Gil: Welcome to the Coaching Hour. This would be March, 2021.
Tonight, I want to lead in with two things. First, I understand that Dennis Manuel is on the line. I was supposed to have a lesson with him the Wednesday before the first Advance Clinic, and his wife called me and said he was in the hospital with a heart attack. I understand he’s on. I’ve had a couple of conversations with him and he’s back among the living. I threw a prayer request out there on Facebook and it was answered. So, Dennis, we’re glad to still have you. I sent you some pictures of that gun today, or just a little while ago. So, you can forward that text on to the people that are interested in it.
Just talking to Jack about having a vaccination, and we both had had ours. He’s had both of his and his wife had the first one. I want to share something. Shane Warnick called and said to me his dad had had both shots and became symptomatic, but he didn’t do anything about going to the doctor or getting drugs or anything for it until six days after he was first symptomatic. They put him in the hospital and he died five days later. So, just because he has a vaccination, doesn’t mean you can’t get it. It just lowers the probability.
About six months ago, I went into my doctor and she and I have a little sit down. “Nothing wrong. I’m good. I just want to talk to you. I’ll be glad to pay the office visit, but I want talk to you.” I asked her what happens if I become symptomatic with this stuff. And she, without skipping a beat, looked me in the eye and said “I haven’t lost anybody on hydroxychloroquine zinc and zythromiasin yet. The instant you feel symptomatic, get your butt in here and here’s my phone number. You call me anywhere. I’ll get to you somehow.”
So, if any of you are in that boat, you haven’t gotten your shots or you’re not eligible to yet, I would advise you to go and talk to your physician. See what their attitude’s going to be if you come in and test positive. You just want to make sure that their attitude is not “go home, get plenty of rest, drink lots of liquid, take aspirin and go to sleep.”
Just because you have had the vaccine doesn’t mean that you can’t get it. If you become symptomatic, do something immediately to go to your physician. I went to mine early, just to see what her approach would be. And I was comfortable with what she said. And now there’s even more good stuff out there.
I don’t know whether Stan Katz is on tonight, but he’s just coming out of it. The minute he was symptomatic, he got on a different cocktail. He said it was it was pretty tough. There were three or four days there in the middle of this when it was the worst. If he wanted to get up for any reason, he had to be leaning against the wall just to make sure he could move one foot in front of the other. He said if he wanted to drink a glass of water, he’d have to hold the glass with both hands. That’s how fatigued he was.
He’s coming out of it. He went and shot a couple of tournament courses last weekend at Able’s and shot pretty well. He was all worried about losing his sight pictures of the things that that he worked so hard on. He said he can barely shoot 100 birds a day. But he was getting stronger, and things were looking up and he hadn’t lost his sight pictures.
So, just be careful with that stuff out there. You never know. And like me, I went and talked to my doctor and asked “What are you gonna do if I have a problem?” And when she answered me immediately, I wouldn’t worry about it in the least. So, it’s a little peace of mind anyway.
Gil: Bev is here, and she was at the Advance Class. We had two short classes. The most people that we could have on the ranch was nine, and us three coaches. Up until we got there, they were down to no more than 10 people on the ranch at one time. They made an exception with us for our two weeks.
When we found out that it was going to be limited, there were some shooters that were not able to come, because they had waited too late for the signup list, but they all understood. It was just another cog in the chain of being in COVID. We talked about having only two instructors, but decided it was good for all the participants to spend a day with each one of us. So, we all went.
The “theme” for the two classes was “there’s a difference between knowledge and understanding.” We played a lot on that all week. And it was a good class. Brian is on and Vicki’s on, and if you guys want to add something, speak up. I can by no means cover it all.
There was a lot of discussion on working memory. And it was pretty deep. But it was very, very good. And I want to share some of those conclusions and some of those things that happened with you tonight.
We played a video of a researcher who was challenged to ride a bicycle that had been modified so that when the handlebars were turned to the left, the front wheel went to the right and vice versa. It took him eight months of failing and flailing for his brain to rewire itself so he could ride this bicycle. It took his four-year-old son only two weeks. All of this is in the video. If you’d like to get a copy of the video, I’ll certainly send you a link, just email me tomorrow. And once his son had learned to ride the bike in two weeks, he then traveled to Belgium for some reason, and he tried to ride a normal bicycle. He could not keep this balance, and he kept falling over. But after about 30 minutes of falling, something clicked in his brain, and he could ride the normal bicycle.
