2009-03 – March 2009 Coaching Hour – Moving Past Consciousness

And I think it’s very easy for us as shooters to slip into that. In fact, the article from The Wall Street Journal says a little something about this. “One of the main problems golfers have is unrealistic expectations. They make themselves miserable when they should be having fun.”

Would that sum up pretty much what you’re talking about?

 Rick: Yes.

 Gil: Yeah. And we had some inclement weather. It was cold. Normally it’s warm down there. You’re walking around in shorts and sandals and having a good time. But it was cold, mid to high 40s the first two days, a little drizzle, a little mist, the kind of day where you don’t want to have to wear glasses to be able to see because they’re all the time getting little drops on them.

In fact, one of the first lessons that I did with the group that I had that first day on Thursday was I made them all open their guns and let their guns get wet because they were trying to keep them from getting wet, and you can’t do that in a rainstorm. I mean, you might as well quit trying. That’s why they have a gun room at the 74 Ranch. You take your stock. You blow it out. You clean it up and you oil it and you go on.

And then the group was wanting to keep their glasses dry and clean, and I told them just to quit fooling with their glasses, just to focus past the drops. And once we got through that, things kind of went a little easier. I thought it was a great opportunity to learn some different things.

We changed our format a little bit this year. I introduced an article to everyone each morning, and they were to read it, and then we discussed the articles. It just so happens that the articles were from the email edition of the USOC newsletter.

I think everybody came away with a realistic view of what they needed to do this next eight months to improve their game, and we got to watch some neat people shoot and enjoy learning from each other as well as learning from Gil and Vicki.

What else, Rick? Anything else pop out?

Rick: Well, there were so many things. I was just reviewing my notes here. As you’ve talked before, there are tendencies at every level that we have to go through, and I didn’t really believe that at first. I think once you break a tendency or once you just assume a tendency you can work on it, but each level that you step up I’m finding that I do go back to those same tendencies every time I break up to the next level.

 Gil: So what you’re saying is what we said in the past, was that once you identify a tendency that creates a plateau for you, you’re going to find that you’re going see that tendency as you go through the different plateaus and get better.

 Rick: Right. Even though you think you’ve conquered that on one particular plateau, you’ll see it show its ugly head again at the next plateau, and I really didn’t believe that. I thought I could overcome that; and what I’m seeing is I improve the old tendencies, as you know, me speeding up, self-criticism. Those kind of things pop their ugly heads back up.

 Gil: Personally, watching you that weekend last week, that was a big thing for you to finally admit that. It’s just part of your personality, and I’m not asking you to change that. I’m just asking you to deal with and realize that’s something that you’re going to have to face, and the best way to control your pace is between shots, especially after a miss. Do you know what I’m saying? When I kept trying to tell you, you would shoot. Regardless of result, you would want to open the gun quick, hurry and load and get back and shoot again.

 Rick: Yeah.

 Gil: I kept trying to get you to slow your pace down between shots because if you can control the pace between shots, then you can control the pace during the shot.

 Rick: That was huge for me for someone who wants to speed up, does everything fast, quick movements.

Gary told me something that was really interesting. Just out of the background, he goes: Just load your shells slow enough so you can’t hear them drop into the cylinder. And I started sliding my bullets and my shells in slowly where they wouldn’t make any noise whatsoever, and I found that just concentrating on that slowed everything down and allowed me to set up my pre-shot routine, still my eyes, allow myself to have time to look at the target and move to the front of the target and pull the trigger. And everything slowed down.

When I speeded up and the targets went fast, it was a quicker mess; and then we’re back into the routine again, reloading fast, and loving to hear you laugh when you finally slowed me down. It was good to have control of the target as opposed to the target controlling me.

Seeking Out the Rain for Practice

 Gil: It was an interesting journey for me to watch you and watch everybody. Everybody reacted to the weather in a different way, and it was less than ideal, I must say; but everyone reacted to it and finally accepted the fact that it is what it is. You can’t change it.

