In this Coaching Hour, Gil and Bob Shannon talk to Mark, a trap shooter, and troubleshoot his problems with flinching and trigger freeze. The conversation touches on interesting topics about the brain, muscle tension and grip pressure, among others.
Gil: Welcome to an impromptu Coaching Hour. Mark, we’re recording this and are going to put it up on the website for all to listen to. The other two fellows who answered the Facebook post are unable to be here with us today. But I want to go ahead. Bob Shannon is with us, Vicki is with us, and of course, Gil is with us. We’ll probably do another one of these after you’ve had some time to think about it, and we can also get Marcus (from the UK) and Don (stateside) on the same Coaching Hour with Bob Shannon. We’ll probably do the next one in the evening so we can open it up to everyone who’s been on the Coaching Hour since November of 2001. We do podcasts every month and put them up in our Knowledge Vault website. And they’re very educational.
Mark, you entered a post on Facebook about flinching. You said you had a flinching problem, and I told you I could help you and to e-mail me. And you were one of the three who had the courage to e-mail. So I’d like for you to give us a little profile that we can get on the recording.
Mark: Okay. I’m 57 year old. I started trap shooting when I was a freshman in high school. At that time, I had some problems with flinching. The gun was kicking me severely. I ended up going to college and getting out of trap shooting. And back in 2000, I started shooting again for about a year. I gave it up again – not because of flinching, but because of other things. Then about three years ago, I started shooting again. Didn’t really have a lot of problems, didn’t hardly flinch at all. And it seems like in the last year or so, I’m flinching probably every 25 shots. You know, during a round of trap, I’m flinching two or three times. And just about every time I do flinch, I do miss the bird.
I shoot from the 24 yard line. I don’t flinch when I shoot handicapped. It seems like I only flinch when I’m shooting singles. And it’s on quarter angles. I don’t flinch on hard lefts or hard rights. I’ve flinched a few times on straight aways, but it’s mostly on the quarter angles, and I typically flinch on a trigger freeze, and flinch on the first shot of doubles. And I never flinch on the second shot of doubles. So that’s kind of where I am now. It seems to be progressively getting worse.
Gil: So what you’re telling me is that the flinching really occurs more on the sixteen yard line. Not the hard right, hard left or center- it’s the tweener angles.
Mark: Right. It’s that little off angle. I call them quarter angles. It’s always on the first shot of doubles. I’ll either trigger freeze or flinch on the first shot of doubles, probably twice out of 100 rounds.
Gil: And have you tied that flinch down to a particular station?
Mark: No, I haven’t noticed any rhyme or reason to that. If I were going to guess, I’d say probably station two, three or four. Sometimes if I’m shooting really well and I’m going 24 straight, that 25th bird will come out and I’ll flinch on it if it’s a quarter angle or a straight away. If it’s a hard left or hard right on station 1 or 5, I won’t flinch or trigger freeze on it.
Gil: Describe the difference in flinch and trigger freeze.
Mark: With trigger freeze, I just can’t pull the trigger. This gun will not go off. The first bird on doubles will come out; I see the bird come out. I know when I want to shoot it. Now, I’m not spot shooting that first bird. I used to spot shoot that first bird, but I don’t do that anymore. I’ll see the bird come out. It will rise, I’m waiting for it to get to my gun, and I’ll raise my gun a little bit to meet it. And that gun will not go off. I cannot pull the trigger. That’s the trigger freeze for me. The flinching will be when I see the bird come out, I go to get the bird, and at the last second before I pull the trigger, I’ll jerk the gun and I’ll miss it. That’s my idea of flinching.
Gil: Interesting. When you have trigger freeze, does the gun jerk at all?
Mark: Yes. And I’ll fall forward just a little bit. I mean, it’s not like I fall over, but I kind of flinch and my whole body will kind of go forward. That’s how I would describe it.
Gil: When you’re calling for the target, are you looking down the barrel? Or are you looking under the barrel? Are you a high hold? Or you hold low and go up to the bird? What?
Mark: No, on the sixteen yard line, I’ll typically hold a little bit lower. I don’t hold on the lip of the trap. I hold up a little bit higher and then my eyes are up out in the field. I’m not looking over the top of the barrel; I’m looking out into the field. And when the bird comes out, my eyes go to the bird and my gun moves to the bird.
