It’s a new year and a new frontier of exploration in our coaching and shooting journey. In 2013 we’re excited to bring some new concepts and updated versions of long-standing concepts to the table, but we’re also introducing a spanking new method of delivering our coaching via our OSP Knowledge Vault website, complete with cutting edge technology like virtual shooter animations. This month, we’ll talk a bit about that, in addition to hitting on topics such as the importance of taking notes after a break, a recap of the timing drill, and some new findings in eye dominance research. Thanks for joining us for another great year of learning and laughter.
Gil: Welcome to the coaching hour, January, 2013. It’s going to be a great year this year for us. I hope you’ve been keeping up with the changes on the Knowledge Vault. It’s really changed over the last few weeks, and there are going to be some new changes coming around the corner that are going to be really exciting. There will be new versions of the animations up hopefully at the end of this month. The first two voiceover versions that I did on the animations, I did that down at the bay house from the Coach’s Eye app just to see if I could do it, and the sound quality wasn’t good enough, and we’re going to redo those and they’ll be up.
Several of you remarked that they’re a little canned and they need to be better, and we know that. So we’re going to try to address that this week. If not, we’ll do it maybe next week before we get to the shot show to launch the new website.
We’ve built a sound booth here in the office. So we’ll be able to have a lot better sound quality in the future. We’ve figured out a way on the Mac book stuff to do some good voiceover here on some video that we have and on some of the animations, and we’re going to be producing at least a new animation twice a month if not every week. They won’t be quite as high quality as our finished DVDs as far as sound, but we will getting the information out as soon as possible to all of you. Our long-term goal is to make everything we learn as soon as we learn it available to all of you-guys via the Knowledge Vault. Time will tell how that will work and time will tell how that will evolve, and the more I mess with this Mac stuff the better I’m getting at it, and eventually we’ll be able to improve a lot about what we’re doing and how we get things out in a timely fashion; and it seems as though just about the time I get my head around what’s going on, it gets bigger and I can’t get my head around it.
The one thing I will tell you is that the coaching hour is going to get cheaper, and it will be included in the Knowledge Vault and will have its own place in the Knowledge Vault, and you can listen to the recording on your cellphone by just accessing the site via the menu. We’ll have another menu item that says audio, and we’ll have the last eight months of the coaching hour available on audio off of the Knowledge Vault.
Now, the big deal is within 48 hours of the coaching hour, almost as quickly as hearing myself repeat myself, we’ll be able to have that up on the site. You can download it as a podcast. I don’t have a clue how all of this works; but from what Greg said and what our web guy said, we can download it as a podcast, and you’ll be able to download it to your iPhone, your droid, your iPad, whatever you have, and you can listen to it. Once you download it once, it’s just like having it on a disk and you can play it in your CD player; but you can actually play it on your phone or your iPad or whatever your device is.
So we’re excited about that. Because of not having to deal with the discs, mailing the discs, duping the discs, keeping up with the discs and everything, it’s going to make it a lot better for us, and that way it’ll be a lot less expensive to you-guys. We’re going to keep it just like it is until we get all the bugs worked out.
So y’all will be getting discs in another ten days and that will continue. But as soon as we get all of the bugs worked out, as soon as we go live in another couple of weeks, then hopefully those bugs will be worked out, and the coaching hour will be on the website as a podcast so that you can download it or you can actually listen to it on your computer if you’re in your office, if you want to listen to it. If you have access to the Internet, you don’t have to download it. You just listen to it. I’m told it’s not going to take that long to download it; but, again, that depends on whether you’ve got 3G, 4G. It depends on the unit you’re downloading it to which is way above my head.
But, anyway, it’s progress, and we’re looking at probably a cost of about $32 a month for the Knowledge Vault which includes the coaching hour, which includes everything else that we’re doing. So there you have it. I’d love to get all of your input. Things are coming along great with the new book. We’ve got one more interview to do, and we’ll be doing that very soon, hopefully tomorrow. Then we’ll be going to pagination and photography and illustration and then printing. The goal this year is to embed animations into the copy of the e-book so that you can view it online in Knowledge Vault.
