Welcome to another year of the Coaching Hour. We start out with a continued discussion of muzzle awareness, this time bringing in a student who had some big breakthroughs with an effective focus ratio and what it feels like for him. Then we spend the bulk of our time discussing what intermediate shooters need to learn to break through to the next level.
Muzzle Awareness Wrap-Up
Gil: Tonight, I want to finish up something that I began last month. I had an occasion to teach two shooters last month, and in talking about the beginner phases, I began to look at muzzle awareness. Muzzle awareness is not necessarily as solid of a foundation as it is different beginning to end. In the beginning, there’s awareness because the muzzle is all people see. Then there’s no awareness. Then there’s some awareness and there’s no awareness. And then in the end there’s an ever presence of knowing exactly where the gun is.
I hate to say this, but as a beginner, you almost have to mount the gun in the mirror so you know what it looks like, and what it’s supposed to be like and what it feels like, even though you may have to start from a full mount and dismount the gun and then come back without moving your head to get that beginning gun mount down. It’s important that you start that way, and you do it over and over until you know what it’s supposed to look like and feel like.
Then the flashlight drill comes along and the three-bullet drill comes along with peripheral acceptance. Each drill at each level is designed to do something different. So, in the beginning there will be muzzle awareness to be able to know what it looks and feels like. Then we’ve got to train shooters to see away from the target. All shooters, in our opinion, are trapped one-and-a-half to two inches on either side of the muzzle.
I can remember Max McCart calling me when he was working out at Rio Brazos and telling me about the shooters at Rio with the gun in the hole, squatting, ready to pounce on the target and never putting two and two together and getting four. They never understood why they were in such a rush and always behind.
So today I had a two-hour private lesson with the two shooters that Vicki had taught for the last few days, and she told me she’d done her job and they were ready to put the gun way out there. I began the session with both of them seated and their eyes closed. I told them to visualize a baseball outfielder. At the crack of the bat, he knows where the ball is and the direction it’s moving, and also has an approximate 200-foot circle where he thinks the ball might land. He begins to go to the center of that circle all the time looking back at the ball. I’ve got these two guys in these chairs and I’m directing their thoughts. As the ball peaks and the fielder moves even closer to the circle, the circle has begun to shrink to 50 feet. As the fielder and the ball come closer, the circle shrinks to 20 feet, and the fielders in the middle of the circle have all closed to the fielder. The circle has shrunk to two feet, and at the last second the glove moves in front of the player’s eyes and the ball is caught.
Several things happened in this scenario. When the ball was hit, the fielder was aware of two things at once. One was very definite: where the ball was and the direction the ball was going. The other was somewhat vague: where the ball was going to land. And while the fielder always knew where the ball was, where it was going became more and more evident the closer it got to where it was going. When we shoot a target, the brain reacts in the same way. The closer it gets to the breakpoint, the more we need to know about what it’s doing.
The player never takes his eye off the ball, even though he’s running forward away from the infield. His head is turned back toward the ball at all times, and his brain is receiving the dots so it can know where the ball will hit the ground. The player, while watching the ball, is in a constant state of evaluation about where exactly the ball is going, and the closer it gets to arrival, the more the player knows about what it’s doing upon arrival. That would be maximizing the anticipation circuit.
The glove is not involved in the shot until the last 5 percent of the shot. (In our game, the ball is the clay and the gun is the glove) If the ball player had given his glove as much attention as you give the gun in your setup, what are his chances of catching the ball? The gun is involved only the last 15 percent of the shot; but most want it to be involved in all 100 percent of the shot.
As the shooter gets better, the amount of the gun in the shot diminishes. The amount of movement gets smaller as the shooter gets better, enabling the shooter to stay more focused on the target and control the visual speed of the target and stabilizing the shot in the breakpoint.
In the beginning phase of shooting, the shooter is mesmerized by the target and the gun. His eyes are going back and forth between the two, and he is wanting desperately to do something to the target with the gun. In the end, the advanced shooter is allowing the target to dictate what the gun does and only chooses where the merger of the two will be and will make the insertion in a place that will allow the gun time to adjust to the speed of the target.