Gil: If I’m shooting 16 yard line trap and I’m on Station 1, my gun is going to be about a foot over the front left corner, but my eyes are going to be to the right of the gun so that they pick the target up, so that they’re looking at the center of the angle of the targets. Are your eyes close to the barrel or are they separated from the barrel?
Mark: No, it’s always directly over the barrel. It’s not to the left of the barrel or the right or the barrel. I look up over the barrel in line with the barrel.
Now let me add this comment: I’m a right handed shooter, but I’m left eye dominant. And I purchase those things called Off Eye. They’re screens that I put on my left lens. You can see though them and still shoot two eyes, but the screens actually make your right eye dominant. So it’s not like a piece of tape where I can’t see through it. So, they’re little black grids that you put on your glasses. I don’t think it’s affecting my vision. I can see the bird clearly, but it allowed my right eye to be the master eye. So I still look over the top of the barrel. I’m not looking to the left or the right waiting for the bird to come out. I’m looking out into the distance, waiting, you know? I don’t want to see that streak when the bird comes out, I wait ‘til I see it. And then I clearly look at it, see it and go to it.
Gil: Okay, when you get set up, are you looking down the barrel to make sure everything’s in the right place?
Mark: Yep, right as I mount the gun, I try to get that figure eight and then I get my eyes off the barrel and out into the field. And then I wait a couple seconds and then I call for “pull.”
Bob Shannon: How many seconds do you wait?
Mark: I wait about two seconds. I mean, it’s not like I yell “pull” right as I mount the gun. I make sure I got a figure eight. I make sure I got to keep that soft quiet focus out to the field, and then I call for the bird.
Bob: How many times do you not see the figure eight the first time you look at it?
Mark: So, gosh…my gun fits me perfectly. It’s pretty much lined up every time I mount the gun, and I do probably 300 dry-fires a day on the Terry Jordan wall chart.
Bob: Are you using a snap cap on the chart as well?
Mark: Yes. I shoot an over and under Browning 725 pro trap. But you know, it fits me, and I do a lot of the dry firings.
Bob: You can’t tell me that there’s any time when you’ve got the gun mounted that the figure eight isn’t there?
Mark: I mean, if I have to make a slight adjustment, I do that before I call for the bird. But typically it lines up pretty quickly, and right spot on.
Bob: Okay, I’m trying to pin you down. It’s typically 99 percent of the time?
Mark: Yeah. If I have to make that last little second adjustment, I’ll do it and then my eyes go up and I look out into the field and I’m ready to go.
Bob: You know where I’m going, Gil, don’t you?
Gil: Yeah.
Mark: Am I taking too much time looking at the barrel?
Gil: Well, we’ll get there in a minute. I’ve got another question. When you say you do dry-fire on some chart…
Mark: Yes, the Terry Jordan chart; it’s an actual chart with an actual photograph. It’s like an eight foot long vinyl chart that you can hang up and it’s got an actual photograph of the trap field in Sparta, Illinois, where the Grand American takes place. And it’s got clay pigeons, it’s got birds, about eight or ten of them across. It’s got lead points, where you’re supposed to lead. I set up about 13 feet from the chart and make moves to those dry firing spots. I do it for handicap, I do it for doubles and I do it for singles. And I dry fire anywhere from three to four hundred times a day on that chart. So, I use a snap cap, but I’m making fluid movements. I’m going to the birds and it’s basically like I’m shooting a gun, except there’s no recoil. I’m doing a lot of that, so, I pick that shotgun up a lot. Even before I go out to the trap to actually shoot.
Gil: Wow. Okay. I think all of this is going to play into a conclusion or something that we might want to talk about a little bit. We find in coaching sporting clays – a little trap, a little skeet, but mostly sporting clays – that if there is muzzle awareness in the setup, there’s gonna be muzzle awareness in the shot eventually. You don’t want anything in your pre-shot which you don’t want in the shot. And if you stop and check for the figure eight just prior to looking out and calling pull, then that’s a signal to your brain: “Okay, when the gun comes in, we need to check and make sure the figure eight’s there.”