We wanted to put the animations in our next book, in the e-book version of it, but the technology doesn’t exist such that you can view it anywhere with the animations, and it’s just not there; but what we can do is embed the videos in the e-version on the website so that when you’re reading it on the website you can click on it and get to the animations so that you can see the animations, and our goal this year is to embed the new animations and DVDs, et cetera, et cetera, into all of our hardback books so that when you read them on the website, on the Knowledge Vault, then you’ll be able to click in and you’ll be able to view pertinent animations to whatever you’re reading about.
Gil: Tonight I want to talk a little bit about getting back to work on your game for this year. It’s time for you all to start your year again. This is the month that we typically talk about this. Hopefully you’ve all taken a break. I know it’s painful, more painful for some of you than others, but you have to take a break. And some of you have taken more of a break than others; but you’ve got to take a break. If you don’t take a break, you’re going to have a horrible slump somewhere between mid June and mid to late August, and it’ll last about 30 to 40 days, and you’re not going to be happy. You’re not going to be able to get out of it very quick because your brain is going to get tired of doing what you’re asking it to do at the level you’re asking it to do it.
I know that Shane had marked the first of January to start, and he started a couple of days ago, I think; and he wrote me a letter or a little email and said he had taken a break and that we should consider writing a book about this stuff because it seems it didn’t leave while he was taking a break. And I think that’s probably something that all of you are going to find, and that is that because of the system you’re on it’s not going to take you nearly as long to get it back after you’ve had a little break.
I got an email from Doss Bourgeois today, said that he won the five stand, and I think he shot an 88 at the last shoot out at American and gave one target away on every station and he’s there, but he hasn’t been able to practice. He’s been working too much. His practice has been shooting ducks in Louisiana, and he said he was just amazed at how well being early to the breakpoint and keeping your nose on the bird made things slow down and how easy it was without practice, without consistent practice, to get right back in there and to shoot really good respectable scores, and he can’t wait until he has some time to work with us and to practice so that he can get his game back.
It’s a comforting thing to know that. It’s a comforting thing to go to a shoot not having practiced, after you’ve been shooting ducks with a different gun, and you pick up your 12-gauge Krieghoff and you go out there and you rack a 47 out of 50 on a five stand and you just mentally go brain dead on one pair and you drop a whole pair, but you’re still winning.
And, yeah, Bobby won it with, I think, a 96. The highest score next was a 93. Doss shot an 88, gave away one bird on every station simply because he’s not used to running five pair in a row without practice.
So it certainly puts that feeling of being able to reach out and touch that peak performance that you’re looking for just on the other side of some good, solid practice.
Speaking of practice, one of the things that we’ve talked about in the past, one of the important things about the log is when you begin your new year or when you come back from your break, it’s important that you write down what kind of targets that you practiced, how many, the frequency of practice, and the duration of practice. I’m going to talk about this a lot tonight; and if I don’t get through, we’ll talk about it next time, too, because it’s an important thing when you’re beginning your year.
Whatever you did last year, if it worked out, you ought to repeat it again this year. If you didn’t write it down last year, do something with some sort of specific goal or regiment in mind and write it down, not only the type of target but write down how many targets and write down frequency of practice.
Everything that you’re doing, make it as a goal, how many shells you’re going to shoot each time you go out, what kind of trajectories. After you shoot them, remark about how easy or difficult it was. The importance of this is immeasurable. Hopefully you should have made your plans for the year as far as the shoots you’re going to, the ones that you want to peak at, the ones you’re going to use to try different things, where you’re going to take lessons, if you are, what you’re going to do with your family. It’s important that your family, business, and personal life be in balance. Remember you’re going to take some time off mid summer and look at the shoots. Look at your prep time, the prep time you need to get ready for the next big shoot after you take some time off in the summer. That’s a great time for the vacation to occur.
