2011-12 – December 2011 Coaching Hour – Don’t React, Anticipate

And they also talk about how major league baseball players can hit a baseball going 95 miles an hour. In the beginning and logic would tell you that these guys have better reaction times than us mere mortals. And the thing that brought the study about was years ago back in the 50s there was a guy that went around the country. He was a softball pitcher he was called the King in His Court. And he’d pitch from second base and he would strike out these major league hitters. He was on TV. Now in 2005 they had the top hitters at that point in time. Barry Bonds went down in three pitches, he didn’t even swing at the ball. Albert Pujols and Mike Piazza couldn’t make contact. Paul Lo Duca, Larry Walker, Richie Sexton, Dmitri Young: K, K, K, K. They all struck out from this guy throwing underhanded. Now the ball is bigger it’s only going 60 miles an hour it’s not going 100, and you’d think if their reaction times were greater that they’d be able to hit that. But they couldn’t hit the softball. And it went on to say that the fellow would go around and he would love to pull his trick and play his four guys against nine baseball players but they had to play softball and his four guys would end up beating the nine baseball players all the time, because the baseball players were not used to hitting a ball coming underhanded.

So that put a question in the minds of scientists about reaction times. Cause these guys proved they had good reaction times. So they brought these guys in and they begin to test their reaction times and lo and behold their reaction time was the same as anybody else’s. They could take people off the street and give them the same tests that they used with the baseball hitters or the tennis players and their reaction times were always the same: 200 milliseconds. One fifth of a second. Which incidentally is about half the time that it takes for the baseball to leave the pitcher’s hand and get to home plate. They hypothesized that because their reaction times were the same that the baseball players had to be anticipating what the ball was going to do. They were actually having to start their swing when the ball was just leaving the pitcher’s hand in order to come in contact with that ball. So with the reaction time that’s the same as the guy off the street, the baseball players and the tennis players, they were beginning their movement, they were able to anticipate where that ball was going to go out    of the pitcher’s hand and the tennis players were able to anticipate where the serve was going to go off the racket because they had experienced seeing that motion over and over and over again. They could anticipate where the ball would be based on what the pitcher did before he released it and at the point of release. This was from playing experience and watching the game film of the pitchers. Tennis players, baseball hitters, football quarterbacks, don’t have the time to consciously analyze what they see when they’re playing their game. It takes too long. But due to years of experience and examination, looking at game film, these athletes can anticipate a tennis serve, a baseball pitch or a pro quarterback can anticipate a defensive formation and subconsciously react to it, anticipating what’s about to happen. You’re sitting there saying, “well big deal.”

Well, here’s the first clue: Moving the gun laterally to the breakpoint is the first step in the anticipation phase of shooting a clay target. Not going to the bird but going to breakpoint is the first step in the anticipation phase of shooting clay targets.

Baseball players can’t hit the softball even though it’s bigger and going slower because they’re reacting, they’re not anticipating. When the baseball players had to try to hit the ball coming from underhand, they lost all of their experience in being able to anticipate what the ball’s going to do. They were back with the mere mortals trying to react in 200 milliseconds. And they couldn’t hit em. The top baseball players couldn’t hit a softball pitcher because they were taken out of their comfort zone.

A similar study was done with chess players. They would flash      a picture of the board up on the screen. Leave it on for five to ten seconds, and as long as the pieces were in a logical offensive or defensive position based on whether you were white or black, the chess masters could recognize everything on the board and with complete and total recall redraw everything on the board on a piece of paper. But if you just randomly put the pieces out there where they were not in a recognizable offensive or defensive position, their ability to remember was no better than someone who didn’t play chess.

When you’re reacting, it’s easy for conscious thought to come in. Conscious thought about an automated task destroys the athletes’ ability to anticipate and puts him or her back into the realm of reacting. In the beginning when you’re learning to shoot, you’re reacting to the target. You end up checking the lead, you end up getting jammed. You don’t even know what a breakpoint is, much less the value of it. But you’re just totally reacting. And as long as you’re chasing targets, you’re in the reactionary mode. You’r not anticipating, you’re reacting. A quarterback can analyze a defensive formation after hes seen it enough times and unconsciously react to it. But if the formation doesn’t make sense, he can no longer anticipate therefore he calls a timeout and regroups.

