2011-03 – March 2011 Coaching Hour – Process Goals

Gil: Yes, sir.

 Gary: And I felt like if there was a consistency to the targets that I was having some difficulty with while we were down there, it really wasn’t trajectory or a particular type of target or anything; but I think it was that issue more often than not. And I got to shoot one time after we got back. I don’t normally like to do it. I don’t like to shoot the day before a tournament, but we had a tournament on Sunday.

And I did go out Saturday, and I shot 60 pairs. I shot 120 rounds and just all the same pair, move the breakpoints around a little bit but just on both birds, easy targets, but on both birds I was just concentrating on making sure that I was really seeing it well before I moved to the target. And after being down to 74 Ranch, if we don’t do it to ourselves down there, you’ll end up doing it to us and pushing us to the outer edge of our comfort zone; and I think it was good  after we finished doing that to come back and just see everything break for a few pairs.

So I went out and I was shooting with the wife and her dad and a couple of her girlfriends. And so it was going to be a fun afternoon, and I ended up just kind of getting in a groove and ran the first two stations and just kept running them. So it was one of those days when it just felt easy.

 Gil: Hum. It’s interesting to me in reading all the stuff that we read and in working with the tens of thousands of students that we’ve worked with how the best performances always come about as a result of very simple planning.

I agree with you in that one of the things that I kept tricking all of you-guys on, not only you three but the people that were there the weekend before and the people that were there for the advanced class

– it’s that we so often anticipate the target. When I say that, I just mean that we begin our move prior to really focusing on the target, and that can be set up by a previous station where you might have a couple of targets that come at you from a long distance, and you don’t have to really be gilt edge on them in the beginning; but by the time they get there you have plenty of time to focus on them and you’ve got good focus on them, and you run that station. And then the next station where you’ve got to come out on them really sharp, you anticipate a little bit and you don’t run the station. And missing it, you’re really kind of shocked when you miss them.

But we found a lot of people anticipating targets down at the 74 Ranch this past two or three weeks, and a lot of that could have been the difficulty of the targets, the wind blowing, because the wind was definitely blowing; but when you get to the point to where you’re not waiting to see that bird, it’s a lonely feeling because typically you don’t question the focus because you assume you have focus if you moved. It’s good to know if that’s one of the your tendencies. We’ll talk about some tendencies here in a little bit.

But we all have certain tendencies, and I guess at the beginning of the year there’s a tendency of wanting to move when you call pull, especially on a bird that’s got a little speed and where you’ve got to get the gun moving pretty quick to stay in front of it and to merge with it. It’s pretty easy to take focus for granted.

You may have thought this early on in our relationship; but I think you’ve grown to respect it in the recent past, and that is that Vicki and I can stand behind you, and we can tell you if you saw the bird. I mean, you can hit it or you can miss it. We can still tell you if your eyes are moving. We can tell you if you saw the bird.

And for a more advanced shooter like you and like Greg and like Craig, the three that were in your group, when you guys just miss a target, man, that’s almost the first place I go because you have put your time in just like the other two have. And most of the guys here on the coaching hour, you’ve put your time in as far as getting your fundamentals down, and if the input to the computer is there, nine out of ten times the output is going to be perfect. It’s just one of those things that you have to visit at the beginning of each year.

 Gary: Gil, I wish I could say I really planned this out and everything; but we’ve been so busy I’ll have to say, other than going out and shooting 60 easy pairs, just thinking about seeing the target real well when breaking it in the breakpoint, the only real preparation I did for that tournament is I did go into it with a thought for the day: I’m going to see it before I move.

And Greg asked me about it sometime after the tournament, and  I told him, because I really hadn’t realized it until everything was over, that the one thing that did happen to me, and I think it’s the first time I can ever say this, is I didn’t drop a single easy target. I didn’t drop one. And I don’t ever remember not walking off of a tournament, even if it was a good score, without saying: Oh, gosh, there were two or three gimmes that I just dutched.  But having that thought is what I think led to that.

 Gil: Well, I would have to agree with that. When you are determined to not move before you see the target, a lot of good things can happen, and I mean a lot of really really good things can line up and take place. And we talk about focus so much, and God knows when you go practice, if you get a chance to go practice, you’re focused and you’re practicing focusing; but, man, I’ll tell you. When you have as a goal that day to not move until you actually see the target clearly, some really good things can happen.

