2012-01 – January 2012 Coaching Hour – Making the Most Of It

Jeff: I’m working on my schedule right now. I’m waiting to hear about two more shoots that I want to go to that I haven’t seen schedules yet, but it’s mostly done.

 Gil: Okay. Rick, what about you?

 Rick: Got the goals set. Still working on  schedule.

 Gil: Okay. Anyhow, Doug Mellen came over to the office about a month ago. Oh, right after the last coaching hour he had called me and said: Hey, I want to get together with you and plan my year with you. I need some help doing that. And he sat down in the office, and Doug typically runs about 15 minutes late and flies in there and tries to make up for the time by talking really fast when he gets somewhere.

And I love him and will do anything for him, but we had a little chat about that, and I said: I want to help you plan your year, but the first thing we’ve got to talk about is what you’ve got to do to get you ready to be able to work your plan.

And I still got a note on my board. It’s a quote from Dean Olson, and I’ve used it on the coaching hour many times. In order for you to be there at the tournament, you’ve got to get your family, your business and your personal life in balance. And we talked about that quite a bit, and Gary, I think a couple of years ago, your personal life balance changed a little bit.

 Gary: Yes.

 Gil: And our personal lives change. Things happen to us. Hell, Artie came down to the advanced school last year and was on his death bed. He was only operating with 40 percent of some of his organs and his life changed a little bit. He had to get a little bit straighter in his life, and he’s doing a lot better now. There’s just things that everybody has to look at.

And I think when Doug came over he was expecting me to help him figure out which shoots to shoot and how many events to shoot at each shoot; and I just set him down in the chair, and this is what I went over with him, and I kind got into my zone as I do often and drew some conclusions that I’ve never really drawn before, and I wanted to share some of those with you tonight.

The first thing we talked about when he came over was getting his family and personal life in balance, and I’m happy to tell you that he’s done that. He is well on the road to doing that. He’s much more relaxed now. One of the big things for him was, I said: You know, you don’t have kids. You’ve got a wife. You need to look at the calendar, and you need to have some specific times that you’re going to spend with your wife. I mean, you can’t leave her out. She’s part of the equation, too, and he hadn’t thought about that, but I said: She needs to see your calendar, too, and she needs to understand that she’s part of it, and you want her to be a part of it; and when you go and shoot, you’re going to give it everything you’ve got, but you have certain times in the year that you set aside for just you and her to go do things.

Well, he took that part and things have changed for him and it’s a good change, and it’s something that all of us have to think about. One of the first things that you’ve got to do is you’ve got to get you a yearly planner that’s got all of the months on it. And in looking at your family life, some of you got kids. Some of you just have a wife. You need to look at birthdays. You need to look at anniversaries, reunions, things that you want to do if the kids are involved in sports.

There’s got to be certain times in your life in this next year where you’re going to have a lot more to do in your personal life and it’s important that you take those into account.

Rick, if you’re going to go skiing, you need to put that up on the board because eventually what you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to back off from that, and you’re going to have all these things that you have to do. You know when your business is going crazy. You know when this is going to happen. You know when the birthdays are. You know this is going to be a big year for your son or your daughter or whatever. You know when those are. You’ve got to get those on the calendar because you’ve got to be able to back away from that and let that determine when you’re going to go where and what you’re going to do in regards to shooting.

One of the things that Doug and I discovered is there’s three big shoots in March, and March just happens to be one of his busiest months if not the busiest month, and he had to back off from shooting those big shoots and just shoot one event at two shoots and work the one in the middle simply because that’s the time that he’s the busiest. Now, we made January and February preparatory months for those so that he has plenty of time to get ready in his training and his practice to do some specific things to get ready to shoot those events, and we’re looking at those events as opportunities for him to have somebody else there running the clay’s car. Okay? And it’s his company doing that, but he’s going to look at those events as an opportunity to begin to  learn how to turn the phone off and leave it in the car, turn the office off and go and concentrate a hundred percent on what he’s doing while he’s shooting. And then once he gets through shooting, go back and be Doug Mellen the professional because that’s going to be his biggest thing to overcome.