Coaches often call a time out before a free throw or a field goal, hopefully to get the athlete to think. Thinking consciously about an automated task puts you in the reaction mode. It destroys the athletes ability to anticipate and puts him or her back into the realm of reaction.

In golf, if you have trouble putting, pressure induced before putting can sometimes be reduced by singing to yourself or counting backward in threes, rather than adding intent concentration, because it keeps the process out of the higher conscious part of the brain. I’m going to say that again: it keeps the process out of the higher consciuous part of the brain. When you overthink it, when you put the pressure on yourself: I’ve got to hit this target, that allows it to get deep within the conscious part of the brain and destroys your feel and your rhythm. For me and for many of you, and eventually all of you, just being congruent like Bob Palmer talks about, that helps me overcome that type of  fear whenever there’s pressure somewhere. It helps me learn to trust myself. Because of anticipation, pitching machines are of little value for developing the most important skills in hitting a baseball. They’re good for swing mechanics, but they cannot sharpen the skills to help hit big league players.

Pitchers that have similar releases for two or more pitches are the best closers. They keep the batters guessing or reacting. They keep them from being able to anticipate. What they throw is lying to the   hitters.

Being Early in Breakpoint Gives You Time to Anticipate

 Gil: This is why being in the breakpoint early is so effective. It allows the unconscious to better anticipate what the lead and what the line is. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I was reading this for the second time. I couldn’t tell why I needed to keep reading it but this is why right here. This is why being in the breakpoint early is so effective. Once you get there and understand how to do it and once you know how to get to the breakpoint early and let the bird come to you, it takes some time, but this is why it’s so effective. It gives the unconscious brain so much more time to read the target and anticipate where it’s going to be. Now I’m going to stop for a second.

Doug are you still there?

 Doug: Oh yeah.

 Gil: You shot a tournament last week? Didn’t have any feel?

 Doug: No it was terrible.

 Gil: Did you not feel more like you were reacting to the birds? You had no anticipation?

 Doug: Yeah. Without a doubt.

 Gil: And you and I talked about the fact that we aren’t always going to bring our A game to the show.

 Doug: Right.

 Gil: And you had gone through some gun trauma since nationals to put it mildly. Doug had his K80 laying across the seat of his golf cart, with the but sticking out a little bit, and we surmised that somebody ran into it and broke the butt stock into three or four pieces.

 Doug: Yeah, they shattered it.

 Gil: He didn’t realize it until he got home and he was going to practice his gun mount a little bit and it came out in pieces. That was traumatic for him. And he went through the normal panic. He realized how many friends he really did have because there were lots of people offering him some K80 stocks to put on in the interim. He learned a lot about K80s and stock fit.

 Doug: What not to do.

 Gil: But because you haven’t been training and you went through a lot of turmoil with that gun and you were shooting a stock that wasn’t fitted for you, it put you back in that reactionary mode, as opposed to being comfortable with what’s going on and having your feel and being able to anticipate the bird. You had to react and reacting is not fun is it?

Doug: No.

 Gil: What did it feel like?

 Doug: The mind wanted me to do something and the body would not let me do it. I knew that I had to have the gun in a certain position and move at a certain speed and I couldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean   I couldn’t throw the gun up in front and pull the trigger or that I couldn’t get beat slightly and get in front of it.

 Gil: Right.

 Doug: But I’ll put it this way. I had no real control of the gun.

 Gil: And as a result, no real control of the bird.

 Doug: I had no control over the bird. I can tell you, of 100 and some odd birds I shot, if I had control of five birds it was a miracle.

 Gil: Now we haven’t talked about this other than me telling him: hey you’re not always going to bring you’re a-game to the show. But I want to ask you a couple of questions. Did you feel like you were early in the breakpoint and the bird was coming to you, or did you feel like you were chasing the bird?

 Doug: Both. No what happened was, I would get beat on the first bird so I’d start with the gun way out, way too far out, like past the 100 yard line, and consequently the timing was so bad that I’d almost be pulling the gun back in the opposite direction to try to get it to the right spot and then I’d get beat again. There was nothing positive other than the fact that I got to shoot with some friends.

 Gil: Yeah. And we all had that. And that’s not the last time that’s going to happen to you. There was a time in your shooting career when that was a good day though.