We’re not diagnosing; we’re just talking about this now. Okay? So, there’s a couple of things. Obviously what’s happening that causes the trigger freeze or the flinch is an interruption to the sequence that you have trained. Because if there was no interruption, the sequence would occur, and the target would break. You with me? Now, you have to understand that the brain views skill as a sequence of events. When repeated enough times, they’re no longer a sequence of events; they are one thing. The best way that I’ve heard it described was a summary that was done on the anticipation circuit by David Eagleman.
“You live in the past. You don’t know this because your brain lies to you and then covers up the lies, which is a good thing. If your brain didn’t fudge reality, you wouldn’t be able to hit a baseball, drive a car, or even carry on a conversation. According to research by David Eagleman, it takes about 80 milliseconds for the brain to generate consciousness, to take the information flowing in and construct the model of reality from moment to moment. Everything you think is happening now already happened 80 milliseconds ago, and you’re just now becoming aware of it over and over again.
Since you live in the past, it should be impossible to do things like hit a baseball, duck a punch, or hit a moving target with a shotgun. Yet athletes do these sorts of things all the time. David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene (he’s a geneticist and I’ve read this book), explains professional baseball players and boxers don’t have faster reaction time than the average human being. No human being can make the circuit from the eyes to the brain to the muscles fast enough to hit a ball in mid-flight or avoid an oncoming fist. You can’t change those neural limits with any amount of practice. So how did they do it?
Epstein explained that practice strengthens intuition, not reaction times. Even among chess players, practice builds up a cognitive database that nonconsciously informs our decisions and reactions. Experience and mastery are demonstrations of a robust, well-trained, unconscious mind that senses tiny cues in the environment and then prepares an action that will occur later, syncing up reality the way you stitch together sounds and sights. All sports are a display of the brains predicting the future based on intuition built up by practice. Brains compensating for lag by seeing what is happening now before the ball is thrown, before the pitch is launched and making a best guess on what will occur later.”
So your brain is constantly anticipating ahead of where you are, and its ability to do that has to do with how many times it’s found itself in that position. For instance, driving a school bus at 22 miles an hour, the driver has to anticipate about 50 to 100 yards ahead of where they are. Take that same driver and put him in a race car that goes 150 miles an hour. His brain is very uncomfortable, because his brain hasn’t been trained to anticipate ten miles down the road. You see the difference in those two? So, practice is more about doing things the exact same way in the exact same cadence as you want them done. Because practice allows for the brain to anticipate what’s about to happen. Even though you are seeing the target, the brain already knows where the gun needs to be. And as long as nothing gets in the way of that anticipation, the hands put the gun where it’s supposed to be and the trigger’s pulled.
Now, let me explain a little bit more about this anticipation circuit. This anticipation circuit can make things that are not synchronous seem synchronous. For instance, Mark, if you and I were in a gymnasium and we were standing at the end of the basketball court and I started dribbling the ball away from you, and you watch me dribble the ball… Well, the difference in the speed of sound at 1,100 feet a second and the speed of light is dramatic. Out to about 90 feet, this circuit in the brain will make the sound of the ball hitting the floor, and the visual of the ball hitting the floor seem the same. Once I pass somewhere just past 90 feet (and I’ve forgotten the exact footage) the lag time between when the sound gets to the ear and the visual of the ball hitting the floor is too great for this part of the brain to make them become synchronous. Therefore, you hear it behind when you see it.
This same circuit in the brain creates converging lines. Everything you do in life is a converging line, especially trap shooting. But when you reach over to pick up a water glass, when you take a step, when you trot up the stairs, it’s all converging lines. Okay? This automaticity part of the brain and the anticipatory part of the brain are constantly using converging lines to help us get through life. And Bob, I think this is correct: this subconscious part of the brain works only five milliseconds behind real time.
Bob: It does.
Gil: Give or take a few milliseconds. The way I understand it, the conscious thinking brain works as much as 300 milliseconds behind real time.
Bob: Correct.
Gil: So, once the brain gets a read on the target, the brain’s already ahead of that target. Because it’s seen it a million times. So the brain says go. The gun begins to go. But for some reason, there is some conscious thought or diversion after the brain has said “pull the trigger” and before the trigger gets pulled. Because of the difference in five milliseconds behind real time, and 300 milliseconds behind real time, everything stops. Whether you call it trigger freeze or a flinch, everything stops.
