2011-04 – April 2011 Coaching Hour – Tournament Pressure

Craig: That’s where I went into a tournament, and this course is typically a course that you’re going to shoot in the 90s. Like at Greg and I’s level we should be in the 90s. If you’re in the 80s, you probably had a bad day. So, one, I kind of went in thinking: hey, this is going to be good. I’m going to be in the 90s today, go to the other course and probably be in the 80s again.

 Gil: You might as well have gone and got the trophy, right?

 Craig: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that’s what I expected. So, again, I made the same mistake that I’ve learned over and over. I didn’t do the simple things, right? I didn’t have target focus. I wasn’t shooting my breakpoints. I was worried about the wind. I was thinking about the finish line, getting my 90-plus score out there. And so, of course, after a couple of stations I realized that and started working back and getting into that, but I didn’t quite make it.

Now, the second course I did because it was about an hour-and-a- half drive. We went to lunch. So I was looking back, going what did I see in the stations, asking what was I not doing right; and it occurred to me that I was late to my breakpoint, if I even had a breakpoint. So, again, I think for me I just skipped over the basics. And for me in the last year that’s what I really just tried to focus on, the target focus and breakpoint because I know I got caught up years ago worrying about chokes and shells and wind, and people, and the targets are tough, you know, all of those other things. But at the end of the day if I can have that hard focus and shoot my breakpoint and have my game plan, things work out.

But when you don’t do all of those simple things, then that’s when you cause problems; and if you don’t figure it out, you get other things like it’s got to be the wind or they’re throwing harder targets today or, you know, other things than what’s really probably the issue.

That’s the way I look at it.

 Gil: Isn’t it amazing how life repeats itself?

 Craig: Yeah. I can’t wait until I quit learning the same lesson all the time, though. It sure would be nice.

 Gil: We can wait. It’s okay. We’ll wait with you. It’s okay. Well, I’ll tell you. You’re not alone. And it wasn’t too long ago where you punched into master class, and you were trying to act like a master class shooter.

Craig: Yep.

 Gil: And had a little comeuppance. And we all learn those lessons, and I’m still learning the same lessons in teaching and being prepared. And I go back to that little section I did on Bobby Knight and what he talked about when he said it’s amazing how people that are really prepared always succeed more than those who aren’t, and it comes back to prepa- ration, which is something that we talked about last week when we talk- ed about goals and keeping our goals process oriented and taking a step back from it and actually having a goal when you go into a tournament; but the tournaments are popping right and left. They’re everywhere.

What If You Treated Every Tournament Like a Fun Shoot?

 Gil: I got a note from a customer the other day and he said: I wanted to tell you this personally. I just don’t have time to go shoot registered targets, and physically I’m getting worn out after I shoot 150 practice targets, and I used to be able to go through 500 without losing my breath. And he said: I think I’m going to quit shooting NSCA targets and just shoot some charity shoots and fun shoots and that kind of thing.

And I thought to myself I wonder what would happen to his tournaments if he could look at his tournaments in the same way that he would look at a fun shoot or a charity shoot. So often when we get into a tournament we put so much pressure on ourselves, and that’s something I’m going to get to eventually tonight. It’s just amazing. And you’ve got to get to that point. You’ve got to experience that.

Craig, you’ve got to experience learning that lesson. Bear with me and don’t shoot the messenger; but you’re going to do that, and it’s going to cost you a big shoot right at the end. And when it costs you a big shoot once or twice, you get to the point to where you realize that over-trying, being cautious, and thinking you’ve already got it does not ever work. And a lot of times it takes losing something that you work hard to get to, which means it might be a two-day shoot and you worked hard on the first day and you’ve been training hard and you got there, and on the second day you’ve got three-fourths of the way through the course and you had it made and you got lackadaisical and you didn’t stay with your process goals and up jumps the same devil again that’s been jumping up in front of you on these smaller shoots. I wish that I could tell you that you can learn how to close on a three-day shoot by just shooting a one-day shoot, but you can’t. Do you know what I mean?

Craig: I know that for  sure.

Gil: And having some sort of an outcome goal is another thing; outcome as far as winning while you’re participating in the event. If you’re trying to win, you’re not going to win. That’s all there is to it. That’s why we spent so much time last month on process-oriented goals, but like it or not, there is pressure. It’s all self-induced. I mean, you put it on yourself by either your lack of preparedness or your overreaction to where you are. Your adrenaline curves get all out of whack and you lose control, and that affects different people’s physiology in different ways; but there is pressure.