 Doug: Yeah, I think I shot 80 and 82. And there was a time when I would have gone home and told my wife it’s time to go to dinner I had    a great day. It was a weird feeling. It wasn’t   pleasant.

 Gil: Well, I feel like because you haven’t been able to put your time in training and got your gun fit and you had to go so long without a gun and there were so many problems with the gun, I feel like you found yourself more in a reactionary mode as opposed to a comfortable anticipation mode.

 Doug: Yeah, I think you’re giving more credit. I don’t think the gun was more of problem than the fact that I hadn’t shot anything in five weeks and I was disappointed that the feel disappeared so quick. Because the feel was gone. We all know that you’ve got a certain picture once you get the gun to your face and if the picture is close, you’ve got a good thirty inch pattern so you should do pretty decent, but the feel was gone. The stuff you and I worked on was real smooth and the feel was solid and I never felt rushed no matter where I shot the bird. And I felt rushed no matter where I shot the bird over the weekend. There was no good timing. No good feel. It was reacting.

 Gil: Yeah, you were reacting. And when you get into that reaction mode, it’s not fun. Especially when you’ve been in the anticipation mode where you can anticipate that target and you know the bird is dead when it comes off that trap. But, when you take a layoff, and you’re all going through that except Shane because he cheated, but you’re going through this layoff, and you need to layoff. You need to put the gun down for a month or two. But I will tell you this Doug, and you can ask Brian Brewton about this because he and I have dealt with this a lot as coaches and as shooters. In a layoff, when you put the gun down, the first thing you lose is your feel. Now, that’s the bad news.

But the good news is, because of all the time you’ve spent working on feel and rhythm and timing and being early in the breakpoint. Because of all that work you’ve done, it’s going to come back real quick. And that’s why people don’t want to lay off. They don’t want to put the gun down, they want to shoot right through. And there’s three or four shooters here in Houston who used to do that, and I could predict within 10 days of when they would go into a two and a half month slump. Because their body just got tired of doing what they were asking it to do.

How to Get Feel Back

 Brian: Can I add something. One of the fastest ways to get your feel back is to shoot nothing but real, slow targets because your hands and eyes can get hooked up so much better. But if you shoot blistering targets you will not have any feel. So start off with nothing but slow targets and the feel will come in quick. You’ll be able to start in on faster targets pretty quick.

 Gil: Yes, I agree with that. You can shoot slow targets, you can also shoot targets that are a little longer but that are in the air a really long time so that you have plenty of time to start your move early and be there early and watch the bird come into you. Is that what you’re describing, Brian?

 Brian: Yeah.

 Gil: Yeah, starting on slower targets will definitely help you get your feel back. There’s no doubt about that. Stay on stuff that’s close, stay on stuff that’s easy and just work on rhythm and feel. Those targets are easier to anticipate and what you’re trying to do is get your anticipation back. And now, when I say anticipation, I’m not saying move before you see the target. I’m not saying that. Not at all.

And this is just like learning to shoot a big 50 yard chandelle, and everybody on the phone has learned how to shoot that presentation with us. But once you learn to get the gun out there and let the bird come to you, that’s an easy target because it floats and the line is straight and it comes right to you and it’s just a duck. Once you realize the benefit of getting the gun well in front of the bird and letting the bird come to you, then you’re trapped in the reaction phase. And when you’re reacting, you’re behind. You’re not ahead of it. I was reading on Shotgun World tonight, some of the people were talking about how you have to change your game when you get to B class and how you have to change your game again when you get to Master class and I wanted to get on there and say, well, if you started out with the OSP sys- tem you wouldn’t have to change your game at all, but I thought they might think I was a little biased so I didn’t say anything at all about that. But let’s get back to anticipation. This is why being early in the breakpoint is so effective. It allows the subconscious to better anticipate what the bird is going to do with respect to lead and line.

Gil: Doug, what was the guy’s name who won the Nationals?

 Doug: Oh, Bill McGuire I saw him today.

 Gil: Bill McGuire is always waiting on that target.

 Doug: Yes he is.

Gil: He’s always way out there and he’s always watching that target come to him. He’s anticipating the target. When you react, you’re going fast, when you anticipate, you’re going slow. What do we want you to do? We want you to get to the breakpoint early so that in effect slows the bird down so you can control the bird and anything that has to happen precisely can happen in slow motion rather than happening with the motion speeding up.