It’s apparent to us now: the thing that’s the most difficult part about this to learn is when to begin the movement of the muzzle so it merges with the speed of the target when the target is in the breakpoint. It’s that timing of that move that takes the keenest amount of awareness. There are certain targets, because of their trajectory and speed, where it’s easy to make that merger because it’s very forgiving. There are other targets that, because of their distance, direction, and speed, the merger is not as forgiving. And it’s the timing of the movement in the last 10 percent of the shot, moving the gun to the speed of the bird and making that picture stabilize in the breakpoint, that has to be learned. That’s what you’re going to learn in the intermediate phase.
So, muzzle awareness is a varied thing. As the new shooter progresses through the quicksand of misinformation and misstatements of fact and misrepresentations of reality, if you talk to ten different shooters about muzzle awareness, every one of them is going to tell you they’re aware of something different about the muzzle. Every one of them. And to them, it’s reality.
In the end, you know where it is. In the end, once you’ve accepted the fact that it’s in your circle and it’s okay for it to be there, as Clay said, you no longer have to fight checking the lead because you’ve accepted the fact that the muzzle is going to be there. And all of this is brought about because you can’t actually see the shot hit the target or where the shot missed the target. You’re only left with the results, hit or a miss.
The results were incredible after going through the baseball analogy with Vicki’s two students today. One of them got it before the other one. He got it real quick. The other one struggled. He hadn’t practiced as much as the other one had. The one that struggled had a hard time getting the gun way out there and seeing the bird behind the barrel. But I had a two-hour lesson with them. At about an hour and ten minutes into the lesson when his light came on, I’m sure Stevie Ray Brown felt the grounds move up there in Kilgore because it was an amazing thing when that happened. It continues to amaze me at how the information we get from our students (albeit coming from a different highway) puts us right back on the same cul-de-sac that we began with Stevie Ray Brown years and years ago.
It’s about focus and it’s about perception. We’re beginning to understand a lot about the way different people perceive things.
An Epiphany on Muzzle Awareness
Gil: With that said, I want to talk to Ray for a few minutes. Ray, I’ve read your synopsis from March 3rd to January the 10th, and there’s a lot of good things in it. You’re not the only one in the beginning that’s looking for a way to improve your focus, and, as I talked about last month, muzzle awareness is a varying thing as you go through the stages of beginner, intermediate, and advanced, and competitor in this game. Because in the beginning, the muzzle is all you see.
I’m going to ask some of the guys that are on tonight to maybe talk about when they first saw the picture, so to speak. Because we’ve all experienced things in the beginning and we didn’t know what they were. You’ve experienced being in that zone, where everything is quiet and the eyes see something very clear, whereas the day before it was very cloudy. And when you see it clearly, it’s an incredible thing the first time. But then you try to recreate it, and that’s where the difficulty comes. In the beginning, we’re all looking for a way to improve our focus. We’re all doing that. And your “aha,” looking at a traffic sign and having to go to the center of it and your eyes read everything, was a huge turning point for you.
In your logical brain, it makes sense to you. You’re trained from top left to low right, that you’re always looking top left, and when you finally started looking in the middle and your periphery began to pick up everything, then your periphery began to be more attuned to what it was you were asking it to do, and it enabled you to see things in a way that you’d never seen them before, right?
Ray: That’s correct.
Gil: Tell us a little bit more about it. What was the sensation?
Ray: Well, I was going down to the circuit shoot when I first noticed it, and, of course, the sun hit the top left-hand corner of a sign, and I was trying to read the sign and couldn’t do it because the sun was there. I got sun blinded. And when I looked back at the sign, my eyes went to the center of it, and I read the sign instantly. And since I was already mentally training for the circuit shoot that I was going to, I was already in the mode of shooting clays. It just triggered off in my brain that: “Why don’t I look at the center of everything, or the center of the clay and try to strengthen my peripheral vision?” And I read those signs like that all the way to that circuit shoot and forced myself to look at the center of the clay, and it was just like an “aha” moment. It was like I had two cameras. I had one camera looking at the barrel and one camera looking at the clay, and as the gun approached towards the clay, I had a solid picture and they both moved at the same speed. I pulled the trigger and they go to dust. So, I started doing that. I’ve done that ever since, trying to strengthen my peripheral vision because, like you say all the time, Gil, your eyes don’t see; your brain sees.