I know some of the guys that we’ve been coaching reluctantly took a break simply because they were trying to get enough all-American points to get something. I don’t know what it was. Two or three other guys are doing that. I told them to take a break and not shoot anything until at least the first of February, and when you take that break, don’t touch the gun. You can go duck hunting. You can go quail hunting, but don’t touch the gun and don’t go to the gun club and do training-type shots. Don’t do that. You need to get your mind away from it, get your mind off of it.
You need to make specific programs for getting back to working on your game. Take notes. Like I said, about the type of target or targets, how many, what distance, singles first, then shoot the bird, shoot the piece with a full and a skeet choke. Record this as you will be able to use it and do the same next year after the summer or after the summer break that you’re going to take.
Gil: We’ve talked about this on the coaching hour, and I probably talked about this with almost all of you out there. You need a baseline target. The baseline target is one that you always come back to in order to get your rhythm back because there will come a time, for whatever reason, that the wheels come off and you just can’t do anything.
You need to have a baseline target that you always come back to. That baseline target for me is a big, belly-on chandelle at about 30 to 40 yards. A big, high looper. I’ve got lots of time to see it. I can see it coming. I stabilize the picture. I can make my eyes go from the whole bird to the front of the bird, left to right or right to left. It really doesn’t matter. I can see the line. I can let it come. I can slow the birds down, and it’s just a bird that I shot so much of that it’s easy when I watch my rhythm and feel to go back to that one baseline bird, and the baseline bird should be the first bird you practice.
You go into your practice session on your baseline bird, and you may shoot that bird for two practice sessions. Yep. That’s what I said. You may shoot that one bird for two practice sessions, nothing but that one bird. You might move your breakpoint. You might back up five yards. You might go in ten yards, but you might shoot that one bird for at least two practice sessions. Why? Because, remember, what you’re doing is a timing circuit in your brain.
The quicker you can get the timing circuit activated so that you feel the target dead before it gets to the breakpoint, the quicker that will bleed over onto all targets. You don’t have to shoot a lot of different targets because of the system you’re in. Remember, when you start, you’re trying to get your feel and your rhythm back. It’s all about rhythm and feel. It’s all about rhythm and feel because it’s timing. Find one shot. Shoot it a lot. Have a baseline bird. Take notes about what you do.
Don’t be as concerned about doing the right thing as you are about doing something and let’s see what happens, but take notes on how much you practice, how many shots, how well you felt and how many shots it actually took you to get that feeling back of once you call pull, when the bird is a third of the way to the breakpoint, you know you got it. Come on. I got it. Come on. I got you. Come on over here. Come on. You’re looking for that feeling because that’s where confidence begins.
Gil: Now, onto the timing drill. Brian did us a favor and read the manuscript for our next book, and he’d never heard us talk about this. That’s just because he’s old and can’t hear because I’ve talked about it several times, but the description of the timing drill that we gave in the new book that’s coming out is maybe worded differently.
The timing drill is done on a skeet field. You go out to station eight and take three or four steps back towards station four and face the center stake. The gun hold point is over toward the high house, and the focal point is into the low house, and you call pull and you throw only low houses; and when the bird comes out, you’re going to start mounting the gun and you’re going to watch the bird as an incomer, watch it cross the stake as a crosser and then watch it come to the gun over there by the high house. You’re going to have to mount the gun slower than you’ll ever have to mount it in your life, but you get a lot of different speed feedback from the target. So you really have to evaluate what’s going on. It stresses the timing circuit, and you do not want to finish the gun mount until the bird and the gun come together over by the high house. It really does stress the timing circuit.
I would recommend that each time you go to the range for the first four or five times that you go to a skeet field, shoot 25 low house birds, working on your timing. This timing drill will stress the timing circuit, and you’ll be shocked at how much more quickly you’ll get your timing and your rhythm and your feel back. It’s an amazing thing. It sounds too simple to be true, but the most powerful things that we’re learning that create great performances are very subtle and very simple.
Remember when you start practicing you’re looking to get the felt connection as soon as possible. When that bird is one third out toward the breakpoint, you need to know it’s dead. Keep shooting one target until you feel the connection early and you know it’s dead before the gun is even mounted. Do it over and over and over and over again, and don’t forget to smile when it breaks. You’ve got to give your subconscious a pat on the back, good boy, good dog, you get a biscuit.