I think that’s probably the biggest difference between being early in the breakpoint and timing the insertion and taking the shot. When you’re timing the insertion and taking the shot, you’re playing close to the bird, everything happens real quick at the end when the gun goes out to where it needs to be. Everything is speeding up, therefore the gun has a lot of momentum and it can’t move these subtle lines that it has to move on some of these birds.

But when you play way out in front of the bird, everything happens in slow motion at the end. When your peripheral acceptance is 20 to 30 feet where you can play way, way, out in front of the birds, then you never get jammed and more often than not, you kill the bird every time. It is, however, putting yourself in the game and getting beat by the illusions of the target setters and learning from this failure that allows you to anticipate and not just react. Not in practice. But on game day.

Said another way: it’s the experience you get from being in the game that allows you to sharpen your skills of anticipation.

Staying in the Gun Too Long

 Gil: Now, I had a lesson today with Blake. He’s in B class and he’s got one punch to go to get to A. Blake started shooting with me, Vicki, I guess it was this year that I had my first lesson with Blake?

 Vicki: Yep, the beginning of this year.

 Gil: And he sold his company for mega millions and he’s doing sports now. The sport du jour is sporting clays. He buys a new Kreighoff every week and he’s coming out, but I’ve got to give it to him, he didn’t do what most people of those kinds of means do, which is, try to buy it. He did exactly what I told him to do, which is, I told him, you can buy all the guns you want to, you can play with them whenever you want to, but if you’re going to go train and shoot competition, you shoot with one gun. And you get to know that gun. And you’re going to have to shoot a train car load of bullets if you want to get good at this. And you’ve got the time and you’ve got the means, so why don’t you just do it?

He said, I believe I will. I had a lesson with him every week for about two months and then every other week for a month or two and I had a couple lessons with him right before Nationals and I haven’t seen him since before Nationals until today. He has been shooting his little butt off. Lots of targets. Going to tournaments. Punching up in class. I said: What seems to be the problem?

He said: well I’m having trouble getting my eyes to the second target without the gun going with it. I just can’t go to the second target with my eyes without the gun being there.

I said: really? You can’t get the eyes first? He said: I just can’t do it.

So I watched him shoot. And like everybody who gets into B class, he had gone from shooting breakpoints to running with the target, riding the target, leaning over, making sure and pulling the trigger. No specific breakpoint. He’d lean, when he started his gun it was back at the 30 yard line, out of fear. He started with the gun mounted. I explained to him that he was in the gun way too long. The target and the bird were together way too long. And starting hard mounted at the 30 yard line, he could hit the targets, but he couldn’t hit the second bird because he was in the gun too long and by following that bird and riding that bird, he had to lean and he’d get out of balance so when it came time to shoot at that second bird, he was just all out of sorts and he couldn’t do it.

He was in such a panic mode in his transition, the gun and the eyes went together. So the reason he couldn’t break the habit wasn’t because he just couldn’t break the habit. It was because he was in the gun too long and he was coming out of balance because he was riding the target. What I got him to do was to stand back up, establish a breakpoint and start mounting the gun and watch the bird come  to him. And it was like night and day. He went from reacting to anticipating. And he said: wow.

So I started throwing him some pairs. I threw him six pairs.  Every one of them was a fast/slow or a slow/fast. Because I knew that would intimidate him. I knew he’d want to hurry in his transition. And without exception, all six pairs that I threw him, one true pair and all the others were report pairs, but all the pairs that I threw him. I analyzed them for him. I told him exactly what I was going to do to him. I told him why I was throwing that one there and that one there and I told him what his mistake was going to be. And this was before we talked about specific breakpoints. And every single time, even though he knew what I was going to do to him, he still couldn’t break the pair. And at that point in time it was a teachable moment. He was reacting and he knew he couldn’t break the bird.

I said: okay let’s move the breakpoint over here. The guy that’s going to shoot 63 is going to break it where you’re trying to break it. If you want to shoot an 82, you need to break it over here, if you want to shoot a 91, you’ve got to break it over there. I started making him shoot different breakpoints and each pair was a completely different pair as he went through them. Each pair was a completely different pair. When I had made the first correction before we had a break to go shoot the pairs, he had told me that in order to shoot the breakpoint it was going to take a lot of trust, that it was a new, higher level of trust. I said: I don’t think so, but we’ll talk about that as we go through.