Gil: Yes, sir.
Ray: If you can strengthen that focus to the point that you don’t have to dart your eyes everywhere to double-check everything and it’s solid from Point 1, as the gun and the clay come together. I mean, you don’t have to look at anything except the clay, and it just magically happens. You’re the science man on it. I want to hear how that happens.
Gil: Well, this is based on what I know right now, and I will make this commitment to you: next month at this time I’m going to know a whole bunch more. Okay? But what you’re experiencing is something that we would call peripheral acceptance. You’re finally beginning to accept the fact that the gun is going to be there.
Ray: Yes.
Gil: It’s part of the picture. I have found myself talking to people that we’ve never worked with before about how they’re shooting, and they’re all afraid. They think that we don’t know what we’re doing and that we’re crazy. Well, the latter is true, but we do know what we’re doing. Because part of being sane is being a little bit crazy. But you begin to pimp them a little bit to see what they’re really seeing.
I say “Well, what do you see when you’re looking at the target? What do you see to trigger the shot?”
“Well, I’m looking at the front of the target,” they say.
“Okay. Well, are you looking at the bird over the barrel or to the left of the barrel?”
“Well, I’m not looking at the barrel.”
“Okay. Well, what are you seeing?”
They say, “I’m seeing in front of the target.”
It’s just like a vicious circle. There have been times in my performance life where I didn’t know where that gun was. I didn’t. I’ve won tournaments not knowing where that gun was.
But we’ve evolved through the phases of awareness in the periphery and the primary, and we understand more about a suspended circuit, which is what you’re talking about. Your way of justifying what you’re seeing, what you’re doing is describing a neurologically suspended circuit, which means that you finally realized what the picture looked like left-to-right and right-to-left. You finally accepted that, and then the brain said: “Oh, so that’s what Ray wants.”
So now the brain is going to start getting rid of anything that’s confusing or nonessential to breaking that target. And it begins to suspend from your consciousness things that are confusing or nonessential. And what we always tried to do in the beginning was get people to create that suspended circuit from the beginning, not knowing that muzzle awareness and understanding what the picture looked like and accepting the gun in the periphery was a precursor to the brain being able to suspend that circuit. We were trying to get them to shoot without seeing the barrel. And we could! And I could!
But what we’re finding is that the brain learns like a stumbling baby. It has to fall and get up and fall and get up and fall and get up until it finally understands balance. Then it takes a step and it has to fall and get back up and take a step and fall, get back up and take a step and fall, and it has to do that until it finally takes two steps and retains his balance. It learns by failing. And what we were trying to do was create that absence of the barrel from the beginning by not trying to not see it as opposed to accepting the fact that it was there and let the brain deal with it however it needed to deal with it.
Now, you look at the center of things, and your periphery reads everything around it. And that’s all well and good, and I learned that in the seventh grade when I learned speed reading. I didn’t learn it very good because I can’t read very good today. I tried to learn it. I just didn’t understand it; but that is the concept of speed reading. Now, is it real? Yeah, it’s real. Is it more real to you and is it the genesis of your being able to accept the barrel in the picture and get the stable picture and trust the stable picture? Of course, it is.
Is it going to be same for me or somebody else? I don’t know. I can’t tell you that scientifically high left to low right is the reason, and your looking in the middle is the scientific cure for all this. I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you this; your explanations have great emotion with them. And your conclusions being: I see the target, I’m aware of the gun, and when they’re going the same speed, I pull the trigger — they are spot on with what our research is showing.
Ray: That’s good.
Gil: You’re spot on with that. And I like the way you talk about it: “It’s like I have two cameras. I have a camera on the target and a camera on the gun, and they’re both working together. When the background moves around those two, I pull the trigger and the target explodes.”
Ray: It does.
Gil: And that’s what I see as the stable picture. I learned from Chuck Griffith last weekend at the Safari show that the 4-H kids he’s working with don’t understand the stable picture. And I said “Well, what do they understand, Chuck?” He said, “This is what I’ve come to with my kids over two years: inserting the lead, match the speed, pull the trigger.” The kids relate to matching the speed as opposed to stabilizing the picture. To me it’s a stable picture, but to the kids it’s matching the speed. To you, it’s the background moving behind the two objects, and the two objects never change their spatial relationship.