And whether you went out and you shot 60 of the same pair, it really doesn’t matter. What matters was that you were determined to do something that had to do with process, and anytime that you have a process goal going into a match, whether it’s eyes still or to see it before you move or lateral movement or being in the breakpoint early or keeping your nose on the bird, regardless of what the process goal is, any kind of a process goal typically leads to a very consistent, a very calm performance with very few mental errors.

Do you feel like having to shoot with other people that aren’t as competitive as you has contributed to your ability to be able to use your routine and go in and out of your routine? Do you think that that’s helped you? Not that you had a choice, you understand.

 Gary: Yeah. That’s true. Yes, I think it has. And when I’m shooting with that crowd, I do like to be first in the cage, and it’s a little easier for me when we’re at these smaller tournaments and we have to watch everybody else’s targets because we’re keeping score or we’re pulling birds or whatever, it’s easier for me to go in there and be done with it; and then if I see a lot of missed targets after I’m through with that station, it doesn’t seem to imprint much.

But I try not to watch the targets any more than I have to. I try to get the pull cords, and I’m shooting with people who are just having  a good time. I can joke around with them and do all of that, and I can grab the pull cords and I can pull birds for them and I don’t have to look.

I don’t look at near as many targets as I used to since I’ve kind   of been shooting with that group as much, and I’m getting better at not taking on their baggage because I still want the wife to hit more targets and I want a coach, but that’s been a whole lot better for her and it’s actually better for me when I don’t. So I’m just learning how to do it, I think, is what a lot of it is.

A Newer Student Learning Only by Book and DVD

 Gil: Well, you’re learning how to cope with a different situation, and it’s a wonderful thing to have a great routine that allows you to go into your little routine and do your deal and then come out of it and play with the rest of the group. That’s really what this whole thing is all about anyway. Well, good.

Ron?Have you still been working on your skeet field practice?

 Ron: Oh, absolutely. Yes.

 Gil: A little history on Ron, guys. He worked for over a year with another instructor who shall remain nameless, and we’re going to just go on past that, and he just never really got out of the mid 60s and he read the essays that Vicki and I wrote on lead last year and committed to getting some of our books and some of videos, and I wouldn’t know him if he came in the office.

 Ron: That’s true.

 Gil: But I’ve had two phone conversations with him.

 Ron: Yeah.

 Gil: And the guy has adopted what we talk about to a T. He’s been doing nothing but practicing his move on a skeet field right-to-left and left-to-right quartering, right-to-left to left-to-right crossing, just moving the breakpoint on a skeet field. And last year with all of his work with the other coach he never got any better than mid 60s. This year his first tournament score was a 70. The second one was a 75, and the most recent one was a 79. Right, Ron?

 Ron: Yep.

 Gil: And he keeps calling me back up, acting surprised at how good he’s shooting because of what he’s doing; but I keep telling him that the stuff that he’s doing has been tried and true and proven by you guys and us. Ron, it is an amazing thing when you can isolate certain things that you need to work on such as the move and the mount and being early in the breakpoint and shooting breakpoints. It’s an amazing thing what that does to the game when you can actually focus on and practice breakpoints, isn’t it?

Ron: Yes. It’s been amazing to me really. Obviously with no formal instruction everything just is strictly from books or DVDs. Yeah. I’ve been amazed with how I feel about what I’m doing, and obviously with the few performances that I’ve had so far it’s been great. I mean, as I said to you in one of the emails that I sent you, those three tournaments, which was a three-tournament series up here in New England, I’ve never had three consecutive tournaments in a row like that, shooting in the 70s; and, I mean, I haven’t been shooting for that long.

It’s been about three-and-a-half years but still consecutive decent and progressive scores on these three tournaments. It’s been fantastic. And, yes, between the second and third tournament, I probably shot about a thousand targets on the skeet field, working on those two, and just recently a little bit more on the quartering, but mostly the crossing left to right, right left on the skeet field. That’s all I did. I did not shoot any rounds of sporting clays other than those tournaments in that time. So all of my shooting was done on a skeet field and/or just doing flashlight drills in the basement every single day, which I have religiously done probably since about the beginning to middle of January, and I haven’t missed a day. It’s been pretty good.