You’ve got to give it a pat on the back or it’s going to shut down. You’ve got to give it a pat on the back. Do nothing without a routine, pre-shot routine, post-shot routine, correction routine. It’s not where you missed; it’s why. Don’t go to “I was behind.” Don’t even go there. Behind is not a diagnosis or a correction. You want to know why the gun wasn’t in the next dot. Was it your PA? What’s your focus ratio? Were you early? Was your nose on the target? Behind is not a diagnosis. Remember, if you’re right handed, just the opposite for lefties. If you’re right handed, if you’re practicing a left-to-right target in the beginning, your tendency will be, as you mount the gun way in front, early in the breakpoint, your tendency will be to put your head on the stock and pull your nose off the target. It will manifest itself in the bird beating the gun, a loss of focus.
If it’s a right-to-left target where you’re looking at the bird across the gun, it’s much easier for you to mount the gun well in front and keep your eyes across that barrel, across the action of that gun, looking at that bird and watching it come to the gun on a right to left. It’s easier for you to keep your nose over there on that bird than it is to keep it on a left-to-right bird. It’s an awkward move.
So which one should you practice first? Well, duh, left to right. Your tendency on a left-to-right bird when you’re really pushing your PA and putting it way out in front is mounting the gun well in front, but as you mount you pull your face over there toward the comb which pulls your nose off the bird. You can still see the bird, but you lose the dots. You don’t see it well enough to get the dots and keep them going. So just be aware when you’re starting out on your crossing moves, if it’s left to right, keep your nose on the target. Make sure you’re early. Look for patterns in corrections.
Grade your focus, 95/5. Have very specific breakpoints. Don’t play. Get hooked up with a 25-yard line to the breakpoint, one target over and over and over and over. You will get back into the groove pretty damn quick if you’ll not shoot a diversity of targets, but shoot one simi- lar target over and over again, working on rhythm and feel. Know what you did through feeling and sync with the bird. Feel your confidence soar. You don’t need to shoot a bunch of different targets. What you need to do is activate your timing circuit again, hone it again, get it excited, stress it, and then you’ll be shocked at how well you perform on all shots.
During your layoff, your PA will have shortened during the off time. Always stretch your peripheral acceptance and see how it affects your focus ratio. They are connected, bonded at the hip. When the gun needs to go past your peripheral acceptance, your focus ratio shifts. That’s what they do. Focus ratio shifts. Always stretch your PA. If you feel comfortable being early, get earlier. Always be stretching it, espe- cially in the beginning of the year. Man, I wonder if I can do this? I won- der what would happen if I were to try this? I’m going to try to be like stupid early this time. Let’s see what happens. Let’s see how that works. Always be stretching your PA to see how it affects your focus ratio. They are connected.
Become acutely aware of how your focus ratio is affected on all shots. Let me say that again. Become acutely aware of how your focus ratio is affected on all shots. Push yourself to the edge after 1,200 to 1,500 rounds under your belt. After you’ve got your rhythm back, begin to push yourself. Push yourself. Mount earlier and earlier. Shoot really fast birds from really close so you have to mount just under that bird and run with that bird and stabilize that picture. Make the picture stabilize. Emphasize feel and the felt connection to the target, sliding your eyes at the end, slow down, quality, not quantity.
Doug Mellen has still got scars on him from where I stuck him in the belly with a knife several times to make him slow down and just load one bullet at a time, and it was painful to him. Load one bullet. Slow down. Every shot with a routine. Every shot with a routine. It’s simple.
You all have routines. The thing that separates play from structured practice is routine. It’s not whether you can hit the bird. It’s how many times you’ve hit it after you’ve run your routine that allows you to maintain focus and be in the game on game day. Look for commonality in corrections. That tells you what you need to work on. You will be surprised, like Shane was, at how quickly it will come back because of the way you built it. Be early, nose on the target.
