Gil: Well, welcome to the Coaching Hour. This would be May 2021. Tonight, we’re gonna talk about three different things, hopefully, we get to all of it.
Bob had written me an email earlier in the week about correction routines, post-shot routines, and how they really work. I will chronicle what we teach and how it has evolved, then talk about what people have to do to eliminate excessive movements and inconsistent things from their game, from the beginner to the intermediate to the advanced phase.
Then I want to share a text conversation that Leif and I had, about why the pointing influence is so strong within us. And then Vicki and Brian are gonna go through the podcast that we did with Leif, and emphasize some of the high points that we think are most important. I hope you’ve all had a chance to listen to that one. There were some real good “a-has” in that for me. He continues to be excited to be a source of knowledge and guidance and leadership for us as we develop what we’re doing in all the things we’re doing. What we’re doing is so unique. Nobody else is doing it.
So, moving right along. Bob, you sent me an email about a story that my friend Marty Fisher wrote in Clay Target Nation. Ask a couple of questions of me. Summarize quickly what you were asking, if you don’t mind.
Bob: Yeah, you know, we actually had a discussion on the Coaching Hour about this several months ago. And there were lots of pieces of information that people dropped about how they did it. But I looked at Marty Fisher’s article, and I think he does some pretty good articles. And I have to say, when I read this, I was like, “Marty, where are you going?”
He talks about consistency in the pre-shot and the post-shot and connecting those. He talks a great deal about how you’ve got to develop this thing. But he doesn’t say how or he doesn’t say exactly what it is until he gets about three-quarters of the way through the article. And he’s done the same thing over and over again. But, he says, “Well, you have to have a post-shot routine that figures out what your corrections are.” He still doesn’t say how to do that.
And so, it came back to the question: how do we teach this? New shooters don’t know how to do this. He doesn’t mention the fact that an awful lot of people throw shells and stamp their feet and swear and everything else, and doesn’t think that’s a very effective post-shot routine. I 100% agree with them. I know you do, too.
But he doesn’t ever really get down to the nitty-gritty of how you actually develop it. And to my mind, that goes right back to what you all teach and what all of us practice a lot: you got to be bold and try different things. And you have to try different things enough times to the point where you develop confidence in how they will work for you.
You also have to develop some sense of what’s number one, what’s number two, what’s number three. This is what I was most interested in talking about. It may be three different directions for your particular personality and the way it is day-to-day. But how do we help people actually work through that process of starting a post-shot routine, stumbling with it, (which all of us have done) and then slowly, but surely filtering out the unnecessary and focusing on the key factors of our game as it’s developing, and how it’s improving or not improving.
I wish somebody would throw down some probabilities. I’ve taught enough to know that there are some and I know you have. But here’s a nice article that had lots of opportunity to talk about that and didn’t talk about it. And it made it in the magazine as a fairly central piece. That kind of bothered me.
Gil: When Vicki and I were in North Carolina last weekend, there was a fellow there who came as a friend of two other people that have had lessons from us. And he had one of the most beautiful pieces of wood on his stock that I’ve ever seen in my life. The Birdseye in the forearm matched the Birdseye in the buttstock. And it was really a beautiful piece. It was a Beretta DT10 or a DT11. I forgot which one it was. It belonged to his dad; there was some sentimental value to it.
He asked me to look at his gun fit, to which I said, “You realize you never ask a barber if he thinks you need a haircut?” [Chuckles] And he asked me, “What about my gun fit?” And I said, “Well, it’s too high. And when you mount it, you won’t be able to mount it very easily on targets over your head or targets under your feet because it’s got a parallel comb on it.”
“Well, what does that have to do with it?” he asked. I explained to him that it’s made to shoot shots in a picture frame above a trap house. And when you get higher or lower than that, the face doesn’t line up with the rib exactly aligned.
So, we sparred a little bit with that, and I let him use my gun a few times the first day. He was amazed at how easy it was to center targets, and how easy it was to mount it. Even though it was 5/8ths of an inch too short for him, he could still mount it and shoot it.
We went along there, and the next morning, we had a little lecture and went out to the first station and he asked, “Why do you not like parallel combs?” And I said, “It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just that when you mount it on the bird high over your head, your eye doesn’t necessarily line up like it does on a bird just off the horizon.”