And he was still worried about this trust issue. I explained to him, that the way he learned to shoot, the way we teach people to shoot, which is teaching you to shoot crossers first and then quartering birds. First we teach you to get the gun way out in front and let the bird come to you because we know in the end that’s what you’re going to do on almost every shot. Picking up the bird on a quartering shot is a very simple function if you can let your eyes get far enough away from that gun to let the bird come to you. Picking up the quartering bird is simple if you can get your eyes away from the gun.

And he can shoot 50 yard crossers all day long, but there was a time when he first started shooting tournaments where he couldn’t hit quartering birds, well that didn’t take long. He could shoot breakpoints. He’d trained breakpoints but he’d gotten away from them. I told him, that rather than a new level of trust, it’s more determination than trust that’s going to get him back into the breakpoint.

After I took him out there shooting these six pairs and showed  him moving the breakpoint and not shooting the bird where it was “supposed to be fat” how that makes the pair an easier pair once he did that, and he realized the value of shooting in the breakpoint and how that could change the pair and make it easier, then he could understand when I told him again: your biggest hurdle is just going  to be being determined to shoot the breakpoint. You can shoot the breakpoint I’ve already trained you to do that. You’ve already done it, you just got away from it. But if you can be determined to shoot the breakpoint, absolutely 100 percent no matter what the outcome.  I don’t care what happens when the bird gets right there I’m going   to pull that trigger. If you can be determined to shoot the breakpoint then it will allow you to trust.

He thought it was going to be a trust issue, but it wasn’t. His issue was more determination than trust. It’s easier to be determined when you realize the value of a breakpoint, how changing breakpoints can turn a difficult pair into an easy pair. And he was amazed. I got him to begin to anticipate what the target was doing. He was a completely different person. There was no more panic. The first thing that began to happen was the gun and the eyes would separate in the transition. There was no confusion. His problem was, he was trying not to do something. He was trying not to bring the gun with his eyes. He was caught shooting the illusion, which is huge. That’s why you build this anticipation and playing ahead of the birds and letting the birds come to you allows you to shoot past the illusion.

You can gain that experience in practice but the experience will be of greater value to you when it’s gained in competition because you’ve only got one look at the bird before you have to shoot it. That’s why shooting competition with a breakpoint, being in front of the bird and letting it come to you, not in the reaction mode but in the anticipation mode, that’s why it’s so important. That’s why the athletes we talked about: the tennis players, the baseball players, the football quarterback, they can look at all the game films they want to, but they cannot begin to anticipate what it is their about to do and actually see into the future to hit the baseball or to hit the serve that’s going 150 miles an hour or to just glance at the defense and know what’s going on, they cannot begin to anticipate that until they’ve actually been out there, in the game, learning how to do it. Time on target, you’ve got to put the gun in your hands and get out there and just actually do it. You’ll typically go into reaction mode on a target that you’ve never seen before, if you let yourself. Or when you have to shoot a target that’s outside of your peripheral acceptance. Ty’s going to be writing about 60 to 70 percent of our new book on peripheral acceptance and what we’re talking about tonight: anticipation and reaction and how fear plays the biggest role in making all of this come into your game or go out of your game.

When you get into reaction mode, you’re going to experience a conscious hesitation, more often than not your going to look at the gun. Doug, did the gun keep getting in the way the other  day?

 Doug: Oh yeah.

 Gil: I don’t know what it is about fear or what it is about getting stuck in this reaction mode and you lose your feel, it always comes back to the gun getting in the way. Fear comes in, you worry and when you get into the reaction mode, your PA or your ability to play in front of the bird, it comes back to about three to five feet. You’re afraid to get the gun any further out in front of that bird. You experienced that Doug, when you said you just couldn’t get the gun far enough in front. You had to put it past the breakpoint sometimes to keep the target from jamming you and beating you, right?

 Doug: Yep.