It just goes to show you that once that circuit is wired, it’s in there. You just got to fail enough times for it to come back out number one, and it takes an older person a whole lot longer to learn something new, or change something to something new than it does to take a small child to learn something almost instantly. So, that was the theme: There’s a difference between knowledge and understanding.
In every morning session we worked for quite some time on the concept of priming or word associations. And it really helped everyone there both weeks. We spent a lot of time discussing long-term memory and working memory. And the more we discussed the topics, the more people understood just how much shooters overload their working memory.
Brian Brewton is on. Jack, Eagle, Max, I’m gonna call on you guys here in a few minutes to kind of outline what people add to their working memory when they’re under pressure in a tournament.
It’s amazing what came out. It’s amazing the reception that people had and it’s amazing the difference that it made in their shooting. When you can put what’s in your working memory to a minimum, the brain can do extraordinary things.
We’ve talked here about prediction and execution, and how this is the most efficient way to build long-term memory, and how the long-term memory builds the file to hit the target and then hands it back off to the working memory to actually take the shot. The problem most people have is they’re loading too many verbal things about how they are going to take the shot into their working memory. This is why we stress in deliberate practice to visualize the prediction and then execute the prediction.
If the prediction consists of verbal commands, the working memory is overrun with too many things, none of which are visual. Remember, the brain cannot do anything unless it first has a picture.
Gil: Jack Flesher, let’s say that you’re facing a fairly easy pair. Before we started using primers and word associations, what would you have done as far as planning the shots? What would you have thought about in the setup of the shot? Hold point? Focal point?
Jack: You know, no. I mean, there’s a certain point, Gil, where when you’ve seen a 30 mile-an-hour easy quartering-out target, right-to-left, paired with a left-to-right on report. You know, I’ll just use that as an example. I’ll call that the cupcake shot, right? The cupcake station. You’ve seen that enough that you see it, “Okay, I know what that is,” and you know where to hold.
It’s not even really a conscious thought. The thought process for me would be something like, “Well, I’m going to break that one there. And I’m going to transition over and break that one there. And it’s going to be boom boom.” And then I’ll set up for it. And I’ll call.
Gil: So, how would you handle that same situation if the pair was, instead of a simple pair, a little bit more complex.
Jack: So, I probably then pay most attention to a good transition. I got to make sure that after I killed the first one, I can get to a good transition point for the second one. And if it’s a really tough target, I might even visualize the two targets while I’m actually swinging the gun to confirm that I can get it where I want it after I kill the first.
Gil: Okay, how would that change, if any, if it was an intermediate pair, and you were down only seven birds with two stations to go?
Jack: Well, a year ago I would have had a lot more conversation with myself. [Laughter] Now I know. I just got to step up and do it. Rinse and repeat.
Gil: Okay, so now it’s a separator pair with one more station to go and you’re down seven.
Jack: You know, I’m at the point now where what I’m down doesn’t matter. And I don’t know how to state that strong enough.
Gil: I agree.
Jack: It’s probably a hard concept. I mean, clearly when you’re down seven you know you’re only down seven. Right? If you’re nearing the end of the tournament, you’re only down seven, you know it, whether you’ve looked at the scorecard or not.
But if that thought even creeps into my head, I push it out. I go into my mantra, which is “see the target, kill the target.” See the target, kill the target. And that’s basically what I tell myself to get my mind back in the present and not thinking about where I am, and what’s going to happen if I drop one or three, or whatever. The minute you do that, you’re toast. Or I am anyway.
So, you’ve got to stay in the present. I got to stay focused on the target. So, I tell myself I got to see these targets really well. And run my plan. And I’ll visualize. I’ll do my visualization. I’ll call for the bird and I’ll go. If I woof one, I’ll maybe revise my plan a little bit, revisualize it and execute.
Gil: What would you have done if it had been three years ago?
