Gil: All right, guys. Welcome to the July 2015 Coaching Hour. Man, I can’t tell you how long we have been doing this. You guys that have been with this thing for a long time, have really realized how much information has been exchanged here since November, 2001, which was the first one. Brian Brewton was on the first one. Clyde McAfee has every recording that we’ve ever done, there are several others out there that have, and it’s made us better coaches and made us have to research stuff every month as opposing to sitting on our laurels just kind of coasting. It’s made us actually go out and research things.
I want to say to Snowflake — I don’t think he’s here tonight, but next month we’re going to talk about perceptual cognitive training in sports. He has been doing some research for us on that, and there is some literature that has already proven what we’ve been talking about as far as watching the kill shot videos over and over. It’s already been proven that what we’re talking about allows for a higher level of anticipation and a better reaction because of that higher level of anticipation in sports where you have to intercept the target. We’ll get into that. I’m going to try to do some phone time with Snowflake, and we’ll try to have him on next month to talk about his two papers that he’s put together on perceptual cognitive training in sports.
That said, Jack Flesher has posted on the forum. I don’t know what I had to do to talk him into getting in the Knowledge Vault. [Jack chuckles] I’ll tell you, you guys that are in it realize the value, but it’s a hard thing to sell. Jack kept calling with certain problems. I kept answering him on the Internet and talking to him on the phone, and I finally twisted his arm. I don’t know what I agreed to pay him to get on, but whatever it was, it was worth it, because he got on, and he read the forum post about most people are looking for a snapshot, but it’s really a movie.
Jack, familiarize us with what you told me you thought your perceived problems were before you got into the Knowledge Vault. You were erratic. Give us a little history on what your perceived problems were.
How the Knowledge Vault Changes Shooting Habits
Jack: Basically, before I met you, you were out teaching a class in California, at Comanche, three, four months back. I met you out when you were looking at the Quail Point site for a possible –
Gil: We are coming there in September after the big shoot.
Jack: Perfect. Well, I met you out there, anyway, and you shared a little bit of your video and what you were doing. I’m in sales professionally for a living, and you outsold me because I’m now your customer. And I signed into the Knowledge Vault right after I met you and saw that stuff. And I spent a couple of weeks, an hour here, an hour there, just really going through everything and getting current. The thing that spoke to me was when I made a post on the forum and you said, “Hey, check our Knowledge Vault. We’ve been talking about that. Check the Coaching Hours and listen to all the Coaching Hours this year.” And so, I did. That really helped me, Gil, and of course, spending time with the Kill Shot Review helped me improve my consistency.
But the “aha” was a post you made on the forum recently about sight picture and how the sight picture isn’t static, it’s a video. And that was my big “aha” moment just a couple of weeks ago. I was really working at trying to see that sight picture, and then my preload was a still. It was a still of the sight picture. I’ve been shooting three years, and it had been right when I learned about a preload a year ago or so, or a pre-shot routine a year ago, I was putting in the still, right?
The “aha” moment was that I was putting in the still, and the still isn’t accurate. I needed to preload a video. And so, that was the comment I made on the forum, and you encouraged me to ask more questions about it.
Gil: What were your shortcomings prior to this “aha,” and what has happened since you changed your preload to a movie?
Jack: The biggest shortcoming was consistency. I made master class last year and toward the end of last year, and then I had this realization that “Wow, all of a sudden I’m in master class.” I kind of thought that was the end of the journey, and then I realized, “Well, if I want to keep going on this, I’d better learn how to compete in master.” You know, got my butt kicked a couple of times and thought “Well, I can either just be glad I’m in master or I can get to work and learn how to compete.”
And so, I really started focusing on that, and my big issue was consistency; a lot of dropped middle targets specifically. So, a couple of dropped singles here and there in the middle of your routine where you kill the first pair and you drop one or two targets in the middle and then you finish out strong. Those add up, and if you do that three or four times in a tournament, they will keep you out of the top spot. And so, I went to work on that, and what I noticed was I was preloading the video as opposed to the still virtually eliminated the mid-station drops, if that makes sense.
Gil: It makes perfect sense. And that’s what Snowflake has been talking about and studying which is what I referred to earlier: perceptual cognitive training in sports. Let me just read you one quick snippet. Okay?
