2015 – 10 – October Coaching Hour – How Focus Evolves

Gil: Okay. We’re going to start over. It’s October of 2015. Tonight, we’re going to talk to Jeff Wolfe about a jitters topic. He had some things that he wanted to add last time, but we ran out of time because of all the input that we got from everybody. Then we’re going to talk to Dean Troutte about his last tournament experience. After that, we’ll talk to Shane about going to the Regionals. 

Depending on what kind of little rabbit trails we go down, I’ve got several other topics here to talk about. But I have a feeling that we’re going to end up bantering back and forth, having some fun, and really putting some good stuff forward with the people we have on here tonight. 

I want to share something with you. I don’t know whether it’s the sequence of events or the types of shooters we get, but every now and then, we’ll go through a series of clinics and I’ll look at something in a completely, 100 percent totally different way. That happened to me two weeks ago. I thought the same thought this last weekend when we had a clinic. Brian took over my responsibilities of teaching my group for two days, just to let him feel the pressure and do the deal, and he surprised everyone. He came through with flying colors, and as a result, Brian is going to be doing shooting clinics for us here in Houston every other week with five people for two days. His mother was very proud of him, as was I. He is really coming into his age as an instructor. When you combine his target setting skills with understanding this system, he says “Dad, this system is incredible. It takes the target setter out of the game.” 

How Focus Evolves

Gil: So, anyway, what keeps coming back to me in different ways is focus. And I know that you’re probably rolling your eyes, but this is really something I want you to understand. Focus is an evolutionary thing. With everyone on the phone line, we have insisted that you learn to move and mount the gun, not shoot with a mounted gun. 

Aside from the fact that you don’t look at the gun in the setup, we’ve been saying for quite some time that muzzle awareness is the culprit. Muzzle awareness and the aiming perception are what we need to overcome the most of when we teach somebody to shoot a shotgun, which is true, but I’ve never looked at it in this way. 

Yes, it’s muzzle awareness. But when you go through the time and put forth the effort to learn to move and mount the gun and have it be 95 percent perfect 100 percent of the time without even having to think about it, it will free up focus for the target. Said another way, the reason people are stuck in the seventies is because 30 percent of their thought process is on what they’re doing with the gun, which leaves only 70 percent of their focus to put on the target. This goes back to the focus ratio thing. We’ve all talked about the focus ratio thing. 

I’ve come up with different ideas for why they’re stuck in the mid-seventies. But this really comes home to me. We’ve all talked about it at the Advance Class, on this Coaching Hour, or when we coached with you. We’ve all talked about how muzzle awareness in the setup yields muzzle awareness in the shot. You can’t get around it. But I never really thought about the fact that focus is an evolutionary thing. It evolves.

There’s no way that Dean Troutte can have the same amount of focus on the target that Shane Warnick had until Dean Troutte had the same number of hours working on his gun mount, and competing, and having to go through all the things that Shane’s done. That’s not to say that Dean is inferior. It just occurs to me that focus is an evolutionary thing. 

And we say: “focus on the front of the target,” “look at the target hard,” “see the rings on a target,” yada yada yada. But a person who’s only been doing this for six months cannot possibly have more than 50 percent of their focus on the target. Because 50 percent of their awareness is what they’re doing with their gun, their feet, and all the other crap that they’re having to think about.

We’ve talked about how eventually you do things enough times to where they’re turned over to the automaticity circuit in the brain and they become unconscious, which allows for greater focus on the target. Because as long as you’re thinking about what you’re doing, whatever amount of focus or attention you have to give to what you’re doing takes that much of a percentage of your focus off the target. So, if you’re shooting in the seventies on your best day, you’ve got 30 percent of your thought process on what the gun is doing, what your feet are doing, or on the lead or whatever. 

I see things now like I’ve never seen them before, and that’s before five o’clock in the afternoon when I’ve had my first glass of wine. I’m just saying, okay? I see things in a completely different light. Focus to me now is effortless. I don’t have to try to focus. And it occurs to me that one of the reasons is I’ve looked at so many targets over the last 23 years as a professional shooting coach that my brain has chunked together target focus to another level. When I look at a target, I see the movie. When I stabilize the picture, my eyes go to the front of the target when I see that stable picture. 

The reason I want to talk about this so much is because each one of you, as you go on this journey, what you see as target focus today will change this time next year. It becomes easier and better based on the amount of experience you have. It’s an evolutionary thing, and it gets easier and easier. It’s just like performance. It’s just like the jitters. You got to go through all stages of the jitters, and it does some weird, stupid stuff to you, okay? But you’ve got to go through all stages of the jitters before you get to the end jitters where you’re down three going to the last station and it’s impossible to not know you’re down three. It’s an awareness of the score. 