Mark: Right.
Gil: That make sense?
Mark: Yeah.
Gil: The flinch and the trigger freeze thing is very confusing to people. And it’s my opinion that it usually starts around 55, 50, 58, when the headlights get just slightly behind the trained response time. As we age, our eyes don’t focus quite as quickly. As a result, the sequence that we’ve trained before is milliseconds ahead of our ability to actually see the target well, creating a slight amount of doubt or a desire to check and make sure it’s right before we pull the trigger.
Mark: So why did it get worse? Like, once I first started shooting three years ago, I hardly flinched at all. Now it’s progressively getting worse.
Gil: There is something you are doing that is creating this problem, which is why Bob and Vicki and I were so interested in what you’ve been doing. So let’s just go down the things you’re doing. I can’t tell you exactly which one it is simply because the problem you’re having is you’re going from the automatic anticipatory circuit in the brain to the conscious circuit in the brain. And there’s something that’s going on that’s creating this.
Mark: Well, I’m real familiar with breathing technique, I’m real familiar with visualization. One thing is I have a tendency to hold my breath. From the time I mount the gun until I pull the trigger. I don’t know if that’s had any influence on me being able to pull the trigger or not.
Gil: The first place I would go would be “are you checking for a figure eight when you’re doing your dry-fire stuff on the wall, 15 feet away.”
Mark: Yes, I am.
Gil: Stop doing that.
Bob: Agreed. There’s this physiological or psychological principle involved, Mark, called recency. If you do something and you’re doing at a very high frequency, the likelihood is, as Gil has pointed out, you’re going to recheck just as you should have taken the shot. You’re gonna recheck on the figure eight. And it’s very subtle. That’s at least one of the things going on.
Mark: I mean, I probably agree with that. But unconsciously, in my mind, I don’t think I’m looking at that bead. I’m looking at the bird, the whole time. Are you saying that I’m probably looking and I just don’t know it?
Bob: It’s two-tenths of a second or less to check back, and by then, the bird’s past the barrel.
Gil: Let me add something to this. There is an eye movement called a “rapid, saccadic movement.” And you can see what I’m talking about. If you can pick up two objects in a room that are maybe two feet apart, when the eye goes from fixating on one of the objects, focusing on one of the objects and bounces to the other object and comes back to the original object that it was focused on, the brain shuts down for two-tenths of a second. And you can actually see this. So pick out two objects that are about a foot apart and look at one of them. Stay focused on one of them and then quickly glance at the other one and come back and you’ll feel as your eyes come back to the first object. You’ll feel a little disorientation in your brain.
Mark: Okay.
Gil: You see that?
Mark: Yeah.
Gil: You do not have any memory of the object that you bounce to and bounce back. Right? That’s what I think is happening.
So, let’s put it into in layman’s terms. If that eye bounce occurs after the brain has said “fire” and before the trigger is pulled all the way to release the sear, when the brain shuts down for two-tenths of a second, everything in your body is going to stop. Now, let me try to explain the jerking motion and the leaning in. You lean in when you have trigger freeze and the gun jerks when you have a flinch. Let me see if I can explain those. The explanation of what really is happening has helped more people get by a flinch than anything, because they don’t know what the hell’s going on. Okay? So let me see if I can explain it. Can you give me a feel for how much pressure you hold onto the gun and hold the gun into your shoulder? A “zero” is the gun laying in your hands, and “ten” is holding the gun as tight as you can. How tight are you holding the gun when you when you mount it and call “pull?” A two or three?
Mark: No, I’d say about six or seven.
Gil: Lighten up on that. [Chuckles]
Mark: I’ve had a few guys tell me after I’d mount my gun on the side, not out there on the field, “Man, your shoulder muscles are way too tight; your arm muscles are way too tight.”
Gil: Yes, sir. In our discussion, we have discovered the culprit. Let me finish with the definition and I think it’ll put everything into perspective. So, you want to have your body tension and your grip pressure and your mount to be somewhere between a two and a three. And the reason for that is you want your muscles to be at what we call neutral: ready to expand and contract in any direction. If you’re holding on with a seven or eight, in order for your gun to move, your muscles have to relax and then move. That make sense?