“An experiment in Class 1A college baseball players, another sport which involves intercepting a target, using perceptual cognitive training, was shown to move correct interpretation of a pitch being served up by the pitcher from 25 percent to 75 percent, watching only the first five milliseconds of the pitch. This was as it left the pitcher’s hand and with all other cues about the pitcher’s other movements blocked from view.”
So, what they did is they took a pitcher, and blocked out his body and everything but his hand coming over his shoulder and the release. That was five milliseconds. And through perceptual cognitive training about associating a certain movement with a certain pitch, the batter’s move from 25 percent correct call on what it was to 75 percent correct call on what it was, looking at only the first five milliseconds of the release of the ball.
Now, this is not a utopia. It’s not the end of the world. I mean, you still have to do your fundamentals. And like everybody on this line right now will tell you, we’re discovering some amazing things and have discovered some amazing things over the last 15 years. And we keep discovering new and better things as science leads us to the fact that seeing is not an eye thing; it’s a brain thing.
We just jumped out there on the edge with this Kill Shot Review thing, and the people who are using it are experiencing amazing results. And the perceptual cognitive training in sports that Bob has been researching has substantiated what our findings and our suppositions are, and that is, it will help you have a higher performance on game day simply by watching it the day before and the morning of your tournament because it emphasizes what the end product is on every shot. That makes it easier for you when you see a target to visualize the movie as opposed to a snapshot. Does that make sense, Jack?
Jack: Absolutely. That was kind of my “aha” in watching those kill shots. And I have to say, you’ve done a phenomenal job of representing those on a 2D screen where I can watch those. But until you actually experience yourself in three dimensions, it isn’t quite as powerful. But once you do, this whole “aha” happens; everything slows down, and just starts clicking on those mid targets. And if you get the first pair, you’re going to probably get at least the next two. If you’ve got a fourth pair in there and you start getting jitters about the fourth pair kill, then you might get screwed up. But if you just continue with that routine, you’re going to kill them all. It’s a powerful tool.
Gil: Jeff, do you have anything to say about that?
Jeff: I think that’s pretty accurate. The fundamentals are part of it. But the sort of video picture, thinking of it that way is more than just a still shot. It’s pretty powerful. I think I sort of stumbled onto it before we had a definition for it, but yeah, I agree completely.
Gil: I have another question to ask Jack. Before you leave, I want you to compare for me and the guys on the line and the people on the Knowledge Vault the amount of stress that you had when you were shooting prior to the kill shot video.
Jack: You know, the stress is good and bad, as they say. And I’ve read all the books, Gil. I’ve read a hundred books on this subject, and you’re supposed to embrace the adrenaline rush and all of this crap. And the real answer is that the adrenaline rush can be good and bad; it can be motivating and bad. Stress isn’t good when you’re in the box and calling for the bird. It just isn’t and it’s never been for me.
But practicing with this video preload totally calms you down, because it slows everything down. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s hard to put into words until you experience it, but when you get in there and when you preload that video, you see your view pair. You preload your video, you get in there and you just do what you’ve trained to do. Everything just goes pretty smoothly, pretty easily, pretty casually. There’s not a lot of stress associated with it. And I’ve got to tell you, you step out of the box and you look at your scorecard and there’s eight X’s there and there’s no zeros in the row. And of course, I don’t look at my scorecard that much, but my point is that you know when you’ve run a station. You step out of the station and you know you have run it, but you don’t get overly excited because you almost expect it, if that makes sense.
Gil: “Almost expect it.” Yeah. And the more you do it, the more you associate the run station with the correct preload of the movie, the more you expect it, the easier things become and the less stress you have.
I have to tell you about two recent students, Mike and Trent. I had Trent for two lessons. I had him for two hours today. He’s leaving for Europe for a week and a half, two weeks, and he’s going to come back. But both these guys were wound up tight. They were both chasing the bird, trying to get the lead right, and both of them took to playing in front and letting it come and stabilize the picture quicker than I’ve seen in a long time. Without exception, both of them slowed down, and after the first hour of doing this new move that they both got on about the eight or tenth shot and then ran I don’t know how many straight. I asked them to evaluate the stress and the way they were shooting now and the way they were shooting before they got here, and they were both speechless because of the lack of stress. Because stress is created by doubt.
Jack: Right.