I’ve shared some of the things that I’ve gone through in my life on this coaching hour. Quite a few of you have only been on for five or six years and some of you only five or six months, but I remember the first five or six times I did this back in November/December of 2001. I had probably 15 different topics written out, and I had rehearsed them all, and I knew exactly how long each one would take me; and I had them categorized from two minutes to 25 minutes, and I had them in front of me, and I did it every time, thinking that it was going to have to be like a TV show cut. It’s going to have to be timed perfectly.

And finally I got to the point to where I stopped giving you-guys so many different things. Vicki and I both realized that we do you    all a greater service, telling you about and explaining the whys and wherefores about the same thing over and over in different ways than we do giving you eight to ten different topics in the evening, and the way we figured that out was I’d give you eight to ten different things in the evening and boom, boom, boom; and then all of a sudden the questions that we start getting were covered three to four months ago or six months ago, and it’s like: Didn’t we talk about that? And we’d go back and listen to the disc; and, yeah, we spent five to eight minutes on that subject, and here’s somebody who was asking me the same exact question about the exact same subject again.

So we realized that it’s more important for us to go over the same thing from several different angles and try to get people to identify with it than it is to try to give you too many different things.

The Different Types of Pressure in Each Class

 Gil: I had the same talk with another shooter a couple of days ago, and this guy just punched into master class. It seems like we’ve got a lot of those right now. And hew was missing some targets, just no real reason or whatever, and the first thing I said to him was: Look, you’re in a different class now. There is nothing higher. You’re in the top division; and you’re going to have to wear that Scarlet Letter, if you will, for a while and go out there and experience this kind of pressure because before you got to master class there was no pressure.

 Craig: Not as much.

 Gil: Yeah. And, Craig, would you not agree that it’s a different kind of pressure?

 Craig: Yeah. It’s a completely different  pressure.

 Gil: So Craig, and anybody else out there, tell me in your own words the difference in E class pressure and AA pressure. I definitely think there’s a marked difference between underclass pressure and master class pressure, especially when you go into the arena as a new master class shooter. Tell me what you think the difference is, Craig.

 Craig: Well, for me the pressure moving up in classes, I felt, was more internal, thinking: Hey, I need to win to move up in class, get my punches and keep progressing; and that’s where I felt most of my pressure was.

Once I got to master class, I feel like the pressure was still internal, and it’s wrong to think about this; but I had more pressure on myself to actually perform at a master class level because I didn’t want people going, jeez, look at Craig. How is he a master class shooter? So that was the pressure I put on myself, and I know I’ve mentioned this.

 Gil: So you were concerned about what others  thought?

 Craig: Yeah. I was concerned what others thought, going: Jeez, how can he be a master class shooter? Blah, blah, blah. And, again, those are all negatives and bad things; but that’s what happened, and that’s why I quit doing all of those things that got me there just because I was so concerned about the other things that don’t matter. And once you for- get about this stuff and get back to what got you there, you’ll do much better. Because really the pressure, once you get to master class, to me is only two things. One, to stay in master class; and the only other pres- sure I really feel is to try to beat a pro or those top guys. Which again, it’s nothing I can control. But when you go to the tournaments now, especially down in Texas , you feel it. Now, up in Missouri, of  course, we don’t have a lot of pros or we don’t have any pros really shooting. But now the pressure for me is if I go to Nationals or like this weekend at Zone 6. I always have pressure, trying to beat a pro or those top guys; and that’s not good pressure to put on yourself either because you’re going into the tournament with the wrong feeling. But that’s the pressure I feel now as a master class shooter. I’ve kind of gotten over the initial stuff those first six months. It’s just a little different now, if that makes sense.

 Gil: It all does. And pressure is a very personal thing.

Self-Induced and Conditioned  Pressure

 Gil: Greg Moats, you had a Dale Carnegie business at one time, didn’t you?

 Greg: Yes.

 Gil: And tell me a little bit about it. What does Dale Carnegie do?

 Greg: Well, we had a number of different programs. He wrote a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People.

 Gil: Did it have to do with anything with public speaking?

 Greg: Yes. The regular Dale Carnegie course dealt with interpersonal skills and then getting up in front of a group and being more animated and relaxed and conversant and expressing yourself. There was also some worry control principles.

 Gil: Worry control principles?

 Greg: Yeah. He wrote a book called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

 Gil: Ah, okay.

