It was much better right where it should be.

Just a little footnote, before going out there, I had the cushions with me. And Sunday morning I spent some time on the cushions with my eyes closed. I felt really solid, very rooted when I was out there shooting, too. How much of a role that played, it’s hard to say, but I felt rooted.

 Gil: I don’t think that there’s any way we’re ever going to be able to quantify it. I was talking to Brian Brewton earlier today about some of the things he’s doing getting ready for the FITASC shoots that he’s in toward the end of the year.

More Balance Cushion Talk

 Gil: Brian, you said you’ve been on the cushions. You really hadn’t notice any different effect. You said you’ve been able to keep your eyes closed for up to a little over a minute, right? And you haven’t noticed anything, any difference about your balance. I mean, you pretty much stand erect to begin with.

 Brian: That’s correct. Yes. For the last two days I’ve been working on an extremely, fast target combinations. And, anyway, I never got out of balance shooting those targets because the first target had to be taken extremely fast. That’s all I can allude to.

 Gil: Hey, Rick, have you noticed anything, any differences in being on the cushions and your shooting in the last 30 days?

 Rick: Yes. I’ve improved tremendously with the cushions as far as balance, not worrying about balance, not a problem, especially when I practiced with my eyes closed because we talked about last time widening your peripheral vision but also widening the balance. When you’re looking up in the air at the target, I really feel like my feet are planted. And I’m at the point where I get in some difficult shoots and I miss some targets and the voice gets to you and all of those kind of thing but when I’m on I’m really on solid.

 Gil: Really? So do you feel that pushing your balance mechanism and making your inner ear take over by closing your eyes more frequently on the cushions has made you more solid?

 Rick: Absolutely. I have to remember because I’m so competitive that this is my first year of tournaments, and I have to be kind to myself. If I’m not shooting up in the 70s, I start getting critical.

 Gil: Yeah. You have to look for things to learn, right? We’ve said over and over again it’s a five-year curve, given a person’s ability to really go after it and pursue a goal in this game. The first three years are learning years. That’s when you’re building the foundations, and nobody likes to lose; and everybody thinks they ought to be shooting in the 80s, if they’ve shot 5,000 rounds of ammo they ought to be shooting in the 80s, and it’s just not going to happen.

How Thoughts Affect Outcomes

 Gil: And it’s amazing when you can control that attitude. Let me jump forward just a second. Give me just about ten seconds. Controlling the thought process determines two outcomes, one, how good of a player you will become; and, two, how much fun you will have along the way. That’s part of a segment I’m probably going to do here in just a minute about philosophy in sports.

But you’re not only looking for lessons to learn, you are learning how to control your emotion at the same time. You can talk to some of the people that have been doing this game a long time, like Brian and Driscoll and Greg. I mean, these people have been competing for a long time. It is a huge thing for you to, number one, notice that you need to control it; number two, notice when you’re losing it; and, number three, to be able to get it back and realize the value of it because there are people that get in this game and quit because they cannot control their attitude or their emotions.

And you’re very competitive. I know you are. I could tell that the first time I met you. You were running in place wanting to get started, you know. It’s just one of those things. But now are you still doing a lot on the balance pads; or is it just once a day, once a week?

 Rick: Well, with the hurricane coming up, not the last few days; but, generally speaking, yes. I found it to be very helpful in so many areas of my life. It’s a time just to pull off the side of the road, and you cannot be thinking about anything else and do well on the balance pillows at all.

 Gil: Really? Your mind can’t be doing something else while you’re on the balance pillows and you can feel stable? You’ll be unstable if you’re thinking about something  else?

 Rick: I’m practicing, as we discussed it last time, about widening that peripheral mind balance thing that we discussed regarding allowing the two, your inner ear and the feel with feet, to take over the balance mechanism when you’re shooting because as you were talking about when the bird is going through the air you lose that third axis of balance.

 Gil: You lose the visual axis of balance. You’re right. And I never thought about that until we got into this, until we talked to that doctor; and it was absolutely amazing. That just dumbfounded me that night. It’s just amazing.

When you’re really focused on that target, you’re not getting a lot of feedback for balance from your eyes; so you’re all on feet and inner ear. And for most of us, as we age, it’s only on feet because the inner ear is not as stressed as much as it should be; and, therefore, we begin to lose it. And you feel more solid in the cage, Rick?