 Gil: You were in a reaction mode. This is why games like “laser focus” don’t build skill. They teach reaction to the picture, not anticipation. It’s easy to be in anticipation mode when you’ve seen it broken hundreds of times. When you’re set up and your shot will be unconscious, there’s no doubt, you’ve seen it happen a million times, there’s no real conscious effort on set up, you just know where you need to be and this is huge right here. This is so huge. It is extremely easy to visualize with feel what it is you’re about to do. There are no worries and your PA extends to unlimited. When you can see these targets coming to you, which is what we work with you all on all the time. That’s why, the lateral move is the first step in the anticipation mode of shooting a clay target. The lateral move is moving the muzzles to where the target is going to be. You’re moving to the breakpoint not to the bird and you’re watching the bird coming to you and it all moves in slow motion and slows down.

I’ve Never Seen Birds Fly That Slow

 Gil: We were shooting in Florida two weeks ago with Kendal DuPont and her boyfriend and she was with me and I finally got her to open up her eyes and look at the target and let it come to her and she shot a 35 yard looping chondelle I think 14 times in a row. I just kept shoving bullets in her gun told her to shut up and shoot and when she finally quit, she just turned to me and she said: Wow, I’ve never seen birds fly that slow. I finally got her to quit chasing birds with the gun and get into the anticipation phase. She went back to it because she’s not comfortable with it.

You’re only going to get comfortable with it after you’ve been out there, made yourself go out there. It’s time on target. This kind of stuff must be honed in real time tournaments not in practice. Practice is repetition, tournaments are performance. It’s seeing the illusion and shooting past it. This is the thing that gives Vicki and I so much trouble when we go to targets. You guys have all seen us shoot, we can hit the birds, but because we don’t spend a lot of time shooting pairs and preparing to perform, it’s hard for us to shoot past the illusions.

You all know what I’m talking about, the illusions that Brian sets, the illusions that Doug is beginning to set now based on what he’s learning. There are a lot of good target setters out there who will actually set visual illusions. It looks like it’s doing one thing but it’s actually doing something else. And we know it, but because we don’t spend a lot of time training and practicing shooting pairs, it’s hard for us to see past that. One of the biggest benefits from shooting as many tournaments as you can with no fear, is learning to shoot past the illusion. Learning to read what the target setter is trying to do to you, and taking him out of it by picking a breakpoint that may not be the fattest part in the bird’s trajectory but it certainly makes the pair much easier. That’s huge.

Putting yourself in a position to do that but you have to do it for score and not just practice, that’s huge. Eventually you’re going to find that you’re going to have to spend a lot of time on the tournament course, with a scorecard, putting yourself through the feeling of what could happen. This is why we’ve always said that learning sporting clays is a five year curve. First you learn to shoot and then you’ve got to learn to compete.

Ty and Vicki and I talked about this when we were up in Canada preparing Ty to write about this. When you’re working your way through the classes, you’re actually learning to shoot. There’s no pres- sure on you. You try to limit fear by not thinking about it and not worrying about it and not looking at your score because you don’t have the experience to overcome it. You just try not to think about it by not looking at your score. But eventually you’re going to have to think about it and overcome it. When you get into Master class, I’ve said this many times, it’s possible to not know you’re down 18. But it’s not possible to not know you’re down four. You know. And eventually you’re going to have to face the score card. Getting to Master class is about not worrying about the score card, but once you’ve punched into master class, you’ve got to learn to  compete.

It’s kind of like learning to go from junior high where you’re at the top of the heap to high school where you’re back at the bottom of the heap, you go to a senior in high school you’re at the top of the heap, you go to college you’re back at the bottom. Well, when you punch into master class, you’re at the bottom of the heap again.

Now, with the system that you’re learning, letting the bird come to you, playing well in front and letting your subconscious better anticipate what the bird is going to do. This system will allow you to learn to compete much quicker because there’s no fear. When you’re in control and anticipate what the bird is doing, there is no fear. And as you learn to compete you can turn fear into a motivator. First, you must acknowledge what it is, it’s fear. But through confidence and competence, you eliminate fear. And confidence and competence in the beginning came from shooting single targets, moving the breakpoint. And competence comes from putting yourself in a tournament as many times as you can, grinding it out. And as Craig Hill used to say, you’ve got to burn that powder. Because the less competence you have, the more fear you’re going to have. The greater competence you have, the less fear you’re going to have.