Gil: And some of the books will tell you that the adrenaline rush is good, you need to look forward to it, that’s why you compete, to get that rush, and it’s just a signal to your brain and body that you need to pay attention. You’re about to go into battle. Okay? I can accept that, but let me tell you something. When you look at the battle, that’s just another day on the practice range. You’ve seen it happen a thousand times and you can tell yourself, “Hey, I’ve seen this one. I’ve seen it break so many times. I see the movie already. Let me at it.”
Jack: Right. Exactly.
Gil: And you can play that station after station after station because there’s no doubt. And even if there’s doubt, you know you have a system that you can preload as a movie, which is get way in front, let the bird come to you, same speed at the end that has gotten you through so many targets you’ve never seen before successfully that you begin to depend on it. Then all of a sudden, the realization hits you that almost every shot you take looks the same at the end. Then all the fidgeting and stress-inducing things that you used to have to go through are now gone.
Jack: But the other thing, and I want to just comment on it before getting out of here is that once you do that, once you get that frozen frame sight picture, where you’re focused on the target and your barrel is moving with the target in your peripheral, the precise lead becomes very forgiving.
[Gil laughs]
It’s amazing. Everyone thinks they need to have this precise lead to break a target, and they don’t. I’ve had these moments. I had one target this last weekend, a quartering close target. I had my tight chokes in and I go, “Oh, dang, I’m a foot in front.” And the target destroyed. And then the next shot, “Oh, dang, I’m a foot too far back.” Target destroyed. It just didn’t matter. As long as I was matching the speed and the brain said “trigger,” I triggered and the targets evaporated. And it is just a very relaxed and low stress environment. You’re just doing what you’ve trained to do.
Gil: Well, as we said earlier, with all these things that we’re teaching you, you’re now learning how to compete.
Jack: Right. Exactly
Gil: You learn how to shoot getting to master class. We’ve had several Coaching Hours on learning how to compete, and several of the guys on tonight have contributed to those. But you’re learning how to compete now, and the more you have to think and the more things you have to be exact on, the harder it is to compete.
And I’ll go to a gun fit issue that I know Jeff has just gone through. Jeff shot with his gun for a while, and he was at the Advance School. I think it was this year, Jeff. You were at the Advance School. I had a pattern stock or you already had a pattern stock or something that was lower.
Jeff: No. You had your Parcour with the lower stock on it, and our dimensions are very similar. So, I took it out on the last day and shot with it for a while, and it made a significant difference.
Gil: My dimensions were lower than the dimensions on his stock. So, I got him hooked up with Neal, and Neal got him a pattern stock. They went through a few exchanges about different things going on, but he finally has him a pattern stock that is as low as mine and that really does work, and I remember two things he told me.
Number one, he felt like his gun mount had to be perfect. But now, the gun mount is the most forgiving part of what he does. To which I said, “If you feel like you have to have a perfect gun mount to make it work, then the gun does not fit you.” The other thing was, “Shooting is easy when the gun really does fit you.” Am I off base on that, Jeff?
Jeff: No. That’s true. It goes back to what you said before. You know, once you start breaking targets and the technique is all there and you get into “do you run a station?” Just to sort of sidetrack a little bit, my thought on the second pair was, “I have to make sure the gun is in the right spot so I can hit these targets just like I hit the first pair.” Right? It wasn’t that I was trying to remember the sight picture. It wasn’t anything else. I was trying to remember the move because I wanted to make sure the gun came up in the same spot.
Gil: The gun mount?
Jeff: Yes. And that’s gone. I don’t have to worry about that anymore. It’s one of the things I don’t have to think about. I’m not trying to control it. I’m not trying to drive that process. I could accept the fact that it works and that I can just let everything happen, knowing that when the target and the gun come together, the movie that I’ve seen in my head is what it’ll look like and I can pull the trigger. There’s a lot less stress and a lot less angst around making sure all that stuff happens correctly, because when you’re successful, you want to do that, you want to control all of that but you can’t.
Gil: Interesting. Yeah. Jack, it’s an amazing thing, and what you’re experiencing a lot of the guys on the Coaching Hour have experienced. We’ll talk more about that when we come to Quail Point in September after the big shoot, and I’m sure we’re going to get to shoot with you. I sure would like to do something out there to get some people together and talk about mental performance and talk about what you’ve experienced and what we’re talking about here tonight. So, I’ll work with you on that, and we’ll see if we can’t make something like that happen one night.