Ray: That’s right.
Gil: We’re all saying the same thing; but it’s the same thing that almost everybody on the show tonight experiences. I mean, Dennis Manuel left his chair there and I stole it from him, and I made him write something with a Marks-A-Lot, and he said: “Stability is sweet.” He sees it as a stable picture. You know?
And in our mantra in talking about routines, we always finish the routine with same speed at the end. If I had to sum up one thing that has revolutionized the way we now look at building consistency with a shotgun, it is the “same speed at the end.” We always knew that the gun needed to go the same speed. We did. And we stressed that. But our system has evolved.
I believe I was talking to you a little earlier about this, Ray. And the next time we see you, I’m going to push you in this direction And we’ll ask some of the guys on the line to talk about this… but I think you’ll find rather than always coming from under and in front with a clay target, on most shots if you can come up well in front but close to the line and see the bird well behind, as you see it approaching the gun, you’re already on the line, and all you have to do is stabilize that picture.
Ray: I did that today when I went and practiced, and it was amazing.
Gil: Tell us what happened.
Ray: It took away one of my pre-shot routines, because I usually have that where I come underneath and come up and my hold point and my line was the same. So that decreased quite a bit as far as my pre-shot routine; but I acquired the bird a lot quicker and was taking the shot a lot earlier than I would if I came from underneath.
Gil: Yeah. It’s one less thing to do. And, like I said in the preamble, the better you get, the less the gun moves.
Ray: I agree with that.
Gil: Then everything you do becomes more efficient, which allows for you to have greater focus on the target.
Ray: I loved that baseball analogy, Gil. That’s going to set me on fire again, to get me thinking again about things. It’s a great analogy. That’s what it’s all about.
Gil: I’ll tell you that Vicki and I are so frustrated… not that it keeps us up at night, you understand. Really, it’s not frustration. We just get to the point to where we look at each other and say: “Are they just that stupid? Why does that son-of-a-bitch keep putting that gun over there in the hole where his eyes are and calling ‘pull’ and wonder why he’s always out of breath and chasing targets? Why do they not put two and two together and get four?”
Why? It amazes us at the reams of material that we’ve written and spoken on video, and yet there’s still people lining up with the gun in the hole, looking right over it and crouching, ready to pounce on it, like Max said. And they don’t understand why they’re always chasing the bird and the gun always gets in the way. Well, you can get that gun so far out there, like you experienced today, Ray. Getting it further out there and seeing that bird further behind that barrel and seeing it come to you, it gives you so much more control over the target. And the timing of the merger of the gun to the target speed is so much more forgiving and so much more efficient because you don’t have to come from underneath.
Ray: Yeah. “Efficient” would be a great word to use because when I was doing that today, my time of that stable picture was a very minute time, just a split second. Instead of trying to ride or try to find that stable picture, it was almost there instantly because you were already on the line.
Gil: Yeah. I think you’ll find that pushing to that end is not going to allow you another two seconds, but it will give your brain a much better read on when it’s supposed to start moving. Now, let me back up and say it a different way. If you can visualize now the gun moving, the bird is coming from the left and the gun is moving from left to right and they’re both moving, and all of the sudden, you want to bring them together and get the speed right. There’s two objects moving at different speeds.
I have no science to back this up, but this has been my experience on shooting extremely distant targets (and my coach is on the line right now, and she will, I think, concur with this). When I see that bird come out, if I’m shooting, like, a 100-yard target that’s up on the Knowledge Vault, when I shot that bird, the first eight times I was so far in front of it that it would have taken two cellphones to call back to it. Vicki kept telling me “You’re way too far in front,” and I kept looking at her and she finally said “Look, dammit. I’m the coach.”
Vicki: And y’all can realize what that look was. “Really?”
Gil: She has this look. When I look at her like “Oh, that’s just stupid. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She has this look that cuts through me so quickly, and I’m humbled before her. And I finally started listening to her.