He’s always used to being involved in things and being in the middle of things and taking care of problems, and one of his biggest things is going to be the ability to slow down and focus and concentrate on one thing. We don’t all have quite that problem, but he certainly does.

And as far as personal things, are any of you going to be going to the gym and be training physically? When Craig Hill finished fifth in the World, he came to me the next year and he said: Gil, I’ve put my year on a calendar. I know what it’s going to take for me to get to the top position. In fact, I talked about it on the coaching hour.

And he said: I’ve got to go to the gym at least three days a week. I’ve got to shoot tournaments three weekends a month. I’ve got to train with that gun. I know what it’s going to take to get me there. And he said: I don’t have but about 60 days when I’m not working on becoming a better shotgunner and win the World championship for the whole year. And he said: I’m just not sure I’m going to do that. It doesn’t mean that much to me.

I said: Hey, you’re going to have to choose the goal. Don’t be afraid of either one of them, but put one of them on and wear it. If you don’t like it, change it and do something else. Are you going to talk about your lessons, when you’re going to have them? Talk about your practice sessions. How long are they going to be? Are you going to do all of your practice sessions at one shooting venue? Are you going to go to American? Are you going to go Rio? Are you going to go to Greater? You know, what kind of practice are you going to put in? What’s your practice session going to consist of?

I know that when Gary punched into master’s a couple of three years ago we were talking about it and he said: I just really don’t know what my next goal needs to be. And I said: Well, why don’t you try to be the person that has the best visual transition of anyone on the course that day, visual transition from the first target to the pickup point on the second target? If you do that, if you’re the best at that that day, the chances of you winning or shooting real well will go up.

Obviously when we’re looking at practice, we want to look at   our weaknesses. Some of you said look for the weaknesses and then practice them into strengths. Some of you said you’ve already chosen big shoots.

Let’s see, Jeff, do you have any feel for how many events you’re going to shoot when you go to these shoots?

 Jeff: I tend to like subgauge, and one thing I found last year is I shot too much. And so I’ll probably shoot Main and subgauge, and I’ll shoot them on different days and that’ll be it. I had the best weekend to shoot where I didn’t shoot too much.

Experiment with Goals

 Gil: Okay. Well, it’s something you need to make decisions on. And I’m getting ready to go through eight or ten things here that you need to be aware of, and one of the things was that when I was going through this little dissertation with Doug I said: We’re creating opportunities for you to make goals for this year, for you to make a plan for this year; but it really is building a foundation of you learning what you have to do to compete well so that next year you learn from what you did this year, and the following year you’ll learn from what you did next year.

Although you’re making goals for this year, and I’ll get to the other side of this in just a minute, it’s important that you try different things in your practice. Try going out and practicing early in the morning after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Try eating different things because in your practice and in your tournaments you’re always looking for patterns of performance, both good patterns and bad patterns.

I also told him that I wanted him to shoot as many small shoots as he could find. And he said: Well, why? I said, because you need to be trying different routines. You need to be trying different mind sets. You need to be trying different approaches to each one of these shoots. When you get there, you need to put yourself in the competitive arena as much as you can to see how well you compete because when you’re going through the classes, you’re learning how to shoot.

When you get to master class, you’ve got to learn how to compete, and it’s pretty much starting all over again, not completely; but what  you have to do is to figure out what makes you tick, and that’s why having the log is so so so important. You need to pick out two shoots  a year where you really want to peak and do well at. Don’t care where they are. Obviously you need to have time to prepare for those. We found that he didn’t have time to prepare for the three in March. So we cut out the one in the middle, and he’s going to shoot one event on the first one and one event on the third one so he could work the rest of    the time but still get in some competition.