Shooting Pre-Mounted and Thoughts on Gun Fit
Gil: So, Scott Creger, tell me what your problem is. You’ve been having your butt kicked by people who are shooting a mounted gun?
Scott: Yeah. I don’t know about any of you other guys, but, hell, every shoot I go to I think I’m the only guy shooting the shotgun out of my shoulder. So yeah, I don’t know how they get by with it. I can’t do it, but don’t want to do it. But, no, I was just at work this morning, and just made that quick comment to you, but I don’t know. Do you other guys see it? I mean, I’ve been traveling to some shoots, you know, some little bigger shoots, and there’s some of the guys that I shoot with in other squads. I see everybody got that gun buried in their cheek.
Gil: John Eagle, do you see that where you go shoot?
John: Sure. That was a joke there this April, when I didn’t see Max (which I still apologize for) at the Browning-Briley. And he knew that he could fix me. I was shooting well and beating him. So, I’m not sure exactly why it was he needed to fix me. But he was a pre-mounted guy, and he just knew that I was breaking them in the wrong place. If I would just pre-mount my gun, I would be so much better. But I was breaking them. So, I didn’t see what the problem was. I just kept smiling and saying “Thank you.”
[Gil laughs]
I think there are two groups of pre-mounted shooters, and some of them aren’t really all that pre-mounted, even though it looks like they are.
Gil: That’s a very big point you just made.
John: Yep. They still use some movement to get in sync with the bird. They just are doing it so efficiently that a lot of times you don’t see it.
Gil: I agree 100 percent. Anthony Matarese is one of them.
John: Yeah. Bill McGuire is another.
Gil: Oh, huge. Yeah.
John: And since coming to you a few years ago, there are a few targets I can’t hit with a mounted gun, but I don’t know why. I feel like I should be able to, but it’s almost impossible. But I think you find that “how much” that’s in your own kind of style of what you do. You find out what works for you the best. And since I still like FITASC more than anything else, some of that is just mandated, but these guys get to the 5-stand and they’re looking at you going, “Boy, that would be a lot easier mounted.” Well, I don’t think so. Not for me it’s not.
Gil: Well, for most of those people the gun doesn’t fit them.
John: Yeah. And there is that. Especially with a lot of kids. If the gun is too long and stuff like that, they almost have to, because they can’t get it there.
Gil: Yeah. It’s still amazing to us how many people are shooting this game with ill-fitting guns. They think it fits, but it just doesn’t work. I mean, to me, if you have to fight the mount, the gun doesn’t fit you. If the gun fits you, you don’t have to fight the mount. That’s just all there is to it.
Today Trent asked, “Well, about my gun fit?” And I said, “We’re not ready to discuss that yet.” And he said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “You haven’t done this system for 5,000-7,000 birds, so that we know what your gun mount really is every time. And once we know what your gun mount really is every time, then we’ll determine whether or not your gun fits.”
His question to me was, “Well, I want to get the gun to fit first.” I said, “No, that’s just not the way it works. It’s close enough right now. You’re inkballing every fifth shot.” So, it’s close enough, but he’s inkballing more right-to-lefts than he is left-to-rights. And that tells me that the gun needs a little bit more cast in it and a little bit more drop. But I’m not going to say that to him right now. I’m going to let him go through his 5,000 rounds, four more lessons, and really get acquainted with the system before we start dinking with the gun. I’ve seen that too many times, especially in kids. They want to get a good gun fit, and the coaches say “If the gun doesn’t fit, it’s not going to shoot where they look.” Well, that’s true, but if they can’t mount the gun consistently without looking at it, you can’t fit the gun. Then the coach looks at me like I’m from Jupiter with three noses. “What do you mean?” There’s more in fitting the gun than whether the eye is aligned with the rib, and let’s just leave it at that.
It continues to amaze me with this system and with a gun that really does fit you and with good fundamentals, how important it is to keep practicing the fundamentals and, number two, how easy and stress-free it is to shoot this way.
Brian, you work with kids a lot. Do they shoot mounted gun or do they shoot unmounted? How do they do that?