And the interesting thing about it is that just recently there’s a few guys I know, and one of them actually is still a very good friend and still taking lessons with the original instructor, and he’s been calling me I would say four or five times since Sunday when we shot. And I’ll tell you one other thing. I’m going to continue shooting and practicing in private because they’re all getting very interested in how and why I’m all of a sudden shooting in this way, specifically shooting low gun because everything else that they’re doing was premounted. So, yeah, that has been amazing. A lot of this stuff that you’ve written about in your books is almost verbatim in what I’m living right now. So I’m very pleased.

Training Alone When First Adopting a New System

 Gil: Yeah. Well, as I’ve told you when you began this journey, eventually when you start beating them, they’re going to begin to ask you questions, and I assure you that their questions are not honorable. All they’re trying to do is screw you up because they’re afraid you’re doing something different that they can’t do, and they don’t want you to get better than them.

 Ron: I agree with you because for the first time on Sunday and, as I said to you a few seconds ago, my practice has really been in private. I bought myself a personal clay launching device, a remote one that hooks up to the skeet fields at our club; and I have not shot with anybody other than on the three tournaments that I’ve shot with.

So Sunday my buddies called me up and said: Oh, come on, you know, we’ll shoot at the five stand. And so I said: All right. I’ll go. And I shot a few, maybe a box worth of targets there. Shot well. And then my other friend said: Let’s go down to the skeet field. I want to work on the skeet field with you like what you were doing. I’m like: Okay. So I go down there. And do you know what? I will never do it again, not now anyway.

 Gil: Why? They didn’t want to do the same thing you were doing, did they?

 Ron: Well, no. I found that at this stage of the game, I’ve been trying to definitely have a goal when I go to practice, either I’m shooting crossing targets or crossing and quartering targets. Now I even throw in some report pairs on the skeet field and practice that, you know, not as much, mostly singles.

When I went and shot with other people like that, I felt that  the training or the practice that I was doing at that time was not  as productive as when I was able to do it by myself without having somebody else who’s not really even doing what I have been trying to do. I don’t know. It just didn’t seem to work for me. I didn’t feel that I was able to accomplish what I would like to accomplish or what I’ve been accomplishing when I do go shoot..

Gil: Well, sooner or later you’ll have to come out of the closet and shoot around some other people. It’s okay.

 Ron: Oh, yeah. No. I know that. The only thing is right now there’s really nobody that I’m shooting with that I guess really understands what the philosophy is that you guys are teaching. You  know?

 Gil: Right.

 Ron: So without somebody else knowing that, I’m not sure if training with somebody else that’s really not thinking in that way right now is productive. And that was actually one of the questions I was going to ask tonight. I really wasn’t sure how to go forward with something like that. So I don’t know.

Gil: Well, eventually you’ll be able to look at that difficult situation as an opportunity to use your preshot routine to focus yourself on your job at hand and do your deal and then get out of that.  Okay?

 Ron: Yeah. And I did do that; but there were some other distractions that we don’t need to go into. But I definitely did and I could see that going forward, but because of time limitations and my schedule and things like that, when I do have the opportunity to go and shoot, a hundred or a hundred and a quarter targets to train on or anything at this particular point in time, I just find it productive to just go and be able to work on it myself.

Again, it’s all interpretation from the readings that I’ve been doing and obviously from the videos. So I feel that I’m actually doing what you guys are talking about without actually having either one of you standing behind me and saying: Do you know what? You are doing what we are talking about. So, yeah, it’s been very good.

The Fundamentals Difference and Lifting Your Head Off the Stock

 Gil: You’ll find that there’s very little that’s right or wrong and that is black and white like that. There are just certain things that will increase or decrease risk, and the way you interpret them and the way you react visually will help you center up on some of those things that will be unique to you.

 Ron: Yep.

 Gil: But for the most part, practicing fundamentals like you’re practicing is the way to train. That’s the way to practice.

 Ron: And I definitely integrated a pre- and post-shot routine into that; and I’ve utilized it in those three tournaments, and I feel that it works. It works great. I mean, I’m not winning the whole thing or anything like that at this point; but I definitely feel the process eliminates a lot of things.

About a year ago, I was actually talking to a friend of mine this morning about it. I would have gotten in the cage; and the way I was being trained at the time I would have sat there almost in the cage and say: okay, well, I’m going to shoot this quartering target swing- through, and then I’m going to go and get that one and I’m going to do pull-away; and these are the thoughts that you have in the cage which would be almost paralyzing to me because your brain is just thinking about all of these things, and it’s the same thing with once you mounted the gun. Obviously it was pre-mounted. It would be well over what you-guys are talking about, that two seconds that you’re standing there with the gun on your shoulder and you’re still contemplating, well, first one swing-through. By the time you went and did it, you were shot. It would be a disaster and that’s what was happening.

