Gil: Welcome to the November 2017 Coaching Hour.
Rick Carter, I’m going to start with you, and then I’m going to go to Dean Troutte. Both of you have a shoot report. I want to discuss with you, Rick, your observations on deliberate practice, which are parallel to Doss Bourgeois’ thoughts on it. We’ll talk a little bit about that and then Bob will go over something that he sent me that’s a really good log addition. It’s about understanding the ups and downs of your shooting. Larry Peck and I shot last weekend and we’re going to update you on his cataract surgery journey. And then I want to share something that Grant O’Neal sent to me about disruption, friction and change: the hallmarks of true transformation. If we have time, we’ll touch on some of the things that Larry Peck discovered when he searched “practice” and “training” in the Knowledge Vault. So, that said, we’ve got a pretty full evening, and I don’t think we’re going to get to it all.
Getting Jammed and Using Modified Chokes
Gil: We’ll start with Rick. You sent me an e-mail and said that you had a really good shoot. Tell us a little bit about your shoot. Which one was it? And tell us what happened.
Rick Carter: Well, actually, Dean and I were both at the same shoot. I watched Dean shoot FITASC a little bit. It’s out here on the West Coast at a great club called Quail Point. They held their final shoot of the season called the “Seafood Blast” And it’s their version of a seafood shoot, where you shoot all kinds of events. At the end of the day on Saturday they throw a big feast. And you can shoot FITASC, sporting, super sporting, true pair separator course. They’ve got a lot of room where you can do all that, and it was a lot of fun.
I didn’t want to shoot all the same thing so I shot four different events. And I did really well in the FITASC, but even more so in super sporting. So, go figure. I did great in super sporting and got a punch there. There was one target on the main that threw me off. And it was a bird that was coming from the left on a trap that was somewhat hidden, and it was rather close. It couldn’t have been more than seven to ten yards away once it was in front of you. So, coming from the left, the bird was canted to the left, and it flared out to about 3/4th belly right in front of the station as a crosser. And then once it flared out. it tailed off as a quartering target away. One guy had a fixed choke Parcour and I thought, “if he can hit it with that modified, so can I.” And he was taking it right in front of the station. So I was fully confident that I could step up and take it right in front of the station, so I’d be set up with the second bird better. Well, I missed it three times. And I’m just not sure what was going on. Why did I miss this easy target that cost me another punch? Because I certainly did. The super easy 7 to 12 yard targets in front of us. Why could I hit it as a quartering target when it was taken as a pair? But as a single, why couldn’t I hit it as a crosser in front of me?
And when I was writing to you, I kind of began to answer my own question. I think I was getting a pretty busy picture. I think there was too much going on in the picture. Once I held out another foot, maybe a foot and a half or two feet more, I was able to quickly soft mount, let the bird come to the target to the barrel a little bit more. And then once I kept the gun moving, I recall specifically seeing another foot or so of space between the bird and the muzzle. Before, I had been shooting right at it, and couldn’t allow the picture to get stabilized correctly to shoot it the way I wanted to. But when I went back on the course after the shoot was over, the owner let me go out to shoot that target again and I figured it out. It was simply a matter of shooting the target in a transition point. And I just couldn’t pick up the line. Couldn’t do it.
Gil: Would it be fair to say that shooting the target where you were shooting it, it all happened very quickly?
Rick: It would be fair and accurate to say. That’s exactly what I was saying. Too quick.
Gil: Okay, so, one of the reasons that our system has evolved to the soft mount is the target setters are giving you less and less time to shoot these targets. Rather than the traps being way off the center of the field and throwing into the center of the field, where the targets have lost 40 to 60 percent of their speed, they’re putting the trap in the field and throwing it out. This makes you have to get everything done in a very short time window.