Sometime this year or next year you’re going to be glad you were out there shooting in that rain gear. You’re going to remember some of those things that you learned when you were out there. When we competed a lot I would intentionally two or three times a year, go shoot in the rain.

They thought I was crazy, but my rain gear was perfect. I never had to worry about it. I never had to worry about whether or not my rain gear was waterproof. My rain gear I could shoot in. And that goes back to the three-step formula for competition readiness. I was doing it, but it didn’t have a name. It wasn’t choreographed. Do you know what I mean? I would always go the extra mile to make sure that all of my gear, rain or shine, cold or hot, I could compete in my gear and it wouldn’t keep me from competing at my best.

 Rick: Gil, that was a big deal to me because the first day when Vicki was coaching me, she said that over and over; and I whined through the whole day, you know, whined about how cold it was, whined about how wet it was.

 Gil: Well, you know, I knew that because she told me that.

 Rick: Well, I’m a fair-weather anything. And whether it’s golf, shotgunning, fishing, whatever, I don’t like to deal with the chilly or  wet. I’m just really bad. But as we progressed through the weekend, it didn’t bother me as much. I adapted. I accepted it. I apologized to Vicki for being such a crybaby and felt like that was really a big hindrance my first day of learning.

 Brian: Practicing in the rain is a great thing, but the other thing that you need to add to that is tell yourself how much you enjoy that because, as you well know, and you-guys are already talking about it, how unpleasant it was.

But you get around a bunch of shooters and get into this rain, that’s all they’re talking about. They’re no longer talking about shooting targets anymore. They just want to get away from the rain. And as far as I’m concerned, if you got yourself mentally prepared and not letting that rain bother you, you’re going to make some points up on these guys. So basically it’s good for you.

 Bob Palmer: If you want a good book that will put a spin on working under duress, there’s a book called Lone Survivor by Marcos Luttrell, and it describes SEAL training in preparation for him to do some overseas service. It is an incredible account of what they put these men through so that when they get into a real life situation they can handle fire with cool and calm and with awareness.

And if you’re talking about taking people out to shoot in the rain and helping them to develop that mind-set so that if they ever get into a competition like that, this book is must reading.

 Gil: I will have a copy of that as soon as Ronda can find one for me, and I want to read it.

It’s just not just the rain. It can be cold. It can be snow. It can be heat, and just one more thing that you’ve got to contend with and like Brian said, if you won’t lose the fact that you’re out there having fun, whether it’s raining, shining, sleeting or snowing or miserably humid and hot like it is in Houston most of the time, if you’re out there to have fun, you will gain an edge. I promise you. You’ll gain an edge on your competitors because most of them are not of that mindset.

Okay. Anyway Rick, I thank you for sharing that.

Changes in Focus and Visualization

 Gil: Greg Moats, how are you doing tonight?

 Greg M: I’m doing just fine, thanks. I recently had a great trip to the shooting range. I was at work. My wife called me and said: Let’s go shooting. And you just don’t get that to happen all that often, you know.

Gil: Does she want a bailout package or what?

 Greg M: It was a beautiful day out, and she hadn’t shot a gun since last November. We go to the first stand and she just smacks the first four birds.

 Gil: Oh, isn’t that great?

 Greg M: It made me feel good, yeah.

 Gil: Did you get your goals done? And I know that you sent them to me. Have you run them around a little bit; and do you still like them?

 Greg M: Yes, I feel very comfortable with them. Something that I’ve come across, maybe you’re familiar with this guy Jerry Lynch. Are you familiar with that name?

 Gil: Yes.

 Greg M: Thinking Body, Dancing Mind, the Taosports Approach.

 Gil: I have read that book backwards and forwards about 15 times. 

Greg M: Wow, what a good book that is.