Gil: Remember when we talked about the fear book I stole from Jeff last month? I remember saying this. Complex skill circuits always break down under pressure because they freeze up. I said this today in a lesson with a guy named Mack from North Dakota. The poor guy is flying back to 30 degrees below zero. I explained to him that he was trying to do too many things at the last minute.
He’s a typical guy. You were all that way when you met us. Start the move. Everything is great. Then at the last half of a second, the last third of a second you try to mount the gun, get the lead, get the line, get the tempo, stabilize the picture, focus on the front. All of that you’re trying to do in the last third of a second of the shot, and you end up doing too many things at one time. When you get there early and let it come, all you have to do is stabilize the line and shoot. That’s a much simpler skill circuit. Complex skill circuits always break down under the pressure. The earlier you can get the gun almost mounted after you’ve seen the bird, muzzles out, get the gun almost mounted so that the bird begins to roll to you when it’s still halfway to the breakpoint.
You can mount the gun so soft and slow as it comes to you. Very little is happening as far as what you’re doing to break the bird. So the skill circuit is not nearly as complex. That would be a great advantage. Remember the dots in the graph anology about how your vision works? The dots are coming. As long as you keep focused on the bird, you got the dots of the projected trajectory; and as long as the dots are there and you’re focused on the bird and the bird is coming to you, the gun is going to be in the next dot.
It’s when you’re trying to do too much at the end, that’s when you get jammed. You’ve got way too many things to do at the end to make it come together. You can do that as long as the pressure is not on, but when the pressure is on, complex skill circuits break down and freeze up. This is why the system is so lethal. It is not a complex circuit, and all of the work is done before the target gets even close to the breakpoint, provided it’s within your PA and you keep your nose on the target, giving you a 95/5 focus ratio. See the line straight. See the picture as stable. We see either one. You might see one or the other, but we’ll see something or we’ll feel that connection.
A lot of times after a layoff you start to mount, start the muzzle moving, you got great muzzle movement, you’re out there early; but the mount is only a third finished when the bird is almost to the breakpoint, and you’ve got to hurry to mount. You want to get finished early. Get everything finished early. Make the skill circuit you’re going to draw on under pressure a very simple, not complex, skill circuit.
In the same lesson I was talking to Mack about peripheral accep- tance, and for two hours this morning in the office I went over the animations with him and I went over slowing-the-targets-down con- cept, and it’s beginning to amaze Vicki and me at how all of this stuff works together to change the base concept of what our shooters are trying to do.
With the addition of the virtual Brian, which has been incredible — and Brian is going to get worked to death. I mean, we’ve been honing that animation, and if you know anything about animation, that animation is drawn or is put together as an actual working person; and when we change the angle, you don’t have to change anything about the animation if it’s put together correctly. When you change the angle, like, from the bird’s-eye view or from the bottom view, looking up, it’s all the same animation just from different angles.
And the first few animations that we’ve been doing, Chris has been having to tweak that virtual animation so that, you know, it’s just a little click here and a little click there now; and eventually we’ll be able to make that virtual shooter do just about any shot we want him to do. And the addition of the virtual shooter has really made the animations and the actual kill shots that we showed in the field really come to life. We were at Safari show last week, and the people were flabbergasted. Speechless is what they were. We had to run them out after two and a half hours. Absolute amazing what’s happening.
But, anyway, we spent a couple of hours talking about that with Mack, talking about peripheral acceptance. We discussed it. He can understand and he can understand where he was about a two-and- a-half or 3-foot PA and was chasing the birds mostly because he was looking down the gun and trying not to see the gun. The dove shot of slowing the target down was a real attention getter for him, and he understood PA better than he understood focus ratio.
The concept of looking at the target behind the gun was foreign to him, but this guy was smart. I mean, he runs a $400 million power co-op in North Dakota. He’s not stupid. He’s smart, and I knew he was smart when he called and made an appointment to come here and shoot with me and Vicki for a day and a half by himself. He was really smart when he said that.