Well, the reason we went from “move, mount, shoot” to “soft mount and stabilize the picture” was because we realize that the more things you have to do in a very short amount of time, the more perfect everything you do has to be. And so when you soft mount, you don’t have to hurry on a 50 yard tower bird or 50 yard chandelle to get everything done, so you have time to stabilize the shot. So I suspect what was happening to you, Rick, is you were getting jammed. And if we’ve got a target that’s really fast and really close to us, we’re always going to suggest you pull the muzzle back toward the trap some if you can, and give yourself time to run with that target another 10, 15 or 20 feet to get the stable picture. It sounds to me like you didn’t have that luxury because the target was on you just about when it came out of the trap.
To answer one of your questions, yes, I would have shot skeet at that without even dropping a hat. I’d have taken the choke out and shot threads at it. No, that’s not true. I would always have a choke in the gun. But I would have shot skeet.
I go back to a situation when I was at Lafayette with Doss Bourgeois, Mark Landry and Mark Cruz. We were shooting targets against the berm, and the targets already had an illusion that they were going much faster than they were. And they were all shooting their modifieds at it and were hitting it, but they weren’t on in the station, and the target was like 15 yards away from you.
I said “Put your skeet choke in.” Can there be that much difference at 15 yards between the skeet choke and a modified? Yes, there’s a dramatically larger pattern with a skeet choke. Even at ten yards there’s a dramatically larger pattern. A modified choke at ten yards, is a tennis ball. And a skeet choke at ten yards is a little bit larger. It’s about the size of a basketball. Now, would that have gotten you the targets? I can’t speak definitively on that, but that’s one of the reasons that our approach on using choke is “either choke it or don’t choke it.” If it’s close, shoot it with skeet. If it’s not close, shoot it with modified.
And granted, the guy before you was shooting the Parcour with fixed chokes and hit it. Yeah, that’s all well and good. But I’ve always been one to open up choke simply because I’ve done so much research on choke. And while it doesn’t seem like much, if you hit it seeing a foot, and the pattern was 15 inches wide, if you were shooting right at it you might’ve hit it in the butt. And that would have at least given you a picture or something; some reference point to come back from the next two and center the target.
Am I going to tell you that I’ve never shot a modified choke at a 15-yard target? No, because I have shot modified chokes at 15-yard targets. But if I have to have the target to win, I’m just not going to do what you did, which is leave a tight choke in. I’m just not going to do it.
It’s one of the things Craig Hill had to learn years ago. And he liked to shoot Imod and Imod and he lost two or three tournaments in a row by 4 birds. Three birds and four birds. And he wouldn’t put a skeet choke in his gun. He wouldn’t do it. After losing those three tournaments in a row, guess what? If it’s close, he’s shooting skeet at it. If it’s not close, he’s going back to eye mod. There’s a definite advantage, and I would tell you this also.
I’m sharing this with Larry Peck, who we’ll get to in just a minute. But if you practice on longer birds with your modified chokes and your whole practice is on longer birds, always finish the practice session up with a box or two with the skeet choke on birds that take very little lead. That way you can get used to how they break. If you shoot close targets with a tight choke, they’re going to smoke. That’s okay for training and programming. But especially before tournaments, you also need to shoot a couple of boxes of shells for your skeet chokes- targets that are 18 to 20 yards away. That’s going to give you the greatest amount of pointing error with your choke.
I went over this with Larry Peck when I saw him in Garland Mountain last weekend. We have learned to start people further on longer presentations- 35 to 45 yards – because the separation between the barrel and the gun is so much less confusing to the eyes when someone’s trying to see the bird to the left of the barrel and across the barrel.
Larry Peck: Yeah, you mentioned that down in Garland.
Gil: Since we have evolved to where we are (same speed at the end and soft mount), it’s so utterly consistent when you don’t have time to practice. And it’s so easy to visualize. We have graduated to the point to where we show the animations and the ShotKam shots over and over again to a new group of shooters, and they’re breaking 40-yard shots in the first box. Five out of eight, eight out of ten.
What we’re finding is that the separation between the barrel and the bird is much more easily seen by someone who’s not used to seeing it than it would be if a target only needed a foot to a foot and a half of lead, or an inch to an inch and a half of lead. It’s much less confusing, which flies in the face of everything I was taught as a beginning instructor. But with all the animation technology and all the drills we have in the ShotKam shots show them the stable picture over and over again. With all of that we’re able to keep a single person in a lecture for about 15 to 20 minutes. If it’s a group of 10 or 15, for about an hour, until they all get on the same page. And we’re experiencing phenomenal results.
