2012-11 – November 2012 Coaching Hour – A Game of Anticipation

…….November – A Game of Anticipation……

 – Introduction

 – National Championship Review

 – More on Fear and the Anticipation Circuit

Brian: I normally shoot three, but I decided to try out the Super Sport this year because I was having pretty good success shooting in Louisiana.

 Gil: Okay.

 Brian: So I decided to give it a shot, but it was on the wrong day.

 Gil: Adding that event, did that change anything that you did? Did you prepare for that any differently as far as sleep or anything like that?

 Brian: No, no.

 Gil: You were there just to experience it and try it?

 Brian: I had probably the best schedule that I’ve ever had as far as shooting because I shot in the morning. I shot in the afternoon. So I had a nice split between everything. And so everything was good. The only thing was Friday. It was the rain day. We pushed everything back. It wasn’t so bad on the Main. The Main was delayed an hour, but we went right on through it. It seemed like clockwork. It’s just click, click, click, and once in a while we’d hit a station where it was a four-pair station and you had some big squads ahead of you, and it’d jam it up just a little bit, but it would just go flow right on through.

So it really worked out fine, but going over to shoot the Super Sporting, it was just unmercifully delayed. I mean, I just waited and waited and waited.

 Gil: We heard that, yeah.

 Brian: And so I fell in the trap just like a lot of other guys, and we just got kind of ticked about how the thing was still going on. Here we were sitting there. They wouldn’t let us shoot and all these stations were empty. We just couldn’t understand why they were, but on the other end they had such a jam, and they would just kind of work it out. But, anyway, hopefully next year they go to that same format. They split it up over two days because it was taking three hours to shoot it.

 Gil: Yeah. They’ll change that. I thought the grounds themselves were laid out really well. It’s probably the best layout they’ve ever had, as far as accessibility.

Brian: Yeah. The other thing that I really enjoyed is I thought the targets were just absolutely dynamite. I wish I shot them better, but the only thing I really shot real well was K-Cup. I really shot it real well.

And I was hanging in there on the Main. And then the first day on the FITASC I really kind of stomped my toe, but the next day I put it all back together and came out and did fine.

 Gil: Good.

 Brian: But other than that, I really enjoyed it. I didn’t participate in a  lot of things, especially around the club activities and the event stuff because as soon as I’d walk up around the clubhouse or vendors’ row,  you know, there was so much freaking whining about this and that. I  said, Shit, I don’t want to listen to this crap.

 Gil: Oh, I’m telling you.

 Brian: So I said I’d go to my room and get me a beer or something and crack my book open and read. But I enjoyed the shoot itself. I really did.

 Gil: It is amazing how much negativity you hear, and to this date people do not understand what that does to their ability to do well. You live in that negative state and it’s a testimony to you, that you get sick of it, and you get sick when you hear it because that means that you’re not going to give in to it. Most of the time when you hear that negativity around the scoreboard or up on vendor row you want to get into it and pile on.

I don’t know how many books we’ve read now on mind control and mental management and positive thinking of what that does for you and to you, and it’s just amazing to us how many people actually submarine their own ability to have a good day simply by the way they give emotion to the negative side of things, and they live there. They like it and it upsets me. I’ve got to leave. I’m not going to hang around it because I’m not going to be that way. Jeff, what did you learn? Anything?

 Jeff: Well, I learned that for as much as I thought I was prepared for it, it was still a new experience to be with that many people. I think I just put too much pressure on myself in the Main to do well. I felt like I was shooting well in other tournaments and I’d be able to do well down there and I think I mentioned to you at one point that I made every rookie mistake I could make. I was thinking about all the wrong things.

I did well in the subs. I shot the subs and I shot the K-Cup, and I was pretty happy with how I did there. I enjoyed myself immensely. Two nights I didn’t manage my sleep and manage my eating, my food intake quite right and ended up a little tired and a little full the next morning, shall we say.