So he was amazed at how the animation and Brian going forward and backwards really drove the point home of moving away from the target and how it slowed the target down. And I’m going to put this on the website as soon as I have time, which would probably be at least ten days from now because we’re traveling.
But I took the behind-the-shoulder shot of Brian on the right- to-left crosser, and I put it in a loop where it runs forwards and then backwards. So you see the target coming to the green dot and the gun as he takes the shot, and then he stops. And then it runs in reverse so that it’s going the same speed, and then the gun begins to slow down and the target accelerates away from the gun; but it really accentuates the target coming to the gun and, I mean, I just did it on a lark, but it actually shows in spades how moving the gun away from the action and merging at the speed of the bird actually does take all of the speed out of the target because the target is not changing in speed.
It’s going the same speed from when you see it until when it’s broken. It’s going to change speed, but the fact that the green dot and eventually the green line and the gun are merging with the bird at the same speed makes it appear to slow down, and you’ve all seen that from the gun’s point of view, looking at the target. But when you look at that animation so that the bird is coming to the gun and then the bird goes away from the gun, you begin to see that the gun is actually moving very slow, and it’s the slow movement of the gun— here comes that word again — away from the action and it actually makes the bird slow down, and you can actually see the bird slow down in the animation. I’m going to try to loop the straight down animation forward and reverse and see if it does the same thing.
But, anyway, he was amazed at how it slowed it down, and he really got that concept. And as he began to shoot, he was able not to worry about hitting the target and was able to get looking behind the gun real quickly. It’s probably my expert delivery, or the anticipation of my cooking and Vicki’s wine, but this concept of looking at the target behind the gun is getting bigger and bigger. I’ve got to tell you it’s absolutely 100-percent huge.
And with the animations, it’s easy for people to understand it, and once shooters see it and I mean really actually see it. In the first place, they see it as looking across the gun, right-handed shooter right-to-left bird, left-handed shooter left to right. The first place they really see it is looking across the gun because they’ve never looked across the gun. They didn’t know they were supposed to look across the gun, but when they really see it happen, I am absolutely amazed at how quickly they pick it up and how quickly they can become proficient at it because it’s a very clear picture.
Gil: The other thing that I’ve discovered is, I’ve been having a conversa- tion with several people in the neurological field about neurological suppression, which is what dominancy is. With both eyes on the target, you have two bits of information coming into the eyes, and those two bits of information are combined into one thing. It’s called the cyclo-pean effect.
Typically in human beings one eye leads the other eye to focus into the interpretation of what it is, okay, which just simply means that the eye that leads is not suppressed and the eye that follows is suppressed; and what we’re finding is that dominancy is not fixed. Dominancy fluctuates based on age, nutrition, sleep, the angle that your head is when you’re looking at the bird. Several things can affect dominancy, but the mind — the plasticity of the brain allows it to suppress the image from the nonshooting eye. You still get the advantage of having the input, but if you can show the brain what it’s supposed to look like and how you want it to look, then the brain will immediately begin suppressing the part of the visual image that is confusing it.
The three bullet drill is the quickest way to make that happen. Some of you may want to continue to do the three bullet drill. If you’re right handed, spend a lot of time looking at the middle bullet and mounting the gun on the left bullet. Stretch it out. Then bring it back real close.
The thing is, you really get confused when a target takes very little lead coming from the right, and you’ll understand that if you’ll put two bullets 3-inches apart on a bookshelf 10-feet away from you and look at the right bullet and mount the gun on the left bullet because then it becomes really confusing, and the more clear you can be to the brain about what part of that image you want to suppress by looking at it at the actual picture and saying that’s what I want to see, the more quickly the brain will begin to suppress the nonshooting image. Don’t be afraid of it. Take advantage of the knowledge. Take advantage of the knowledge. Do the three bullet drill. Spend a lot of time looking across that barrel with those bullets, a lot of time. The brain will help you. The brain will begin to suppress that image.