In the beginning, you’re all about score. Then you dump on the first five stations, almost all the birds. You quit caring and you shoot good. Then you shoot good in the first part of the match, and then you’re not used to shooting good, so you get overly protective, shoot not to miss, you dump in the middle and you finish strong. And then all of   a sudden you find yourself on the last three stations down three, and you’ve never been in that place before, so you get careful and you dump 15 on the last three stations, regardless of how easy they are. 

So, those are things that you just need to go through. It’s part of the maturation process of learning how to compete, being in those places, experiencing and working your way through them. I think that’s one of the greatest benefits of this Coaching Hour. It helps people realize that they’re not in the boat by themselves, and it’s just something you have to go through. I think is one of the great things about last month that we talked about and that everybody got to understand “Hey, I’m not in this all by myself.”

But it’s all an evolution. And I’ve got to tell you that I’m seeing things now that I’ve never seen before. Focus is easy. When I see a target go across the sky, when I have to demo a shot, I’ve already seen the movie. And it’s just a matter of letting the movie play. 

Depending on how much experience you’ve had, just realize that what you see as a gilt-edge or really sharp focus on the targets now, next year at this time, given the same amount of experience, not only will it be easier for you to focus on it, but the focus will move to higher and higher levels.

This is somewhat along the topic that Jeff Wolfe sent me in an email about different types of memory that he has. I’m going to get to him in a just a minute, and Shane has alluded to this, too. Shane, your focus has gotten easier, too, hasn’t it?

Shane: Absolutely.

Gil: I don’t know about you, but when I see a pair of targets, I instantly just know what I’m going to do, and I’ve already seen it break. 

Brian said something I’ve never heard before when he was talking to a guy that was looking at the gun. He said, “You have to distance yourself from the gun.” I’ve never heard it said that way, but in reality, that’s true. To see the bird well behind the barrel, you’ve got to distance yourself from the gun.

Shane: I think you have to distance yourself at first, but then you need to move into acceptance of that, and you have to learn to accept everything else that’s going on while you can still maintain focus. I think that the ability to gain the focus and attain it makes it easier to maintain in the long run. 

It’s almost like you were talking about a while ago with the jitters. When people start out, you’re stuck here because you’ve dumped the first three, four or five stations. And then you quit caring, and then you can run the rest of the course out. Then you get to the middle of the course and realize you’re five stations in and only down one bird. Then the next two stations you’ll drop eight. That’s the whole progression. The focus, for me, followed a very linear progression. And I can tell you that the focus I have now is exponential compared to what I thought was 95/5 when I first started. When I first started, what I thought was 95/5 then is me thinking about balancing my checkbook and shooting targets now. That’s a learned thing, and it’s almost impossible to distract me from the task at hand. Once I’m in the cage, the people talking go away, and the carts driving by go away, and then the trappers go away. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned and look at somebody and said, “You need to say ‘no bird’ next time.” And they were like, “We did. We screamed it three times.” 

“Oh, sorry.” Because I’m so focused on the first target. I break the first target, and I stand there looking for the second target, and I don’t see it. I wait four or five seconds waiting on somebody to say something. I finally opened the gun, looked at them, and I’m like, “Well, are you going to call no bird?” And the trapper is like, “I did, sir.” “Oh, sorry.”

I think that that’s where I’m at now on focus. I think, like you’re saying, it’s definitely a learned thing and it’s definitely an evolution as to how to get there, but I don’t think that there’s a magic formula or pill for it. I’ve heard people say, “Well, you can try looking at the stripes on the road or looking at telephone poles running down the highway” or whatever, but I don’t think that that’s going to get you there. I think that it’s just the time on the gun and doing it. And I think that’s what brings you down the road far enough to where you become so proficient at it that you don’t have to tell yourself, “Okay, I’m going to see it here.” 

I think all that segues back into what we talked about: in order to have good habits, you have to make them good habits. You have to make those habits. When it becomes automatic, then it’s a habit. And I think that the turning point for me on the focus thing was when I made the determination that I was going to do it the right way every time until it became automatic. I don’t know if a habit is the right word for it, but it’s just subconscious. I don’t have to make myself decide where I’m going to see the target and where I’m going to have hard focus. It just does it.

Chunking the Circuits and Confidence

Gil: Let me add something. I think we’ve talked about the phenomenon of chunking on this show several times. The brain is constantly chunking circuits together so that a circuit that may have a hundred parts now becomes one. Then it takes ten circuits to have a hundred parts and it chunks them together as one thing. And then it takes ten circuits to have a thousand parts, and then it chunks them together as one thing through experience. It makes bigger and bigger chunks as it creates skill. I think, to me, in the beginning, focus is not chunked.