 Greg: It’s about basic self-improvement program.

 Gil: Okay. And based on your experience there, when people began to do public speaking, what were the two or three main things that kept them from being able to do public speaking well? Do you remember those things at all?

 Greg: Well, the fear of an audience is generally considered to be one of the top three phobias or most prevalent phobias.

 Gil: What are the other two? Fear of OSP Shooting School instructors? And what else?

 Greg: Alimony and child support, I think, were the other two. I don’t know. But they were based on at some point a bad experience, either empirically or observed, and just over self-consciousness at that point then.

And what we do is kind of ease people into it and do a lot of positive reinforcement and do some exaggerated animations and things to just help people break out of their shell and become less self- conscious.

 Gil: Okay. So even in public speaking, when you were doing that, the pressure is self-induced.

 Greg: Yes. But some people developed the phobia through reasons that were not self-induced. It’s like getting bit by a dog or burned on a hot stove. You’re conditioned to some things.

 Gil: Or leaving the toilet lid down. You just get conditioned to certain things.

 Greg: There you go.

 Gil: I’ve got a phobia about that. Vicki fixed that 35-and-a-half-short years ago. Okay. All right.

 Greg: About a year ago, Gil, you talked about giving an inspirational talk, right?

 Gil: Right.

 Greg: And you were uncharacteristically or you sounded uncharacteristically concerned or nervous about it in the way you described it because you really wanted to nail it and you really wanted to do it well, and it was something just a little bit outside of your comfort zone. Am I right?

 Gil: Yes, sir.

 Greg: And, you know, that’s kind of what we dealt with and that’s what shooters deal with.

 Gil: Yeah.

 Greg: You were having a shooter experience just like shooters have a  Gil Ash experience.

 Gil: Yeah. I got to tell you when I finally looked at myself in the mirror, I said it’s okay. If we fail, let’s fail big; but let’s go for it because on the other side of this is a huge opportunity to do more and to do bigger things, and I began to focus on what was on the other side of it, the ability to do more of those and change and bring about changes and help other people in their lives through doing those kind of things.

And once I began to concentrate on what was on the other side of it, the fear went away. And that doesn’t mean that I didn’t rehearse. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t prepared when I got there. I had the thing written out verbatim in large type on 22 pages, you know, eight sentences on a page. I could have read it. I didn’t have to read it, and there were two or three things in there that I wanted to make sure that I did right, and I rehearsed it quite a few times; but I felt like the more I rehearsed it the more prepared I became the less pressure there was.

Experience Is the Ultimate Pressure Relief

 Gil: And I guess we could say the same thing about shooting. The more that you shoot competition with the pressure of being in master class the easier it becomes. I was talking to Murph about that the other day, that once you ascend into master class, it’s a different kind of pressure, and each one of you is going to react to it in different ways. And Jim Scott up in Iowa, I quoted him two or three months ago, saying he’s never going to be a world champion. He doesn’t have time to commit to it. He punched into master class at three big shoots this last year, and his goal was whether he beat them or not he was going to bruise them up a little bit whenever he had chance to because he just would enjoy doing that to the top shooters and every now and then beat them, and to me I think that’s a great goal for him right now; but it’s just different.

I think Vicki would agree with this. And bop on in there, if you want to, babe. Once you begin winning shoots, it’s different. Once you’ve won three or four, it’s different. The little things that set you off, the little things that you hope don’t happen are little things.

And much like in public speaking the first three or four times you do it you’re very very prepared, but if you give the same speech four times, the fourth and fifth time you rehearse it a little bit; but you don’t have to rehearse it near as much and you get a lot more relaxed in different parts of the speech and you can ad lib a little bit and things get a little bit easier as you go through those things, and going through the same speech is much like going through and winning a  tournament.

In the ‘80s when Vicki and I were competing fiercely with people, and many times when we would go to a shoot Vicki would not only win the women’s division, but she would beat all but five or six of the men and sometimes would be up there in the first or second or third category high overall with me and my shooter partner, Jimmy. The Texans would win it all. And the more you do that, the more you show up at a place that you’ve never been to … there’s no practice traps. I mean, you got to walk out there cold turkey, get your gun out of the case, go find the bullets. They didn’t have numbers back then. You just had scorecards, and they had scores that went out with the group. Lots of galleries but no numbers.