Recovering from Cataract Surgery and Training the Periphery
Gil: Now I’m going to skip ahead to Larry’s journey with cataract surgery. I shared with him that he probably should be shooting further and further targets, because it would be less confusing in the periphery. He told me that since his cataract surgery the side mirrors on his truck are driving him crazy because he’s so aware of the things in the mirrors. Am I telling that right, Larry?
Larry: It’s gradually declining. But after the second eye was done, as I’m driving down the road, I can see the motion in both side mirrors. So it’s like you had this increase in brightness and clarity. But it’s like your peripheral vision has expanded or something, at least in my case. And your brain hasn’t figured out what to cancel out, so it’s all one big cinema.
The other thing I noticed when shooting longer birds was that it was much easier to see the bird-barrel relationship. But when you got in the crossers that were 30 yards or any closer, I just couldn’t see the bird-barrel relationship that I used to be able to see. And I continue to shoot, and I’m beginning to see it. And I was beginning to see it at the lessons with Gil. You have a little 30-yard crosser just kind of meandering across, not necessarily streaking across the fields. And it all looked good to me, and I would pull the trigger and miss it.
Then what happened to me, Gil, when I had that lesson with you, is I actually began to lose confidence, and in turn, I started measuring. So one lesson is just because you had cataract surgery, don’t believe that your shooting is going to immediately get better. Well, not necessarily. I think it will all correct out in time, but, you know, there are no more missed birds that I cannot see. I can see as well as anybody else out there. I did learn that you can actually correct your vision with glasses to a better point. I can actually correct them 20/15, and I’m doing that, and putting those in my shooting glasses.
But at least on those close crossers, it’s almost like I’m going to have to relearn the relationship or something, or my brain has to adjust to the lead somehow. I don’t know, I never really measured lead, but it would look good when we were shooting out there. I was hitting maybe half the targets.
Gil: Probably a little higher percentage than you’re giving yourself credit for. But you were not the way you were before all this began, I will concede.
However, in working with Larry on this I had a real revelation. Early on in my shooting career I could shoot birds faster than Bob Brister can see them. I’ve always had incredible vision and I thought that had to do with what I saw. But I’m beginning to understand now that what we perceive, not only in shooting, but in everything that we do visually, has more to do with training the periphery to not see certain things as opposed to training the sharp vision to see certain things.
You hear people say “focus harder on the bird.” Well, I’m here to tell you, you can’t focus harder on the bird. Now, you can focus just on the bird, but there’s a nirvana I’m convinced that quite a few people and I have achieved in wing shooting and clay shooting. And you do it through an evolution.
Larry kept telling me “My periphery is just crowded. It’s confusing. I’ve never seen this much stuff in my periphery.” Well, I’m sure that has a lot to do with the clouded lens that was removed from your eye not enabling you to see much in your periphery. You were able to see something that was straight on much better than you could in your periphery. But when everything got cleared up, now you’re going to have to train the brain more what not to see than what to see.
I understand, and I hear your frustration. But as I said a couple of months ago, learning to focus on a target while shooting it with a shotgun while it’s moving has more to do with explaining to the brain what not to see than it does explaining to the brain what to see. And as we were talking about skill building, I also added that the more skillful you become at something, the fewer visual cues you need to perform at peak level. That means you’ve trained the brain through deliberate practice. More what you don’t want it to be concerned with than what you want to be concerned with. It sounds like I’m talking in circles, but in my mind this is a big deal. Because when you’re shooting a shotgun at a moving target, all the movement happens in the periphery.
Larry: So, how do you bring your brain not to see it?
Bob: Well, wait a second. The other half of quiet eye research proves Gil absolutely right- the studies of experts in particular sports versus mid-level operators or even novices. The amount of eye movement that goes to the non-specific, non-appropriate things is much higher (in a mid-level operator or novice) than it is in the expert. That’s the other half of quiet eye
Gil: Yes, yes. So Larry’s question is how do you train the brain to do it? Through repetition and patience. What you have to work with the most, Larry, is patience. It’s there. It’s in your brain. But you’re already beginning. You’re already doing this. It’s just going to take a little bit longer.