Gil: Yes, it is. It’s an incredible book. I must tell you. I recommended that book to quite a few people. In fact, a student of mine in Monterey, California gave me that book; and he said: You talk like these people; so you need to read this book. And he gave it to me and I read it, and it’s the kind of book you can go to and you can read a specific chapter on what you want to think about or emphasize. Each chapter is a contained unit within itself.

 Greg M: Yes.

 Gil: And it gives you life applications for what they’re talking about. Again, the book is Thinking Body, Dancing Mind. Probably 15 percent of the people that I’ve recommended that book to have really followed through with it and have really gleaned something from it.

Quite a few people find it maybe a little too deep, maybe a little too Eastern oriented or Western oriented. I don’t know. But, anyway, it’s an incredible book. There’s some great insights in it, and it follows right along with what we talk about because we both read that book. Well, have you read the whole thing; or are you just getting into it?

 Greg M: I’ve only got, like, ten pages left to go. But the thing that really struck me, Gil, last week, or, excuse me, last month when we finished is we were going to talk about a system for visualizing the stand; and a couple of key things stuck out in this book to me. One is about the enemy of focus, and focus is nothing more than being fully in the present.

I was also doing some studying about the  tachypsychia  effect  where time slows down under duress, and that had more to do with  pistol shooting; but they overlap in that when you’re fully focused,   when you’re fully in the present, perception increases so much more   that it’s almost the feeling of time slowing    down.

It has to do with visualization. I figured what my problem is. I’m trying to visualize conscious thought.

 Gil: You can’t do it.

 Greg M: And I’m in the stand saying, okay, the bird is going to come up here. I need to be a foot under it and 2 feet in front of it. Here’s my breakpoint. Here’s my holdpoint, and I’m trying to pick words of vision instead of just being fully in the moment and forcing myself not to use words.

But the last couple of weeks when I’ve been practicing I’ve been just consciously unconscious. I’ll stand in the shooting stand and say I’m not going to think about certain things. Of course, you can’t do that, but I don’t let myself verbalize mentally.

 Gil: You don’t let yourself what?

 Greg M: Verbalize mentally. I don’t let myself think words. I don’t know how to describe it.

 Gil: I am certainly enjoying your struggle.

 Greg M: Yeah. It’s hard being subconscious. You can’t just come up with words. You  know?

 Gil: Yeah. It’s that way for visualization. It’s also that way for your pre- shot routine. You can’t be consciously thinking about what you’re doing in your pre-shot routine. You have to have done it enough to where it has a rhythm and you feel it and you wait until your cue. You wait until you’re congruent. You wait until whatever you wait for that tells you it’s time to go. You’re focused, and your routine is something that just happens. You can’t be thinking, okay, I got to close the gun, address the target, eyes still, pull. You can’t be thinking about that kind of stuff.

Now, when you talk about visualization, tell me what you’re visualizing when you’re not thinking about words.

 Greg M: Okay. Instead of allowing myself to talk to myself, today we went to a stand. They had a very difficult, long, quartering target. It was beneath you about 35 yards out going away. I mean, it really was a bear. And initially I started thinking about: okay, I need to come  up from under it. I was thinking lead and all of that stuff; and then I finally said, okay, stop. I’m not going to think about anything when I’m talking to myself. All I want to do is feel the stock. And so I just want a pure feel. And then I started breaking the bird.

And so I guess what I’m saying is I’m trying consciously to not talk to myself mentally. You’re right. This is hard to verbalize. I’ve been trying to visualize by mentally talking, and that’s not the way to do it.

 Gil: It’s not ever going to work.

 Greg M: Right.

 Gil: I don’t know how many years ago it was at the advanced school, probably three years ago, Steve Brown was down there; and he brought a PowerPoint presentation, and we were talking about visualization. We were talking about focus. And he and I were sitting on the back porch, and everybody else had gone in to dinner. And  we  were talking about it and how eventually focus moves to another level and visualization has to move to another level.