I took him out, and there was a pine tree that was about 60 feet tall. And close to the top, there was a limb that had been broken, and it was hanging there. And I said, “Look at that limb where it’s broken right there, and mount the gun two or three feet to the right of it. Then tell me what you see down the rib.” And it was like he saw a ghost.
He said “My eye’s way over the rib.” I said, “Yeah it is. Because it just doesn’t work. I can’t tell you why, I know it just doesn’t work.” Then I tossed a shell down there on the ground, said, “Mount to the left of that shell.” And it was the same problem. So, he was amazed at that.
He said, “The thing that I’ve noticed about you yesterday and today is you’ve got a lot of opinions, but they’re typically based on practical experiences that you can show us that make them sound.” And I said, “That’s what happens when you do something for 35 years.”
Now, with your correction routine, it’s the same thing. It’s going to evolve. Eight or nine years ago, when we changed our approach from getting you to hit the targets to teaching yourself to self-correct, we began to realize that just looking harder at the front of the target was not the correction that would work for the majority of shooters most of the time. Occasionally, but not most of the time.
Your ability to self-correct comes from the elimination of variables in your baseline approach and the consistency of your baseline approach fundamentals. But this comes as an evolution in time and experience. Same speed at the end was the first really big breakthrough that we had for consistency, and it’s the common denominator that allows for immediate correction. Until you have repeated your move and mount so that your brain has enough consistent repetitions that enable you to produce it with enough consistency without thinking about it, your self-correction will be hit or miss at best.
When you list all the things that can cause you to miss, it’s unending. The most frequent is a lack of a clear, distinct visual plan of where and how you want the target shot. I continue to be amazed at how quickly the brain can pick up the moves we are now doing and teaching, especially the challenge move.
Personally, I think Brian and Vicki and I have a much clearer understanding of the working memory, and how so many things confuse the working memory. As a beginning shooter, your working memory is shot, because you’ve crowded the workspace.
Gil: I want to run down a few things that I jotted down. These are things that keep people from being able to self-correct:
– Muzzle awareness. You need to begin to recognize when you look at the barrel in the setup, which leads to awareness in the shot.
– Too much cheek pressure and too much grip pressure. Both of those things are bonded at the hip. You can’t have soft hands and a hard cheek on the gun. And if you have hard hands on the gun, eventually you’re going to want to put a hard cheek on the gun.
– Calling “pull” with no visual plan or command to the brain.
– Setting up your feet to where you’re out of balance in the breakpoint.
– Checking the lead, stopping the gun.
– Trying and hoping. (That’s a big one.)
Here are a few more that prevent shooters from self-correction:
– Letting the target get too close to the gun.
– Pushing away at the last minute.
– Shooting swing-through
– Pulling away from targets
– Trying to fix the shot at the end
– Looking at the lead
– Gun fit
– Starting too close to the trap
– Eyes moving when you call “pull,” and so on.
Bob, there are just so many different variables when you’re beginning this sport, that it’s hard to learn how to self-correct. And I think one of the main things that leads to that is people don’t shoot enough single targets in the beginning. They’re infatuated with the game. They love to shoot pairs. Their logic is, “it’s a game of pairs, therefore I need to practice shooting pairs.” And that logic is miserably flawed. That in and of itself postpones their ability to begin to make good corrections, because they got too many things going wrong at the same time.
I’m going to list several of the things that the beginning shooter does, and I’m going to throw it open after about eight or nine of these. If I miss anything, y’all chime right in.
The beginning shooter has a problem:
– Looking at the gun
– Checking the mount
– Dealing with the double image of the gun in the periphery
– Looking at the lead
– Stopping the gun
– Chasing the targets and trying to fix the lead at the end.
Bob, can you think of anything else that a beginning shooter would have trouble with?
Bob: Well, obviously, the gun that wanders all over the place isn’t the smooth, straight line into the shot. Watch a lot of looping things like that, and dropping shoulders that throw people off. So, I wish there were some training things to do, to train people to just trust the feel of being connected.
Gil: They ain’t got no training. They don’t have any feel at that stage of the game. They just don’t have any feel. I mean, they hadn’t done it enough, and 90% of the time, the target gets ahead of them. And the only feel they have is panic and chase.
Bob: Oh, yeah. I agree with you.
Gil: Yeah, I mean, you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. Everybody here has seen it.