But I think, Shane, what you’re experiencing or expressing is something very similar to what I’m experiencing now; the focus part of this is something I no longer have to try to do. It is chunked into the circuit that I call “shooting the bird.” No longer is focus a separate thing. No longer do I have to stand in the cage and say,“Okay, now, we’ve got to see the right edge on that bird. We got to go to three o’clock.” I’ve shot enough chandelles to where I know it’s not four o’clock and I know it’s not eight o’clock. It’s nine o’clock and three o’clock, stupid. I don’t have to say those things to me because I’ve done it so much, and I’ve said the words so many times to so many students here and all over the world. I’ve experienced it so many times. The things people who don’t have my experience need to think about all those little things. But I’ve done it so many times I feel like those little intricacies that were explicit things at one point in time are now implicit things. They have been chunked. They’re part of my chunked move. And your brain is going to continue to chunk what you’re doing. There’s no doubt. It’s an incredible phenomenon, and I’m understanding more about this every day as I think about it. 

I had an incredibly brilliant retired professor whose students are now writing the algorithms and the programs that are controlling all the drone aircraft that the government owns and uses. I mean, this guy was a brainiac. Okay? There’s a mathematical equation for everything. He and I started a conversation on Friday afternoon about chunking and how I’m seeing things in a different way now. 

He said, “You and Vicki are doing things that nobody else in the world in your industry is doing. You’re seeing things. I listened to your Coaching Hour in March when you were talking about the filler. That’s brilliant. That’s what it is. All skill is in the filler. I couldn’t agree with you more, but I had never heard it called ‘filler.’ That’s a great way to put it, because it’s right there.” 

I got to talking to him about this phenomenon of what I really see now. It’s like I have to exhibit no specific thought process. It’s just there.

Bob: Hey, Gil, I’m going to disagree with you a little bit. I think you do have a process, and the process in your brain is confidence.

Gil: There’s no doubt. I agree with that.

Bob: And that suppresses cortisol. The cortisol is what ruins your chunking.

Gil: It’s what ruins it?

Bob: Yep. Too much cortisol with this fight or flight ruins your chunking abilities. It’s called procedural knowledge. And when you have confidence, you have the counterbalancing chemical coming out of your brain, believe it or not, which happens to be testosterone. And testosterone gives you better focus and actually allows you to chunk more material than you normally would. There’s been some interesting experiments about it. 

Gil: Okay. So where am I off?

Bob: Well, you’re not off on the filler, but what I’m getting at is the confidence that you’ve built is what really makes the performance happen under pressure. And that’s the key: the confidence gives you the testosterone, suppresses the cortisol, and it happens at the brain level. It increases your chunking by 25 to 30 percent in research that’s been recently published.

Gil: Yeah. That makes sense. And when I perform this stuff, it’s always in front of an audience.

Bob: Exactly. Performance under pressure.

Gil: Yes. So, it’s always under pressure. 

Bob: And that’s what the big shoots are: performance under pressure.

Gil: Yeah. Well, anyway, I have got to confide in you that what I see now is so much more easily done. And I’m just more and more aware of it, Bob.

Bob: Yeah. I think that’s true, but just keep reinforcing the confidence circuit. It has tremendous benefits to you.

Gil: Oh yeah. I mean, it’s absolutely incredible. It’s something that I’ve been made aware of because of the discussions with some of these guys that are talking to me on a regular basis about some of their experiments. It’s amazing. I have got to tell you what I’m seeing and the ease with which I’m seeing it is amazing. 

I said all that just to say that, guys, there are some great things way ahead of us. Again, like Shane said: what he thought was 95/5 a couple of years ago was probably 60/40 because of where he’s at in his experience, and it’s going to get better. It’s absolutely going to get better. 

More Thoughts on Jitters and Experience

Gil: Jeff Wolfe, talk to me a little bit about some of the thoughts you had on last month’s topic. 

Jeff: Well, I think you guys have walked around it well. [Gil chuckles] No, I’m serious. I mean, the thing that sort of struck me about it was that for whatever reason, at any given time, you can ask me what my score is and I know it. I can’t turn it off. I’ve had a couple reasonably good performances in the last month or two that corroborated it in my mind. It’s just there. I know how many targets I missed, and I’ll always know how many targets I missed.

What’s changed over time from the anxiety conversation to the focus conversation, I’ve allowed the knowledge of my score to affect how I perform in the past. And I can now focus at a level where I don’t have to worry about it. It’s just not an issue. I know I’m down four targets, and it just doesn’t matter. In the past, it did. Now, it doesn’t. 