And you had to go out there and you’d never seen this course this before, I mean absolutely never seen it before in your life, and you’d go to Station 1. There wasn’t any of this walking the course the day before and, oh, I’ve been here to this one. I mean, because when we would go to a shoot, it would be the first Minnesota state shoot, the first Michigan state shoot, the first Maryland state shoot, the first New England master shoot, the first Colorado champion. I mean, they were all the first ones, and then it would be the second ones.

And I remember as a tournament shooter I would practice Wednesday and Thursday and then put the gun up, and we’d leave Friday morning and we’d get there Friday afternoon and I always I shot a good score on Saturday. I never could close on Sunday, and one time I had a job and I couldn’t practice on Wednesday and Thursday.  I always carried two guns. I had a backup gun. I had backup programs for everything. I was like a space shuttle. Man, I had backups for every backup. I had contingency plans for every contingency, and we got there and I wasn’t able to practice. I just had to leave.

I showed up at this two-day shoot. The first day I was within four birds of the top score, and the second day I ran away with it, won by seven birds. The lesson I learned was you can over-practice before you go, for me. And my goal whenever I went to a two-day shoot was all  I have to do is finish within five birds of the top shooter and I will be in contention on the second day. As I won several shoots, for whatever reason, I always had a better day on the second day. Don’t know why that was. Some days I was in the lead and I was in the lead the second day, but as we went back and looked at it on the shoots that I was ahead, that I was within five birds of the top shooter on the first day, I felt absolutely no pressure at all because so many times I settled into my game and I just was unshakeable; but that came from having won quite a few.

And it’s just hard when you get into master class, you’re going to have some great scores, and there’s going to be some “damn it almost.” And winning a Master 1 in Houston, Texas, is going to be different than winning Master 1 in Kansas City. I think that’s what Craig was alluding to. Right, Craig?

 Craig: Definitely.

 Gil: I mean, at any one shoot in Houston,  if  you  win  a  Houston shoot where there’s 150 people, it’s like winning a zone or a state championship because there’s so many great all-American shooters down here. If you beat them all, then you’ve done a hell of a job. And I think Tom Murphy can echo that. Would you not agree with that, Murphy?

 Tom: Oh, yeah. I agree a hundred percent. The pressure that’s changed for me going into master class and probably more this year is, I think Craig said it exactly. The way that I feel kind of coming up through the ranks, I guess when I first started off in a lower class, I was just concerned about embarrassing myself not being able to hit anything. And then I’m moving up through the ranks, and then when I first punched into master class, I had the same anxieties about, okay, am I going to embarrass myself when I go to this shoot.

But what you find out in Houston is you have a wide variety of master class shooters, and you’ve got a large group of them that are going to be extremely tough to beat; and then you’ve got a lot people that probably shouldn’t be in master class anymore, too. So you’re always not as bad as you think you’re going to be in master class.

But this year I think the pressure, which really kind of goes along with what Craig is saying, that I am imposing on myself, especially being here in Houston, is I feel like if I drop three birds on a station I’m done. And I’m worried about that, and I have that pressure on me; and if I have a bad station like that that I’ve dropped three birds, then it’s like I’m done. Man, it’s over with. I might as well pack it in for the day because, you know, Bobby Fowler, Byron Justice, none of these guys are going to drop three birds on this station. You  know?

And I think it’s ridiculous for me to be feeling like that at this point, but that’s the pressure that you start putting on yourself or this pressure I’m putting on myself.

Are You Really Out of Contention?

 Gil: Well, be careful with that. I have won tournaments with  a perfect score. And I’ve said on this coaching hour many times, I won a tournament one time with 63 out of a hundred high overall, and that’s shooting at American last weekend with the wind blowing like it was. That would be one of those shoots where, you know, if Brad Kidd hadn’t been there, what would the high overall have been?

 Tom: Fowler’s 86.

 Gil: 86 would have been high overall. That’s 14 birds right there.

 Tom: Yeah.

 Gil: Do you see what I’m saying? To me when you got somebody who just won the National championship and he’s been there teaching and he shows up and he shoots in a shoot and that guy shoots a 90 and the next score is 87 and there were only what? Three other 80s?

 Tom: No. We had several 80s there. Let’s see. I shot 80 on it, and I  ended up tied for 12th on   it.

 Gil: Okay. All right.

 Tom: But it dropped from 86 down to 85 and then you had some 84s and 83s.

 Gil: Yeah. The majority of the master shooters, the in-town  shooters were all in the 80s. I mean, if a guy has got a 90 on that course, he was out of his  head.

 Tom: Right.