All right, so here’s what I’ve come up with as a solution for the beginning shooter; the guy shooting between 50 and 65 percent:
– Do the three-bullet drill and the flashlight drill until your arms fall off.
– Drill single targets over and over and a lot of times over and over on the same target.
– Learn the difference in the two sight pictures.
You have no idea how many people who call us with a problem on a certain target. And we ask them point blank what’s the difference in their right-to-left and left-to-right sight picture. Their first comment is, “I’m looking at the bird.” [Chuckles]
“Well, what is the difference in the sight picture?
“I guess I don’t know.”
And once they finally admit that – here’s the killer – we ask them, “How do you expect your brain to do something if you don’t know what it’s gonna look like when it does it?”
And then there goes the open door to “Okay, if it’s coming from the left and you’re a right-handed shooter, it’s to the left of the barrel. If it’s coming from the right, it’s across the barrel.
“I’ve never seen that.”
“Go get your gun.”
I went over to a man’s house today with Brian. And, Brian, we looked at a virtual animation, right?
Brian: The shotgun simulator. Virtual reality.
Gil: Virtual reality. I think they got something. It needs polishing. But the man that’s behind it has the money to do it.
And I showed the computer nerd putting it together some of our animations. I showed him the difference in the left-to-right and right-to-left sight picture. If you want it to be a simulator, it’s got to simulate, okay?
And he immediately got up and went over picked up one of their shotguns and put one of their virtual reality hoods on and started looking at it. And he says, “You’re right, it’s to the left of the barrel or across the barrel, isn’t it?!” Yes, sir. Now, this is the guy who’s supposed to be writing the programming. He doesn’t even know the difference.
So, the money man and the tech are gonna come out and shoot with Brian a couple of times, so that they can begin to learn and understand. This was an instance where they knew just enough to think they were right, but not enough to know that they were wrong. They thought they were there, but they were only telling half the story.
Anyway, it just amazes me that people can play this game for a long time and shoot birds all over the world and not understand the difference in the left-to-right and right-to-left sight pictures.
Gil: So, we’re going to pass on along from the beginner to the intermediate shooter, 65 to 79 or 80 percent. They’re looking at the gun in the setup. They’re trying to be perfect in the first 85% of the shot, especially in the hold point. Still too much muzzle awareness in the setup. They’re trying to fix the shot at the end on the difficult presentation. They get jitters in tournaments. They’re concerned about peer pressure. They got the target coming to them half the time. They’re learning to follow the target with their nose most of the time.
And the solution for the intermediate shooter, in my opinion, is to shoot lots of tournaments without checking your score. Just go to the shoot and learn to concentrate on the targets you’re shooting next. Begin to be more visual with your approach. Still train on more singles than pairs. Begin to develop your routines and be the same on every shot regardless.
The intermediate shooter has made a serious commitment to do better. He’s taken lessons. I don’t know who he’s taken lessons from. Probably one of the pro shooters.
We had a man in a clinic this last weekend who said he had lessons from eight pro shooters; four before, and four after he had lessons with us here in Houston.
He said, “You know the unique difference in OSP?”
I said, “Well, there’s quite a few, but I’m anxious to hear your differences.”
“Every pro shooter that I went to take a lesson from, the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘this is the way I do it,” he said. “I’m quite a bit older than they are. And I can’t do what they do. But OSP gives you a system of shooting that you can learn to apply, regardless of how much experience you have, and how old you are. And that’s a huge difference for somebody wanting to learn on their own.”
So, the solution for the intermediate shooter, as I said, is to shoot lots of tournaments without checking the score. I wish I could get every intermediate shooter out there just to go shoot every tournament they could without trying to win. Just go to the first station, look at the targets, adjust your chokes, do whatever you do, get in your routine. Call “pull,” break the targets, when they tell you you’re through, get out, take a scorecard and go to the next station. When you get to the last station, don’t think about what you shot. Think about how you felt, how in control you were.
When you get more shooters to do that, as John Eagle says, they will begin to learn to compete while they were learning to be a good shot. But they don’t do that. They’re too tied up in trying to win their class. Winning is part of it. And all of you like those little trinkets that say “first in A class” or “third in B class.” We all like the trinkets. I understand that. But I’m trying to put forth an ideal pathway for people to improve and eventually learn to self-correct.