When you begin this game focus is more about conscious focusing on something, and visualization has a lot to do with what the picture looks like when you begin; but as you get into the game and as you get to the point that you are in your journey, this is what we came up with. Focus goes from visual acuity to concentration on, and visualization goes from what it looks like to what it feels like to break that target.

Does that make sense to you?

 Greg M: Absolutely.

Gil: Yeah. And I’m not talking about the simple targets. You don’t really focus on them, but what I’m talking about are the targets that you have to begin to achieve mastery of to go into master class and be competitive at the higher levels, the kind of things that we want to go into.

Those targets, a lot of times you can’t actually focus on the front edge of that target. It’s either too far or too small or it’s too hazy. You can’t acutely get focus on a quarter of an inch of a target, a 4-inch target at 45 yards. You can’t do it.

You can’t resolve that. Okay? But if focus goes from visual acuity to concentration on, you may not able to see 3 o’clock on that target; but that doesn’t mean you can’t concentrate on the area of 3 o’clock on that target.

 Does that make sense to you?

 Greg M: Yes.

 Brian: That’s where the feel kicks in.

 Bob S: You know, visualization that you were talking about in words is a perfectly appropriate visualization for writing a report or putting together conceptual ideas on paper.

I did a talk for Gil and Vicki about this some years ago. The visualization we’re talking about is about a picture as well as a feel, and that’s it. There are no words involved.

 Brian: Correct.

 Greg M: It’s hard to visualize when you’re thinking about visualizing. You’re talking yourself through it.

 Bob S: Well, you’ve seen enough targets that you need to go back into that part of the recall system to put the target up for you to visualize on from your memory of the picture; and then go through the process of what everything felt, smelled, sounded like, and everything else. Because the more elements of those sensory inputs you can put in the better the quality of the visualization, and I thinkBrian can probably confirm that, too.

 Brian: Well, I agree, agree  totally.

Bob P: And the more you add adrenaline to your visualization the more you add that feel. And if you can visualize with that kind of energy when you get out there, that’s how you’re going to perform.

 Gil: Well, I will tell you this. Yeah. And I think, just from listening to what I just heard there, that you guys are talking quite a bit about, is everything that you can add to the visualization process that has to do with feel puts an asterisk on what it is you’re trying to visualize.

Visualization, to me, is more about how it feels to break that target. It’s also seeing that target break where I want it to break, but it has nothing to do with swing mechanics, lead, line. It doesn’t have anything to do with that.

 Does that make sense to you, Greg?

 Greg M: Yeah.

 Brian: I’ll agree with that totally.

 Gil: This is going to be an interesting thing for you to go through. In fact, I think it was last year at the advance school that we had a big sit- down and a big talk to with everybody there. I think we had 14 people last year, and we really talked about when you hit the target what did it feel like to hit that target; and we emphasize and overemphasize for everyone to when they made that move to hit that target not what did it look like, what did it feel like.

And anytime you can get into that feel computer, you go so subconscious and you are so in the present because the subconscious only understands feelings and pictures. It knows what the picture is, but if you can talk to it in that feely kind of way, any words that you can use that emphasize feel. I feel my hands flowing to the left as they insert the gun to the bird, now, anything you can do that will emphasize feel in your visualization process is a huge arrow in your quiver.

Leaving Swing Mechanics Behind

 Bob P: When you mentioned that you can’t visualize swing mechanics, what do you  mean?

 Gil: Visualizing a swing mechanic, to me, is a positive sound alike; and it’s a trap that people fall into, Bob. When you are visualizing your swing mechanic, okay, getting the gun up, getting your head on the stock, making sure the gun is three-and-a-half feet in front of that bird, when you fall into that trap, you lose feel.

Now, maybe we’re running around in circles here in saying the same thing with different words like you and I have before; but I think you can ask anybody on this line that when they begin to lose it the first thing they do is they begin to think about swing mechanics, and they begin to go conscious in trying to break the target as opposed to trust the swing mechanics you’ve trained, visualize how it feels to break that target and let it happen through focus.