Mark: Perfect sense.
Gil: And I’ve gotta believe, in different score situations and on different surrounding situations and on different days, your grip pressure and body tension isn’t going to be exactly 6.9. It’s going to vary. The better you’re doing, it’s probably going to go to a nine. And the worse you’re doing, it’s probably going to go to a four, and then go up to a ten. You see what I’m saying? There is a variable there that you were not aware of.
The guys telling you that you got too much tension in your shoulders were diagnosing what was going on, but they couldn’t make sense to you why you needed to change that. Because you equate tight grip, head in the gun, cheek weld with good, consistent performance.
Mark: Right.
Gil: Okay, so, I’m diverging here. But I want you to take your hand, Mark, and just lay it on the table. Now I want you to push down on the table. Keep it there. Push down on the table and keep it there. Okay? When I say “now” the next time, I want you to relax every muscle in your hand and arms. Ready? Now. You see how long it took you to relax?
Mark: Yeah.
Gil: All right, now just lay your hand on the table, and when I say “now” this time, push down on it. Ready? Now. Boom, you were instantly there.
Mark: Yeah.
Gil: Understanding that it takes longer for you to relax all the muscles than it does for you to tense the muscles. You with me?
Mark: Yes.
Gil: So now there is a time between when the brain says “now” and the gun goes off. There’s a certain amount of time. I’m going to guess it’s somewhere about 180 milliseconds. That’s just my guess. That’s not scientific. We call that the recoil sequence. And during that sequence, your brain is tightening your grip, it’s tightening the shoulders, and it’s leaning slightly forward, getting ready to take recoil. And it does it the exact same way every single time. So, when you have what you call trigger freeze and you had that slight lean, something after the brain said “now” and before the trigger broke something interrupted the brain’s ability to continue to anticipate through the shot. So you couldn’t pull the trigger and you leaned forward a little bit. When you flinch, the same thing happens, but the recoil cycle has just now begun the tightening of the grip and the pulling into the shoulder. So what you feel when the brain shuts down is the sequential tightening of the upper body getting ready for recoil. And that makes the gun jerk.
Mark: I see that more in the first shot in doubles, because I know I’ve got to get to that second bird. So I mount the gun. I check that figure eight, and I’m so intently focused, it’s like I just can’t pull the trigger sometimes.
Gil: So, let me help you with that. The concern you have, which you just said is “I’m worried about getting that second bird. I got to get that second bird.” That right there is going to induce tension in what you’re about to do. You’re not thinking about the first bird. You’re already thinking about the second bird.
Bob: It’s also going to screw up timing.
Mark: Right.
Gil: It’s all about timing. Everything you do with a shotgun is about timing. And I realize that we’re talking about hundredths of a second. But that’s why this flinching thing is such a mystery. Many people don’t know what they feel when they have trigger freeze or when they flinch. And as a result, after it’s happened to them two or three times, the resulting trigger freezes and flinches are actually the person trying to not trigger freeze or trying to not flinch. Because they don’t understand what’s happening.
Mark: Yeah.
Gil: That makes sense?
Mark: Yeah. The fear is what it is.
Gil: Everything is fear. You hit the nail on the head, buddy. Let me tell you. It’s fear. And when the fear emotion enters the computer, three things happen and you can’t stop it. We’re getting ready to give you some facts now, okay? The instant the fear emotions enter the computer, the first thing that happens is your hands speed up. What is it?
Bob: Your brainwaves speed up first.
Gil: Ah, yeah, your hands speed up. Your brain speeds up, your hand speeds up, the muscles tense up. And the eyes lose the ability to fixate. So when the fear emotion comes in, you can’t see. You can’t focus. You can’t see. And when the fear emotion’s in there, you ain’t going to grip the gun lighter. You know what I mean?
And don’t think that what we’re talking about is criticism toward you. This is just an open discussion for all of us to seek knowledge and solutions. Okay?
Mark: Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about, because I’m doing exactly what you’re saying.
Gil: Well, damn it, don’t get mad at me. [Chuckles]
Mark: I’m not. I hear what you’re saying. It makes perfect sense to me. I know what’s happening, but…I mean, I can sit there and mount the gun and say “Okay, relax, breathe. Don’t grip the gun too tight.” But then I’ve got too many things going on in my mind. It needs to become automatic.