In the beginning you must hold it together to keep it from falling apart, when you’re working your way through the classes. In the end, when you’re in master class, you’ve got to hold it together when you’re shooting great and you only have a few stations to go. You’ve got to hold it together at the end when you’re competing to win the tournament. Routines can control fear to a certain extent after it’s recognized and accepted. If you understand what fear does, you can accept it and be determined to do the opposite of what fear does to you. And when you do that, now fear has become a motivator. I had a pretty long segment on fear that I’m not going to get to because we only have a few minutes left.

The Pain of Taking a Break is Worth It

 Gil: I’ve got a little piece here on taking a break. Doug, you took a forced break. You’re shooting again, are you just going to take a little bit longer break and wait until middle of January?

 Doug: Well I took five weeks off and I had planned. It was fortiuitous that the stock break then because I’d already planned to take all of November off because you told me I needed to take a break, so it made it easy not to cheat. Because when the weather got nicer I was looking for anything to put shells in that could possibly shoot. I understand not wanting to wait.

 Gil: Shane, can you feel his pain?

 Shane: Oh I can feel it, but I take my gun out and scratch my finger and it’s not so painful any more.

 Doug: It’s worse than crack isn’t it?

Gil: Well, I want to tell you this, and I had this talk with Rick Clay a couple years ago. I don’t mind if you go shoot, but I want you to go with no expectation and don’t try to compete. You can go play, just don’t make it competition or training. You can go shoot geese, go shoot pigeons, you can go shoot clays. But you’ve got to get away from it or some time mid summer, you’re brain is going to say, I’m not doing it anymore. It’s hard to get people to put the gun down who are as active and who are as excited about learning and shooting better as you guys are. When are you going to pick the gun back up  Shane?

 Shane: Well there’s a shoot here Sunday, I’ll probably shoot here Sunday and then because of time constraints I won’t be able to shoot again until the middle of January. I shot a hundred shells last Thursday and that’s all I’ve shot this month. I’ll probably shoot a hundred birds on Sunday and then that’s all I’ll shoot until mid January.

 Gil: Say three hail marys and leave $10 in the collection plate and go on your way. Now, let me give you the secret to taking a break. The secret to taking a break is going to a calendar and circling the day when you’re going to come off your break. Middle of January won’t get it. I want you to get a calendar and email me next week and tell me when you’re going to start back. Make a commitment. Cause then you’ve got a deadline.

 Shane: Are you going to send my wife some thorazine? Because she’s going to have to live with me while I’m not shooting for three or four weeks.

 Gil: It’s not my problem. She has total control over you, she’s just letting you think you’ve got control.

Shane: Story of my life.

 Gil: You just have her call me, I’ll help her. If you’ll give me her cell phone, I’m sure I can help your home life.

 Shane: She doesn’t have a cell phone, sorry.

 Gil: She doesn’t have a cell phone?

 Shane: Negative.

 Gil: But I’ll tell you, if you just say you’re going to start in mid January sometime, you’re not taking a break because you’re thinking about starting. If you’ll just go over to the calendar and circle a day, I don’t care what it is, you know what days you normally shoot. Circle a day in January where you can go out and start your training again. That way you can go play. You can take a 28 gauge and go out and play. You can get a clay target fix if you want to. But it’s play, it’s not training. You understand what I mean?

 Shane: I understand what you’re saying. I shot 100 targets last Thursday, probably 70 of them might possibly have been from the hip.

 Gil: I don’t have a problem with that. That’s fine. Go play. But have a specific date that you’re going to pick the gun up and you’re going to start training. Put it in your log and the week before your date, pick up your log and read about your journey last year. Read about what you learned. And if you keep tabs on how much you shoot and how long it takes you to get your feel back this year, then next year when you pick your log up and read about what you did this year and how quickly you got it back, then funniest thing, you can probably do the same thing next year and you’ll get it back even quicker. Cause we’re all creatures of habit. Once you find a habit that works for you, exploit it. Use it over and over again. Pick you a day that you’re going to start. I don’t care when it is. But pick you a day. Everybody needs to do this.

You’re going to experience a slump that will last three and a half weeks in the middle of the shoot year if you don’t put the gun down.  I promise you. And when it does, I’m not going to say “I told you so.”

 Shane: Yes you will.