Jack: Oh, my gosh. [Laughter] Honestly, I would have stepped in that station, “Okay, dude, you’re only down seven, you’re shooting for a 93, you’re shooting for a 93, you’re shooting for a 93.” And get to the separator stations. And that’s when you go 3 for 8.
Gil: Yeah, because now you’re being careful, and you’re trying.
Jack: You’re trying, you’re careful, you’re shooting not to miss instead of shooting with confidence. And you just cannot. I don’t think you can finish any tournament with higher than a 90 if you shoot carefully. I just don’t think it’s possible.
Gil: Oh, it’s impossible. It’s absolutely neurologically impossible.
Jack: You have to trust your training. And I think that actually may be something you said to me in our very first lesson. I did one of your clinics out there at Quail Point. I think you said that there comes a point in time where you’ve trained enough and you’ve got to trust it.
It’s kind of like trying to catch a baseball. If you have to think about everything you got to do to catch it, you’re not going to catch it. You just got to react to it.
Gil: Eagle, what would go through your mind in that scenario?
John: Well, you know, at this point, two things that have happened over the last year. You and I had a private conversation, and you kept saying “We got to know what the target’s doing.” And so, when I get to a station that’s difficult, that’s all I worry about: what is the target really doing?
And I hope I’ve gotten to the point where I can tell you when I’m shooting well, but all I know is I’m shooting well. I don’t know anything about the score. I think I’m being pretty honest about that. But I know when I’m shooting well. And that is a dangerous thought at the end of the round.
So, what I try to do is say, “Okay, what’s the target really doing?” You know, before you got with Dr. French, we were still doing that stuff already. I mean, hauling or stalling, rising or falling. Those are four things I always ask myself when I’m paying attention. And so, at the end of a round, if the thought comes in, “I’m shooting well,” I work harder at trying to figure out what the target’s really doing. Because I have plenty of confidence. If I know what the target’s doing, I should be able to break it. But as we go back to careful and careless, you know, for me, being careless is not knowing what the target’s really doing.
Gil: Yeah. At the Advance Class, not so much the first week this year, because we had beautiful weather – wind’s eight miles an hour, no more – but the second week the wind blew probably 18 to 20 miles an hour, every day. To me, this was a great opportunity to go and practice things that may very well happen to you when you’re at a tournament. It turns some of the targets into cupcakes and it turns some of the targets into rocket ships.
And I know, Jack, you’ve taught enough to where you see people struggling with putting too many things in the working memory.
Jack: Yes.
Gil: Everybody wants to talk a lot about things that might happen, and the working memory just gets overloaded and it just doesn’t function. It’s like having too many apps open on your iPhone.
Jack: You see it all the time, Gil. You get somebody that comes to you, and they’re a decent shooter and there’s six things that you know right away that they’re doing wrong. But you don’t dare try to correct all six at once, right? You got to work on it. You got to deal with the worst one and get that fixed and then move on to the other stuff. I think it’s the same for any of us in our own shooting, when we diagnose our own shooting. There’s a point where you don’t want to be changing too many variables.
Gil: Right. But in order for the brain to evolve, it’s got to change and then it goes through the struggle of having to think it through and then eventually the circuit connects. And you’re off. You still got to do it, but…
Gil: We talked a lot about working memory and how it’s limited in duration and capacity. It can hold on to things for about 10 to 20 seconds if you don’t do something with them. And there can be no more than four things in the working space at any one time.
One of the interesting things in studying working memory is when it was called short-term memory back in the ’50s, the common science, or the thought process was that a person could hold seven digits in their short-term memory long enough to dial a phone, which is why all of our home phone numbers have seven digits in them.
Zoom fast forward to now, because of quite a few things in the medical field, notwithstanding the MRI, scientists know a lot more about working memory. And the number now is four things in the workspace at any one time. However, if you have four things in the workspace, since the attention is divided between all four, that means that 25% of the working memory is on each one, or if two things, 50%. But if we can have one thing in the workspace, 100% of the working memory can be focused on that one thing – in our instance, where and how we want to break the target.