Gil: Hang on, we’re not ready for a solution yet.
So, when the fear emotion comes in, your hands speed up, your big trunk muscles that the gun’s anchored to freeze up, and the eyes lose the ability to fixate. Okay, so we’ve got to figure out how to control fear. Fear is not trying to get the first bird as quick as we can in doubles, so we have time to go to the second bird. That’s not going to work. If you have a place when the bird gets there, you’re going to pull the trigger regardless of what it looks like? Number one you’re going to stop checking it. And number two, if you shoot it there, you’ll always have plenty of time to get the second bird.
I would liken that to a window shot in sporting clays. If we see it come out from behind one tree, and it’s going to go behind the wall over there, and if I’m going to try to shoot that bird before it gets out of the window, I’m going to smoke it on the right side of the window the first time. I’m going to knock the butt off of it the second time and I’m gonna miss it clean the third time. However, if I’m not trying to get it before it leaves the window, if I pick a break point, which is within the window, and say to myself, “When it gets there, I’m going to pull the trigger,” when my plan is within the window, the window doesn’t exist. Make sense?
So a stricter adherence to the break point on your first bird of doubles. And you know you’re gonna spot shoot it. I mean, it’s just right there. You know exactly where it’s going to come out of that house. And you know exactly where you’re going to hold. And you’ll hold a little bit different. So, when you’re shooting doubles, are you going to shoot the right bird first every time on every station?
Mark: I’ll see the bird that’s the closest to a straight away.
Gil: Okay, so when you get to three, do you shoot right or left first?
Mark: I shoot the right bird first.
Gil: On four and five, you shoot the left bird first.
Mark: Correct.
Gil: Okay, so on line or just off line, so you can see the bird come up, just cut it off.
Mark: Yeah.
Gil: Okay, so if you can lighten up your grip pressure, it’s kind of like wearing women’s underwear for the first time; it feels a little strange. But if you can lighten up your grip pressure a little bit and don’t jam that gun into your shoulder as hard as you are, then the muscles you’re going to need to react in a tenth of a second to kill that bird will all be at neutral, and the gun will just go where it’s supposed to go. You’ll be able to anticipate better because you will not have to relax a different amount each time, because a muscle, when it’s tense, must first relax before it can move.
Mark: Right.
Gil: So, holding on with a six or seven or eight makes you have to do something before you can move. I’m going to tell you that, in my opinion, there is the root cause for your problem.
Mark: Is it the amount of tension I’m holding the gun?
Gil: Yes, sir. All right, so, do something for me. Put your hand on the table again with the amount of tension that you’re holding the gun. Now, feeling that tension, do you think you could move the gun smoothly holding onto it that tight?
Mark: Probably not.
Gil: Alright, now raise up to about a two or a three. Do you see how your muscles are relaxed and they can move any direction they want to move?
Mark: Exactly.
Gil: That’s where you want to be.
Bob: And you got to do it in all your playing time. All those training exercises you do at home, you need to be making the effort right away to start reducing the tension there. It’s gonna be easier to do it there than it is in the actual shooting, initially.
Mark: Right. I agree.
Gil: Mark’s looking for a new normal. You’re going to miss a few birds in your training because you’re thinking about things that you’re doing with the gun. But it won’t take you long to make this adjustment once you feel what this adjustment will give you. It will make your first move much smoother.
I want you to report back to us, because we’re going to do this recording again with two or three other people. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and tell you that when you relax your grip and mount and head pressure on the gun to a two or three, you’re going to see the bird sooner. And because you’re at neutral, the instant you see it, you’re going to see the line sooner and you’re going to be freer to go and take the bird out. Has your break point in front of the house gotten a little further out, now that you’ve come back to shooting?
Mark: You mean the speed at which I shoot the bird?
Gil: Yes, sir.
Mark: I think it’s been pretty consistent. I’ve tried shooting quicker to stop the flinch.
Gil: You can’t do that.
Mark: The kill point’s about the same distance from the house.
Bob: As when you were 20 feet?
Mark: Yeah, try not to shoot quicker than my ability level. I’m pretty good with the move to the target.