Brian Brewton: Basically, when we first start, we use the mounted gun, but it won’t be long. If they’ve been with me at least five weeks, they’ll start mounting the gun. Most all of the other coaches that I know of that are teaching youth do not teach low gun at all. They don’t know how to do it themselves. So, they just don’t teach it.
They were back in their spot, and my shooters said, “Well, I know who your coach is because we’re the only ones that use a low gun.” And they all do well. So, it’s not a hindrance. I have one young man that shoots all three of the disciplines, and he said it’s just as hard as hell for him. He said, “I can’t get locked in on a trap-style target. I can use a scrub mount, but I can’t just bury my face in the gun like most of these guys do.”
Gil: Yeah. If you’ve got to bury your face in the gun, it doesn’t fit.
Brian: But their faces are distorted on the gun.
Scott: Just one other comment on that.
Gil: Yes, sir.
Scott: I’m kind of like you. I think a lot of guys don’t know how to move and mount the gun or are afraid to. Just two or three weeks ago I went out to Nebraska to a three-day shoot. They had sub-gauge events and they had a FITASC event, and I got in at a 50-bird FITASC event. There were a lot of guys in my class at the shoot, but I was the only one in my class in the FITASC event, if that tells you anything. They either don’t know how to move and mount the gun or they’re afraid to try it. I don’t know.
Brian: It’s fear.
Gil: Oh, yeah. It’s a hundred percent fear.
Brian: Yeah. They’re afraid of failure, and they’re definitely not going to spend the little bit of time it takes to learn how to mount a gun. They just feel like it’s not necessary. “I can get by with where I am.” They’re happy where they are. I said, “Well, stay happy then.”
Gil: [chuckles] I will tell you, knowing you have the ability to move and mount the gun and insert the muzzle where you need to on that bird is paramount to stress-free shooting. They got to start looking at that gun to make sure everything is lined up, and then chase the bird with that barrel. It just ain’t gonna happen. They may win a one-day shoot, but it’s going to be harder than nine hells for them to put together a three-day shoot. It’s just not going to happen.
Now, there are certain courses that are easier for a mounted gun course. Those quick, tight courses in the woods where you’re shooting down lanes and it’s quartering from the right, quartering from the left, two quartering from the right, two quartering from the left, one going straight out, one high right quartering, one left-right quartering… When all the birds are quartering shots, now, that kind of a target is conducive to shooting a mounted gun. But you take that same shooter who scored well on that course and take him out to a course that’s got a lot of chandelles and crossers, especially if you have a quick transition from one bird to the other bird, where dismounting the gun is a great advantage and not being hard into the gun is a great advantage, they’re going to fail.
Anytime you have a course that’s set up like trap shots, a mounted gun is very forgiving. But when it starts getting to be big crossers and big loopers, you don’t begin the shot as relaxed. I’ll put it that way.
Scott: Yeah.
Gil: And the other thing that you’ll find if you shoot with a mounted gun is that gun is in your hands, arms, and shoulder 80 percent longer than my gun is in my hands, arms, and shoulder. Which means at the end of the day, you’re going to be a lot more fatigued and a lot more tired. That’s just what we’ve seen.
Brian: That’s a fact. That is true.
Gil: Bill McGuire is a great shot, but he is not as hard into that gun as most people think he is. I’ve shot with him. We interviewed him at the 74 Ranch the year before last after he won the Nationals. He’s a gracious man. He’s a nice guy. He was more than willing to sit and talk with our Advance Class for an hour and a half one morning. And he doesn’t have the gun mounted hard into his shoulder. It’s very soft, and he does make a move with both hands to get the gun into the pocket and face when everything comes together. Not like many people think.
How Champions Think: Quotes and Thoughts
Gil: So, I want to introduce something to you tonight. Dr. Dan Fisher from Chattanooga, Tennessee, called me, sent me an article from the paper from June 18. It’s about a new book out there by Bob Rotella. I’ve already got it on my iPad, and I’ve already got a hard copy of it to read on the airplane. The title of the book is How Champions Think, and I’m going to read a review or excerpts from a review that I got in this paper because I haven’t read the book yet. I scanned it, and I can’t wait to get into it on the airplane Wednesday morning going to Montana, and I’ll have it read by the time we get back. We’ll talk about it next month for sure.