 Gil: You know?

 Tom: Yeah. You had Byron who always shoots in the mid 90s or low 90s and he was 81.

 Gil: Yeah. And you were 80. You’re beginning to knock on their door,  I think. Are you seeing them talk to you in any different way?

 Tom: Oh, yeah. I’ve got a lot of more people that know my name now out there than they did in the past that will stop by and talk to me now; and people are asking me how I’m doing as I’m going through the course or once I finish up that never would have ever asked me that before.

 Gil: So how do you answer the question “How are you doing”?

 Tom: Well, if you just take this weekend, I felt like even though I had some stations I was very disappointed in myself where I dropped three birds on a station that I didn’t feel like I should have dropped three birds. And, of course, I went straight to the, “god-dog, man, nobody else is going to drop three birds here and now that puts me that much further behind.”

And that was at the front end of the course, and I didn’t have any idea it was going to continue being this tough as it was that day. But probably when somebody asked me at that point in time, I’d say I’m not shooting very well.

Same kind of deal in Lufkin. I felt like I was shooting pretty good. I didn’t score real good. And I felt like it was a course that the winner should have been in the mid 90s or above in the deal; and it ended up an 89 won that deal and I was 87.

 Gil: I think I’ve said this on the coaching hour, too. We shot tournaments and when I’m walking up there, if I shot a 87 or an 85 or a 91, I automatically gave every one of the guys that I’m competing with, which are the guys you’re competing with now, I gave every one of my peers credit for hitting two-thirds to three-fourths of everything  I missed. I just automatically gave it to  them.

 Tom: Right.

 Gil: I think the difference between me and you was I didn’t give it to them during the tournament because I kept Vicki’s score and she kept my score, and I really didn’t give a damn about the score. I was there to give every bird everything I had, and my job was to leave it all out there on the field; and then after it was over and we got to look at our score and count our score, she knew that my X’s and O’s were correct, and I knew that her X’s and O’s were correct. And then when we looked at it and I looked at it – you know you’ve shot a good score if you can count the zeros and do the math in your head.

You know? If you’ve only got seven zeros, you know you’ve shot   a good score. If you’ve got 17, I mean, it’s hard because if you think you count 17 zeros, trust me; there’s two more in there you didn’t see. Okay?

 Tom: Right.

 Gil: But if you only count six or seven zeros, you know you’ve done your job. But even though I only counted seven or eight zeros, I could go back in my mind, god-dog, those four right there, Fisher is going to kill all those. Bass is going to kill all those. Fuller is going to kill all of those. Those guys are going to get those. And then I automatically gave them credit for everything that I’d done well. You know?

 Tom: Yeah.

 Gil: So if I shot a 92, hell, I gave them all of them 96s; and by the time I get up to the freaking clubhouse I’ve actually beat everybody by six birds.

 Tom: Yeah.

 Gil: You know? And it’s really easy to think that way. It really is. And that’s something that I’ve wanted to share with you tonight and with the other guys. It’s really easy. Because of the difficulty of the targets in this game course to course, day to day, it is really easy to think: Well, if I miss three I’m out of it. Well, if you’re at a charity shoot and you miss three, you’re out of it.

Tom: Right.

 Gil: I can tell you that. But at a shoot that’s got a pretty good target setter, we’ve got some pretty good target setters around here in Houston. At those kind of shoots, you ain’t the only one that’s going to miss some. You just ain’t the only one. You just need to be real careful about that thought: Well, my shoot is over.

In my perspective, you need to look at that as an opportunity to leave those in the cage behind you and even if you know for sure that you can’t win, if you’re on a Station 7 of a 12-station course and you’re leaving Station 7, then look at Station 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. The next five stations is a different tournament. Do something to get something out of the day, you know.

Are There Any Substitutes for Repetition?

 Craig: So – Gil?

 Gil: Go ahead.

 Craig: We’re all on here to learn stuff. So the things you’re talking about are the hardest things to go train and practice on, right?

 Gil: You can.

 Craig: So my next thing is just through repetition, like you said, you just got to put your number on your back enough times and do it. Are there things, like can Bob Palmer help with this stuff? Other folks out there can help you prepare for things, but is there anything else we can do as students, you know, learning from you other than just go out and do it? Because I think these are the hardest things I know I struggle with.