Does that make sense to you?

 Bob P: Yes, it does.

 Gil: Now if I was trying to learn a new move, say, okay, something that I hadn’t done before, that somebody had just shown me or, I know that’s hard for you to believe, but we learn things every day.

First of all, I would have to do the swing mechanic thing to get that feel down, and I would probably do it in a slow motion way. Whatever move I had to make I probably would do it with my eyes closed and  I would visualize the bird coming out and I would visualize what I wanted the gun to do.

At that point in time, I’m going to have to visualize in a conscious way the bird and the gun merging together and what has to happen   at the end for that bird to break; but eventually what I have to do is   I have to take that process of breaking that bird with that new move and I have to practice it enough so that the only thing that I’m left with on game day when I am going through my visual process of what I’m about to do is how it feels when I break that target.

I’m telling you. Ninety percent of the people in this game are eaten up with swing mechanics. They’re thinking about lead.

They’re thinking about getting the gun up. They’re thinking about getting their head down. They’re thinking about follow-through. They’re thinking about pulling away. They’re thinking about lead. They’re thinking about a foot in front and 2 feet under.

They’re all worried about what the gun is doing, and 99.9 percent of the thought process on swing mechanics is not about the target.

 Brian: Correct.

 Gil: It’s about the gun.

Bob S: And what you keep talking about is the conscious thought of control is the enemy of trust and focus.

 Gil: There is no doubt.

 Brian: That’s right.

 Gil: That’s where we’re going. And you can’t trust something if you can’t feel it. You can’t trust it until you feel it. You can tell yourself to trust it, Greg. You can tell yourself, okay, I’ve done this a thousand times. I know how to do this, but if you don’t have feel when it comes time to trust it, you can’t trust it if you can’t feel it. Tim Gallwey says you can’t trust it if you can’t feel it. You can’t fix it if you can’t feel it. Feel is the thing that releases subconscious trust. That was a big thing for me, and there are a couple of chapters in Thinking Body, Dancing Mind about trust and feel, right, Greg?

 Greg M: Yes.

 Gil: I mean, that book is eaten up with a lot of that, and it shows you the concept. You can tell yourself to trust it all day. It ain’t going to happen. That’s just like telling yourself what you’re visualizing. It’s not going to happen.

And until you get to the point to where you can feel that target, you know what it feels like to break that bird, eventually there’s going to be an argument in your head, and that argument is not good. You’re going to lose the argument. You may win, but you’ll lose the war because it’s just so easy to go back. And, Bob, tell me what you think about this now.

And, Brian, you, too. I have to tell you that it’s a very logical thing for you to go to swing mechanics when you have difficulty because the way you got to where you were is working on swing mechanics.

Do you see what I mean? This is a shotgun. It’s not a rifle. You look at the target. You point the gun ahead of it. You can read reams of material on shotgunning, and 99 percent of it is on swing mechanics and what the gun is doing. There’s a very small percentage on what the target is doing and how to focus on the target and how to use your visual motor process.

So it’s a logical thing because when you’re in the conscious competence phase of learning, you’re consciously thinking about your swing mechanics. Just like, Greg, when you were consciously thinking about your visualization, you were still in the conscious mode. And something clicked that got you to quit thinking about that and start being touchy-feely. It’s more about touchy-feely than it is about vivid pictures and conscious analyzation.

And it’s a very normal process to want to go to swing mechanics because that’s how you got here, but you’ve got to leave that behind. We talked about block practice and we talked about random practice and we talked about varied practice, which is something hopefully we’ll get into next time or the time after at the advance school.

And even though the test results are better from varied practice, research will show that hands down. Block practice is not something you get away from. Block practice is something that’s extremely important. You’ve got to understand it.

An Example of How to Look Past the Gun

 Gil: For instance, Greg Espenhover is having trouble with a right-to-left target. He’s a big, tall guy, wide set eyes; and for some reason he’s just got a right-to-left phobia. Snowflake, you were with me that morning I had him shoot behind the target, weren’t you?