So, you just get caught up. It’s real easy to get caught up with it, and there’s a fine line between enjoying yourself and also staying on the program and getting out of control, you know, letting yourself loose and forgetting all the things that you do to maintain your game, that all of a sudden now you’re at the Nationals and just kind of loosen up a little bit, and there’s just a really fine line there, but I had fun. The rain was a little unpleasant, but I shot my best score on the weekend in the rain and the showers and squalls that happened after the lightening storm. So it wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

 Gil: Yeah. And, again, in order for you to hold together at a big meet like that you have to have been there before. I was talking to a father of one of the fellas that was shooting on the squad, I think, right ahead of you and Vicki the last day, and he was saying that his son wasn’t doing very good, and he kept getting upset with himself.

And I said: Listen, the first time you go to the National Championships you lose seven birds on your average. When you go through the main gate the first time, you leave seven birds on your average when you go to the first stand of the Main event, and it’s going to happen that way for about three to five years until you learn to cope with everything that’s going on; and once you’ve been there enough times and the excitement doesn’t affect your adrenaline curve, it’s just another tournament to you, and you’ve got to go do this and, you know, you’ve got to go do that, and you know it’s four-day event and you’re going to be over there doing that. Until you’ve been there enough times it just affects you that way.

You hear sportscasters talking about this when you have a team that’s got a bunch of rookies on it that have never been to a Super Bowl or a World Series. They’ll talk about how they’ll use their older players who have been seasoned and who have been to these events to calm the younger players down, and they’ll look at two different teams, one team that’s been to the show, the big show three or four times and won it a couple of times and most of the guys on that team, they’re going to be a lot better prepared mentally for the up-and- down adrenaline curves, the adrenaline swings that they’re going to experience when they get to that thing. Because of all the hype; and even though shooting doesn’t have the hype that the pro sports have, you create your own hype and it’s just experience. At the end of the day, it’s experience.

It’s like Clyde throwing that jig in that teacup a hundred times a night. I mean, you can have the best fundamentals in the world, but until you’ve been there and had the practice on a day for fishing and figure out what the patterns were and go back and predict the pattern and the pattern hits and you catch your fish, the first time you go to a big tournament, typically you end up fishing a lot faster than you should. Your bait doesn’t stay in the strike zone. You imagine that all of your competitors already have their limit and none of them have; but you imagine that, and it’s easy to let your brain go to those other things, and it’s all about experience.

I’ll tell you that the more we study performance in any arena, the more it comes back to us why these people are talking about the 10,000-hour rule and the futility of what some people may be going through when they go to people that tell them, you know, you just come work with me and I’ll transform your brain into the brain of a champion and you’ll be able to win the U.S. Open next year. It ain’t that easy, and whenever they tell you that, they’re lying to you, and all they’re going to do is take your money. It’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of dedicated work, and you have to have been there enough times to where there’s nothing new.

Jeff showed up with a book. Jeff shot with Vicki. I didn’t shoot this past Nationals because my shoulder is almost healed and I didn’t want to hurt it any more. In fact, when we were getting ready to go to San Antonio on Tuesday, Vicki said: Where’s your gun?

I said: I’m leaving it here.

And she looked at me and she said: You’re really not going to shoot?

I said: I’m not only not going to shoot I’m going to leave my gun here because I know if I take my gun, intending not to shoot, that there’s a good chance that I might go ahead and shoot because my shoulder feels really good; but I just feel like I need to keep rehabing it and get it in tiptop shape, and she was shocked.

So, anyway, I didn’t shoot. And Jeff had gotten a paperback book called Extreme Fear by Jeff Wise, and he showed that to me, and he had marked two or three chapters in there. He said: You might want to read some of this. This is pretty pertinent stuff.

I said: You know, I got that book on my desk, and I started reading it and I just couldn’t get past the first 50 or 60 pages. It just wasn’t written in a way that I could feel like that there was something inside the book that I could use.

And he said: Well, I marked a couple of chapters. Why don’t you try it and, you know, tell me what you  think.

Well, needless to say, I ended up with the book. I didn’t even give the book back to him. But I think the reason I didn’t give it back to you, Jeff, is because you left that night and you didn’t come the last day. I fully intended on giving you the book back.