So, Bob, when they get to be in the upper part of the intermediate phase, they’ve begun to eliminate a lot of the variables that they had in their game. And when we changed from getting you to hit the target to teaching you to self-correct, we had to become much more disciplined with what we were doing as far as specific moves and set-up, which is where all the animations came from.
We can talk ‘til we’re blue in the face, but we had to say the same thing 150 times – and maybe by 4:30 one of them got it. So, that’s when we went down the animation trail. And thank God for the ShotKam. We were able to show a lot more.
But those things were there specifically so that people could develop the mental representation of the focal point, the hold point, the break point, the bird coming to you, and matching the speed at the end. And once we got those, the angels began to sing, because people began to pick up the ability to visualize. They couldn’t do it all the time, but they had the ability to visualize how they wanted their brain to bring the shot together and where. And right there is the genesis of self-correction. You can’t self-correct unless you have a clear mental picture of where and how you want the shot come together.
The poor beginning shooter doesn’t have that, and the intermediate shooter is just beginning to understand it. Until they’ve shot enough, had deliberate training, and learned to understand to visualize prior to before they close the gun and call “pull,” then reproduce the mental representation they just visualized, they’re stuck between 75 and 79. And that’s where the overwhelming majority of the shooters are. They’re stuck between 85 and 79. And they jump from 79 to 82 or 83. This is when the self-correction finally begins, in my opinion. You’re beginning to learn to self-correct.
As you’re training as an intermediate shooter, when you’re shooting your single targets, you need to be very aware of repetitions and the same mistakes. And you’re aware of that by making the same corrections over and over again on different targets. That points out a weakness in your game. But if you’re not practicing deliberately, you still can’t self-correct. And you’re going to founder at 79 until you find somebody that can speak to you, like I’m speaking to you right now.
I think one of the greatest advantages of people being in the Knowledge Vault is they can listen to you guys talk about what you did and how you got through it. It’s a great value, and people are beginning to wake up to it.
Gil: When you become an advanced shooter (80 to 95) you develop mental representations of what you’re about to do and where, you’re concentrating on the last 15% of the shot visually and how you want it and when you want it. Many of the parts of your game are becoming automatic. The mount is smoother. You’re developing a rhythm in your routine. Saying “pull” is in your rhythm.
Let me explain that. I had a lesson with Jeff Miller two days ago. Brian has been working with Jeff and has done an incredible job with him. Jeff has the time and the means to do whatever he wants to do, and he is a rabid shotgun shooter. ZZs, box birds, hand-thrown, sporting clays, skeet – everything but trap. I admire his taste in shooting.
I finished up his forearm to where it was perfect. He was getting ready to send that to Neal [Bauder] to get his stock made. But one thing I mentioned to him is that he was the consummate student. I said, “When Brian told you to go do this, you went and did this. When Brian told you to go play the game at least twice a week. the next time you came back, you’ve played the game and you’re amazed at how much it helped you.” He has done everything we’ve asked him to do.
I’ve had two lessons with him, and in the first one I introduced him to slowing down and getting in control of your pace. The one thing I introduced to him the last time (that I think you’ll all be able to benefit from) was having the gun moving as we say “pull” or just before.
He was doing the challenge move and I explained to him that there was an irregular time lapse between when he set the gun and when he began his move and called “pull.” I showed him by demonstrating the same shot three times. How, when you move the gun in sequence with your routines, it’ll be easier for you to focus on the bird. And more importantly, the brain will know when you begin your routine to within a tenth of a second when you’re going to call “pull,” which allows it to make a small muscle move, big muscle move every single time. That was a breakthrough for him.
I’ve learned in doing and teaching this that if you’re standing there with a still gun and thinking about “Okay, I gotta move the gun and then call ‘pull,’” you’re trapped. You’re playing with your food, as we tell Captain Bev Benzing. You’re playing with your food if you’re sitting there thinking about when you’re going to move the gun. But when it’s “close, address, move, pull,” and everything’s in the rhythm of that routine – he was shocked what a difference that made for him. Absolutely shocked.
For the advanced shooter, same speed at the end is easy. It’s not a problem. It’s really simple. The advanced shooter can also pick up different nuances in feel, which is what you were talking about, Bob. Because they’ve done it so much the same way, when something is irregular, it sticks out. And the more advanced shooter you become, the fewer corrections there are. They’re very obvious. And when it’s the same correction over and over again, it’s obvious what you need to go work on it.