 Rick: Absolutely. It’s not something I even have to think about. My feet go in the proper place. My pre-shot routine is solid. The only problem I have is making sure I do all the other things correctly.

 Gil: That will come with time. I know that you’re going to be different, and you’re going to reach the five-year goal in three years just like a lot of other people who said they would. But along about that fifth year we get a lot smarter. I’m sure you’re going to push the curve, and that’s okay. That’s okay. When you say you’re a lot more solid, you’re not on as much as you would like to be, describe what you mean when you say you’re solid.

Rick: I’m not worried about my balance. My hold points are exactly the same every time. I’m looking at the focal point. I’m calling pull. I’m moving to the breakpoint, and I don’t have to worry about the balance for the second bird. I already have my plan. I work the plan and that’s when I’m on. I’m not worried about the balance point of it because I feel very centered.

 Gil: Okay. Hey, Greg, have you been able to play with your balance pillows?

 Greg: Yeah, some; but it’s been off and on. I stood on them for quite a bit last night, watching the football game or listening to the football game because I had my eyes closed.

 Gil: How long can you stand on them with your eyes closed? A minute or two?

 Greg: Oh, yeah, something like that. It just depends on what you’re focusing on. I mean, I play around with it. I’ll do my eyes closed; and then if you shift your head up or down and you’ll throw your balance off. Much like just lifting your eyes, even with your eyes open, if you look up, you’re going to lose your balance. I don’t know if I read it somewhere or something or we talked about it; but just having eye movement while being on the cushions is a good exercise, so to speak. I’m, just trying different things. I think I was telling you about just controlling your breathing while being on the cushions will stabilize you. And then last month we talked about breathing in our routines. It’s just kind of funny how everything kind of comes around.

 Gil: Welcome to our life. Vicki and I have talked about this so much, and we talked to Brian about it because he’s been with us for a long time as you-guys have; and it just never ceases to amaze us that we think that we’re heading down a pathway that’s going to be a certain dead end, and all of a sudden it opens itself up to so many other different dimensions and so many other facets of learning to perform.

It can be mental performance or physiological performance. Just this whole balance thing has been intriguing to us and how people have been able to use it and how it’s helped. I haven’t been able to talk to Dick Baker because Ike went pretty close to his house, and I think he scrambled out of town, and I haven’t heard from him. I was hoping to talk to him prior to us getting together tonight; but I don’t think he’s been able to shoot very much, either, because of the storm and some other things. But I’ll definitely be talking to him this next week, and I’ll give you a report on him. Driscoll, do you have any of these pads?

 Driscoll: Yeah, I’ve got them.

 Gil: Have you been playing with them?

 Driscoll: Yes, I have; but when you have a lower center of gravity, it doesn’t have as big of an effect on   you.

 Gil: The lower center of gravity, does that enable you to close your eyes longer and keep your balance better?

 Driscoll: Yes.

 Gil: It does?

 Driscoll: Yeah. I was able to hop right on them and not have any issues but I do use them. That’s part of my workout  routine.

 Gil: Driscoll, you might want to put enough air in it so that you feet don’t go all the way through to the bottom.

 Driscoll: It’s more comfortable when you’re feet are flat on the ground.

 Gil: When you can feel the floor through the cushion?

 Driscoll: Yeah. It makes it a lot easier.

 Gil: You probably can close your eyes for a long time, too, couldn’t you?

 Driscoll: Yes.

 Gil: So you’ve been playing with it a little bit but not a lot?

 Driscoll: No. I’ve used them quite a bit and one of the things that      I had to be careful of was when I was doing mounts and stuff. One of the things that I was doing was not doing a solid mount. I was concentrating more on the balance and not doing a solid mount, not coming all the way to my face, and that actually kind of hurt me until I realized what I was doing. Then when I got into it, I got back and was very careful and did a good solid mount, using the light where I knew  I was getting a good mount, using the cushions; and that made all   the difference in the world because I kind of got into a sloppy mount because I was balancing on the cushions and didn’t have any problem balancing, and I was just kind of mounting the gun, and I really wasn’t paying any attention to the mount, which kind of hurt me. So I had to kind of go back and redo that.

 Gil: Okay. Well, I will try to talk to Willy in the next week or so and talk to him about some more exercises we can begin to do with them, and you-guys just kind of keep up with how much you’re on them and the sensations that you’re experiencing or lack of.

Brian, you were saying that the particular pair you were working on this past practice session, you had to make a really quick, fast move and then change directions; and you felt like you were very solid when you were having to do that.