I’ve figured out something else, too. What I was being shown   was to take your head off of the stock. The gun would still be fully premounted, but you would lift your head off and look for the target. So essentially when you went for the target you’re dropping your head down to the comb as opposed to bringing the stock up to your cheek, which I think, isn’t that all about how the eyes don’t work properly?

 Gil: Yeah. They can be trained to work that way but they don’t work as well that way.

 Ron: As well.

 Gil: At least that’s what we found.

 Ron: Yeah. And that was the whole thing as far as what I was being taught. And then again obviously I told you about patching the left eye, which, I think, knowing now and seeing now, that was just a disaster.

But I didn’t know enough; and my instructor and a friend of    mine and his who is an optometrist up here, that’s what they felt. So unfortunately it was not necessarily the right thing.

 Gil: That’s not the first optometrist that has made that wrong decision. I’ll tell you that.

 Ron: Yeah. Yeah. Well, he comes from a skeet background and is good friends with some of the good skeet shooters that go around the country and I think they’re probably relatively well-known for putting tape over either right or left eye, depending on what’s going on there; but I think that’s where that comes from.

 Gil: Well, it is, and people will keep doing that and that will give people short-term success.

Ron: Right.

Gil: But you’re among a group of people on this coaching hour now that have been through all of that. And man, I’ll tell you. The thing I have to tell you about putting tape on somebody’s glasses is — we have a good customer in Grand Isle, Nebraska, named Kent Coen, and I was struggling with a guy that wanted to close his eye and put tape on his glasses one day; and we got through with lunch, and Kent and I were on the front porch of the gun club; and he looked at me finally and he said: You know, every time I hear somebody talking about closing an eye or putting tape on their glasses or doing something to occlude their eye, I want to just go hit them in the middle of the face as hard as I can. And he said: Jesus Christ, I’ve only got one eye. I’d give anything to have another eye, and these people are walking around with two perfectly good eyes, and they’re wanting to cover one of them up.

 Ron: Yep.

 Gil: You know? And I never had really thought about it that way until he said that to me. Anyway, well, that’s good. You need to keep doing what you’re doing, keep working on fundamentals.

 Ron: And I will.

 Gil: Because at the end of the day it’s going to be your fundamentals to get you where you want to be. We’ve had many students who have done nothing but single targets, have punched into AA just doing nothing but single targets; and once we put them on pairs, man, they go through AA like a Caterpillar going through a charcoal factory. It just happens, you know.

But it’s all fundamentals, and I don’t think anybody on the coaching hour tonight would disagree with the fact that regardless of what we do when we see you in person, typically it’s revisiting some fundamental that has slipped just a little bit.

And that brings me to something that I wanted to talk about tonight which is new goals for the year.

Process Goals for the New Year

 Gil: Obviously learning and improvement and learning and enjoyment are the two main goals that we want to work toward, and we’ve talked about those on the coaching hour an endless number of times; but we also want to add to that a resolve to stay deeply in your routine regardless of result. We touched on that briefly with Gary. We touched on it briefly with Ron. The routine is the thing that allows you to stay congruent regard-

less of results and maintain focus, and work on your fundamentals at the beginning of the year, staying in a routine is critical; and it’s criti- cal that you use your routine each and every time you call pull. That pre-shot routine is what you depend on when you’re in the shoot-off stadium and you’re alone and it’s just you and the other guy and the targets, and you’ve got to be able to use that routine throughout the tournament.

I was talking to Doug Mellen the other day. He held it together through nine stations of a 12-station tournament, and he just wasn’t able to continue his routine, and it slipped a little bit and he didn’t win; but he came awful close to winning. And we worked on that, and I’m going to work with him tomorrow afternoon on that over in Beaumont on his routine.

And he has really been training hard with his routine. He doesn’t get to train much. He’s lucky if he gets to train one afternoon a week. Every once in a while, if things settle out just right, he might be able to train twice a week; but he’s really cut back to only once a week because of the amount of business that he’s got and running golf cars all over the country.