Gil: That’s good. And that’s really a perception. So I predict when you back off on your grip pressure, you’re going to see the gun be able to move a little sooner, because you’re going to see the target sooner. And you’re going to have less interruption in the anticipatory circuit. Bob, what do you think? It’s been me just talking all the time. Bob’s the medical part of the team. He’s a retired physician and he reads all the medical studies and then calls me up and changes all those ten dollar words to penny words so I can understand them.
Bob: I think this is the first thing to do, and it likely has a big impact. There are a couple others, but they’re not worth discussing until you have gone through this relaxation phase. Because I agree, it’s a big thing.
The only thing I would add is something I want you to do for me just as a check. You use a mesh on your left lens, and when you’re at the 27-yard line, no gun in hand, I want you to just look out with both eyes and have somebody pull a few targets for you. And I want you to just notice whether your left eye seems to be picking up more target information. My whole principle behind that is that target is now much smaller in the arc of your vision. And the mesh may not be fine enough at that distance, but that’s a real minor thing. I think the big thing Gil’s nailed, there’s some other things that happened, as I believe a result of that. We’ll come back and discuss it after you give us a report back.
Mark: One of the things I thought is “well, maybe, even though the mesh allowed my right eye to be the dominant eye, it’s impairing my vision enough to cause part of the flinching.” But if that were the case, I’d be flinching more.
Gil: Yeah, but let’s not go on a witch hunt or a ghost hunt yet. Now, the one thing that I would ask you in reference to your dominance issue… Are you sure that you’re left eye dominant?
Mark: I’m 100 percent sure.
Bob: What test determined that?
Mark: You know, the old typical “look at a spot, put your finger up, close your eyes, see if it moves.” When I don’t have my shooting glasses on, I can mount my gun and I’m looking right down the left side of that barrel.
Gil: Okay, hang on. But when you mount it, are you looking down the barrel? Because you realize that when you mount the shotgun and look down the barrel. The shooting eye has the bottom part of it covered up by the receiver and the non-shooting eye, when you’re focused on the bead, will see the side of the barrel. But that doesn’t mean it’s dominant.
Mark: Right. But the other test is looking out, using your finger, close one eye…I know that my left eye is dominant.
Gil: That’s fine. I’m not going to mess with that yet. Whatever configuration you need, you need to have it so that you can see the bird clear. The other thing that sometimes will happen as the eyes age and they’re a little bit slower reacting, is, if you have soft focus, each axis of the eyes will be separated. And when they focus, they have to come together to focus on whatever you want them to focus on. You might also try focusing on a distant object lowering the gun, a little bit. Doing a little something. Focus on a piece of grass or a broken target out there, 60 yards in front of the trap house. And see what happens. Just try it and see. You might be surprised to realize that the eyes come back and focus in one move, they go out and focus in two moves. And as we age, sometimes our visual ability to create that jump to focus requires a small amount of change in our approach. So that’s something else that we’ve run into. You might wanna try that. But definitely work on your grip pressure and the amount of tension, and I think you’ll instantly feel how much easier it is for you to move the gun. Instantly.
Mark: The Texas State Shoot is in Amarillo this weekend, and I’m going to be shooting Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Gil: Don’t do anything ’til you get through with that shoot. [Chuckles] You don’t want to be changing something going into the shoot. Where do you live, Mark?
Mark: I live in Carlsbad, New Mexico. I’m from Amarillo, and Amarillo growing up was my home gun club. So I’m familiar with the gun club. I’ve shot there many times.
Gil: Well, I’ll be curious to know how it feels. You know, the last thing you want to do is start tweaking a game when you’re going to a match that you want to shoot well in. So you might want to wait till it’s over. Just hang in there and make sure you’re not looking at those beads in your setup. And, you know, you could try to relax a little bit. But I think it’s the tension in your hands and arms and shoulders, having to relax before you go to the target that’s creating an inconsistency upon the arrival of the gun to the target.
Mark: And that breathing and relaxation… you know, right before the shooter before me shoots, I’ll take a deep breath, try to relax and do all that. In my mind I know I can relax.
Gil: Well, you’re trying to relax, but if you hold that gun as tight as you’re telling me you’re holding it, you’re tensing right back up each time. Does that make sense?