I continue to be amazed at how quickly everybody picks all of this stuff up. And then we move them back about 10 yards, 12 yards, shooting on the same target and their PA kicks in and they lose it. No big deal. I mean, they’ve got to figure it out sooner or later. It’s fear. It’s that fear of that longer target. They always check the lead. Their focus ratio goes to 50/50 because they’re not comfortable with the gun that far in front.
The subconscious is putting the gun out there, but when it passes their PA, all of a sudden it stops going out there and comes straight back. It’s not going to go any further than their PA. That’s why we would encourage you in the beginning of the year to always push yourself to be as early as you possibly can. Be as early, early, early as you possibly can to the point to where you might miss the bird, but always push yourself to be early, looking at the bird behind the muzzle. Become very accustomed and very comfortable with looking at the bird behind the muzzle, whether it’s to the left of the gun on a left to right or across the gun on a right to left for a right-handed shooter. Just the opposite for you southpaws.
Gil: Here’s a note from The Little Red Book of Talent. I think when that book came out Shane got one of first copies of it, and he said, This ought to be a required reading for anybody that really wants to become really good at anything. Well, I stole something, and I used it today and yesterday when I was shooting with Mack. It’s called the 10-minute break. It’s huge. It’s huge. I’ve tried it in learning the Mac, which I’m learning. I’ve tried it in a lot of different things. It’s huge. The key is not to just take a break for 10 minutes. Go do your practice. Practice for 20 minutes.
What I was doing with Mack today and yesterday so he wouldn’t wear out is, I’d give him three boxes and take break, three boxes, take a break, single targets, no pairs, three boxes and take a break, load one, do the routine, three boxes, take a break, be early, self-correct. Hell, it wasn’t six boxes into the lesson yesterday until he was starting to make his own self-diagnosis and correct it after one shot, and today he didn’t miss many; but the 10-minute-break thing is huge. The key was not to just take a break but to engage in a conversation that would take him completely away from shooting.
This is the key factor in the break routine. You can take a break, but if you’re thinking about what you just did or about what you’re going to do then it ain’t going to work as good. I mean, we finished that third box. It was intermittently sprinkling today. We took a break or two, but I really had to get him engaged in a very deep conversation about things. He liked to talk about his employees. He liked to talk about efficiency in his office because he manages a lot of people, if you can imagine; and I would keep asking him questions until he really turned around and looked me in the eye and said: Do you really want me to tell you what I think?
I had to get him engaged, and once I got him engaged and I mean really engaged, then I fed the engagement and I bantered back and forth with him. I’ve got to tell you it was amazing what transpired.
After every break we went back out. He was able to remain crisp, to make immediate corrections and not just hit the targets but crush them. It was almost as if he was gaining momentum after each break because of getting his mind completely off of what he was doing. One time I had him read the short chapter on taking a break, and we talked about the psychological principle of a break, but I’ve never done it in spades like I did it today exactly like The Little Red Book said. He can see it working, three boxes, take a break, three boxes, take a break. He could actually see it working.
I pushed him pretty hard one time, and he fell into a hole after about a box and a half. Guess what we did? Took a break. We had to get his mind off the misses, and he understood it; and once we got his mind off the misses and we took a 10-minute break, we went back to the exact same place and he crushed everything he shot at.
He looked at the results, stopped, looked at me and said: Now, that’s amazing. I’m using that when I get back to the office.
To which I said: Meet your subconscious mind. It’s a really powerful asset; but you’ve got to know how to access it. That’s what we teach, how to access, how to unleash that subconscious mind of yours. It’s a powerful thing, but you’ve got to know how to access it.
The looking-behind-the-gun concept does contribute to much more rapid expanding of peripheral acceptance and increasing focus ratio. 95/5 is the king and today Mack got out to 20 feet of PA, and he’s not going to stay there. We all know that. It’s just the first time he was out there. He was amazed at how slow everything was happening and moving, and it didn’t matter whether I threw him right to left or left to right, curling, quartering. It didn’t matter. He finally understood the advantage of getting early and getting the gun out there. He said: Actually getting the gun out of your vision is incredible. Well, duh! The muzzle is not your friend. He was amazed at how slow everything was moving.