But if you remember, baby, when we were shooting that, you’d pull that target and I’d mount that gun instantly, soft to my shoulders, and, as that bird came to me, the gun was quiet, and, as that bird came to me, it was almost like the bird began to push the gun when it was the right time. I’ve shot a lot of long birds, and it’s difficult to get that slow, smooth tempo, but if I can insert that gun well ahead of that bird and that gun is quiet, not moving, as the bird approaches, I feel like the merger to the target speed is easier if the target is moving and the gun is not moving, as opposed to on a longer bird trying to merge the gun from beginning to end with the target speed. Because now the bird and the gun are both moving a lot, and it seems to me harder for my brain to get that picture to be stable instantly when they’re both moving. Now, I don’t know whether I’ve explained that right.
Ray: Yeah. That’s interesting.
Bob Shannon: Hey, Gil? Let me give you an idea: You’re trying to merge in traffic. If the traffic is moving steady, it’s easy to merge in. If the guy behind you starts to slow down, thinking he’s going to let you in, it’s really tough to get synchronized with him.
Ray: Yeah.
Gil: Bingo. That’s what I’m talking about, Bob.
Anybody else want to add anything to that? Shane? Ben? I had Shane and Ben and Max up here last year, and we were shooting a bird at 91 yards, and when that bird came out of that trap, you mounted that gun soft to your shoulder, and, as it came to you, you just stabilized that picture and pulled the trigger. I felt like it was easier if the gun was quiet to stabilize that picture as opposed to trying to move, mount, and merge with it at the speed. Would you agree with that, Shane or Ben? Would you agree with that?
Shane: I would agree with it.
Ben: I would agree wholeheartedly with that.
Brian Brewton: Now, what does that do when you’re required to mount? Are you talking about also when you’re having to mount a gun like in FITASC?
Gil: Yeah. Because the point, Brian, is this: rather than doing it from a move, mount, and shoot standpoint when you see the bird, soft mount the gun to your shoulder way out there and watch the bird come to you, where all you’ve got to do is move the barrel to the same speed and pull the trigger.
Brian: Okay. Yeah.
Gil: It takes the mounting out of the end product.
Brian: Yeah. I’m with you. We did some of that in Beaumont.
Gil: Yes, we did. That’s exactly what we did in Beaumont, and what we found was that the “move, mount, shoot” that we would be talking about 18 years ago, what ended up happening is you ended up postponing 85 percent of the mechanics with the shot until the last five percent of the move, and invariably it made you speed up.
Shane: And what happens when the gun is the fastest thing in the picture?
Gil: Nothing good.
Shane: You can’t not look at it, right? That’s what I say. That’s the biggest advantage for me, because on those targets that are that far away and you have to be so technical, the gun has to be in exactly the right spot to break that target. It’s almost impossible to move and mount in the last 15 percent of the shot and not make the gun appear to be moving faster than the target in relationship to the background because of the distance to the target. So, if I can get the gun over there to the 85 or 90-yard line and have it just creeping along, as the bird closes, all I got to do is worry about pulling the trigger when it’s stable, and the brain will take care of everything else. And like the day you were talking about, it would come out of the trap and we would move and pull the trigger and take the gun down and put the shells in the bucket and then it would break.
Ben: Whenever you do that, you know you’re doing it, and you’re able to mount the gun that much earlier and make all your movements flow. Whenever you’re rushed, the mount is a conscious effort; but whenever you can move that slow and soft mount, what happens for me is basically the gun just becomes an extension of my arm. At that point I’m not worried about having to mount the gun at the right time or in the right spot. It’s there. It’s just an extension of my arm.
Tying that back into the Ray’s note, once you’ve done that enough, as soon as your subconscious takes over with having the gun mounted, your focus zooms in on the target. You’re 100 percent on the target, and subconsciously you know the gun is there. It’s in the picture. It’s part of it. But once you’re comfortable with that, all of your focus is on the bird.
Gil: Ray, do you hear what they’re saying?
Ray: Yeah, I do. And I agree with that. I agree that your focus is on that 100 percent. But I’m kind of at a point now if you had to have a percentage, I know that barrel is there with my peripheral vision. I have focus on both of them. I can’t say I’m a hundred percent on the clay because I am aware of that barrel being there.