 Bob S: Shoot in front, shoot behind, shoot underneath. You had him do everything except shoot at the target.

 Gil: Now, Bob Palmer, I stole that from you. Okay? I stole that from Bob Palmer. I want everybody to know. I’m going on record. I stole that from Bob Palmer.

But, anyway, I knew what the problem was. In my heart of hearts, I knew the problem. He was looking at the gun. The gun kept getting in the way. Now, sometimes it didn’t get in the way as much as it did other times; but his gun kept getting in his way, and it was because he had this phobia. He had given it so much emotion. He’d fought it for so long. And Snowflake is usually chattering most of the time. When I started having him do all this weird stuff about miss the bird 8 feet left, miss the bird 4 feet right, miss the bird 5 feet over, miss the bird 4 feet under, when I started having him do that, Snowflake even shut up and started listening.

And the whole group was silent at that point in time. What the hell is Gil doing to this guy? And because he could not anticipate how bad it was going to be when he looked at the gun and missed it, because he had to look at the bird to insert the gun 5 feet behind or 4 feet over or 8 feet left, okay, because he had to really look at the bird to do this weird thing, he began to focus on the bird. And, I mean, he was focused on it with sharpness.

And I said: Okay. Now this time shoot right at the left edge of it. And he blew that thing up. There was no visible piece; and I started feeding him bullets and it was just: feed shoot, just shoot, shut up and shoot, shoot, shut up and shoot, shoot, just shoot, just shoot, shut up and shoot, you know.

And he’d rattle off about 15 of those right in a row, bam, bam, bam, blowing them all up; and he looked at me and he said: That’s incredible.

I said: No. That’s just the way it’s supposed to look like.

 Bob P: Incredible.

 Gil: That’s what it’s supposed to look like. Okay? And because you have given this so much emotion, it consumes your idle thought process. It just consumes you. You’re going to have to over-practice this a little bit, and you’re going to have to do some block practice on right-to-left targets to understand what the picture looks like.

I’m not asking you to know what the lead is. I just want you to understand when you’re looking at the target and the gun comes in and is coming from the right and the gun comes in front of it, it’s going to interrupt your visual circle, and what you’ve got to do is do it enough to where you get use to it and it doesn’t present a problem for you. He looked at me. He was relieved. We shot right-to-left targets. The rest of the day he shot real well. He had one little train wreck on one, long, curling incomer that was about 45, 50 yards away; but he felt a lot better about his right-to-left problem, and I designed a little practice routine for him.

I told him to draw a picture of a clock that’s about a foot-and-a-half wide and don’t put any hands on it. Just put all the numbers and put the dot in the middle where the hands will go and focus on the dot and mount the gun on the 9 o’clock and focus on the dot and mount the gun on the 8 o’clock, focus on the dot and mount the gun at 10 o’clock.

And as soon as you can mount the gun in different places mimicking a right-to-left trajectory, as soon as you can do that, then shrink the clock. Shrink the clock down to a foot wide. When you can do that, shrink the clock down to 6-inches wide. And that’s something that  he can do at home to help him overcome and understand that picture.

And once his periphery can accept that picture without wanting to know what’s coming into it, then his problem is going to be solved. And we talked about that the next afternoon, and he said: Let me tell you something, when I — not “if I”, he didn’t say “if” — he said: When I get this right-to-left thing remedied, that’s going to be an instant 10 birds on my average, an instant 10 birds on my average.

And he’s excited about it now. He’s got something now. He understands it. It’s not a mystery anymore, and it was amazing. Wasn’t it amazing how making him miss that target, Snowflake, made him focus on the target?

 Bob S: Oh, yeah. I mean, I understood as you were doing it, and I was really impressed how you got him to pay attention to the target only. Everything else became subject to the target only.

 Gil: Yeah. The thing was he was just snake bit on that trajectory.