Everyone needs to push your PA and learn to be earlier and earlier and to keep your nose on the target, see it coming, coming, there’s the line, take the shot, coming, coming, coming, stabilize the picture, take the shot, 95/5 at the end.
The more you can do that and the more you can give a little emotion when it feels right, when it looks right, when everything is perfect, the more emotion you can give it, the more the brain will begin the suppression of any image that might interfere with it because it wants to please you; but if you keep complaining about missing it behind, it doesn’t know how to fix that. It can’t fix it because you’re not giving it clear signals.
I read a study the other day about the Royal Air Force. The helicopter pilots over there that have the helmet on them, you know, where it’s got the little thing over the right eye and wherever the helicopter pilot looks the guns go.
Whenever they have somebody with an eye problem of center dominant or of switching dominancy, they make them wear an eye patch over their left eye for three weeks. Guess what happens? The image gets suppressed. Push your PA. Learn to be earlier and earlier. Keep your nose on the target, and when it looks right, tell yourself that’s what I want to see. It came right to me. You will find that the brain will suppress that nonshooting eye image more quickly if you can see the bird farther away from the gun and see it coming to the gun from farther away. The farther away you can see it, the less confusing it is at the end. Be aware of your focus ratio as you push your PA. Get it out there. Overcorrect your PA. Find and exceed your limit, first on crossing, then on quartering.
Figure out foot position based on your physiology. Now, Mack didn’t have no neck. There’s a couple of you on the coaching hour tonight that don’t have no neck. Greg Espenhover is not one of them. Greg Espenhover can look as far left as he can right because he’s got an 8-inch neck. Okay? But there’s some of you, Shane, that don’t have a neck. So that means you’re going to have to compensate on a left-to- right blindside bird with your foot position. You’re going to have to open your foot position so you can get your nose over there so you can get your nose on that bird and not cut your eyes.
That’s something that Mack learned today. That’s important. You need to recognize that the instant you see the setup in the stand. You don’t want to have to figure that out after you miss the first one. Blindside birds. Be aware of what you have to do on blindside birds. Open side birds, birds from the right as far as the right-handers go, no big deal; but that blindside bird, I mean, Mack was a little stiff in his lower back. So he really had to open his stance a lot on those blindside birds. So just be aware of the blindside bird.
Gil: Be alert of that feeling of doubt in your stomach. Put yourself in places where doubt and fear will come in and see what it feels like, greet it, live with it, stare it in the eye, overcome it, see what it feels like to you when it first comes in and what specific target and what it comes in on and what about that target causes it.
Remember you’re starting a new year. The voice of conscious doubt will take many faces. You must begin to be excited to face it. Then you’ll be able to conquer it, and until you have this mind-set, you will live in fear. We talked about that for the last six or seven months. It’s that fear thing. The earlier you can face it, the better. You want to have it there. Don’t dread it. Don’t try to not have it. Conjure it up. Let it come. Go out of your way to shoot in front of people, people that you know and get lost in your routine.
Why? That’s where you’ll be losing it on game day. Don’t practice in private. Practice in front of everybody. Hold my beer, watch this. It is the fear of what others might think or say about you that lets fear get in the quickest. You’ve got to have that hold-my-beer attitude all the time, and that allows you not to be arrogant but confident.
You can’t wait until game day to turn it on, but if you live it every day so that it’s game day — stop worrying about what others might think or say. Overcome that by doing in front of others. Do in front of others. Do in front of others. No fear. Turn fear into a motivator by doing it in front of others, whether you know them or not. Stop practicing in secret. Put it out there for all to see. Eventually it will become an arrow in your quiver, but make game day every day. Never be defined by your last shot. Always the next one.
Lastly, stay congruent. It’s the first I’ve mentioned about this, but I must tell you that I don’t go through a day without anchoring to a congruent physiology: Shoulders back, head up, smile, deep breath. Man, you feel so much better, and things just seem to happen when you’re in that physiology, and I’m in that physiology right now. And the clock just struck 12:00 so I need to close. Thanks for listening. Good night, everybody.