I would tell you to have a practice regimen, and you’ve already started doing it with more distant targets. It makes the left of the barrel and across the barrel pictures much, much easier for you to understand. So now we’ve got to start backing off on that and do some long birds, and then take the same bird and do the Tony Morrow gut check. Instead of starting at 20 yards and going to 40, you need to start at 45 yards and go to 25 yards. Same bird, same break point. 45 yards, go to 25 yards. Then start at 40 and go to 15, but on the same particular bird.
When you’re trying to reprogram the brain, either from a trauma or from the increased awareness in your periphery, I’m convinced there’s something to train that periphery on the same bird but a different distance, which will change the timing, speed and sight picture. But once it clicks in on two or three different distances, I’m convinced that you’re going to be able to take advantage of that. and cut your learning process much shorter.
It goes back to the Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson’s golf ball toss. You use a 5-gallon bucket with a little water in it so the ball won’t bounce out of it. Then you stay two steps away from it and toss the ball in the bucket. You take another step away and toss another ball in the bucket. And you do this consecutively until you get to the point where, instead of just tossing the ball in the bucket, now you’re trying to think the ball in the bucket, because you don’t have the confidence to just turn loose and let it go. And it shows you where your threshold is.
When I read that book, I had a lesson with Tony Morrow the very next day and I said “Let’s see where your threshold is.” We started at 20, and I marked this one target off, left to right curler, belly bird from 20, 30, 40, and 50 yards. And I said “Go to 20.” Smash, smash, smash. “Go to 30.” Smash, smash, smash. “Go to 40.”
At 40, I could see him getting tight. That was his threshold, but he lucked out and hit it the first time, so he hit it several more times. Well, at 50 he just fell to pieces. So, that told me his threshold of comfort was somewhere between 35 and 45 yards. What he had to do to expand his threshold is exploit targets at that distance, until he became very comfortable not only with the tempo and rhythm that he had to shoot them, but also with the sight picture and how long it took him to get the gun and the bird going the right speed.
So I think this would be a great opportunity for all of us to learn from Larry, and get him to go out and find a really long, high bird that’s easy to see. They’re all easy to see for you now, but get one that doesn’t have a confusing background and get to where you own it at 45 yards, and then go up to 20 yards and shoot the same bird.
Larry: If you remember Garland Mountain, I think the big looping birds in the sky were no problem. And that’s because I think the sky, there’s nothing in the peripheral. But the bird crossing in front of the stand of trees is a different story.
Gil: And you’re going to have to exploit that.
Astigmatism and Training against the Background
Larry: I agree with your approach, but I think what was in the background was a big deal for me.
Gil: You’re not used to seeing that.
Bob: Did your doctors correct your astigmatism when they did your cataract surgery? Because sometimes they do. Your brain learned how to ignore all the stuff that was distorted. It’s not distorted anymore.
Gil: Explain that, Bob.
Bob: Astigmatism comes in so many different forms. But most people with astigmatism on stuff that is distorted learn to ignore it, because they figured out by hook and crook, crook or crook and sometimes by trial and error that it didn’t work out to be beneficial. But if they corrected the astigmatism, now all those things are normal and no longer distorted. So you can’t ignore them anymore. You brain’s got a completely different picture.
Gil: Wow.
Larry: Yeah, I had astigmatism in one eye, which was corrected. I use a different lens for that eye versus the other eye.
Bob: Yeah, they may have done a little bit of correction in both, but I can’t tell that. Only you could find that out. But I can tell you that your brain learned how to ignore the stuff that was distorted because it didn’t help you. In fact, it got in the way. Now all of a sudden it’s not distorted anymore.
Gil: And it’s feedback that he hasn’t had to deal with, right?
Bob: Yep.
Gil: Wow. So not only do you have to deal with seeing things in the periphery…Bob, do you think that could be why he was so aware of things in the periphery? Because with the astigmatism, the brain blocked all that.