 Bob S: Oh, yeah.

 Gil: You know? And that’s not fun. It’s the toughest one for a right hander anyway, and then to have had trouble with it, and that’s how easy we can make something —

 Bob S: Make it bigger than it is.

 Gil: Oh, yeah. I mean, you give it that emotion. That’s one of the reasons Greg didn’t want to come to me that time. He said: Man, I got this trouble with right to left, but it’s only one or two birds a hundred, but it’s a problem.

I can see it. What’s wrong? Let’s look at it. Get the gun out of your face. Watch what happens. Oh, man, that’s great. You know, it’s just one of those things, but he’s just got to get used to that. And I want to make sure that I emphasize to everybody on that although we were talking about the random practice regime making it easier for you to score better on tournament day that the results will always be better from random practice.

We’re not throwing block practice away. There’s a definite need for block practice. When you have a problem with a certain trajectory, you’re going to need to go back and do some block practice.   There’s just no doubt about it. And your wires get crossed and your periphery can’t accept that gun without wanting to know what it is, and those are just things that you’ve got to work on.

I worked with Homer Saye’s little boy, Conner, today on quartering birds. He didn’t understand that right-to-left picture with a quartering bird. And I mean, the little kid was a sub-junior all-American, hand- thrown pigeon shooter this last two years; and he’s just graduated to a 12 gauge, and it’s just too much gun for him. I told Homer he needed to go back to that 28 gauge for another year, and he didn’t want to; but Conner said: Man, dad, this gun is hurting me. You know, I need to relax a little bit with it.

So it was just another one of those things. You have got to go through that block practice stage to understand what the picture is supposed to look like and to get your peripheral acceptance up to a level where it doesn’t want to know what the gun is when it comes in.

Greg Moats, tell me a little bit more about when you began to try to visualize without conscious thought. What happened?

 Greg M: I don’t know how to answer that.

 Gil: Well, you had a hard time telling me what you were doing. I understand how you don’t know how to answer it, but what was the thing, when you finally discovered what you needed to be doing, what did it shift to?

 Greg M: The thing that went through my mind was that thought is the enemy of focus, and focus is just being fully in the present. What I tried to do is just get into the sensations and kind of feel my feet touching the floor and feel my fingers inside my gloves and just kind of get in touch with the body. I don’t know how else to put it. And then before I had a chance to think about hold point, breakpoint or anything else, call for the bird and react to it. So I had already thought through hold point and breakpoint. When I got in the stand, I just was trying to take a few minutes to clear my mind. Then just be fully in the present.

 Gil: Okay.

 Bob S: It sounds like you got into some anchoring techniques.

 Gil: Yeah. You realized that you have to be present to win. You have to be present to win.

Brian: More ways than one.

 Gil: In more ways than one. You have to be present to win. It’s interesting that you should say that. In an article in the Wall Street Journal they talked to Pia Nilsson, who along with Lynn Marriott wrote that book that we’ve talked about several times, The Game Before The Game; and they were asking them what certain things people could do if they were golfers, to admit to themselves that they don’t have 10,000 hours to train to become a world-class golfer; but what could the normal weekend golfer go through and do to actually improve his game. Common targets that can produce big in practice for the average golfer.

Immediate payoffs are tempo, the short game, and developing an ironclad, stress-reducing pre-shot routine. And it doesn’t matter who we study. It doesn’t matter what sport it is. Everybody has that pre-shot routine.

Vicki, what do you think? To me, I go up. I know where I’m going to break the birds. As I’m looking at my breakpoint, I’m actually feeling what it feels like to move the gun to the first breakpoint, move the gun to the second breakpoint; and I come back and I’m there in the stand with my gun loaded. It’s open. But as I look at my breakpoints, I’m actually feeling what it feels like to hit that bird.

Do you do the same thing, Vicki?