 Brian: That’s correct. Yes.

 Gil: Okay. All right. Well, that’s something just kind of keep your finger on the pulse and just kind of see what it’s doing.

 Rick: Gil, one thing I’d like to add. One of the things I started doing with my eyes closed is the flashlight drill. It’s kind of silly because it’s like Stevie Wonder driving a car, but you don’t have to use the flashlight. It saves batteries, but it’s like I felt the gun in my hand. And one of the things I wanted to say about that is if you’re doing the flashlight drill on the pillows with your eyes closed, it’s something that you’ve done repetitively, and it feels more comfortable. It’s not like throwing a ball up in the air and catching it or something you don’t do often that throws your balance off, but I’ve noticed for me personally that when I do something I’ve done a lot, I balanced on the pillows while I’m doing the flashlight drill with my eyes closed.

 Gil: When you say the “flashlight drill,” does that mean just practicing your  gun mount?

Rick: Practicing my gun mount. I’m actually opening my eyes and doing the flashlight drill with my eyes open and then closing my eyes and repeating it.

 Gil: Would it be fair to say, Rick, that when you do that you have a better feel for what the move and mount are?

 Rick: Yes. Absolutely. And then I open my eyes to see where I’ve ended up, to see if I’m where I think I am, and I’m really close. The one thing that we may want to try because if it’s something that you’re used to doing. I notice something I’m really comfortable with on the pillows with my eyes closed it’s just about as easy as with my eyes open.

Different People with Different Feel

 Gil: You know how we’ve stressed feel so much. Vicki, I’m going to talk about my ability to feel, and then I want you to talk about your inability to feel and how you have begun to feel and what’s different because I feel like people have different amounts of feel, and they have differing abilities to feel in sync with movement.

And I know that when I learn something or I’m trying to learn something that’s new that if I keep doing it enough to where I begin to feel how it works, it just comes very easy for me, and it has. And I know that a lot of times that when I’ll be talking to people about, did you feel that, did you feel that, they’ll look at me like: What?

I’ve done this to all of you. You call pull and I said that one is dead, and then you pulled the trigger and blew the target up; and I knew    it was dead because I knew you were in sync, you were in tempo with that target. And feel is something that I’m fortunate to have learned early on in my life in some way, I guess, from playing tennis, you know, something that I did enhanced my ability to feel things. Vicki, on the other hand, is completely the opposite.

Now, I want Vicki to talk a little bit about her ability to feel and what she learned, and then I want to ask each one of you. And I will tell you it’s easier to feel your move and mount with your eyes closed. Whether you’re on the cushions on not, with your eyes closed you ain’t got nothing but to do but to feel what it is. Okay? But Vicki and I are kind of at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to this feel thing. Right, babe?

 Vicki: Not kind of. I would say we are on complete opposite ends. In going through this journey with each other for the past 33 years –

Gil: Short years. I always say short years, dear.

 Vicki: I know you do. You’re a good man. But Gil kept asking me: Well, don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel that connection? And I’d go: No. I just didn’t have that feel or that connection with the target. We were talking about this today, and I said: You know, I don’t think I have felt in sync with the target until the last maybe four or five years.

All of those years of him saying: Don’t you feel it? And I go: Well,  I can’t typically say what I used to talk to him about, but I didn’t get it. I didn’t feel it, but I do now and when I’m out there talking to people and trying to show them and getting them to feel that connection.

We do a little thing called grading the move, and I’m sure we’ve done it with all of y’all. But people look at you and when you say that: Put a number on it one to ten, they look at you like, well, that’s such a stupid thing; but about the fourth time that they have to put a number on it, they’ll look at you and say: I do feel it. I do understand it, you know.

It’s been very hard over the years, but I think between the flashlight drill and this new thing with the balance cushions, I think, it’s phenomenal. It seems to be getting to the feel area a lot quicker when you’re on the cushions; but I think that if you can actually feel that connection with the target, then this game becomes effortless. The voice is quiet. It just allows you to trust and go ahead and pull the trigger in the breakpoint and know that that target is dead. And, yes, it’s been a journey.

 Gil: Well, wait. What was it that gave you the ability to feel? And do you think you really feel what I feel; or do you think you’re just beginning to develop feel on your own?