 Jeff: Ah, it’s no problem.

 Gil: But it was a very unique book, and I’ve got some excerpts from that book that I’ve plagiarized in OSP language the best I can; and if we get to those tonight, we’ll sure do that. I noticed that people were having a good time. You could tell, and Vicki brought up this point, that the third day is typically where people lose it. They get there the first day and they’re all keyed up, and the slightest, little irregularity can set them off, and on the second day they’re still a little bit keyed up; but by the third day, they just can’t keep it together for two days or three days in a row and much less for four, and typically by the end of the third day everybody is relaxed and having a good time, and they realize they’re not going to be the next National champion and they’re not going to shoot 75 straight for four days in a row, although Cory Kruse did do a hell of a job.

 Brian: That’s what he said.

 Gil: I talked to Craig about him today. He had talked to him a couple of times and, you know, I said: Well, what was it?

And he said: Gil, he went in with no expectation, and you taught me about expectation 12 years ago. He had just gotten married. He’s got a good job. He’s got a good life. He’s having fun, and he went with no expectation, and he was having fun doing it. The last day he was within one bird, and the last day he put up a score that nobody could top, and he won when he came off the course. He knew he’d won, and it’s just one of those things. He just had no expectation and he went in. And, oh, you can say he left it all on the course. You can say he was focused; but if you’ve ever seen that kid shoot, he doesn’t get off by himself. He doesn’t go sulk. He’s just Cory and he’s Cory between the stations. When he gets into the station, he’s all business. When he comes out of the station, he’s smiling. He’s talking. It’s not like he has to go into this little trance.

He’s relaxed, and he has put himself in front of a lot of people, and he has learned, now, this is one thing that Craig told me. He has learned how valuable it is to maintain a positive attitude, and he has also learned how destructive it is when you don’t have a positive attitude, and he said: The destruction is huge. When you let the least bit of negativity about anything into your mind, the destruction is quick and it is huge, and he said he’s learned that lesson.

That’s another lesson that Craig and I talked about quite frequently; but it’s just amazing to me, as Brian said, in walking around vendors’ row and talking to people. Man, it’s amazing how few people really realize how destructive talking negatively about anything can be when you’re trying to perform. It takes you immediately to the dark side. You become incongruent immediately, and it’s very destructive. It’s very destructive.

More on Fear and the Anticipation Circuit

Gil: I wanted to review just a little bit before I went on, something that I had been discussing last month about fear and the anticipation circuit. All skill resides in the subconscious, and it’s the subconscious anticipation and the ability to anticipate further and further out into the future that actually eliminates fear and allows for your skill to seek higher and higher levels which, in turn, allows for greater anticipation.

You will find, as we have, that this ability to anticipate will   allow you to go deeply into your zone when performing, but more importantly when you are practicing. Think about that for a minute, to be able to practice into that zone. It’s becoming more and more obvious to Vicki and me how powerful the unconscious brain is and how quickly it will adapt and learn if you can get a shooter to fire that circuit without conscious control.

It’s amazing what that brain can do, and we’re spending more and more time with shooters now getting them just to fire that circuit and getting them to let that circuit correct itself, and miraculous things happen.

Vicki had a student named Paul this last weekend who was a one- eyed shooter. I’ve forgotten where Paul came from.

 Vicki: Temple, Texas.

Gil: And he came in, one-eyed shooter. Never shot well. He was on Shotgun World and texted us on our forum page there that he had bitten the bullet. He was coming to see us in November for two days, and the minute he said that, I emailed him back on the forum. I said: call Marlene and get the perfecting your gun mount book and do the gun mount exercise with a flashlight and the three-bullet drill at least five days a week between now and when you get here, and that was six week ago. He did that.

And when he showed up, he had a great gun mount. He was confused as hell in his eyes, but he had a great gun mount. Vicki did a miraculous job with him on Saturday, and she shuffled the group around a little bit on Sunday, and Paul came with me and my group. And looking at the front of target was huge for him. Staying in front of the target was even bigger.