There are two current poles about what creates a champion. David Epstein talked about The Sports Gene in 2013, and it talks about you’re either born to be a champion or not. That got mixed reviews. Obviously if your natural height is going to be 7’2″ as opposed to 5’2″, you’re more predisposed to be a basketball player than you are a shortstop. But I read the book and there’s still some controversy on that right there. Malcolm Gladwell wrote Outliers in 2008 and talked about it takes 10,000 hours to be great. Daniel Coyle of The Talent Code also echoes the same thing in a similar way. Rotella says that neither of them are right. Champions are not born or made. Rather, they have developed a certain mental habit and attitudes that play a central role in their success. It’s not your parents, or time at the range or in the gym, but something in your brain, and we can all change our brains. Interesting concept here. Tiger Woods is always changing coaches and altering his mechanics- the sort of tinkering that Jack Nicklaus always avoided.
Before Jordan Spieth’s runaway at the 2015 Open in golf, Rotella wrote about Spieth’s incredible mental strengths. “If you stood behind him and a dozen other young stars on the practice range and you didn’t know who he was, you’d probably not select him as the best of the bunch. He has an excellent mental game. He talks about being indifferent to what his competitors are doing so he didn’t fall into the trap of thinking much about where he stood in the tournament and trying to force things.”
In the book, Rotella draws from three coaches. John Wooden, and his concern with detail, even down to how they tied their sneakers and how they popped the pass as they passed it from one to another. Vince Lombardi had a great love for effort, not outcome, which flies in the face of the comment “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Listen to this. This is so profound: Lombardi taught his players that sustaining a commitment to personal excellence over a lifetime would separate them from other people and make them exceptional. That’s huge.
And then Coach [John] Calipari of the Kentucky Wildcats’ basketball team. It seems that he was one of Rotella’s favorite coaches that he studied because he keeps popping up in this book many times. One example was after his team won a game by 20 points, he walked in on a celebration and stopped it by saying, “You guys coasted the last eight minutes, and I always insist on maximum effort when on the court.” Amazing. We’ve heard a lot about that. We’ve talked a lot about that on this Coaching Hour.
He goes on to say that advice from this book is not earth-shattering, and here’s some of the highlights that he liked: “Be optimistic, confident, and believe in your talent.” Here’s one that Jack would appreciate: “Do visualization exercises in the same way you practice your three-pointers on a basketball court or your bunker shots on a golf course. Let the subconscious do the work, train it, and then trust it. Forget mistakes and failures and treat them like accidents. Commit to working hard.” I love this.
Eagle, are you there?
John: Yes, sir.
Gil: Listen to this. It’s so cool. “Sweat in practice so you don’t bleed in the game.” [chuckles]
When I read that, I thought of you. Now, I don’t know why I thought of you, but I did. “Immerse yourself in the process, not the final goal. Love the great days more than you hate the bad days.” Here’s a huge one, and we’ve talked about this on the Coaching Hour: “Underreact to everything.” I’ve said this on the Coaching Hour I don’t know how many times: “Nothing is as good or bad as it seems when it is happening.” But he categorizes that as “underreact to everything.”
“Be patient with yourself but impatient with the limits that others place on you. Surround yourself with positive people. Do what you love and love what you do.” And here’s a big one: “Luck can affect outcomes, but it does not affect effort.” I can’t wait to get into the book. I’m really excited about it.
Dan Fisher went to Argentina with us this last year. He and I have been carrying on a running discourse on Tiger Woods and some of his problems. And the year before last when he was on the next to the last day and he was in contention at the Open, Fisher called me and said, “I think he’s going to win it,” and I said, “No. He’s going to fold on the last day. He just doesn’t have it.” I mean, he’s close, but his problem was when he was messing around with them women and Phil Mickelson was going home, those two years that he had to lay off in golf to get his life back together, Phil Mickelson and his other contemporaries kept practicing. They maintained their myelin sheath, and Woods lost it. Now there are too many hours in the day for him to maintain it and keep it like it is. I thought it was interesting, the comment that Rotella made: “Tiger Woods is always changing coaches and altering his mechanics, the sort of tinkering that Jack Nicklaus always avoided.”