The majority of most people’s workspace is taken up with the first 85% of the shot. What we found by using the word associations at the ranch this year, and in our clinics and lessons here in Houston and around the five-state area, is that when using the primers or the word associations, there’s only one thing in the workspace – it’s a visual memory of exactly how we want the shot to come together in our chosen breakpoint. But this means that you have programmed through deliberate practice visualizing the shot and using your word association and pointing to the break point so that your brain is clear where and how you want the shot to be taken.
When using the primers or word associations (“challenge it there,” “catch it there”) the two things become a sequence of events or a beginning and end of only one thing. There’s only one thing in the working memory workspace.
So, we went over the primers or the word association, and what happens when you use that word association enough. And during that week at the ranch, people began to, when they would say “I’m going to catch it right there,” would all of a sudden have a visual picture come up in their mind of the catch move, everything coming together, without them trying or having to actually push themselves to visualize it. And the more they used the primers or the word associations, the easier it got, because there were fewer conscious things in the workspace.
What we have found in working with shooters locally here who have come to us from quite a few different places, is when shooting pairs, if you can say, “I’m going to challenge that one right there, and I’m gonna catch that one right there,” when you say those words, the brain has a real-life visual picture of exactly how you’re going to do it – all the mechanics of how you approach it, where you start.
Everything that you’re going to do in the challenge move on that bird is easily seen by the mind’s eye. And everything you’re going to do when you catch the second bird, including the transition, is an instant visual picture because of the use of those priming words.
It’s amazing to watch it happen in people’s minds. And in going back to shooting more difficult targets with the catch move, with the gun still waiting on the bird to get to me, I never realized how much of my working memory was taken up on determining when to start the gun.
Ultimately, it’s a trust thing. There’s no doubt about that. As soon as you’ve caught enough birds, or used a certain technique on enough birds, the gun movement is very unconscious.
However, what I’m understanding of what I’m seeing, and from the competitive shooters that I’m working with, using the one-word approaches, the word associations with how we’re going to break the target and where by saying, “I’m going to catch that one right there, and I’m going to converge with that one right there,” using those words over and over again is a big deal.
When I would say, “Okay, we’re going to break it there,” come back here and we’ll push the gun and go through that kind of a setup, or a quartering bird, or I’m going to put the break point right there and any little deviation rabbit trail that I went down about the setup, that’s more stuff that I’m putting on the workspace.
Eventually it gets cluttered. And as you said, Jack, any emotional involvement that you might have based on how you’re shooting, where you’re shooting, or who you’re shooting with just complicates the problem.
It was absolutely amazing to me how shooters took to these word associations. And we explained the four to six ways that you can use these and how they function. In the beginning, it was not as easy for some because they hadn’t done it very much. But once they did it two or three times and realized how quiet it was in their brain, you couldn’t keep them away from it. It was an interesting process to watch the human brain struggle and then overcome the struggle. Rick Carter, I’m coming to you here in just a second.
So, whether you’re using the word associations that we’re using or not, if you’re not, get some of your own. Hybridize whatever we’re doing, because believe me when I say we are on to something really big. We’ve always talked about visualizing and how the brain understands pictures. But the word association with the visualization of the setup and the breaking the target and the break point, just that simple word association keeps you from adding too much stuff into the workspace, which enables you to perform so much more efficiently, so much more confidently. And there’s absolutely so much less chatter in your brain, either between pairs, or during the shot especially, regardless of what situation you find yourself in.
So, Rick, how would you have described what you would have done in the scenario that I just put Jack through? Very similar to what he would have done?
Rick: No. Regarding two or three years ago, no. I’ve just never really worried about the score. You know, and I’m not saying Jack worries about the score, but…
I shot a really good tournament this summer in an event that I happened to win. I had no idea what my score was. None at all. The guy at the end, he goes, “Man, nice shooting. That 94 ought to stand up.” And I said, “94? Wow, okay, cool. I wish I’d have concentrated on those two left-to-right crossers a little bit more. I would have had a 96 and really made it stand.” [Laughter]
So, no, I’ve never really worried about the score, Gil. I just go out there. I don’t see targets as hard. There are no hard targets to me. There are solutions to targets. I just don’t go up to a pair and go, “Wow, that’s a hard pair. That must be the separator.” I look at it as a solution. Something has to be solved. And I don’t always solve it. I will come out of there with a three.