The goal this year is to learn what it takes for him or for you guys to peak. If you know that, if you can figure that out this year, then you can set a plan so that you can do that next year. Eventually if you keep your log up, which Doug is starting to do now, eventually patterns will begin to emerge. It could be that you shoot better in the afternoon than you do in the morning. If that’s the case, you need to do what Dean did the year he was runner-up at Nationals. He met Vicki out at our practice range at eight o’clock five different mornings to shoot a hundred targets so he could figure out how early he needed to get up, what he needed to eat, how early he needed to go to bed the night before, how he needed to prepare himself so he could sleep well the night before so he could get up, get out to the range, get there and shoot and shoot well because he knew at Nationals he’s going to have to shoot at eight o’clock.

One morning he’s going to have to do that. So rather than just hoping, he actually went out there and did it. And these guys shot well, and shooting well consistently doesn’t just happen. You’re looking for patterns, both good and bad. You’ve got to be methodical about everything you do and every shot you take. I can’t say that enough. I can’t say that enough.

If you’re not methodical, if you’re not intense every time that you get ready to call for the target and go after it, then your results are not something you can look at and build on. What you practice, you’ve got to practice intently with your routines. When you shoot tournaments, every tournament shot, regardless of score, you’ve got to stick with your goal. Make a goal. Stick with it. Don’t go to the default goal with trying not to look down. You’ve got to do everything with the same intensity.

I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes we see people make, is they practice consciously and then they try to shoot unconsciously. Every shot in practice and tournaments must be the same, the same intensity, the same scrutiny, hit or miss. And more important than all of that is they all have to have your routine. Practice your preshot routine, your postshot routine and more importantly your correction routine.

Stay in your routine. Brian is the one that taught us this: you control your pace with what you do between the pairs and what you do between the stations. Panic will get in there and make you walk fast between the stations. It’ll make you talk fast. It’ll make you move fast and if you can control your pace by walking slowly, taking your time getting there and making your plan control your pace.

Take no shot, practice or tournaments, without a breakpoint. No casual breakpoint. Specific breakpoints. Specific. You must begin by the way you practice and by the way you shoot tournaments. You must begin to develop the person you want to become by doing and acting like that person. You’ve got to become who you want to be. It must become out of character for you to go and play grab ass around your buddies. That’s hard to do because you all love to go shoot. And if you want to go out and play, go out and play; but if you want to start scoring in master class and get into master class for you guys that are in AA and A, it’s going to take a lot greater commitment. You’re going to have to really take all advantage you can of your practice time.

Practicing Less But Better

 Gil: I know that Gary was not able to practice as much in the last year and a half as he would like because of some changes in his life. Gary, in fact, you didn’t practice much at all, did you?

 Gary: I practiced less last year, but after we talked about it, and I think I told you this last year. Because I knew it was going to be that way, I ended up getting more out of the practice than when I was practicing more.

 Gil: Yeah. And when you say you got more out of it, what did you do different? Did you appreciate each shot more?

 Gary: Well, I think I did a better job of going to the field with something specific that I was working on, and I did a better job of sticking to that when I went.

 Gil: Smart. Really smart. And would you say that you determined what you needed to work on by something you might have had trouble with in a shoot or something like that; or is it just something that you felt like you could do better?

 Gary: Some of it was goals that I had at the beginning of the year. If   I had particular trouble with some presentation or felt uncomfortable with something, I would work on that, as well; but I had some fairly specific things in mind at the beginning of the year and I think I stuck with them fairly well.

 Gil: Okay. And we’ll get into that here in just a minute. We all  have concepts, and it’s good to have the concept before you go to the practice field because you’re going to practice your concept. We’re going to talk about that in just a minute.

You must get to the point to where competing is just like your gun mount. It’s a natural never-rushed thing, and you only do that through repetition. When your move to the breakpoint is never rushed but in complete control, you’ll be there. That’s the goal, to be in control in front of the target.

Gary, did you also practice trying to be earlier to the breakpoint? Did you ever do that; or do you feel like you’re comfortable being really early to the breakpoint now?