But, anyway, I told Dan Fisher that he wasn’t going to win and sure enough he faltered the last day. We were watching the golf tournament yesterday, as a matter of fact, and one of the guys that was making the run didn’t get a par that he felt like he really needed because he was way too aware of the score. There was already a 13 under par in the clubhouse. Some guy had a fantastic round. And he was aware of what he needed to do, and when he didn’t do it, he let his emotions get the best of him, and it was not pretty for him the rest of the last three holes. And it’s amazing what we see when we watch people performing under pressure, if you will. It goes back to what he said: “Underreact to everything, even the good stuff. Underreact to everything. Nothing is as good or bad as it seems when it is happening.”
Staying Hydrated and Losing Weight
Gil: I wanted to bring Max in. He was pulling at a tournament up at Able Ammo where they were inundated with 300 and…how many was it, Max, 316 or 360?
Max: 316.
Gil: 316. And they didn’t expect that many, did they?
Max: No, they didn’t. They were a little overwhelmed.
Gil: Yeah, they were “whelmed” and overwhelmed. Max was talking to me today earlier in the office about what he experienced there. He was pulling and they didn’t get lunch until three o’clock and they ran out of water. And he got to a point to where he couldn’t see, and we talked quite at length about it. And you mentioned something, Max, that I’d never heard. And that is when you get dehydrated, the shape of your eyeball changes.
Max: Correct.
Gil: Tell me a little bit about that and how you know that.
Max: Well, my wife has had some serious eye problems and eye surgeries. We lived out in West Texas out in Midland. She would have to go back to Dallas for her exams. They got to the point that they wanted her to come in two or three days early where it’s more humid so that the shape of her eye would change to more of a correct shape to where they could test her vision Now, that’s kind of an extreme deal, but she had some serious eye injuries, dry eyes and all of that.
At Able Saturday it was hot, and as I got dehydrated and hungry, man, at about 2 o’clock, it’s like you flipped a switch. I had a really hard time trying to call these birds. It’s a big, big deal. And these shooters who are 50-plus years old and 40 pounds overweight and not used to being outside, you can watch their scores. You look at their scorecards, and as the day progresses, the X’s lessen and the O’s increase.
Gil: Jeff, how is your weight loss coming?
Jeff: I’m making progress.
Gil: Excellent.
Jeff: My exercise is up and I’m just shaving the pounds off. It’s going to be a long, long, long road, but that’s the way it goes.
Gil: It’s not going to be nearly as long as it would be if you were 65, let me tell you.
Jeff: That’s true. Someone who was very close to me looked at me the other day and said “It didn’t take you a week to put it on. You’re not going to take it off in a week.”
Gil: You know, I’ve never thought about it that way. That sounds like something Eagle would say.
Jeff: [laughs] But it’s the truth. You have to manage your expectations, right? It’s something you do, but you have to manage your expectations.
Gil: Well, Max and I have carried on a dialogue about this for the last three weeks or so. We could all afford to lose a little weight; some more than others. But what Max has been able to see as a trained observer, based on the experiences in his life, is the true effects of dehydration, especially in older people. Older people typically have issues with dehydration. This is what I see. And, Max, you tell me if you saw it the other day. What I see in senior shooters is their eyes do go. There’s no doubt about that. But I watch their ankles, and the hungrier and more dehydrated they are, the more their ankles move when they’re in the stand, trying to shoot the bird.
Max: Oh, they’re shaky all over.
Gil: And that stresses the focus mechanism. And Brian Brewton is a believer in the balance pads. We talked about that on the Coaching Hour last year or the year before last where you got off them, and your wife said you were dragging your foot or something. I don’t remember what it was. What was it that she said? You were dragging your foot or something. But you got right back on the balance pads, and all that stuff went away, right?
Brian Yeah.
Gil: I can’t tell you how important doing a balance regiment is, but in the bigger picture, something that Max and I have been talking about for two or three weeks is that people that are not in shape, (Dean, you and I talked about this, too) if you want to be a contender, and you can be a contender – you have what it takes, you’re going to have to lose some weight. We talked about that, right? [Pause] He doesn’t want to say anything about that.
[Laughter]
It’s just something that you’re going to have to look at if you really want to be a contender. Because I’m telling you, as Max has seen and as we have seen, people that are big and out of shape, the heat isn’t going to affect you on the first day. It’s going to happen to you on the second or third day when you’re in contention. And let me tell you something. When you get dehydrated and you’re too big to maintain hydration and maintain the influx of protein that you need to run on, once you’ve lost it, you’ve lost it.