I’ll say, “Wow, you got me. He really got me on that pair. I’m going to go talk to the setter after this and I’m going to find out how should I have shot that.” And I will. I’ll go seek the guy out and go, “How did you intend that pair to be shot on station eight?” By God, I’ll come back the next weekend and I’ll shoot a box and a half, three, four boxes with that pair just to figure it out. But I think I’m getting off subject a little.
I don’t really know about the scores, you know, being seven down, being six down, being four down, oh, I’ve got to run this pair… Gil, it’s just never been a part of my personal makeup. I just don’t sweat the score. I just let it go where it goes. And I’ve done very well a few times with a big surprise at the end where they hand you the Coleman stove and they say, “Hey, nice shooting. You won.” And I’m surprised.
Gil: Was it always like that?
Rick: Yes, Gil, it has been, since I started shooting with you a few years ago. It’s just, you know, I sought you and Vicki out to learn how to hit targets, not how to score well. Scoring well was a byproduct of learning how to hit the targets.
Gil: Interesting. Interesting how you can bypass a lot of the rabbit trails people run down by having that attitude about score and that attitude about performance. Absolutely amazing.
Gil: Let me ask an open question to everybody out there. After you successfully break a target in the stand, do you replay the shots in your mind?
Rick: I’ll go first. When I successfully crush a pair, the first thing I do is look out. Sometimes I look down. I know that sometimes you profess “don’t look down, look out.” But I can focus better or concentrate better when there’s no distractions. So, sometimes I’ll look down a few feet out from the stand and I’ll picture that shot again. And then I’ll return right exactly to that break point and that focal point and not worry about too much verbal input – you know, “Well, let’s do this again. Let’s put it right where I hit it before.” That’s all crap.
Gil: You’re overloading the workspace at that point.
Rick: That’s right. That’s what I have to say about it.
Gil: That was something that we struggled with shooters at the ranch with this year, getting them to pause after they broke a target or a pair of targets and actually replay the movie of what they just saw, which in turn becomes their pre-shot visual on the next pair.
Vicki, did you have some things you want to talk about that?
Vicki: Well, I just wanted to say that we had a lot of issues with that. Nobody wanted to stop and redo it after they just smashed targets. And you had to just really get people to just say… not even pull the targets, because they’d just keep loading.
And you know, these are really good shooters, and these are the things that will break down their game, especially on game day. If you don’t stay in the same routine, you’ll get hurried, you’ll start getting out faster, you won’t stay in the same rhythm.
It got to be funny, because we start out the pairs nice and slow on the first pair. And then nice and slow, maybe miss one on the third pair, and they just load, load, load, load, and not ever stop and enjoy the break. You know, you’ve paid enough money for this game that we play, you might as well enjoy it when they just smash everywhere.
So, that was probably one of the hardest things to do – to make everybody stop, relive it, re-visualize it and make it a part of their game, which slowed them down. This made everything roll right along and nobody got going faster and faster. I mean, that’s what we see on the scorecards that come to us. Nice and slow on the first two pair and then everybody squirts one on the third pair and squirts at least one or maybe two on the fourth one, because they get out of sequence with what’s going on.
So, be sure and do your post-shot routine, because then it becomes your pre-shot routine. You just see it again. I know that when we were competing, I saw it break in the break point probably three times before I ever loaded the gun. And it made it easier because it relaxes you. You’re not in a panic.
But it was interesting when we finally got everybody to slow down. I mean, they just stayed killing targets. It was wonderful to see. But it was very hard to get them to stop. That’s about all I have to say on that.
Brian, you got anything to say?
Brian: Yeah, one thing I would like to say is as on the first shot, the nose and the head were completely off the stock, but as you kept repeating the same shot, the nose and the face ended up on the stock before you called “pull,” which led to a lot of issues.
And it’s a very simple thing. But on the first shot when there is no expectation, you’re just trying to execute and it works. Then you try to get careful and try to get involved in the process. Like the first one when it feels so easy. That’s because you know you’re not looking at the gun before you call “pull.” You’re just bringing your nose over there on the trap and then calling “pull” and breaking the bird.