So, it’s hard to have a correction routine if you’re thinking during the shot, because there are too many variables. Eventually, you have to have done this enough where you can visualize it vividly and the brain understands your visualization. That’s when the correction routine really takes hold. What do you think about what I’ve said, Bob?
Bob: I think you’re right. A lot of this stuff is in notes I’ve made myself, and things I’ve written to students and follow-up. You’ve clarified pieces of it in sequence, which I would have to say, I probably hadn’t done that well at. That’s been very helpful. And I can see the pattern here that you’re drawing on.
I mean, that’s a lot of what I appreciate about what you all do as a group, and being able to pull these things together based on lots and lots of experience. I think this gives me a lot to work with.
Gil: Yeah, that’s what I said. Vicki, do you have anything to add to that? Brian?
Brian: Yeah, I have something that I just wrote down, actually. A new shooter doesn’t understand what a perfect plan looks or feels like. You know, it’s the same thing that we’re always preaching: the more you do it, the more it becomes routine. But with somebody who doesn’t know what the perfect shot looks like, or what it feels like, you know, you’re fighting a battle there. And that’s where I think going and getting a lesson is a benefit.
Gil: I think that’s one of the greatest benefits of the Kill Shot Reviews for them to begin to focus on what it looks like at the end, and try to replicate that. What about you, Vicki?
Vicki: Well, I was just gonna say, most people don’t want to, or don’t know what to correct. They don’t go back through “Was the target on the correct side of the gun? Were they going the same speed?” They just try to fix it in another way.
I know last weekend, I just wouldn’t pull the target. Because they would load the gun, they would not make a correction and just shoot – just stupid, you know, because you’re not correcting anything. You’re doing the same thing, but it’s not working. It didn’t work once, why would you do it again?
So, I think that’s the biggest thing is just stop loading until you figure out what you have to do to fix it. And that’s hard for a lot of people. They just want to keep shooting, and then get mad. It’s just kind of a silly thing. So, I think that correction routine is very important.
I also think that the post-shot routine is very important. It’s so hard to get everybody to do, because nobody wants to do it. I know that with the 10 people that I had; it was very hard to make them do that. They make beautiful shots, smack the targets and then just load the gun and go again, like it was going to happen again. But they wouldn’t take that fraction of a second to just really enjoy that break and see it again so that they could replicate it. Very interesting. I mean, to me, that’s the most wasted, but the most important routine that we have that nobody uses. It’s really silly to me.
So, I just made everybody slow down. And if they needed to correct it, correct it, then do that. If they hit it, relive it, because that’s so important. The correction routine is a big thing to me. You have to correct it. But why not take that fraction of a second, if you just smacked it, to relive it? That way the brain sees that picture another time, so you can then make that happen.
Once my guys (Doug, you were there) started doing that, they started being very consistent. And just smacking targets – more than just one time out of five. It was fun to watch.
Gil: Wow. Anybody have any comments?
Dean: For the first year and a half after coming to you guys, I struggled with this. I struggled with understanding what the pre-shot, post-shot, and correction routines were. It wasn’t until I got into the Knowledge Vault and watched the Three Routines in Sporting Clays that it clicked. And I realized that the pre-shot routine, post-shot routine, and correction routines are going to be different for every single person. What you got to do is develop that yourself. But watching that video gave me the foundation I needed to understand it.
Gil: And that was basically the point that I was making. Until you get two or three years under your belt of shooting – and I mean a lot of shooting – it’s hard to develop anything like a correction routine. And that’s where the Knowledge Vault comes in. And that’s where having a good coach – not just a shooter, but a true coach – can help you build your game.
Dean: You mentioned peer pressure. Peer pressure was a big barrier for me. I was always worried about impressing the guys around me, showing them how good I could shoot. And that was a barrier. And chasing punches. I felt so much relief when I punched in to master class. I didn’t have to worry about that anymore. [Laughter] I wasn’t chasing punches or trophies, or you know, if I go to a DU shoot, it’s a free gun if you win your class, I didn’t have to worry about any of that stuff anymore.
Gil: And that’s all part of going down the trail. You know, I wish you could do something like this really well from the beginning, but that’s not the paradigm. It won’t work.