 Gil: Ultimately – and this is my opinion. Okay? Ultimately it’s a matter of repetition. You can only prepare so much. Sooner or later you got to get in the game and you got to be like the samurai warrior. The reason they were so feared, when they put the long and the short sword on, their motto was cut while being cut. That’s what their motto was. They accepted death as part of life. They were not afraid to die and they weren’t afraid to get cut which made them the most feared warriors out there.

And I’ll tell you. I want to go to Greg Moats on this one. Greg, in your opinion, as far as public speaking goes, because I want to take it out of sporting clays and put it in something entirely different. Would you agree with me, Greg, that you can just practice public speaking so many times; but sooner or later it becomes a matter of repetition that helps you control the butterflies in your stomach and your delivery and how calm you are when you’re delivering a speech?

 Greg: Yeah. Actually, what we dealt with was not so much rehearsal or practicing as the getting cut part, you know. The real development comes in actually being in the game. I mean, you need to be prepared; but if you’re talking about something you really like to talk about, the minutia of what you say is not as important as how you say it.

 Gil: And that comes from being able to be calm enough to react and do what you do best. And, Craig, let me share this with you and everybody on the line. Let me share this with you. I am less concerned when I do the coaching about having specific topics to talk about. I have them. I’ve got five different topics and they’re all incredible topics because I’ve researched them and I’ve read them out loud. I’ve rehearsed them. I know what they are.

But I am less concerned about picking out one specific one and doing it simply because I know that if I’m congruent and I’m in my zone that whatever is supposed to happen is going to happen, and I will be so much better at reacting and carrying a conversation if I’m not worried about the outcome, if I don’t try to force what it is I’m going to do, if I let myself be open and do what I did tonight. I mean, I’ve got several of the topics that I was going to talk about tonight, but once I started talking, Craig was the first one to hop on.

Once I started talking to you, that topic dovetailed to three other topics that I had prepared. I had talked to Tom Murphy about the same thing. When Greg got on I wanted to talk to him about it. Eventually you have to get to the point to realize that you can have rehearsed all you want to rehearse; but if you’re not calm and in your zone, if you’re not congruent when you go do it, it ain’t going to be pretty.

 Craig: Yeah.

 Gil: Okay? And eventually this comes back to routines, pre-shot routines. It comes back to the routine you go through when you prepare. I think midyear last year we talked about a preparation routine as far as doing the same things the same way every time you get ready to leave for a tournament. Doing the same thing when you get to the tournament, doing the same thing two hours out, doing the same thing 30 minutes out. All of those little routines that you go through, the more times you’ve done them the more they contribute to putting you in your congruent zone mind-set.

Now, that doesn’t mean you’re going to win. It doesn’t mean you’re going to blow their doors off if you’re giving an inspirational speech. It doesn’t mean that this coaching hour is going to be the best of the best of the best.

But I’ll tell you this. It’s going to be a hell of a lot closer to being really good if I’m relaxed, kicked back in my zone and I am not afraid of asking a question and I’m not afraid of the answer because I know if it’s about something that I know about and even it’s not, I’m not afraid to ask the question. Just like tonight, this is not the road that I was going down, but I think it’s the right road for everybody on the coaching hour because you’re all shooting tournaments every weekend, and tournament pressure is tournament pressure.

And, Craig, the answer to the question you asked is repetition.

 Craig: Okay.

 Gil: You can rehearse it all you want to. Now I want to share one little short segment with you, and God, it’s amazing when you’re in your zone how things just come together. It’s just now I’m going to have to leave out a couple of really neat things, and we’ll talk about those next time.

But it is repetition. Ultimately it’s repetition. There are five laws of learning: Explanation, demonstration, imitation, correction, and last but not least repetition. It’s about repetition. At the end of the day, it’s how many times have you done it.

I had a gun fit today with a guy named Mike. I’ve shot with him several times. He got there. I measured his gun. I looked at him and I said: This gun is going to be about three sixteenths to a quarter of an inch too high at the face.

He said: How do you know?

I said: I can tell by looking at you what you’re going to need, and  I know what this one has got, and it’s just not going to work for you.

And he said: Well, put me on a Trigun and let’s see. It was exactly between three sixteenths and a quarter of an inch too high at the face after he shot the Trigun. I got the Trigun set up for him, took him out and he shot, I think, 38 or 40 shots with the Trigun from all different directions and never missed a target and he said: This is absolutely incredible. I’ve never had a gun that I could do this with.

And I said: Well, we’re getting ready to get one for you. And he said: How did you know what it was going to take?