But as you got more and more careful, the nose and the cheek started out on the gun, which led to a lot of anomalies that happened, because it looks right and it doesn’t break.
Gil: I must tell you all in the experimentation that I’ve done and in the coaching, I’ve done with the shooters moving the gun as they call for the bird, it’s dramatic what that does to your ability to shoot in the subconscious mind.
As I said before, I’ve gone back and shot quite a few targets with a still gun when calling “pull,” and then with a moving gun when I call “pull.” Not that the movement is a lot, but it is definitely softening up my hands and letting my hands begin to move as I say the word “pull.”
I don’t know how to explain it other than the fact that I’ve talked to Dr. French multiple times. And he has convinced me that the thing that makes the four approaches so deadly is the fact that the gun is moving as we call “pull” or before. And this allows for the merger to occur as the gun steadily accelerates to the target speed.
As I said earlier in the hour, I have intentionally gone out and shot targets with a still gun calling “pull.” I still hit them. I’m not throwing that away. There are certain instances where I need that. But there are many other instances that I’ve experimented with where I’m going to catch a bird, instead of just catching it, I’ll stroll catch it. “Stroll” meaning that as I say “pull,” the gun’s gonna start moving slowly away from the trap and as the bird comes in, we stabilize the picture. Converge on really quick trap shots that are under your feet, over your head, off to the right five, eight yards, either direction throwing either straight away or crossing in front of you.
If I will challenge those birds, meaning the gun’s gonna be moving slightly before I call “pull,” my eyes are still as it comes out. It has enabled me to go on automatic and just absolutely center-punch those birds. I’m still catching a lot of birds, especially on the second shot.
The fact that the brain does not have to get involved with when to move the gun at all is a big deal. It’s absolutely a big deal. I’ve shot it low gun and I’ve shot it high gun. And all I do is low gun is just to make sure that my muzzle when I do see the flash, my muzzle is moving away from that trap. And I can get in sync with that bird and kill it. Low gun or high gun. It’s a lot easier for me to do it with the high gun.
But everybody that came, “Wow” was said a lot. Some shooters who had never moved at or before pull found it unusual and difficult in the beginning. But it’s absolutely amazing how quickly they picked it up.
It occurs to me that the quiet I hear doing the approaches is the total absence of needing to time the movement of the gun. I showed Doss this move before we went to the ranch. I set him up so that the awning on our field was blocking the trap. And the bird was coming out from behind the awning. And it was about a 50-yard rising, turning into a quartering bird going away in the wind. I told him to find out where the bird was coming out behind the awning. And he said, “It’s right there.” I said, “Okay, put your eyes right there, put the gun two inches to the left where your eyes are. And when you say ‘pull,’ start moving the gun slowly left.”
And when the bird came out, he smoked it instantly. When the bird came out, he said “Where have you been hiding this?” And I said, “Well, we’re just learning how to do this.” And I showed him that and I showed all the people at the ranch this.
It’s amazing how it slows down birds that are coming out from behind an obstruction. And instead of jumping out from behind the obstruction, the brain sees the difference in the forward speed of the muzzle and the forward speed of the bird. And we used that a lot. We got the most uncanny response. People would look at you with a blank face after they just smoked the targets. And they would say “It’s so still.”
So, I’ve gone out and shot with the challenge move, the stroll move, converge, and the catch, both moving the gun and not moving the gun. And if you haven’t done this, you should, because you will be amazed at how much of your working memory is taken up with exactly when to move the gun.
I didn’t realize how important when the gun move was if the gun is still. But if it’s got a little movement to it, you don’t have to tell it to start moving. It’s just a strict merger. It just merges with the bird. And it’s absolutely uncanny what we’re seeing and what we’re doing.
I was amazed at how many times the gun just went off by itself, all the shooters, as if it knew when the trigger needed to be pulled, especially on shots that were challenged in the first third of their flight path. The gun just goes off, you see the birds. And because you’re moving away from it, as it comes off that trap, it slows down really fast. And when it’s stable, the gun just goes off and the target smokes. It’s one of the most uncanny things that I’ve ever witnessed.