 Vicki: I don’t know that I feel it, but I can look out there in that break- point and actually see that target breaking at 9 o’clock or 3 o’clock or left edge or right edge or whatever it is. I don’t go so much into the feel part, but I do visualize that sucker breaking in a thousand pieces.

 Gil: If my wife ever calls me a sucker, I know I’m in trouble.

Now that’s just the difference in me and Vicki. I’m like a feely person. She’s not a feely person. And different people will glean different, personal things from this.

But I would suggest to you, Greg, that your pre-shot routine should come after you’re feeling whatever you’re feeling and then let the pre- shot routine carry you into calling pull and react to what you see. Is that pretty much what you’re doing?

 Greg M: Well, I was under the impression that your pre-shot routine ended with follow the bird.

Gil: That is correct.

 Gil: Yeah. And we go through all of these routines in our Out Of Your Mind book. And to me, my visualization process is what it feels like to be moving and letting that target come right to me, and I blow it up right there and I blow it up right there. And when I’m visiting my breakpoints, confirming my plan, I feel that target coming to me.

That’s what I feel. And when I feel that, it’s a dead bird before I ever call pull. And then all I do is my trigger, which is closing the gun, set the gun, my eyes are set. I call pull, boom, boom, the pair breaks. That’s my routine, and the feely part of it occurs before my trigger. My trigger is closing the gun. In 1.9 seconds after I close that gun, I’m going to be calling pull.

Does that make sense to you?

 Greg M: Yeah.

 Gil: You might want to do it in a little bit different way; but it’s all going to be a personal thing.

I know when Vicki does her visualization, she sees 3 o’clock. She sees 9 o’clock. She sees 10 o’clock. She sees the o’clock because the o’clock is key for her to have success. Okay? I mean, that’s just the way her game is. That’s the way her brain functions.

And, Brian, do you do anything different?

 Brian: No, not much. It’s pretty much the same thing. Well, one thing that I do want to reiterate is whatever you do decide that is your pre- shot routine, make it habitual —

 Gil: Does that mean do it over and over again?

 Brian: Yeah. Become addicted to it.

 Gil: Become addicted. There you go. Now, I can relate to become addicted. I can certainly relate to become addicted. And it’s something that you’re going to have to work on. Maybe what I’ll do is give you a holler the first of next week, Greg, and we’ll talk a little bit more about it; and we’ll kind of go on that journey with you. I’m glad you’re getting a little bit more touchy-feely with your stuff because ultimately it’s more about feel than anything.

Bob P: Gil?

 Gil: Yes, sir?

 Bob P: You remember walking with grace and power?

 Gil: I do, that is, he is one of my best  friends.

 Bob P: Okay. Well, have I ever mentioned to you the abbreviated version of it?

 Gil: No. We’ve got four minutes.

 Bob P: Okay. Well, I can do it in probably one.

 Gil: Go.

 Bob P: Okay. Instead of the walking back and forth through yourself, you step from one foot to the other and sway through an image of yourself in the zone. It will stop all internal dialogue. It will keep you in the zone you want to be in. It will connect you with that wonderful feel, and you’ll be ready when it’s your turn to shoot.

 Gil: That’s what I was doing up in Reno, wasn’t it, Vicki?

 Vicki: Yeah.

 Gil: I was swaying. I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I understand it. You know, Bob, I’ve talked to several people that are on the Coaching Hour, and they have requested that we maybe go through a couple of the exercises again; and I think that walking with grace and power would be one that everyone could understand.

I know that I did some NLP stuff with Greg Moats, and Brian has used the walk, and we need to cover that a little bit more. Why don’t we maybe talk about doing that next month? We’re going to talk next month about walking with grace and power, and we’ll do a review of congruency. I think that’s important for everybody, and it’s just this time of year you’ve got to get all of your swords and all of your arrows back in your quiver, and you’ve got to be ready and get all of your tools sharpened and ready to go to battle because things are beginning; and before long the U.S. Open is going to be here, and you’re going to want to be going out there and shooting well. So we’ll try to do that next month.