Bob: You trained your brain out of it. The plasticity in your brain is now coming back and saying “Wait a minute. They’re not that way anymore.” The good part about it is your brain is re-trainable. Not you, but the brain.
Gil: Yeah. Oh, this is a huge thing.
I had a fellow at South Florida last year who was choosing material to go inside his redecorated yacht and wanted me to help him with skeet. He wanted to learn to shoot with both eyes. And his lead was perfect, but he was 4 feet under the bird every time. In order for him to hit the bird with both eyes he had to hold real high over the line. And it wasn’t until lunch break the second day that he told me he had a really bad astigmatism. Well, that would have been good for me to know in the beginning!
“Well, how does it affect what you see?” I asked
“You see that exit sign over there?”
“Yeah.”
He said “It looks horizontal to you, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It looks vertical to me.”
So at that point, I told him to close his left eye, and he ran 25 straight. He was happy and I was happy. But I never have understood what astigmatism does to your vision. I guess I need to call Rich Colo and have him explain it to me.
Getting back to where you are is just going to be a matter of you going out and doing specific deliberate practices. And I’d like you to try the 45 yard shot and then go to 20 yards on the same shot, and then 45 yards on the same shot and then 20 yards on the same shot. Start getting some sort of a relationship between you and the target and the gun and get it working. And if you need to do it against trees, do it against trees. Whatever it is. But even more so, you’re going to need to take notes of what you’re doing. Does that make sense?
Larry: Yeah. Well, today I did just some right-to-left crossers. I was looking across the barrel, and it was below my feet, and I just used a couple of boxes of shells and deliberately tried to focus on the front of the bird and to see a relationship. I wasn’t trying to measure anything, I was just trying to see if I could see the barrel in the picture. And I got to the point that I was hitting it pretty consistently and able to see a peripheral image of the barrel. But I couldn’t even tell you what the lead was. It was very fast. So, you know, I think those types of exercises are helping.
Gil: Okay, then you’re going to need to carry on, as they say. And just put it in the background. If the problem is the background, then force yourself to train against the background. That’s what deliberate practice is. Rick Carter had a really great “aha” about deliberate practice. I’m going to read it to you a little later but I want to go to two more things before we switch subjects completely.
So, seeing fewer visual cues and having higher and higher level performances is the second half of the quiet eye. But the thing that blew me back was that all the movement in the picture, once you focus on the target, occurs in the periphery. All of it. And when the gun and the bird are going the same speed, there’s no movement, which makes the picture that much clearer. I’m sure I’ve said it before and I’m sure that I’ve understood it, but I’ve never understood it in this way. And what we’re doing with the animations, the ShotKam shots and drills is getting people’s periphery to accept the gun in it without pulling the primary to it.
That’s why, if you soft mount the gun well ahead of the bird and the gun is quiet as the bird’s coming to you, then the bird is the only thing moving in the picture, which makes it easier for you to focus on. And as it approaches the gun all you have to do is go the same speed and kill the bird. There’s a lot more to this that Vicki and Brian and I are going to spend some time thinking about, because we’re on to something here. We’re on to something because we’re getting such immediate good results from shooters who should not be able to shoot as well as they’re shooting once they go through the animations and the drills. It’s absolutely amazing.
Deano. You went to the same tournament that Rick Carter did. And you’re in Double A now, right?
Dean Troutte: Yes, sir.
Gil: And how did you do?
Dean’s Updates and Learning Lessons on Scheduling Shoots
Dean: Well, I can tell you first that I had the same problem that Rick had with that bird. That was one of the corrections that I made. I was telling you about how I did really well. I had no last two pair misses. All my misses were first birds and corrections. I had that same problem with that bird, and it wasn’t a choke issue; it was a “getting jammed” issue.
I have mounted my gun so many times over the last few years that I know exactly where it’s supposed to go. And I haven’t really discussed this with you because I just started playing with it, but instead of soft mounting, I hard mount with my head turned toward the machine, and I shoot it. Kind of a hybrid of Brian’s dropper, where I’ll bring my head to the gun, and on those jam shots, as soon as your face gets to the gun, it’s there.