Gil: We call it a 95/5 focus ratio.
Ray: That’s probably good. Yeah.
Gil: I’m glad you agree. [Chuckles]
Ray: Like you just said, when your eyes go to the fastest moving thing, which is the barrel, you’re going to stop and shoot behind it. But I do see that barrel very clear in my peripheral vision, and I’ve been really working on strengthening my peripheral vision, and I just don’t have to dart my eye back and forth. But I couldn’t say I was 100 percent on the clay.
Gil: No, sir. Fifteen years ago, I would have disagreed with this; but working with some of the scientists that we’ve been working with and understanding the process of neural suspension, what we’re looking for is a suspended circuit. And the only way it can be suspended is for you to accept the fact that the barrel is going to be there and let the brain clean it up. The brain will clean it up, and it will clean it up rapidly once it understands clearly what it is you desire for it to do with the data, and that’s where the ShotKam videos and the animations and all the stuff that we’re doing now really pays big dividends. Now you can even be clearer to the brain what you want it to look like and what you expect it to look like. That’s where the three-bullet drill comes in. That’s where doing the flashlight drill comes in. Instead of looking at the middle of the light, if you’re moving left to right, look at the left side of the light. So, you’re always looking behind. You’re always looking at the target behind the barrel when you mount. Like Chuck’s mantra, instead of seeing the bird behind the barrel, insert in the lead (because the kids understand that), adjust the speed, pull the trigger. It’s simple: insert in the lead, adjust the speed, pull the trigger.
Now, I’m glad he told me that because we’re going to be in San Antonio in a couple of weeks with all the 4-H kids from Texas, and we’re going to be doing classes over there, and we’ll use some of that. Chuck is going to be there. It just never ceases to amaze me how people see the same picture but perceive it in different ways, and that’s why I wanted to talk about what Ray was talking about tonight because he’s finally seen it. He’s seen the stable picture; but his stable picture, as opposed to being stable he sees the background moving behind it.
Ray: It stops dead and the background moves. It’s kind of weird.
Gil: No, it ain’t weird, dude. Because that bird and that gun are going the same speed, and they appear to be still, and the background does move. You’re saying the same thing we’ve all seen. It’s just that your perception or your way to describe it is a little different than we’ve heard so far. That’s why I wanted to talk about it tonight.
Ben: And there is nothing more deadly to a clay target than the stable picture.
Gil: Woo-hoo! Ben Leonard. Yes, sir. Hear, hear. And I’ll tell you what. There’s nothing more deadly to a flying live bird than a stable picture. I mean, it is absolutely awesome what it does. It doesn’t matter what kind of bird it is, either.
What Intermediate Shooters Need to Learn
Gil: All right. So, we’ve gotten through those two sections. Now I’m going to throw it open. Somebody say their name and start. We need to talk about what an intermediate shooter needs to learn before they can ascend to the ranks of an advanced shooter. Rick Carter sent some stuff in. Dennis Manuel sent some stuff in. The first thing on Rick’s list was travel, get away from your home club, shoot in other nearby states, shoot a variety of target setters, fly to a shoot, see what it feels like to travel with your gun and check in. The first thing on Dennis Manuel’s list was set goals. Dennis, what do you mean when you say, “keep them evergreen”?
Dennis: They’re not something that should bind you down.
Gil: Don’t get married to it?
Dennis: No, you’re not married to it. If you see a better way, change it. If it’s not working for you, change it. You know, this skill development is an evolutionary process. It’s not a light switch. It’s something you chip at day by day. You build on the wall one brick at a time. So, you know, change is inevitable. If you’re not ready to do some changing, then you’re not ready to learn.
Bob: How is this for a growth statement? Water doesn’t fertilize it, but don’t hesitate to bonsai it.
[Gil chuckles]
Dennis: Hey, I like that.
Gil: All right. So, Shane, in your opinion, what does somebody have to do to come from an intermediate shooter to move into an advanced shooter? What’s the big thing they have to cope with?
Shane: I would say learning to pay attention and look at the small stuff enables you to continue to refine the process. And I think that’s where you evolve in your game, being able to identify the issues that aren’t real glaring, and I think that’s where the transition is made. In A and AA class, I think that’s where you begin to make the transition between hoping and learning that you can be determined and focused and have a peak performance. And I think that’s where that needs to begin to develop in order to transition rapidly into the advanced shooter.