 Gary: I feel pretty comfortable with that. I practiced a lot. I practiced a lot last year on the feel, and I spent a lot of time last year shooting only one or two presentations in a practice session, like 50 to 75 shots at the same bird.

 Gil: Is it not amazing what you can learn from that and how well that improves your timing?

 Gary: Every time I come back to it, it makes me wonder why I was ever doing anything else.

 Gil: The first night we talked about that on the coaching hour, y’all must have thought I was just absolutely crazy, but I’m telling you, man, just shooting one bird, maybe two different birds a hundred times, 75 times, you can really get into the feel of being in sync with the bird. It’s an incredible feeling. Because remember, it’s all timing.

 Gary: I’ll tell you something else I did last year in practice that I’ve never been able to do.

 Gil: What?

 Gary: When I was having trouble with something, walk away from it. Do it some other day. If you miss something more than about two or three times, leave it, just leave it alone. Don’t sit there and try to figure it out. Just leave it alone and come back some other time. And guess what? Ninety percent of time it won’t be a problem.

 Gil: No, it won’t. You’re exactly right.

Gary: But I think you can make it a problem if you sit there and just beat yourself up with it.

 Gil: Oh, there’s no doubt about it. You can embed that miss — remember, myelin’s job is to wrap. It’s going to wrap whatever you give it, and you can give it the bad circuit to wrap just like you can give it the good circuit to wrap. And you’re right. More often than not your wires have gotten crossed, and all you need to do is just get away from it and come back to it and it won’t be a problem.

I know we’ve talked about peripheral acceptance on this coaching hour and being early to the breakpoint and not letting the bird jam you. I will tell you that in my opinion that’s one of the biggest tools you can ever have in your toolbox, is to eliminate the fear of being too early. Be able to keep your nose on the bird and the gun well in front of the bird so that you’re controlling the bird from well in front. You want to have no rushed moves. We’ve talked about skill development and how myelinating the circuits is just what we’re trying to do and how it’s all timing. It’s not about the picture.

Outgrowing Old Concepts

 Gil: Max McCart sent me another article from his Vintage Motorsport magazine, November/December 2011. The article was Inside the Helmet by Paul Dickinson, on driving better. And I’m going to quote him here in just a few minutes, but there are a couple of concepts that I wanted to bring out that he talked about. He talked about the fact that everything we do, we do it twice. We do it in our head first and then the other time actually on the course with the gun. We develop certain concepts of what things are or how they work.

When I say “concepts,” there was a time when I shot skeet, and  I thought that the lead that I had to see on high four to break it or  low four to break it was huge. My concept was that was a lot. Now that we’ve been breaking targets 50, 60, and 70 yards out there on a consistent regular basis, when I go to the skeet field and shoot high   four, I just feel like I’m just off the front edge of the target. My concept has changed. My concept of what that was has changed.

“As we get better at something, we outgrow our old concepts  and develop new ones that allow us to perform at higher levels.   The inability to recognize concepts you have outgrown keeps you performing at the same level.” Let me read that again. “The inability to recognize concepts you have outgrown keeps you performing at the same level.”

I had a lesson the other day with two guys that I shot skeet with for years, 30 years ago, Kirk Kirkendall and Jim McDaniel. They were both having eye problems and all kinds of stuff, and one was trying to swing through targets and he’d been able to do it for a long time, but he couldn’t do it anymore. The gun was getting in his way. He was cross firing it. For them to come ask me for a lesson, they were in dire straits, and I told them to show up.

And I took them down there, and I showed them how to let the gun get way in front of the bird. Jimmy McDaniel thought it was the best thing he’d ever seen. He says: It’s insane. It’s crazy. It works. This stuff works.

And Kirk Kirkendall kept saying: This is diabolically against all of the concepts of shooting that I have ever known about.