I called Brian a week or two ago about incomers. Something that I found shooting incomers, and that’s a whole different…I won’t even touch that this time. That wasn’t the issue.
Gil: Talk about it.
Dean: Well I have a problem with slow incomers that stop and drop. I shoot them too soon. I have a hard time waiting on them. So I called Brian and told him I was having a problem with these. And he said just as it starts to drop, shoot the feet out of it. What I realized was that if I hold under the line of that incomer, it doesn’t matter where it is, off machine or about ready to drop. If I come up to the line of the bird, come up to the bird and just as the barrel touches the bird, “fire,” it breaks. You understand what I’m saying? Brian said it’s almost like a swing through, because I come up to the line and as the barrel gets to the bird, I crank off the round and it breaks. It could be 40 yards out. Still works.
Gil: Another one of those Brian Ash anomalies.
Dean: Oh, I told Brian about it. He said he was going to go out and shoot some. I never heard back if he ever got a chance to go out and try it.
Brian Ash: No, no. The hardest thing about it is that you have to shoot pretty much right at something that’s moving. That was the confusion.
Dean: Yes. It’s still something I’m working on. It’s also part of a vertical field that’s out a little ways. I’m shooting it too soon. I’m laid off now until the middle of January, but as soon as January rolls around, I’m going to start practicing those and get those out of my system.
Gil: If you can break that teal bird going up, you’re going to gain three or four birds on your competition, because very few people can break it going up consistently.
Dean: I can easily break it going up. It’s trying to shoot it just like an incomer that comes in and then the bottom drops out of it. Trying to break it as it starts that drop. That’s my problem.
Gil: Well, that’ll be something we’ll work on when get together next. We’ll definitely work on that.
So, you had problems with the same target that Rick had problems with.
Dean: Yes, sir. And I’ve had those in the past. Those are those peeling away birds and I’ve always led those too much. If you shoot them as they’re starting to peel away it’s more of a shoot right at them kind of deal, as opposed to trying to lead them. So, diminishing leads.
Gil: Brian was the one who started that target. That was one of his signature targets. You see it as a big belly crosser. And by the time you get the gun on it and get ready to shoot it, it’s already turned and it’s lost at least two-thirds of its lead. He’s known all around the country for setting targets like that. So it was interesting that you both had the problem with the same one, but at least you both shot well.
Dean: Yeah, I did Double A one in the 12 gauge FITASC, the 28 gauge FITASC and the regular 28 gauge, I think.
Gil: Wow, that’s great. You won’t be in Double A very long. You’ll be in master class pretty soon.
Dean: I have to share my biggest “aha.” It started at Nationals, and I emphasize that I was getting tired towards the end of the shoot. At Nationals, every day I started at eight o’clock. And I think three of those days I finished late in the afternoon. I registered late so I was stuck with what I could get and by Saturday, I really noticed not being able to focus. Friday was my best day.
Vicki: Have you registered for next year?
Dean: I have. The first day I was really tight. You’re just there and it’s all kind of overwhelming. The second day I started to relax a little bit. The third day we had a 30 mile-per-hour winds. And I still managed to pull an 82 out of the 410. And I did really well on the K Cup until we got out into the winds. And then Saturday it started downhill.
Gil: Well, I’ll let Vicki tell you about her experience, but in my experience, I’ll typically start out rough on the first of the four mains, and by the time I get to the last main I’m shooting in a really good rhythm.
I shot the Kreighoff Kup, and I shot the super sporting great. But we still had 20 and 28 gauge main event and 20 and 28 gauge FITASC and that’s 800 targets. I’d shot 500 targets. I mean, I’m not used to shooting that many. I’m not used to shooting at tournaments at all, okay? I don’t have any registered targets this year. All of a sudden at the end of Nationals I had 800.