And I said: Well, number one, you’re a lot like me because you’re built a lot like me. I’m just better looking than you are, and I knew about what you were going to take, and you  fooled  me  on  the length to pull because your neck is longer than mine, but your facial characteristics just aren’t going to fit with that gun stock. It’s just all there is to it. I’ve done it before. You know?

And it’s like Murphy was talking to me about those targets that Brian set this last weekend, this last Sunday. I mean, Murph, there were a lot of them off towers that had a lot of spring on them, weren’t there?

 Tom: Oh, yeah. Man, we had five out of 12 stations that were tower targets, and some of them were sprung with those silver springs on those new Promatics. So they were hauling.

 Gil: Yeah. Yeah. They’re the new Laport’s silver springs.

 Tom: Yeah.

 Gil: Anyway, I’ve said it on this coaching hour. I know I’ve said it at the advanced school. Ultimately you’re going to find that all tower targets take lots of lead, and if they’re fast you better be playing into next week; and if it’s a midi and there’s some wind, you better be playing in the week after next. People that haven’t shot a lot of towers don’t know that.

Craig, do you remember that right-to-left tower down at the Ranch when I taught you how to shoot across the  gun?

 Craig: Yep. Sure do.

 Gil: Do you remember how far out in front we were down at the Ranch. We had the right-to-left target off the front tower, and we had a strong easterly wind, about a 25-mile-an-hour wind. When    that target came off of there, it went over the hill before it landed. I believe if that target had been launched when that airplane took off, we probably would have hit that airplane with that target. That’s how far it went, and it was hauling ass, and Craig got up there and he shot at it a couple of times. He looked at me and I said: Buddy, you’re not even scaring it.

And he said: No way.

I said: Well, I’ve never said this before, you understand. This might not work.

 Tom: Another time you got lucky,  Gil.

 Gil: Yeah. There you go, Murph. See, I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

 Tom: Right. Because I didn’t know that worked with other people. I thought that was just with me.

 Gil: I looked at him in the eye and I said: Now, this may not work; but I want you to take your shotgun, your Krieghoff, and I want you to point it all the way to the left as far as you can. And right over the top lever I want you to put the top lever right underneath that trap, and when you see that bird come off of that trap, I want you to push that gun as hard left as you can and pull the trigger. When he smoked that bird, he was speechless.

 Craig: I learned a beautiful thing that day.

 Gil: I mean, he was absolutely speechless when that bird broke. He said: I’ve never been that far in front of a target in my life.

I said: Welcome to towers. Well, you had the privilege of shooting 150-foot tower. The target is 50 yards away on the trap. Ultimately, Craig, you can read all the books. This is where Vicki and I will deviate from most of the mental gurus out there, the ones that tell you that    you can fool yourself into thinking you can do it.

There is a certain amount of confidence that can be gained through positive reinforcement and through being congruent and through rehearsal. I’m not going to discount that, but give me somebody who has never won a major shoot, who’s done a lot of rehearsal, who’s congruent and who’s really shooting good and give me another guy who’s won 50 tournaments.

Guess what? The other guy, the one that had never won one, is eventually going to win one. And then he’s going to win two. Then he’s going to win five, and then it’s going to be a lot easier for him; but the guy who’s won 20, he knows what to expect. He’s already dealt with his demons, and when I say “his demons,” you’re each going to have your own demons. That’s where reading the book on it and rehearsing all you want to fall short of practical experience because I can tell you about all the demons, but I don’t know which ones are going to show up for you because your demon is going to show up because of some- thing that’s happened to you before in a shoot, something that you’ve seen happen to somebody else. That voice is going to take many faces.

I remember telling Craig Hill. He got to a point in his career that he said: What do I got to do  now?

And I said: You got to go to 15 to 18 out-of-town shoots. Get you some miles and you get going, put a number on your back, sleep at a strange hotel, get out there and learn. And it was two years of doing that before he finally won one. Then he was runner-up and Master 1 to a couple of them, and then he won three in a row. And I think if you were to get him in a room and back him up and say, look, you know, Gil was talking about this the other day; and can you rehearse enough to get to the point to where you can win a big shoot? I think he would tell you that rehearsal and visualization and all of that is a very important part of being able to win. But you can just imagine what it would feel like to be on the last station down three so many times; but if you’ve been on the last station only down three or four, you don’t have to imagine what it’s going to feel like.