So we have had to look at some of the things that he’s been doing and set him up on a training schedule to where he doesn’t load two shells. He loads one shell. And every time he closes the gun he does   it with a routine. Every time before he calls pull he uses his preshot routine, and it’s working. It’s getting better.

He came over and shot a tournament course with Brad Kidd over at American last Wednesday. He wasn’t able to shoot the tournament; but he wanted to come by and shoot the targets when he was over there working, and he did, and I think Brad only beat him by two birds which is saying a lot. I mean, Doug has really been working on his game.      A big deal for him is committing to the breakpoint. I mean, a huge commitment on breakpoint.

And, Ron, as you go along, I know you’ll find, as Gary and Greg and Rick and all of the other people on the coaching hour found, that being able to 100 percent totally commit to the first breakpoint in that pair sets you up to kill the second bird every time; and it’s that commitment to that breakpoint and being early in that breakpoint that allows you to shoot as consistently as you want to continue shooting.

Find Your Idiosyncrasies at the Beginning of the Year

 Gil: I think it’s important at the beginning of the year, and it’s something that we talked about at the Ranch with all of you, is to find your idiosyncrasies. They’re going to be certain things that you will have a tendency to do under pressure. You’ll take things for granted. Muzzle  too high. Muzzle going up. Not being comfortable  with  the  muzzle  being well in front of a right-to-left bird. You know, eyes moving when you call pull. There are certain things that are going to be yours for this year, and now is a great time for to look for them and now is a great  time to begin to train them out of your game and train the right move into  your game.

And there’s an unlimited number of goals that you-guys could have for this year, but if your goal was to be the best in visual transition and plan, I think that it will reward you ten-fold. You can do all of your singles practice that you want to. You can shoot ten in a row, shoot ten in a row, shoot ten in a row, move the bucket; but ultimately on game day they’re all pairs. And if your visual transition from the first broken target in the breakpoint to the pickup point on the second bird, if it’s the same every time, if you are the best in visual transition, you’re going to find yourself with one of the top scores.

I was talking to Jim Scott not long ago. And I think I read this    the other night. This last year he had punched into master class at some pretty large shoots, and he was really proud of the fact that he punched in. He got his punches at big shoots; and he said: You know, I’m not going to be a national champion; but I’m going to do what I can to bruise them up a bit when I get the chance, and I can compete against the top guys. So I thought that was a unique way to put it: I’m going to bruise them up a little bit whenever they give me a chance and I get to shoot with them.

Another goal that I think that would be beneficial on both sides of the course would be always be early with your nose on the target. See it come. Keeping your nose on that bird is something that’s critical. And this time of year you’ll find that because of your lack of training, you’ll find that your nose will come off that bird on certain targets. Typically if you’re right handed on a left-to-right target, your nose is going to come off the bird at the beginning of the year. Just make sure you keep your nose on the target.

And dealing with distractions is also huge, and you do that by hav- ing a routine, getting in then coming back out and coming back to the present via being very congruent in your routine. That’s something that Gary is having to work with, and that’s something that Ron had to work with; but he’s going to get away from that right now, and that’s fine. If you want to get away and train by yourself, I don’t see a problem with that; but ultimately you’re going to have to face the distractions, and that’s where having a good routine comes in handy because you can’t eliminate the distraction. You’ve got to let in, deal with it, let it out, come back to the present, be congruent, work your routine, shoot the pair, work your routine.

Setbacks Follow Success

 Gil: You’ve got to stay in control of your expectations. Without expectation it’s very easy to perceive the subtlety of what you do. With expectation you will always perceive the boundary. Remember that setbacks always follow success. You never get there. You’ll think: I’ve arrived. No, you haven’t. You never get there. I’ve heard several people say it. Man, I’m there. I shot great today. You know, I was two birds out of high overall. I’ve arrived. I’m there. You’re never there. You are never there. Setbacks always follow  success.

Strive to be someone who when they have succeeded really don’t look at it as a success, and when they fail they certainly don’t look at    it as a failure. They know if they succeeded that there are things that they could have done better, and they know that if they failed that it’s only a failure if nothing is learned.

Failure, like so much of what we resist in life is simply nature’s way of expanding and teaching us. Each experience we have yields a treasure of knowledge if we can accept it that way. If we can accept it that way, failure and setback work for you, not against you. They work for you, not against you. What you learn from failure is infinitely more valuable than what you learn from success, and those who succeed are the ones who can weather the storm. Failure cannot be avoided. Seeing failure as an opportunity for improvement makes it more tolerable and will help you relax and figure out how to go beyond your present level of performance.