But I have to tell you, after super sporting, I was done. I mean. I’d laid it all out there and I did the best I could. And shot a fairly respectable score in the Krieghoff Kup and the super sporting for an old guy. But I looked at Vicki and I said “I’m just tired.” There was no more gas in the tank. We did the mains in two days had one 8 o’clock rotation, and the rest of them were 10 and 11 o’clock. But we shot the 20-gauge hundred birds and the 20-gauge FITASC on one day, and then we shot the 28-gauge hundred birds and the 28-gauge FITASC another day. So that was 150 in two days.
And dude, let me tell you, when I got through that stuff Thursday afternoon, I was worn out. But it goes to show you that to be able to be there mentally and physically you’ve got to train doing that many events at a shoot. Now you’ve become a little bit better from a planning standpoint. So you have one 8 o’clock rotation and you register early enough that you don’t have to get up and do that 8 o’clock rotation. But when you went to Nationals you drove for two days and were pretty keyed up when you got there, weren’t you?
Dean: I wasn’t that keyed up. I actually showed up a day early, on Sunday. I had nothing on Monday and I started on Tuesday. I did that on purpose so that I could get there, get to the range and figure out where everything is, where I have to be, and get all my registration taken care of. Because I knew I was shooting at 8 o’clock every morning. I didn’t want to show up there Tuesday morning at 7 and try to get registered and get out to the course. So I gave myself a whole day.
Gil: That’s a good plan.
Dean: This is my second time to Nationals. And honestly, both times I didn’t feel keyed up. I didn’t feel that the pressure. But on my second or third day I reflected back and, man, I was tight. In fact, my very first event on Tuesday with FITASC and the first parcour where I shot 14, and I just was not swinging my big heavy gun like I should. I put it away and pulled out my automatic, which is lighter, and I could swing better. I wasn’t swinging right. I was just tight. The mind was there but the body wasn’t.
Gil: Oh, that’s never happened to me.
Dean: I went to a lighter gun and my scores came up as a result. Yeah, I learned a lot.
In this last shoot on Saturday, there are two 100-round events; one in the morning, one in the evening. I couldn’t get out of taking my Mom to the airport at 4 AM and then going to the shoot. So by afternoon I was tired. It felt exactly like it did Saturday and Sunday at Nationals. I just wasn’t focusing. My focus was not there and I could feel it. And I know what it feels like now.
Gil: Yeah, and you learned a big lesson about how to plan your big shoots. And I think that if you get a chance to visit with Rick Carter any time at another shoot you ought to sit down and talk about what he did. We talk about what Rick did two or three years ago to see how he could perform the best: what he needed to do, what he needed to eat, and all that stuff that he figured out.
Dean: I actually listened to that Coaching Hour on my way to Texas. I remember the Coaching Hour that he talked about it.
Gil: Well, we’ve been doing them since November 2001. You’d think we’d covered almost everything but there are still some new things that are coming to us.
A Log Exercise for Comparing Best and Worst Performances
Gil: I wanted to spend a few minutes with Bob Shannon, who sent me a great list to help you define the ups and downs of your shooting. Bob, where did you get this?
Bob: It’s an adaptation from a particular piece of a book called “Heads up Baseball: One Pitch at a Time” by two sports psychologists who also coached college baseball teams (if I remember correctly). It’s an interesting book. The authors are trying to zero in on players who struggled with different kinds of situations and help them understand them better. So this is something I latched on to several years ago, and the books are worth reading if you have the opportunity. You can get them on Amazon, which is nice because you used to have to order them specifically from them.
So it starts out with defining your best and your worst performance. And the first question is “who are you shooting against or with?” The second question is “what were your thoughts before the shoot on the best day and the worst day? What were you thinking or saying to yourself the time of your performance?” (Again, that’s best and worst)
“How would you describe your emotional state at the time? What was your focus during the performance?
“What if anything was different about the way you experienced
your performance?”
(i.e. was the target bigger, did the action seem faster or slower than usual,
or did any other thing seem to be different for you?)
Gil And all of these topics are on one side of the page, and there’s a column next to each one of them that says “On Your Best Day” and “On Your Worst Day,” so you can contrast your actual thought processes and your actual emotional states when you’re having your best and worst performances. Is that right, Bob?