Mark: Yeah. Perfect sense.
Gil: All right, so what about we’ve talked about makes the most sense to you?
Mark: The most sense is the tension. If your muscles are tense, and I understand the concept of when you try to relax, when you tense back up, things are going to be tight. And I can understand moving to the target. I’ll be a little bit tight doing that, checking the figure eight. Maybe unconsciously I’m coming back to the bead when I’m trying to shoot a quarter angle. I don’t know. I mean, all that makes perfect sense to me. And I realize those are the things I need to work on.
Gil: And understand that this is all research for me and Vicki and Bob. We’re professional coaches and we understand the timing circuits in the brain, thanks to Bob’s help. The difference in a successful shot in a trigger freeze or a flinch is maybe a hundred milliseconds. Not even a tenth of a second. And it’s that critical, because your ability to perform skillfully at high levels has everything to do with the brain’s ability to anticipate further and further and further in front of where you really are. It goes back to: skill is the brain’s ability to focus ahead of where you are. And it’s able to do that based on how many times you repeated it. Eventually skill is based on episodic memory, which means you’ve done things that have so many circuits in them automatically and unconsciously enough times to where you remember what you’re about to do in an episode, not all the little tiny sequences they’re in. It’s important that we isolate the one thing that we all think will make the greatest change in what you’re doing.
So we’re excited to hear back from you, and once we get the other two guys, we can get on the phone and talk. We’ll probably do this one again in another couple of weeks, after you’ve had some time to play with it. We’ll just see. I mean, this is why they call a doctor’s business a “practice,” because the doctors are always practicing on you. Even though you’re paying for him to do that, he’s still practicing. Well, we are practicing on you. So, anyway. If you have any “ahas” when you’re practicing or implementing this, please text me or pick up the phone and say “let’s talk. I discovered something today.” I think that you’re getting ready to discover something that’s going to make you shoot a lot more consistently. At least that’s the way I feel about it. Dude, thank you for having the courage to do it. Very few people have the courage to talk about themselves and what they’re doing and the problems they’re having, especially to a perfect stranger.
Mark: I love to trap shoot, but when I’m shooting, I’m so stressed out that it almost becomes not fun at a certain point. If I could just learn to relax and enjoy the sport, I may actually start shooting better.
Gil: You will.
Mark: I mean, I’m a class A shooter. I’m a championship shooter. I’ve won numerous events. And it’s just frustrating to me that this happens, because if I didn’t flinch, I’d probably run 100 straight quite often. And that’s what’s keeping me from being perfect on a hundred straight.
Gil: There’s a million different degrees of tense. There is only one neutral. And what you got to do is find your neutral. Because when you find your neutral body tension, when you find it, your brain’s going to get quiet.
Mark: Well, I’m so competitive, too. And I know you have to be competitive in the shooting sports. But I’m very competitive. I don’t like to miss. I don’t linger on misses. I know I can’t bring the misses back. So I don’t really get concerned about that. I just want to get to the point where I can shoot better and be more consistent and try not to flinch.
Gil: The more you try not to flinch, the more you’re going to flinch. What we’ve got to do is get your body neutral where it needs to be, relieve a little tension in your shoulders and your neck, and you’re going to find you’re going to see that target really quick. I do want you to practice looking at a specific spot on the horizon to see if that helps you pick the target out better. Are you going to go practice between now and the Texas State Shoot?
Mark: I’ll practice probably the day before there in Amarillo. It’s doubles on Friday, singles on Saturday, handicap on Sunday. And I’ll probably go out Thursday afternoon and do a little practice before that.
Gil: Just loosen up the grip a little bit. Don’t be afraid. Just loosen up. See what happens. And stay in touch. Send me a text and let me know what happened.
Mark: I will.
Gil: All right. We’re going to close it out. Thank you for emptying your soul and letting us listen to what happened to you. We got to get you to calm down and be able to be relaxed every time you call “pull”. That’s what the goal is. So that said, we’re gonna wind up this episode on flinching. And Bob, I thank you for being here to help, and Vicki and Mark. We look forward to our next phone call together.
Mark: Appreciate it.
Gil: All right, buddy. See ya.