I think that it’s very important that you’re able to identify the areas that you don’t excel at; but you also need to be able to pay enough attention to everything: yourself, your personal life, what you ate, how you feel, everything. You have to be able to step back and look at the 10,000-foot view, but you have to be able to zoom in and look at the right-in-front-of-your-face view. And those are the things that are going to allow you to identify the areas that you need to work on and make them better. I think that’s where that begins to develop, and I think people struggle if they miss that.
Gil: They’re looking for something big, aren’t they?
Shane: I can tell you I was. Just like the gentleman that sent in the log and everything. Honestly, me and you talked about it and I’ve spoken with Ben about it. And I feel like he’s on the path. He’s certainly headed down the same road that we’ve all traveled. He’s looking for something big. I did. I was looking for the magic pill, the thing. “Where is it?” You know, every time I came up against a locked door, I didn’t think that if I just stood there and jiggled the knob long enough it would come open. I was looking for the battering ram, brother.
[Gil laughs]
We were going through this door, that door. Hell, if somebody didn’t slow me down, I might go out the back door. But it’s not there. And I think that whenever I began to be very attentive to all the little things, that’s when I began to learn more and was able to refine my game faster and become, in my opinion, a better shooter. I think that’s one of the things that has to begin to develop in that stage because that’s going to allow you to develop the determination that you need to practice like you need to. It’s going to allow you the fortitude to go forth through the adversity, and it will also allow you to develop the mindset that will allow you to go out and become very consistent. Instead of going out and hoping and poking, you’re going to go out and do your job and break the clays. Run the routines. And you’re also going to be able to step out of a station and go “What did I learn here?”
And then, for me, developing all of those things begins to remove the negative emotions from the, I won’t say failures because they’re not failures; they’re opportunities to learn. But when you’re a beginning shooter, you look at them as failures. “Man, I only got a one there. I shot a zero there.” And that’s one of the things that me and Ben tell people all the time. Almost everybody that shoots with us that’s brand new, we tell them all the time: I can tell you the last time I shot a zero, and I’m going to do it again. I promise. I will walk into a station somewhere and I will walk out with a whole field of zeros on a scorecard. And I learned from it. And that’s one less time that that won’t happen on that particular target. I won’t get fooled by that target setter like that again. I won’t misread that again, etc. And I think that’s where all that stuff has to develop, and for me that would be the one thing that is the foundation for everything else. I agree with traveling. I agree with shooting different targets. But to me, those are all expanding your horizons, building on the experience.
You know, you’ve talked to us several times, and I firmly believe that, as you have stated, there are no shortcuts. It’s a five-year-plus commitment if you’re going to become a very skilled shooter. It’s a minimum of five years and it’s a lot of work. There are no shortcuts. And I think that if you build this foundation correctly, it allows you to identify when you need to go back to the basics and what you need to go back to the basics and work on. I think that the game is so dynamic. And the presentations, the personal life, the professional life, the targets, the weather, you know, everything is so dynamic on top of the skill set that’s required. And that foundation is what is being in tuned and being attentive to, not only the whole picture, but the minutia as well.
I think those are the things that help people excel. And I think that’s one of the things that helps myself and Ben, as well. We’ve learned to be able to step back, and we do this all the time on the way home from a shoot. There will be an hour or an hour-and-a-half conversation about “How did you feel today? What did you feel like your strong points were? What did you feel like your weak points were? What do you need to work on? When are we going to do this or that?” And once I began to approach the game from that standpoint of just observation more than anything, it all became a lot clearer. I used to really struggle. When I was looking for the magic pill, I really struggled with setting goals because I wanted it to be the right goal to get me that magic pill to bust that door open.
Gil: [chuckles] And how many times did you call me and want me to give you your goals?
Shane: You know, I’m going to say more than four. [Gil laughs] I wouldn’t want to put a number on that; but I’m going to say it was probably more than four and probably no less than 12.
Gil: I think you’re in the ballpark. And I haven’t given you one yet.