Bob: That’s absolutely correct. That’s the whole idea. Well, the other thing which I think is important is “what were the differences in your mental approach to your best and worst performances?”
Gil: This pretty much lays it out. Yeah. You can’t lie to yourself. If you’re honest, this would be something that would be good to put in your log, I would think. You know, after you’ve gone to shoot a big shoot, like Dean just got back from, go back through and answer these questions. In fact, I’m going to give this back to Becky, and guys, if you would like to give her an e-mail and ask her to e-mail you the “Reflective Practice,” is that what it is, Bob?
Bob: That’s what this stuff is.
Gil: “Reflective Practice”
Bob: Yeah, it’s trying to catch on to things quicker that could help you change what’s going on. And you know, the log is certainly excellent. And if you sat down once a quarter and really analyzed your log, you’d probably get the same things. We’re trying to tease them out a little bit faster so that you can start thinking about how you’re going to make changes. Or as Albert Einstein said, “If I want to be different than I am, I have to give up myself in the process.” I have to change myself.
Closing Thoughts: Contrast Sensitivity, the Periphery, and “Peak”
BOB: Well, let me throw one more thing out there about Larry’s situation. I have this teaser in the back of my brain that he was also having a change in contrast sensitivity. And sure enough, I did a quick search and it turns out that the most common lenses that are put in now are called spherical intraocular lenses for cataracts, and they markedly improved contrast sensitivity. So he’s seeing all kinds of movement he didn’t see before.
GIL: There’s a lot to this. I mean, think about it: we’re talking about having new lenses put in his eyes like he’s trying a different kind of tea. It just happens every day. So, there are a lot more things we’re going to have to learn about this I’m just I’m just glad that Larry is willing to share them with us, because we can certainly help other people further along the way.
Dean: He’s not only getting new lenses, but he’s also changing the corneas in the process. So he’s changing two different parts of his eyes.
Gil: And it sees more. But the paradox is, for us to perform at higher levels, we have to actually see less. We have to train the brain what not to see.
That’s the part of this whole journey that floored me the other day when I was riding around in the golf cart with Larry. You know, I’ve often said being able to see the target better is more about telling the brain what not to see than it is actually seeing the target. It’s the excessive movement in the periphery that creates the confusion. Whether it’s mounting the gun on the target, when you see the target decrease the confusion, or whether it’s learning the target jammed you or get ahead of you and then race out in front of it. It’s excessive movement in the periphery that interrupts the focus on the target.
Since I’ve talked to Larry about this, I’ve been thinking about it pretty much nonstop. And we’re getting such great results by explaining to the periphery what it is it needs to see and not see. Our system has evolved to where, as the target approaches the gun, the target is the fastest thing in the picture, which makes it easier for you to concentrate on the target. And as the target and the gun come together, they’re both moving the same speed, which makes it even easier to see that target. And everything else out there is doing nothing but confusing the visual input to the brain. I’ve got to think about this a lot more.
I want to leave you all tonight with some phrases that Doss sent me about the “Peak” book, which he listened to on a hunting trip to Canada and on the way back:
“Deliberate practice. Solitary practice. Must have a good coach. To be good: tremendous amount of effort over years. You must practice in the correct way. Go to the top gun school or the 74 Ranch advanced class. Constantly push outside your comfort zone. Use of simulators, watching the Knowledge Vault videos: huge. Develop skills through practice.”
Those are some of his reflections on his first time through “Peak.” He’ll be through it two or three more times in the next month, and we’ll get some more reflections from him.
It’s time for me to sign off again. Rick, Dean, Bob, Larry, all you guys, thank you very much for opening up and sharing your journey with us.
I’m looking forward to next month. I’m so excited to get to some of these topics. We just might have an extra Coaching Hour before the end of the year, because I’ve got quite a few things I want to discuss with all of you. So that said, y’all have a great Thanksgiving. Don’t forget to thank your family for letting you pursue something that you’re pursuing like shooting sporting clays. It’s a great hobby, but it takes a lot of time. We wish you all happy Thanksgiving and we’ll see you in December. Good night.