The unknown is fear’s fuel. When facing a long shot for the first time, gosh, you think of almost everything except focusing on the target, focusing on the front at the end. Experience teaches you process of elimination. Do something, view the result, replicate or change. Experience teaches you process of elimination. Do something, view the result, replicate or change.

Mile-a-Minute Man

 Gil: Man, I had a lesson with a guy about four weeks ago who came in, and leading up to this lesson I must have gotten six or eight emails that were a page and a half in length, thousands of questions about the gun, about gun weight, about gun balance, about gun fit, about gun length, point of inertia. I mean, there were just a bazillion questions.

And when he arrived, needless to say he was as wound up as an eight-day clock, full of expectation, and to say he was tense was an understatement. He was constantly talking when he was trying to shoot. His mouth was going all the time. He was giving himself and whomever else would listen a constant commentary on what he was doing, what had happened, why it had happened, and what he was going to try to do to fix it.

He was extremely self-critical. He ended up gripping that gun so tight it took me almost the whole first day to get him to relax his hands. His mount was quick. He kept looking at the gun, and the more he missed the tighter and faster he got. I finally ended up having to tell him you’re not good enough to get mad. Quit getting  mad.

But it didn’t seem to work. He only saw what he wanted to see. Poor guy. I felt sorry for him. He was one of the few that, although he shot well the second day, he’s one of the few that because of their preconceived notions you just don’t know whether they’ll ever get it. I mean, he watched the gun mount DVD, and when I asked him to do the gun mount drill, he did it so fast you couldn’t even see the flashlight, and I said: Slow down and do it. This is the way it does it on the video.

He said: I didn’t see it on the video that slow. I saw it a lot faster.

And so often when we are performing we only see what we want to see. We only see what we want to see. We never see what’s really there. It’s hard to tell sometimes when you’ve moved before you focused on the bird. It’s our choice what we end up seeing.

A Few Examples of Process Goals

 Gil: Some goals that you might want to think about are process goals, and some of you-guys think about some of these and tell me if you’ve got any others, if anything comes to your mind. Obviously, a process goal has nothing to do with score or outcome in that way. It is what you’re going to do, good fundamentals, what you do to achieve a good score. Obviously we want to be congruent. Early in the breakpoint is a great one. Lateral move is another great one. Muzzles first.  Shooting around the corner. One thing was amazing to quite a few people when we were down at the Ranch, and that is just getting the muzzle to make the first move. Moving the muzzle first before anything else. It certainly allows the muzzle to get to the breakpoint prior to the bird arriving, and it allows it to get there with very little movement, very slow movement; but it allows it to be very early.

Making the muzzle move first is critical. Slide your eyes at the end would be another good process goal. Control the pace at all costs. When you feel like you’re losing it, slow down. Slow down. Slow down walking stand to stand. Slow down in the stand, relax.

See it come is another great goal, a good process goal. I want to see the birds come in to me. Stay with your routine. Keeping your eyes still until you see the bird.

One that we got from an email that we talked about in the morning session at the advanced school was focus on the front edge until you see it break. You know, we talk about focusing on the front edge, the front edge at the end. This particular shooter found that for some reason when he was just focusing on the front edge as he made the insertion that some of the time his eyes didn’t stay on front edge, and he felt like when he gave himself the instruction to “focus on the front edge until you see it break,” that allowed him to maintain that focus on the front edge of the target through the shot. Little- bitty things like that give you a good feel for what it takes to get you centered and focused on what it is you need to do to have a consistent performance, and it may work for somebody else. It may work for you. Be very specific in the breakpoint. Again, early in the year it’s all timing. Every single bit of what we do is timing. Be very, very specific in the breakpoints, especially in your training because they give you timing. You can smoke it, but if you don’t smoke it in the breakpoint, I’d rather you cornflake it in the breakpoint ten times in a row than smoke it in the breakpoint five times in a row and be a foot and a half to three feet out of your breakpoint the other five times.