It also seems to me we’re doing this because we’re having a gentle move, a soft hands move in the beginning of these shots. All the moves are small muscle, big muscle moves, which are more easily repeated and hold up under the stress of competition much better. As Brian said, without exception, nose on the target is big, it’s huge. And the only time that I’m starting with my head on the stock is on a real narrow angle quartering bird where the trap’s in front of me. The rest of the time, my nose is on the traps, one side or the other. And I close the gun. And I let my brain set the gun. I don’t get involved in the hold point anymore. I can feel my foot position. It works.
Like Jack said, eventually the mechanics of your setup and your shot have to become something that are habitual as opposed to conscious efforts. But more often than not, on the shooters that were down there, they would break it four or five times. And then they’d miss it twice. And we would gently say to them, “Why don’t you try putting your nose on the trap and keeping it on the bird the whole way this time?” And they would break it. Especially in older shooters, we’re seeing this.
Have a gun that fits well enough to start with it softly on your shoulder with your nose on the target. And as the bird comes into the gun with your nose on it, the face just comes into the comb and you take the shot as it stabilizes. That was a big deal for those two weeks. Nose on the target is huge. And it was seen by all who shot – the difference between hits and misses on targets that gave them stress.
Let me break that down for you. Any of you who have been to the ranch knows that you’re not down there for a picnic. You’re not down there for a cruise. You’re down there to be pushed and prodded. And our job is to find your comfort zone and then push you past it and then get you used to being comfortable being uncomfortable, as Rich posted for me last year was so apropos.
We’ve always known this, and we’ve seen this many, many times. But as this tension goes up toward being able to break the bird, as the stress level increases on difficulty on the bird, the nose comes back closer to the gun. And in my shooting, in my own personal research that I’m doing, my head is completely up, the gun’s soft-mounted on my shoulder, I’m shooting high gun, or it’s in the ready position, and my nose is turned all the way back over to the trap. Either side. I want my nose on that bird. And if my nose is on that bird, as it’s coming to me and my gun’s already moving, it’s just nothing but same speed at the end. And it’s a cakewalk for me.
It’s just absolutely incredible what that does. And it’s interesting to me what an instant success it makes for people who might be struggling under pressure. If we can get them to get their darn head off that stock and their nose on that trap and follow that bird with their nose, wow, what a change it makes in people. What a change.
There’s a post on the forum about what do you do if it doesn’t feel right or something. I forgotten the actual first post. But if I miss a target, the first thing I think is “Was it stable?” If I say yes, it was stable, then I’ll want to make sure that my nose is on the target all the way to the gun, it didn’t come to the gun early. You’ll typically find this will happen to you on really fast left-to-right birds if you’re right-handed, especially if they have a going away element in them. If it’s edgy and fast and going away, that particular target will create stress for you and you give in to stress.
When you give into stress, that just means that your face is gonna come to the gun early, you lose focus on the target just about the time it’s coming into the zone where you want to start moving the gun with it, looks right, doesn’t break. And you’re perplexed because in your mind, it should have broken but it didn’t. Nose on the target is a big deal. It’s critical for consistency and success under pressure.
Brian Ash, how many times did you make the correction on people at the ranch: “You might want to try putting your nose back over on the trap”?
Brian: Oh, it was probably at least 75%, or why the miss occurred. And once I got it through to them that there’s a direct link from the speed of your nose to the speed of the gun barrel, that’s why it’s so important to get it away. Get that nose just away from the barrel. Because you can’t see anything or you can’t focus unless your nose is on it.
Yeah, it’s impossible for you to see something and focus on it unless your nose is on it. If not, then you’re putting your cheek on the gun and you got your eyes cut.
Gil: It’s a big deal. I don’t know how many of you are starting with your head off the stock and your nose on the trap or on the target and following it with your nose. If you’re not, you ought to try it. You might find that it would make your move much more in sync with the bird and would certainly make the bird slow down a lot.
I’ll go back to where I was showing Doss that target that was gonna stroll from behind the awning. As he began to move away and the target came in, his brain didn’t see the full speed of that target. It saw the difference in the speed of the gun and the speed of the bird, which took about 60% of the speed of the bird out of it.
I’ve played with this a lot recently. And it is absolutely amazing how these new techniques allow us to make the birds really slow down. And I mean, really slow down.