Now, I’ll give you a guess at who shot the best after an hour and a half. Jimmy, looking at the concept as new, was willing to get past the concept that he’d outgrown and embrace the new concept. Kirk, I don’t know whether he’s going to be able to do it or not. I tricked him in to hitting it that way.

He said: But it don’t make sense. It’s against every concept of everything that I’ve ever done my whole life. He said: You’ve got to start behind to get the line and swing through it and get out there in front of it and see the lead and pull the trigger.

I said: How is that working for you now? He looked at me with a little cigarette and said: Not very good.

I said. Okay. You’re going to have to change. Yeah, but I don’t want to be  competitive.

Yeah. Right.

Anyway, I’m telling you. We went round in a circle on this. Okay?

Skill is demonstrating your concepts. Skill is demonstrating your concepts. Concepts express themselves within themselves. This brings concepts to practice, not practice to develop the concept. You’ve got to have the concept before you go practice which is exactly what Gary was saying.

You had a concept that you wanted to go practice, and you went out and executed that practice rather than going to practice and see what concept comes up, which is what most people do. Would you agree with that, Gary?

Gary: Yeah, I think so, last year.

Gil: When will you be willing to fully embrace the concept of  breakpoint and be early? It is a choice. When will you be willing to fully embrace the concept of subconscious lead and stop looking at the bar- rel? There’s a choice. When will you be willing to not be afraid to play really far out in front of the target? All of these are concepts. They are all concepts that we’ve gone over with you. You know they work, but each one of you is at a different part in the journey about developing these concepts. You know that I could go on and on about the concepts, but eventually you must create concepts in order to some day replace them. You’ve got to create the concept.

I never really thought of it that way. I guess it’s something that I always do without thinking about labeling it like that. Performing at higher and higher levels requires that you consistently replace your concepts. Committing to a concept allows you to practice at a higher level. That’s exactly what Gary was just talking about.

And, now, four years ago, Gary, when you were shooting a lot, contrast the amount of practice you did then with the amount of practice you did last year. Ten percent? Five percent?

 Gary: All in all I’d say somewhere around a third.

 Gil: A third? A third as much as you practiced two years ago?

 Gary: Yeah. Maybe a little over that but not much. I’d say right in that ballpark.

 Gil: Okay. And when you would go to practice, how many shots?

 Gary: Typically I’d say about 150.

 Gil: Okay.

 Gary: If I pace it over a long enough period of time, if there’s two or three other people out there that shoot our style and are willing to practice and whatnot and we’re kind of rotating around, I can do 200 shots and still have the appropriate approach to it; but if I’m out by myself, it’s somewhere around 125 or 150 I’m going to start to lose it because I haven’t really mastered it when I’m by myself. I haven’t really mastered the ability to make myself stop for 10, 15 minutes at a time. I’ll stop for 2 or 3 three minutes at a time and then I’m back up there again.

Gil: Don’t feel alone. Brian, how much do you practice?

 Brian B: I try to get at least three times a week.

 Gil: A hundred birds or 300 birds?

 Brian B: A hundred birds. I don’t get much more than that. I don’t try to do a whole lot. I just try to, like you said earlier, just working at different angles on them and just work on the feel and the trust.

 Gil: Hey, Rick, how often do you practice? And I’m going to ask Jeff that same question in a minute.

 Rick: I practice, and my goal is to practice this time a minimum of three times per week.

 Gil: Okay. And when you practice, what are you going to do?

 Rick: Well, I’m going to practice specifically a particular target using my preshot and postshot routine every single time. That’s my commitment this year.

 Gil: That’s huge.

 Rick: It’s real huge because it’s something that I practice inconsistently and it shows up in my scores.

 Gil: Yeah. That’s huge. This just hit me in my brain that I may be going to cover here in a few minutes, and I’m going to go ahead and talk about it right now because it needs to be said.

In order for you to have a realistic view of your real gain, you’ve got to shoot without fear every time you go. You’ve got to have your routine. You’ve got to do every shot with no fear. You’ve got to do every shot with everything you’ve got. You can’t become hesitant and confused and shoot not to miss.