And I know I’ve said this on the coaching hour, but I’ve got to say it again. Actually getting people to have a place for their eyes to be when they mount the gun is more powerful than I ever dreamed. If you’re right handed, looking away from the gun to the left on a left-to-right bird and looking across the barrels at a bird coming from the right, the more we teach that, the more I’m convinced that that is the Holy Grail. Having a place for your eyes to be allows for the barrel to be there, but it takes the focus off the barrel, and it allows you to maintain that 95/5 ratio on that bird.

Shooting is a game of anticipation. You have to see the bird where it is, and that subconscious brain can anticipate where it’s going to be so precisely that it’s scary; but in order for it to do that, it’s got to accept the gun is coming in the picture, number one, so that it can maintain a high focus ratio on the bird, and it’s just absolutely amazing.

Well, the whole group was breaking literally 40- and 50-yard curling chandelles out there eight, nine, ten in a row, eight out of ten, nine out of ten or ten in a row, and they wanted to keep doing it. They didn’t want to stop and I didn’t stop them. I let them go. But just the miraculous turnaround when somebody understands where their eyes are supposed to be, it is absolutely phenomenal what the anticipation circuit can do if you can let that subconscious take care of the shot; and if you’ll help it by getting the gun to the breakpoint early so that the bird is coming to you, it is absolutely phenomenal what that anticipation circuit can do.

It’s also amazing to us, when we were at the National Championship, I watched a lot of shooters because I wasn’t shooting, and it’s like the beginning of the shot is casual, and everybody is trying to consciously fix it at the end. I mentioned in closing last month that if you will concentrate more on the beginning of the shot that the  end will be a product of the beginning. But in watching shooters of all ability levels, the better shooters were very meticulous about their starting point, not that they looked at the barrel in the focal point, no, but they all started with soft hands, quiet eyes and stone still when they called pull.

All of their routines were impeccable and the same every time. If you’ve never watched Wendell Cherry shoot, you need to watch him shoot. He is like a metronome. I mean, it is dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, pull every single time. And you can tell the better shooters. They’re never rushed, but their beginning is the same on every shot. You can tell the inexperienced shooters. Their beginning is not the same. Their cadence between the pairs is different. Their emotional reaction to the result is different. They’re on a roller coaster.

I’m convinced that if your beginning is the same every time, soft hands, hard focus, eyes still, whatever your cue is as you go to your hold point, whatever that is for you, I think that you should concentrate really hard on doing that the same every time because the beginning of the shot is where you either get careful or not. This is why the first move being away from the target is so critical. Commitment when getting ready and slowing down and controlling your pace is critical. Mechanical thoughts are about the end.

This is where everybody is trying to fix the shot. I’ll fix that. I’m going to get the lead right at the end. I’m not going to worry about   that. They’re not able to anticipate because they’re not in that zone. They’re still trying to consciously fix the shot, and the fixing all happens at the end. That’s why they’re always behind. That’s why they’re always rushing. The mount comes up or they shoot with a mounted gun. Their head is down on the stock. They call pull. The bird beats them or jams them, and they’re out there trying to fix it constantly at the end. If you’ll tie your success and practice of what you do in the beginning, the shot will be a result of what you do, not how you can fix it at the  end.

Fear is only in the present or in the past. It cannot exist in the future. It takes you there, but it’s not there. It’s your choice. Fear is a conscious reaction to a perceived set of circumstances.

Trying not to check is trying to change the result. Think about this. The result is a consequence of the approach. You’re either going to be reacting or anticipating. It’s your ability to have been there enough times that allows you to anticipate what could happen in the future that keeps fear from being able to get in; and, man, did we see some fear at the National Championship and what fear makes people do.

We’ve talked about peripheral acceptance and focus ratios, and we all know what they are; but I’ve never looked at them from the standpoint of what they do to the anticipation circuit. Well, I’ve come to understand that they’re one and the same. The shooter has to anticipate where the target is going to be and at the same time, look at it where it is.