I also continue to be amazed at how easy these approaches are for shooters of all ability levels to implement into their game. They are reluctant at first and stumble with moving as they call and before they call for the target. But it takes only a few hits for the “wow” to come, and they can’t get enough of it. Their practice sessions move to a new level, and their confidence soars. The people that are doing this are wanting to practice more. They’re excited to go practice because now they have something to practice.
The more you use these simple word associations, the more your long-term memory catalogs them each in their own file. And then it does not have to search as much to recall the perfect file of movement to break the target you just saw.
Dr. French has confirmed with me about one of these things. I said I felt when I was doing this, when I put a word association with my visualization of how I was going to break the bird, that my brain is beginning to set up different “files.” And it’s filing all the challenge moves in one file, all the catch moves in another file, all the converge moves in another file, and all the stroll moves in another file. And when I simply look and point at the breakpoint on that bird, and I say, “I’m going to challenge that bird right there,” the brain doesn’t have to search through all of those things. They just go to the challenge file.
Then it recalls different parts of different files in a circuit synchronously, that will absolutely smoke that target that I just saw. Which means it’s easier for the brain to put together different circuits from similar circuits as opposed to having to search the whole memory.
As you fill each file with predicted and executed shots, the less the brain has to do to select the correct file to break the shot in front of you. It can go to the specific file: challenge, catch, converge or stroll, or any of your hybridized names that you want to call your approaches and be only concerned with recalling from that specific file. The bigger the file, the better the file. The more balanced the files are in your mind due to your practice, the more well-rounded your game becomes.
As Eagle mentioned, one of the things that we continue to teach in our clinics and our personal lessons with competitive shooters is actually reading what the bird is really doing in your chosen breakpoint. That’s something that we’ve spent a lot of time at the ranch this year, especially the second week when we were shooting in a 20 to 22 mile-an-hour gusty wind. And believe me, we didn’t take people to targets that the wind was slowing down and making them be still in the sky. They learned what fast targets really were. It was interesting shooting on the berm and the ditch with that wind running down that ditch and making those targets jump up and down.
But they realize the value, number one, like Brian said, of keeping their nose on that bird when it was jumping all over that ditch and it wasn’t slowing down. It was speeding up. They realize the value of keeping their nose on that bird and moving the gun early so that the bird didn’t jam you. It was amazing to watch. You can see the confidence.
The people that did not move their gun before or as they call “pull” were a little uneasy in the beginning. But after lunch on the first day, they were like, “Wow, this is amazing. I’ve never shot with it being as quiet in my head as I am when I do this.” And it doesn’t matter what approach you use, whether you’re catching it, challenging it, or converging with it. When your nose is on that target and your gun’s already moving. When you see it, it’s so easy just to turn the gun loose and let the brain kill the bird. It’s absolutely amazing.
We are back in Houston now. And we hopefully will be able to have some clouds in the sky now. We are planning, as I said last time, to do a series of videos where we shoot the same bird with as many different techniques, or different approaches as we can and then put them together as a kill shot review with voiceover. We’re doing some very unique things now. And we just haven’t been able to shoot any video because we’ve had nothing but blue skies. But the moisture’s come back and we’re in Houston. And it’s not winter anymore. So, the garden’s planted and we’re going to be doing videos. Y’all be sure and look at that when it’s up.
Brian, Vicki, have I missed anything that needs to be said? I want to do another Coaching Hour on just the four approaches and the combination of couple of those approaches another time. I think that needs to be done so we can get it on the website. Y’all have anything else to add?
Vicki: No, I think for me, we’ve covered it. Head on the stock and nose on the target, all that we need to bring up again. It’s a constant battle for everybody to keep their nose on that target. But I would like to do another discussion just explaining the four different ways to shoot the target. That would be good.
Gil: Okay, all right. We’ll try to schedule one of those. Well, we can do it for the first one in April. We’ll let y’all know when we’re going to do that. And we’ll do an extra one in April.
That said, it’s time for me to sign off. Thank you all for calling in. Please call us with anything that you’d like for us to discuss next month. I’m gonna put another post in the forum. If you’d like to have us discuss something, please sign up right here. So anyway, good night, everybody.