Gil: And it had to be obvious to you that day, Max.
Max: Oh, yeah. As your blood sugar goes down and you get dehydrated, you’ll see it in your ankles and you’ll see it in their hands. You get these little tremors, for lack of a better term. But for me, as hot as I got Saturday and hungry, the blood sugar down and dehydrated, I wasn’t feeling real good Sunday evening. It was really this morning before I really started feeling a hundred percent again.
Gil: All the medical people I talked to about dehydration say when you get it like you had it, it’s a 48-hour recovery.
Max: Yeah. And, you know, I’m older than a lot of those guys, but I’m in better shape than they are —
Gil: You are.
Max: — in better heat conditions than they are. And it was this morning before I started feeling halfway decent again. I was real glad Saturday evening when we left the range to drive a hundred miles back to Houston that I wasn’t driving. And that’s a big deal for me because I don’t like riding with other people. [chuckles]
Gil: Well, yeah. So, just let that be a lesson to you.
Jeff, I’m happy that you’re on your road, and it’s not going to happen overnight, and you do have to curb your expectations, but I will tell you this. What you’re in the throes of right now is changing your eating habits and changing your exercising habits, and once you’ve done that for three or four weeks and those habits get changed, you’ll be shocked at how quickly it’ll come off.
Jeff: Yeah. The exercise is a big one for me. I’ve been through this once already when I was younger, and the real thing for me is the cardio exercise, the general metabolism, and what building muscle mass entails. So, I’m looking forward to taking some of the weight off. I have a reason to do it which really helps.
Gil: Well, yeah. And I will tell you that Jeff and I talked about him going ahead and having his stock done. He’s got a pattern stock from Neal, and I said “Go ahead and have it done unless you’re planning to lose a bunch of weight or do something crazy like that,” and he was silent for a second. And then he said, “Well, I am going to lose some weight,” and I told him immediately, “Then you keep shooting your pattern stock and don’t change until you get your weight loss down and under control and you’re maintained.”
Now, when you get it down to where you want it, it might be a great incentive for you to stay there, to go ahead and spend another $5,000 having that stock made, knowing that if you put the weight back on, then the stock won’t fit.
Jeff: [laughs] Yeah. It’s always financial. That’s always the motivation, right?
Gil: Hey, dude, “Nothing is ever as good or bad as it seems when it’s happening. Always underreact to everything.”
Jeff: Exactly.
Gil: But that might be an opportunity for you to add a little cherry on the sundae of intent and keep it like it is.
I got to tell you we are staying where we are, and it’s not easy. But when you make life changes and you stick to them and create new habits, I have to tell you, it is easy. Because you look at eating in a different way. You look at what you’re putting into your body. You look at things a lot differently. My knees, ankles, and plantar fasciitis are getting a lot better now, and I think we’re going to be able to start walking again. I’m excited about doing that. It’s just taken awhile for me to get my body back in shape, but it’s coming around, and I’m looking forward to being able to walk and do some cardio stuff and that kind of thing. So, we’re all on the same road, and I think Brian would echo the importance of that. Wouldn’t you, Brian?
Brian: Absolutely.
Gil: And you do that on a weekly basis, don’t you?
Brian: I do it an hour and a half every day.
Gil: It’s just important. I mean, Brian is married to a young woman, so he’s got to keep up with her. Be sure you tell her I said that. Do you hear me?
Brian: [laughs] She would love to hear that.
Gil: You just go in there with a big grin on your face and say “You won’t believe what Gil Ash said tonight on the Coaching Hour.” And when she wants to know, you be sure and tell her I said that, and then when it comes out on the Knowledge Vault, skip to the end of it and play this part so she’ll know what I said about her. Okay?
Brian: I’m going to spread the word real quick, because it’s going to make her night.
Gil: [laughs] All right. Guys, next month we’re going to talk about perceptual cognitive training in sports with Bob Shannon. It’s an incredible study. I want to try to finish up what has to happen for the intermediate and advanced. I’ve got several other things that we’ve been trying to get in, but we haven’t been able to. I will call Dean in the morning, and we may talk to him next month.
So, until next month, we’ll talk to you later. Goodnight, everybody.