In order for you to have a real view of where you are and what you really do need to work on, it doesn’t matter whether it’s practice or whether it’s on game day, you’ve got to shoot every shot committed to a breakpoint with a routine, believe the plan, right or wrong, hit the bird, enjoy it, duplicate, replicate, whatever you do.

If you miss the bird during your correction routine, go right back in to it. Hit the next bird. Hit or miss, do what you got to do, but stay within yourself and stay within your routines. The routines are designed so that you can stay within yourself.

 Rick: The last thing I would do in my practice session as part of my plan is to end with soft, fluffy pairs, real easy stuff.

 Gary: Start it the same way.

 Gil: There you go.

 Rick: Yeah. That’s a great idea. I agree.

 Gil: And specific breakpoints.

 Rick: Yes.

 Gil: You can run ten straight on an easy pair. If your breakpoints are varying, you ain’t done nothing for yourself.

 Rick: Exactly.

 Gil: There’s two things. There may be three. I may have not counted right. There’s two things. Being early to the breakpoint is huge. Being comfortable early in the breakpoint is huge, I mean huge. Being very specific with your breakpoints is huge.

 Rick: The third one is do not short the focal point on the second pair.

 Gil: That’s one of them. That’s the fourth one. Okay? All right. Be early in the breakpoint, specific breakpoints. Don’t short the breakpoint. Is that what you said?

 Rick: No. Don’t short the focal point on the second bird.

 Gil: Yeah. I was going to say the third thing is visual transition from the first target to the pickup point to the second target. Those three things need to be in every workout, those three things: Specific breakpoints, early to the breakpoint, and the visual transition. Because the difference in singles and pairs is just the visual transition. And I don’t know how many of you guys I’ve worked with on going and shooting tournament courses, but I catch you shorting the focal  point almost every time we go out there, and you’re in a hurry because the first shot isn’t over until you see the second bird. Let’s put it that way. I’ve never said it that way. But the first shot is not over until you see the second bird. That’s when the gun starts moving. You’ve got to see that second bird. It’s the visual transition that will allow you to elevate your performance. You can have sloppy visual transitions and be a great shot and shoot a bad score. You can be an okay shot and have great visual transitions and shoot a pretty darn good score.

And, Rick, shorting the focal point will catch up to you, won’t  it?

And it will catch you flatfooted, won’t it?

 Rick: Oh, absolutely. It’ll beat you every time, and you might get by  with it the first pair, maybe the second pair; but I’ll guarantee you by  the third and fourth pair you’re sucking eggs at that   point.

 Gil: Yeah. And you don’t know what’s going on. You’re lost. And I don’t know whether we’ve used the term “shorting the focal point” with everybody on the air, but shorting the focal point just simply means when you kill the first bird, instead of bringing your head off the stock and even dismounting the gun if you need to and looking back to see that second bird over your nose and then moving the gun to it, you just kind of look a little bit to the left of the barrel and the bird is not there, and all of a sudden when you see the bird it just goes right through your vision and you’re behind the bird. I mean, you can recover a couple of times.

 Rick: I’ve incorporated that into my flashlight drills. At the end of last year and starting this year, I’ve incorporated the flashlight drill, pulling the trigger, looking for the new focal point and then moving my gun to the second focal breakpoint.

 Gil: Ultimately it’s about seeing the target early to the breakpoint and visual transition. That’s going to control the height of your score. That’s going to control the height of your score, right there. It’s going to control the consistency of your score. Everybody is going to have trouble with some of them, but early to the breakpoint is huge. Keep pushing yourself to be earlier and earlier and earlier to get the gun out of the way. Fear will put the gun between you and the target. It will put the gun right in the middle of your face between you and the target. Vicki and I see it every single day. Every day we see it.

Learn to Do the Hard Things Easily

 Gil: I want to read something. This is a quote from the article I just referenced, “slower is faster.”