And if that’s confidence, if that’s, “Geez, I have a 94 with three stations left if I carry it through to the end,” that’s probably good enough to win. I can have that thought and it just doesn’t matter. You know, I know what I have to do in each station and just go do it. Some people talk about trying to tune that out or trying to ignore that. For me, that’s just not something I can do. I just have to be able to accept it and deal with it.

Gil: Well, understand that if you’re used to shooting 74, it’s damn near impossible to know you’re down 23. [Jeff chuckles] But if you’re only down three, you know you’re only down three. 

Now, I’ve shot three perfect scores in my life. Okay? Believe me, I got to the same point you are. I’ve won tournaments with a hundred percent and I’ve won tournaments with as low as 63 out of 100. And that 63 was one of the best tournaments I’ve ever shot because I had to keep leaving those misses behind and giving the next one 110 percent of what I had left.

Bob: And that’s the key thing: you’re not letting any of those things change your attitude at the next shot you have to take.

Gil: Bob, let me add a little fuel to the fire here, okay? That year, Vicki and I and my shooting partner Jim Juhl had traveled to 15 or 16 tournaments, and we travel as a threesome. We put a thousand dollars in an envelope at the beginning of the year, and Vicki’s the banker. If we won a gun, we would sell it for cash and put the money back in the envelope. And at the end the year we had about $350 left for each one of us. But we paid for all our shooting. 

That year, Jim beat me by one bird at every tournament we went to. And the tournament that I finally beat him on was the tournament that I shot a 63 and he shot a 62. And I’m convinced that giving it everything I had for the whole year allowed me to stay focused and have the right attitude about shooting stupid hard targets. Knowing that everybody else had to shoot them, I was determined to give it 110 percent of what I had left on every shot. 

Now, I didn’t know that I was down that many birds because it’s impossible to know. But like Jeff says, you get to a point to where you have to admit that if you don’t miss any more on the next three stations, you’re going to have a 97. You can’t do that if you’re a C class shooter, but if you’re a master class shooter and you won some high overalls and you’ve won some shoot-offs, yeah, you got to know. 

Jeff, wouldn’t you think it’s just more of an acceptance of it?

Jeff: Well, I was going to say two things. One, I think you have to have known about it. You have to have experienced it and failed it before you can overcome it.

Gil: Oh, there’s no doubt. I agree with that a hundred percent. 

Jeff: That to me is really the key, right? I have to have experienced it and failed. And then the next time you’re there, you know what failure feels like. You can work around it. You can motivate yourself out of it. Whatever the internal thought process is that works for you, you can address it. You’ve been there, and you know what wrong feels like. Something else has to be better. And I think that was huge for me. All the big issues that I’ve experienced while I’ve been competing that turn into the breakers, the things that knock me out, you have to go through them. You have to experience them negatively.

But I’ll also say I knew this weekend that I was down 17 targets after five stations on the second half of a two-event shoot, and I ran the rest of the course out because that’s what I wanted to do, and the stations weren’t easier. It wasn’t that the hard stations were at the beginning. It’s that I made some dumb decisions on some true pairs and gave away a lot of targets. But the difference, I think, is that I didn’t throw my gun down. I didn’t throw it over the stand. I didn’t jump into the cart and sulk. It was just, “No, we’re done. That station is behind us. It’s in history. No matter what you did, it doesn’t matter. It’s done. It’s on the board. You can’t do anything about it, so forget about it.” 

It’s easy to say, but for me being able to just move past it and address the next stand at the new station is the part that really makes the difference for me and lets me do that.

Bob: That requires two things, tenacity and optimism.

Jeff: Yeah. I am kind of pathetically optimistic. I will agree with that.

Bob: [laughs] No, there’s no such thing in winners as “pathetically optimistic.” Because they have to get better. It happens to everybody.

Gil: Yeah. I agree. I mean, I am an extremely optimistic person, and I’m very optimistic with Vicki’s money. So…

[laughter]

Vicki: Apparently!

Gil: And she would be the first to agree with that.

Vicki: I certainly would.

Gil: I’m a very optimistic person. But I can be doggedly determined and optimistic at the same time, which I think is what you’re referring to. It goes back to “You’re not going to learn it until you failed, failed better, and failed one more time better until you finally succeed.”

That goes back to one of the things that I said last month about the jitters: you can’t lie to yourself. Shane is a big one for saying that. You can’t lie to yourself and tell yourself it’s like you to hit that target. That doesn’t work. It works in Hollywood, the movies and in books. But when it’s you and the other guy in the shoot-off stadium, that stuff doesn’t work. It’s how many times you’ve been there and failed. That’s the thing about experience.