Shane: No, you haven’t. But I don’t need you to at this point in my game.
Gil: No. You were begging for it the first 15 times you called.
Shane: I was. I was indeed. And I think that once you begin to develop that particular skill set, everything else just falls into place. We’ve talked so much about how you can’t lie to yourself.
Gil: Being honest with yourself, dude.
Shane: You have to trust it. Just like Ray, how he has begun to shift his focus ratios. He has begun to be more aware of what his weaknesses are, and he is well on his way to fully adapting the OSP method. And I think when he first started off on his synopsis, I think he was 60 or 70 percent trying to shoot the old way and 30 percent trying to shoot the new way. I think now he’s progressed a lot farther down there to shooting the new way. It’s opening his eyes up, and he’s beginning to see all of these new things.
And that’s what I’m talking about; having to be able to pay attention to all of the minutia. And I think that’s one of the reasons that the log is important- keeping up with that stuff. Because it allows you to go back and see exactly what was going on when you were having a problem. I’d like to tell you that I had an indexed glossary, you know, a 16-volume log. I’d be full of baloney if I did, because more often than not I completely forget to write in it. But that said, I can tell you that there’s a lot of times that me or Ben will be having a problem, and the other guy will look at him and go, “Well, here’s what I did when I was having that problem.” And then they’ll be some consternation, some hand wringing and teeth gnashing, and then the next time we go shoot, the dude that was having the problem is like, “Yep, that was it.”
That’s where I would say you got to start. You got to start paying attention to everything and develop that skill set, and I think that will feed everything else from it.
Gil: I’m going to wave our own flag here for a second. At this point in time in your game you need to have a coach you can go to that cannot only coach you on a mechanical level but can also coach you on a life lessons level. A coach who makes sense to you with respect to opening up your mind and learning everything you can about yourself through this game.
As Vicki and I have found ourselves with you and Ben and Max and Sheep Dip and everybody else on the line tonight, when you really begin to get serious about this thing, it’s being able to control the things in the periphery that allows you to be all there on tournament day. Most shooters tend to get caught up in what they’re doing with the gun, and they seem to forget about their business life and their personal life. And, like Dean Olson said, you’ve got to have your family life, your business life, and your personal life in balance in order for you to be all there on tournament day. I know I’ve had that talk with you. Vicki and I both have had these talks with everybody on the line tonight.
So, we’ve had these “be honest with yourself” talks. “Maybe you need to back off from that goal this year because of some things that happened at work” and “Maybe you need to change that.” But being able to have a coach who is not just a shooting coach but who is more of a life coach, I think, is huge for helping you get through the unexpected potholes that you’re going to have to drive through. Would you agree with that?
Shane: I would wholeheartedly agree with that, everything from being honest with yourself to dealing with a small nuclear reactor. And that was going to come out of my mouth next; it has to not only be shooting related but you have to learn that you can’t pull yourself into being a better person and you can’t say “I’m not going to be mad” or “I’m not going to be disappointed” and “I’m not going to give these things emotion.” If you’re unable to deal with the rest of the things in your life in the same way, then it won’t happen. And that’s what you have to be able to change, and all of those are things that help you pull all of that together and put everything under a magnifying glass.
Gil: Those are all things that enable you to be all there. You can’t be a hundred percent there in the present if all that other stuff isn’t taken care of in the first place. That’s a hard lesson for most people to learn, because they want to hurry up and get it over with so they can go on and do something else. You can’t do that. You just absolutely can’t do that.
All right. We’re out of time. Ray, thank you for coming on tonight. We’d love to have you again next month. Next month we’re going to talk some more about intermediate shooters. I want everybody that’s on tonight to please come back next month.
For next month, if you have some thoughts in your mind that occur to you about what intermediate shooters have to do to become advance shooters, email them to me. I thank Dennis and I thank Rick for emailing me their stuff. I just want to continue this dialogue because it’s important that we learn from you guys that are moving into master class what you had to go through, because there’s nobody else out there talking about this. They’re just talking about the way they see things and what they do. There’s nobody talking about how to become a better shooter in the beginner, intermediate, and advanced stages.
That said, I got to sign off or they’re going to cut me off. Goodnight, everybody. Talk to you next month.