You’ve been there and you’ve closed. Just like I told you earlier.  I knew that if I finished the first day on a two-day shoot within five birds to leader that I had a good chance of winning high overall. There was something that happened to me on the second day. I was calm, collected. Didn’t matter. All of my decisions were easy to make. I knew nothing about NLP or congruency or anything like that. I just knew there was a calm that came over me, and Vicki could see it. My partner, Jimmy, could see it.

I just was just there. I was having a good time. I was eating apples and drinking Cokes and water and stuff. But I was having a good time, but when it came time to shoot, I was a completely different person. I walked in there and I did my job. There was never any doubt about what I was going to do, but now before I’d won 15 or 20 shoots, there was some doubt. And you’ve got to be close enough. You’ve got to have gotten close enough. You’ve got to have worked hard to get close enough to finish strong enough to win a big shoot and failed enough times.

It’s just like when I come up behind you or when Vicki comes up behind you or Steve comes up and says, you know, this may not work; but why don’t you try getting way way out there and let it come to you and see what happens. Because you know as well as I do, Craig, it’s easy when the pressure, when that self-induced pressure occurs for that gun like a magnet to go back over there to that trap and you start letting the bird get too close to the gun. Right or  wrong?

 Craig: Right.

 Gil: Yeah. And I’m not picking on you because everybody on the line is that way. I mean, I’m that way. Okay? That’s just the way it is. That’s the way that pressure grabs you.

I remember talking to Craig Hill about this one time. And let me tell you what did it for him. He went to Wren Lake, and he was shooting with an older couple and two other people. Didn’t know anybody else on the squad, was up there, and there was what they called a squirrel. It was a gravity rabbit that came out of a tube about 18-feet high and dropped straight down on the ground, a five-pair station, true pair, quartering bird, that bird coming in second. He missed all five of them. He watched meemaw and papaw run the station.

Now, before he went up there, he had been practicing on a lot of real long birds that took lots of lead. I told him not to do that. I told him before you go I want you to shoot at least 500 targets that take almost no lead. He didn’t see the value in that. He lost the tournament by four birds.

He went back to that station, asked the guy to throw the target again after his squad had left. Went back. Begged, begged. The guy pulled them. He shot two of them and he said: Gil, I shot right at the target and blew it up.

I said: How did you know to do that?

He said: I learned a lesson. When meemaw and papaw run the station, those targets don’t take any lead.

Now you are all going to have to find what devil you’re going     to have to face because they’re going to be different for you. Tom Murphy’s devil is going to be different than Rick’s devil. It’s going    to be different than Greg’s devil. It’s going to be different than everybody else’s devil because your devil is going to come up out of your weaknesses. That’s where it’s coming from.

Failure Shows You Patterns

 Gil: Now, don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be afraid of going to three shoots and having the same thing happen to you over and over again. Don’t be afraid of that because if the same thing happens to you over and over again, guess what? You can look at it in one or two ways. You can look at it as I’ve got a terminal problem and I’m going to die from it or all I got to do is figure out what the hell is wrong and, goddamn, they better watch out for me from now on. Okay? There is a pattern. You’ve got to learn to back up from your game and look for patterns and the failures.

And you-guys that are in master class you don’t have a lot wrong, but if you don’t get out there and put a number on your back and   get out there and say I’m going to do my best to win today, and then once you get on the course, don’t think about winning. Do your job. If you’re not all there and you’re not giving it everything you’ve got from Station 1 to Station 15 or however many it is, if you’re not giving every competitive target everything you’ve got, the patterns that emerge will not be the ones you’re looking for.

You’re looking for patterns of failure, but the only way the pat- terns of failure will be the ones that you need to work on will be if you are prepared. You have the right process goals. You stay process oriented. You’re not worried about winning or losing. You give every tournament target as much as you can give it.

And I wasn’t able to tell you what I wanted to tell you, but every shot is an investment in your future. If you look at every shot you take as an investment in your shooting future and give it every bit of respect that it deserves every time you call pull, I promise you certain patterns will evolve. They will emerge. And if you’ve been doing your job on game day, the patterns that emerge will be the true problems. They will be easy to define. Won’t they, Murph?

 Tom: Yes, sir, they will.

 Gil: They will be easy to define. And once they’re easy to define, then they’re easily practiced into submission. I got off on a tangent tonight, guys. Gosh-dog. It’s gone. I can’t believe an hour has gone by. Can you believe that I can talk for an hour and actually make sense for half of it? Man, it’s time to go.

Hey, Greg Moats, it’s good to hear your voice.