“Don’t forget the effort required to get it right. There is such great emphasis today on instant gratification and being a winner that we often forget the valuable lesson we learned from getting it wrong. Remember a fact of trying something. If it does not work, it often opens doors that would otherwise have remained shut or closed. Small failures lead to incremental improvements. Learn to do the hard things easily, gracefully, and efficiently. Improvement is there for the taking if only the effort will be invested.”

That’s a huge thing, right there. I love it when he says learn to do the hard things easily and gracefully and efficiently. Every shot you take is an investment in your future. Be selfish with your shots. Give each shot its due, intensity and attention, constantly playing at the edges of your ability.

Now, listen to this. “Life lessons rarely come when we want them to, and you don’t go out and learn something monumental when you schedule it. It must happen; therefore, you must always play at the edges of your ability.”

Creating failure so you can learn. Stop trying to learn. Control the learning process. Let it happen. Stop drawing conclusions. Those are expectations. Go shoot to see what happens. One real learning encounter is more desirable than many great, perfect repetitions, although both are important.

Your brain is not like a tape recorder. It’s like building an infinite network of scaffolding that creates a new skill. You need to be about turning the stakes into new skills. Every shot will build myelin. Myelin wraps it. It doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t unwrap. It wraps. Be careful how you react to what goes  on.

It’s just as easy to insulate the wrong reaction as the right one. You will become what you allow yourself to be. Every shot is an investment in your game. The quality of each shot is critical for building your game, whether you’re in practice or in competition. Whether or not you believe your plan controls the outcome, especially in competition.

Total commitment without regard to outcome. Process thoughts, commitment, make the plan, shoot the plan. That’s important, guys. And I can’t say this enough, and I’m sure you’re going to pick this up when you get your disc.

But getting better in changing your concepts is about  knowing your strengths and weaknesses. It’s about Gary knowing what he needs to go practice. It’s about Rick knowing what angle he had trouble with at the last two tournaments. It was a pattern that evolved; but if Gary wasn’t all there, if Rick was hesitant, if he wasn’t all there, he might be chasing the ghost because that target might not have been the trouble. It might not be that he can’t hit that target. It’s just that he wasn’t all there on that one. He got a little hesitant.

Practice with Intensity and Commitment

 Gil: I cannot stress to you how much it is through determination that every shot you take in practice and in a tournament, big or small, has to be with a hundred percent commitment to the plan and your routines. When you’re congruent and in the zone, effort is optimized. You’re not stressed. You’re in control of the target. You stop trying and through determination you begin to do. Your timing takes over and early to the breakpoint becomes easy and the targets float. The plans become more obvious. You’re not rushed, and things that happen aren’t either good nor bad. They just are.

The concept of practicing in the zone is just as important as performing in the zone. You’ve got to be congruent. That’s huge. Reiteration. Until all you do in shooting is done with the same intensity you will never know how to optimize your performance.

Let me say that again. Until all you do in shooting is done with the same intensity you will never know how to optimize your performance. Most shooters approach haphazardly and are constantly trying to fix something. They have no basic concept. They’re just going through the motions and hoping to do well. Because of this they’re constantly trying something someone else does, hoping they can do it. They’re like five year olds playing soccer with three balls or a two-headed dog trying to get through a picket fence. They’re fooled by their own conclusions based on what happened the last time they shot and what they hit and what they missed.

This is what I was talking about, that 90 percent of the people that do this game in a semicompetitive and some of them in a more competitive way have peaks and valleys in their commitment to do something, they never play out on the edge. They’re afraid to get on the edge. They’re absolutely afraid. As a result, they think what they missed last tournament or the last time they practiced, they think that’s their problem, but their problem is they have a fluctuating intensity of commitment and passion on every shot; therefore, what they think they know they don’t know.