 Vicki: I think I probably feel it differently from you, because it’s taken so long, but I don’t know. I think once you get the feel, you get the feel. When I feel the connection and I say: This sucker is dead, I think it’s the same thing that you’re feeling. I think probably when you get that connection and that feel, then you know you’re going to kill that bird; and it’s probably varying degrees with everyone.

A lot of it came when I finally just said: I’m just going to shoot the target at the breakpoint. I think breakpoint has a whole lot to do with my ability to feel because you don’t have time to over-analyze. I over- analyze everything. So if I don’t have time to over-analyze, I don’t have time to do all the junk. Then I have to rely on just my feel. So I think that has something to do with it.

 Gil: So taking the opportunity for analytical thought out. By committing to the breakpoint and just say: Screw it, look at the front, see it to the breakpoint, has allowed you to develop some rhythm and feel. All right. Brian, when you feel like you’re connected to the target, tell me a little bit about what you feel.

 Brian: When I’m doing it, I’m recognizing the movement of the target, and I feel like my hands and everything is going in the same direction with it, and it’s just all kind of flowing together. And that’s the only way I can really describe it.

 Gil: Okay. Bev, what about you? Do you have feel like Vicki’s talking about; or do you have feel like I’m talking about? When you feel connected to the target, can you describe that feel?

 Bev: I think I’m a little closer to Vicki’s end of the scale than yours. There’s a lot of correlation to a lot of things that I’ve done in other sports. And Saturday, after talking to you before shooting on Sunday, Vicki’s advice was breakpoint, keep it simple; and I just tried to do that. And one of the things that I just tried to turn up was that hard focus on the bird. I can feel that almost like hyper-focus kicking in, and the hands just go to it. I have a lot softer hands when I do that. That’s a key word for me, is just to relax and the soft hands.

 Gil: And you can’t have what you call hyper-focus on a bird, Vicki, if you are being analytical, can you?

 Vicki: No, no.

 Bev: No, no, no. I have to turn that off, and I’m an analytical type of person. What I do in everything from the college degree to the job and everything in between and the personality I bring to the equation, I have to turn it off. I have to turn off that measuring, accountant, precision flying type thing.

I have to get more artsy. I have to get more in touch with that. And I used adjectives like soft hands and focus and feel and just going and catching it like a soft fly ball. These kind of adjectives work for me. But when I was really going on Sunday, and it didn’t matter that it was pouring. I just dismissed the rain. It didn’t matter anymore. In fact, I wasn’t even wearing the jacket.

I wasn’t worried about anything else, and I felt connected, the ability to slide to the front edge when I wanted to. It was all there, and I think it started back in the hotel room when I’ve spent a while on the cushions, and it was no problem. Like Driscoll, I’ve been able to pretty much hop on these cushions and take to it pretty easily.

 Gil: Yeah, but you don’t have a low center of gravity like he does.

 Bev: No, a little taller. But whether that’s the pilot training I’ve had and separating the eyes and the ears, I’m not sure, because you have to train yourself differently. You know, I still play golf. I still play the other sports. I ride motorcycles. I use my balance a lot. I use my eyes and my ears in different ways. You’re right. It’s hard to quantify. We bring the different talents and experiences and physiology to the  table.

 Driscoll: We both fly by the seat of our pants.

 Gil: Yeah, but one of you can reach the seat of your pants without bending over backwards. Well, now, Driscoll describe feel to me. All right. The milkman is on the station and he feels connected. Are you more like me and Brian? Are you more like Bev and Vicki?

 Driscoll: I have become more like you and Brian, and what’s happened is I’ve gone back to my days of baseball and tennis and those days, and I’ve done that through visualization with Bob Palmer, and killing time on the treadmill. I’m basically ambidextrous. I play tennis left handed. I play baseball right handed. I shoot left handed, you know. I play golf right handed. I visualize playing tennis with both hands, you know, hitting the ball with a ground stroke with the right hand, with the left hand, with the right hand, with the left hand; and that visualization has allowed me to go out and feel more connected when I get on the station and step in and start shooting targets.

The visualization has been a big deal for me on the field because  I can sit there and visualize not necessarily targets but just different things, and that just seems to correlate and go out; and when I’m out on the course, I can take it with me.

 Gil: Greg, what about you?

Greg: I probably side with you and Brian. The feel for me, there’s a smoothness to it and call up the zone or whatever it is; but when I’m shooting at my best, I mean, it’s almost like I’m not looking at the targets that hard. I’m not working hard at looking at the targets. Let’s put it that way.

 Gil: Right.