Gil: Vicki, you want to run through some of the high points of the Leif French interview that stuck out to you and me and Brian?
Vicki: Okay. Leif went to 74 Ranch for four days. I don’t know if he went with them, but there were other people there and they all shot together. And he found out a lot of interesting things in watching other people.
He said that he did the challenge move on all targets, especially on targets that he had not used it on before. Shooting rabbits with a challenge in the first quarter of the path, he had to shoot them early to get to the second target on true pairs, and had amazing results. I think from listening to it, his head was completely off the stock. He didn’t have to worry about pushing that gun into his cheek; it was just all there. When it looked good and he moved, he took the shot and the target broke.
This is one thing that Gil and I found out in the last month or so: consistent move is critical, and when you start, make it steady. Once you start, don’t stop, because then you’re thinking. But consistent movement is critical.
Here are some other key takeaways from Leif: No contact with the stock; Nose on the target movement before target is visible was a big deal. Stock cheek pressure is huge; tendency to check to make sure the cheek is down. When you do that, the flow of the shot stops. Hard mount puts the barrel back in the workspace. So, he was shooting with several other people who had not had lessons, and they just were pushing that stock up in their face, and they could hardly move. And of course, then they lost focus on the target.
He said to stop trying to be perfect in the hold point. The brain will, with practice, take care of the hold point. I always tell everybody, “You got to know where to see it and where to break it.” So, just load the gun, put the gun into the break point, put your eyes where they need to be and the gun will just naturally flow back. You don’t have to worry about it. Because if you’re thinking about that, you’re not thinking about the target for one thing, but you’ve added stuff to the workplace, or the working memory.
He says that intense visualization allows for least cognitive thought about what you’re going to do to hit the target. As the shot comes together, the intensity of focus increases. And since the gun is already moving, the shot is automatic. And it’s so lethal.
Use all visual input in the last 5% of the shot. Stroll-catch: eyes go to the front when speed is matched. I think that’s a big thing. We’ve talked about this before – everybody says, “Look at the front of the target. Look at the front of the target.” Well, we all know that we really probably can’t see the front of the target. But if you were moving with it, as the target closes in on the barrel, your eyes will naturally go to the front of the target and you don’t have to think about it.
I guess the biggest thing was for him was “soft cheek pressure is lethal.” Everybody else was mashing it into their faces, but then lost track of the target. Then you can’t see it. There’s no fun. If you have to have your cheek hard, then your gun probably doesn’t fit.
You’ve mentioned this direct link a little while ago – soft cheek pressure allows for soft hands. Hands can’t be soft, and they will check the barrel. I know that in watching students over the years, you can see when they get real tight in their grip on that gun. Well, then that makes everything else tense in their body. It makes it harder for them to see, and it sure makes it harder to move. So, you just tell them to grip that gun as hard as they can and then just let it off, because they don’t realize how much they’re gripping that gun. And gripping the gun usually means there’s a little bit of fear coming in.
The guys that he had with him were swing-through shooters. And as we’ve said forever, as a swing-through shooter, you got really good days, and you got those other days. But if you can stay in front of that target and match the speed, good things will happen.
He was up on the berm, and anybody who’s been to 74 Ranch knows about the berms. One of the targets that they shot was one we had when we were there in March. It was a pretty tough target. Everybody really wanted to hit it. But for the people who were starting behind the target, their gun speed was different every single time, so they could not self-correct. Six different insertion points, no consistency, and no self-correction.
With the catch, challenge, and stroll, everything is forgiving. It makes everything easier and much more consistent. So, he was watching everybody else come from behind. Well, there’s no way they’re going to hit that target. But everybody had a different insertion point, everybody had a different rhythm. The movement of the gun was never the same. You have nothing that is the same, therefore you cannot redo that. And I’m sure you probably didn’t want to, because it wasn’t working.
Lead disappears when you aren’t synced to the target and committed to the priming techniques. That means he would call the shot so he didn’t have to think about it.
He did say for the targets behind obstructions, he used the stroll-catch: catch the bird, comes out behind the obstruction in slow motion, and the sync up is automatic. I think that’s a really big deal for a lot of people.
I mean, we’ve known this for quite a few years. But now knowing the science, and watching my students this past weekend, making them start that little bit of a move toward the break point just made everything come together. And they just were so relieved that it all happened. You know, you should never show relief or surprise, but there was a lot of relief. But they had never thought about doing that, because everyone says, “don’t move until you see the target.” And so, this put a lot of people with a little bit less pressure.