I mean, if you want to optimize this journey, that’s why it’s so so so important that every shot you take in practice is the same as it is on game day. Be selfish with every shot that you take. Practice or a tournament is an investment in your shooting future. I cannot stress that enough. And everybody wants to get there fast. Nobody ever wants to take their time getting somewhere. Okay?

You know you’re really relaxed when you can enjoy the scenery on a detour, but nobody wants to take their time getting somewhere. They all want to get there fast. If ever there was a fast way to get somewhere, every time you close the gun, do it with a routine. Every time you call pull, do every shot you have like it’s the last one you’re ever going to be able to do. You want to enjoy it. You want to feel   it. You want to do it at an intensity to where they all begin to mean something.

Now let’s talk about the other side of this coin, of this intensity. The other side of it is you’re creating a concept of how easy it is for you to compete. Because eventually when you go into a competition, it’s got to be just like another practice day. You just got somebody keeping score for you. You’re out there doing what you always do. Practice has got to mimic game day.

If you can bring the intensity level up, and I think that Gary would agree with this, when you can bring the intensity up in practice,   then competition is not a letdown, but it’s certainly not a traumatic experience. I’ve been doing a lot of speaking lately, and when I go do a rehearsal, I’m going to rehearse it, rehearse that speech several times; but I’m going to do it once a day for the last three days, only once, and I’m more interested in my pauses than I am anything else. The words will come; but knowing when to pause, knowing when to get excited and knowing when to raise the voice level and when to let it down is critical. And the more you’ve done it in rehearsal the easier it is for you to do it when the lights are on you and the microphone is on.

It’s the same thing in competing. If every time you do it you do    it with the same intensity, and I know you get tired of me saying this stuff, but I’ve got to say it more than once. There is a huge benefit for having your practice and your tournament play with the same intensity. Huge benefit. Everything becomes the same.

Now you’ve changed your concept of both practice and tournaments. Now your concept is they are the same. You’re  excited to be there. You’re fearful enough to pay attention, but it’s like you to be early in the breakpoint. It’s like you to never be rushed. It really is like you to be that way. You’ve constantly pushed your PA out. You’re constantly playing farther and farther in front of these birds, keeping your nose on that bird, and you’ve practiced that religiously; but when you can change the concept, your concept of what competition is,     it makes the butterflies go away or what it really does is it turns the butterflies into a tool for you. It’s an alert that you need to get ready because you’re getting ready to have a good performance. You’re getting ready to show people what your game is about. Time to go to work. Time to go to work. The people that don’t do that never develop a concept, and the problem is they have no concept; therefore, they see little or no improvement. You, on the other hand, must develop concepts. Shoot every shot with a routine, same intensity every time.

If you hit it, enjoy the hit. If you miss it, learn from it and move on. That’s why you must have a concept of who you are, who you want   to be and begin to develop that concept. Do not give up. It will not be easy. Learn to do the hard things easily, gracefully, and efficiently. Improvement is there for the taking if only the effort will be invested. Every shot you take must be an investment in your shooting future.

I want y’all to listen to that disc, and about the third or fourth time you’ve listened to it, after you’ve listened to it, call me. Tell me what   it says to you. I’ve been thinking about this coaching hour for the last three weeks. We’ve always said you’ve got to practice with intensity  just like it’s game day; but the deal is you don’t know what you need     to practice unless you shoot every shot with the same intensity and   with the same amount of no fear, the same amount of confidence, and you’ve got to develop the concept of who you are and who you want  to be.

Very good. All right, guys. Thank you for giving me some feedback tonight when I asked the questions. I appreciate it. We’re out of time again. We’ll see you in February. We’ll be just getting back from Las Vegas. We’re going to a sports vision seminar while we’re there, and I’m excited to be there at that; and I will have some things to talk to you about that we talked about at that sports vision seminar. We’re the only people going who aren’t doctors. For some reason they want us to be there. So we’re excited about going. We’re looking forward to hearing some new concepts and listening to some people talk about sports vision and how you can enhance your vision and do your sport better. So with that said, happy New Year. Good night, everybody.