And again, visual transitions. That’s a great process goal. Eyes first  in the gun. If there’s any doubt, be earlier. That’s one of those things that a lot of times when you’re faced with a shot that’s maybe out of your comfort zone or you really have never seen it before, it’s really  easy for your brain to go mechanical. It’s really easy for that voice inside to start talking about the mechanics of the shot and I’ve never done   this and what shall we do. Anytime that I experience anything like that, my response to that is I’m going to be stupid early. I’m going to be in  that breakpoint so early, as Driscoll would say, that they call me the milkman. Get there early.

Soft hands. That’s another good process goal, to have soft hands. Soft beginnings create soft endings. Stay in balance. Finish in balance. I don’t know whether any of you are back on your balance pads or not, but I will tell you that we’ve had two other people get on those balance pads, and they’re experiencing phenomenal results.

Hey, Rick, are you there? You’re on your balance pads, aren’t you?

Rick: Yeah.

 Gil: And how long are you on your balance pads?

 Rick: Man, I don’t get on them long. Maybe five minutes at a time.

 Gil: Okay.

 Rick: And, you know, just whenever I think about it and I see them on the floor I run in there and jump on them.

 Gil: Are you still standing on them with your eyes closed?

 Rick: Yeah. I sit on them with my eyes closed. I close my eyes for all the commercials since I’m watching TV or something, and it’s a great thing  to do if you’re watching television just to burn a few extra calories, as well. When the commercials come on, I close my eyes, and that way I don’t have to think about the time. And when the show comes back on, I open them back  up.

 Gil: So Brian Brewton quantified it from the standpoint of how he’s putting out duck decoys, and his sons are amazed at how well and balanced he is. Can you quantify your balance in some way like that?

 Rick: Oh, absolutely. When he talked about putting out duck decoys, this is the first year I’d ever done that. And when I first started walking in that muck, I couldn’t do it because I didn’t realize you had to have your boots strapped on tight.

 Gil: Right.

 Rick: So I fell all over the place. So the next time we went out I got some straps for my boots, and I walked out there like I was walking on a yard. In karate, when I take karate with Zach and things like that, my balance is very grounded, very centered. Like today I went out shooting. Tom and I were went out at American, shooting the five stand; and there is a real difficult pair, one going up and away from you and the one screaming from right to left under you, and I just put my heels together. And so I got to be there and then I got to turn and be at the breakpoint on the second one, and I could do it because my balance was so solid. didn’t have to move my body all around. I just dismounted, moved my hands to the breakpoint and I was there.

 Gil: So you felt more in balance in your transition then?

 Rick: Yep. And I believe that was what it was. I felt confident that    it was my balance that allowed me to transition so smoothly. And watching other guys shoot it, you know, they’re slinging their bodies around and and the bird is beating them. So they’re trying to shoot it backwards and all different kinds of ways, and I was there early. I was sitting there waiting on it. It surprised me.

 Gil: Okay. Well, good. I think this is a good time of year to write down some process goals for yourself based on your own idiosyncrasies in your game and stick to them, put them in your training regimen and work on them the first third of your year because the foundation that you build now is the one you’re going to compete on.

I’ve talked to several people about goals, and it’s really easy when you punch into master class for the first year to be become lackadaisical about your goals, but that’s when you need to kick in with process- oriented goals like I’ve been talking about. I’m supposed to talk to Tom about this next week, I think, and I’ve been wanting to do that before then; but I just didn’t have time.

But anytime that you can have process goals as opposed to outcome goals to be the best at certain things, to constantly improve your ability to transition from the first shot to the second shot, to constantly improve your ability to be early in the breakpoint — anytime you can work on those you’ll be doing yourself a favor.

And, Ron, it doesn’t matter whether you’re working on them on   a skeet field or if you’re working on them on a sporting clays field    on a tower, on a 50-yard crosser or a 15-yard quartering bird, it’s all the same thing. It’s all basic fundamentals. And the more you can stay focused on your fundamentals, what you will end up finding is what we have found, and that is that it’s all fundamentals. At the end of the day, it’s all fundamentals. It doesn’t matter whether it’s golf, tennis,  shooting, whatever. It’s all fundamentals, and the more you’re focused on process and fundamentals, the more sound your game becomes and the easier it is for you to advance. And, hell, your game just gets bet- ter. It gets more fun when you don’t have to worry about all the junk. I mean, think about Gary. Gary is shooting with four or five different people that aren’t competitor shooters now, and he’s still putting up some good scores. I mean, that’s got to be satisfying, and I know because I’ve had to do it, too. So focus on your process goals.