 Greg: You know you’re looking at the targets because they’re blowing up. So there’s a smoothness to it. There’s less of the mechanical clutter; and it’s just, okay, you know, breakpoint, gun goes to the breakpoint, gun goes off, target breaks. It’s kind of a weird sensation because you go: Gah, I just don’t feel like I can break that target without looking at it. And, of course, then you get caught and that’s what happens; but you don’t look at the target and you miss. You sort of take that focus for granted because it’s just sort of happening with the feel.

 Gil: Feel is what creates trust, that trust is a result of your ability to feel. This is real stuff to me, but Vicki’s eyes glaze over. I mean, it’s just like: Shit, here he goes again. It’s like I’m speaking in tongues. But to me feel is when I feel like everything that I’m doing is mirroring what the target is doing, and we’re both going to the same spot and we’re in sync and I know that I’m going to get there ahead of it; and when I pull the trigger, it’s going to blow up. That’s what I feel. I mean, it’s more like a dance to me, and the target is leading. Whenever the target moves, I move, but my job is to always be ahead and move with it. That’s what I experience when I feel. And when I feel that connection, whether I’m shooting with my head on the stock or with my head off the stock, right handed or left handed, so you-guys can see over my shoulder most of the time with your gun, regardless of how I’m shooting, when I feel that, I know that target is going to break.

And when I’m shooting my best I feel that on every target, and it’s a sense of synchronization? Everything slows down. It appears to happen in slow motion. Is that the way you feel, Brian?

 Brian: Oh, yeah. Agreed.

 Driscoll: The feel really comes out on the tower shots for me, whether it be at 74 or at Elm Fork or whatever. And you know those targets are coming and you’re way out in front and you’re just kind of waiting on them and you’re there early, and that’s when I can really feel it.

Insights into Flinching and the  Subconscious

 Gil: I do want to share one thing with you before we leave. We got  about five minutes left. I was watching Bev shoot on the cushions. I watched her shoot. Okay? And this is going to be like coming from  left field, but bear with me for a second. I watched her shoot, and I  was right behind her when she shot, first time on the cushions; and      she was mystified like I was. She wanted to do it, and she got up there and I said: All right. I’m right behind you. If you start to fall, I’m going to grab you.

She said: Okay. No problem.

Well, she goes up and she pulls the trigger and it knocked her off balance, and I grabbed her. She recovered.

She says: I want to do that again.

And in one time of her subconscious feeling what was going to happen to her when the recoil on that gun hit her and she was on those balance pads, in one time of falling off and didn’t fall off completely because I caught her, the next one the subconscious manufactured whatever forward lean was needed for her to maintain balance on those cushions when she pulled the trigger. Now, I was fascinated by how quickly the subconscious instituted a forward lean to keep her perfectly in balance. I was just fascinated with it because not only did she stay in balance she stayed in perfect balance. And this began to give me great insight with respect to what causes and what goes on when a flinch occurs.

Each one of us, we’re talking about differences in the way we  feel and differences in the way things happen to us, and we all bring different perspectives to this game. Each one of us does something. Our bodies do something different to counteract recoil at the time of the shot. We either grip the gun, we pull it into the shoulder, we lean forward, we put our head down; but until now I didn’t appreciate how precise a weight shift and how well the timing is to pull off a successful shot time and again. When I watched Bev go from getting knocked out of balance on those cushions and me catching her to maintaining perfect balance on the next shot that showed me how quick the subconscious can create the necessary weight shift.

Now think about it. She’s on the cushions. Okay? We’ve always said when we talk about flinch, that the flinch comes from an interruption of the visual stream of information to the brain, a rapid movement when the eyes go from the bird to the gun and back to the bird without focusing on the gun, that brain shuts down for two-tenths of a second. But if the shutdown occurs at the trigger break, the finger stops but the body’s built-in movement to counter the recoil has already begun; therefore, the reaction to the finger not pulling the trigger because of the interruption of the visual stimuli is sometimes violent and somewhat stuttered in movement. It’s not predictable every time because we all do different things to counteract the recoil of the gun and maintain balance. It’s different in all of us. If you know what’s happening, everything is happening, that is, it could keep from you going over the hill and developing a physiological fear of flinching. And I go back to when I watched Bev’s subconscious go from totally out of whack to balanced. And I’m talking, I’m ready to catch her. And, Bev, you never moved at the second shot. You were as solid as a rock on those cushions.