Anybody have any observations?
Brian: Yeah, one more thing he said is that he let his brain set the hold point. That’s huge, especially when you’re doing the challenge move.
What I don’t think a lot of people realize is that 50-yard line is just a starting point. And if you call “pull,” and you’re doing the challenge move and you feel like you had to wait on it, then you adjust your hold point accordingly and let your brain do that for you. Everything is not written in stone that if you’re going to challenge this target, you have to start at the 50-yard line. It’s more of a feel after the first line; it’s a guideline to go from. You can vary your hold points depending on the feel of the shot.
Gil: Yeah, if you’re at the 50 and you had to wait on the target in the break point, then go to the 40. If you’re at the 50 and you have to hurry to stay in front, go to the 60. But these are all things that you’re going to hybridize on your own. The most important part is that the movement be steady. The consistent and steady movement, and you vary the hold point to help you control the target. That’s huge right there.
Brian: Absolutely. And I think that that needs to be brought up a lot more.
You know, I teach a lot of kids. And their eyes are a lot better than the older generation. And when I say start at the 50, they’re out there waiting on the bird. And so, I constantly tell them that that’s just a starting point. If you shoot the first one and you feel like you’re waiting on it, don’t be afraid to get in there tighter to the machine.
Gil: Yeah. For sure.
Vicki: Can I tell you about something that happened last weekend? I had my group do the priming word, and it was astounding how it all came together in exactly the same place.
At first, they were really (dismissively) “Yeah, yeah, okay. I’ll break it here, or whatever. I’ll challenge it here.” But once they started doing it, they didn’t have to think about anything. They close the gun, they address the bird, call “pull,” and then it’s just like magic had happened.
So, give those priming words a chance – whatever you choose as your priming words. I don’t think it matters. But as long as you know what you want to happen, and you tell the brain, that brain is going to come through and say, “Hold my beer, watch this.” It’s really exciting.
All right, anything else?
Brian: Yeah, I think it’s funny when you have them say it out loud. And everything works. And they do it for a handful of times and then they stop doing it. They think they can do it mentally. And I tell them, “No, say it out loud. Say it out loud and point where you want it all to happen. That way you’re clear to your brain on what exactly it needs to do.” And it’s like they think they’ll look stupid or something, saying that. And I tell them to say, “I’m gonna challenge it right there. I’m going to stroll it right there. I’m going to catch it. I’m going to converge it.”
That was a big thing for Jeff. He was like, “Well, I’m not gonna say that out loud.” And I said, “No, if you want to get better, you’re going to say it out loud, and you’re going to point what you’re going to do.”
And when he does it, he’s amazed. It’s not something you could just say mentally inside your head. You need to say it out loud and point.
Vicki: And when you say it out loud, that makes it a part of the shot. And then your brain can be totally uncluttered from all the other stuff that it usually thinks about. So, it’s just kind of a very committed act – “I’m challenging it here.” And just let it happen.
And you’re right, it’s interesting to see how people don’t want to say it out loud. You’ll find that it makes a big difference when you say it out loud, because then it makes it a part of the shot. And it’s amazing.
Of course, I’m just getting back into this, and I noticed that when I do that, there are no thoughts. It is so quiet. And I’m usually the one who’s doing 10 things at one time. But there’s only one thing when I close that gun. I’ve said “I’m going to challenge it here,” close the gun, call “pull,” you shoot, kill that target, and there’s no thoughts. No relief, no concern, nothing. Just do it. And let it go.
You got to trust it; you got to let it go. How can you do that if you don’t know what that is? This is a good way to be able to trust. It’s exciting. I think it’s wonderful, just getting people to do it and to commit to that.
One thing I want to say is that people are so used to being two to three feet in front. And a lot of our targets are farther out than that. And getting the gun further away from the target is a real hard job for a lot of people. They’re so used to looking about two feet on either side of the barrel to pick up that target, and to get their nose back on the trap or close to the trap. People don’t realize it’s how they do it.
I absolutely had to make my group last weekend do it, because they were so used to looking down that barrel. They would shoot the target and turn around to look at me, and they’re just like, “Really?” Yeah, you’re not allowing your eyes to do their job. But once they see it, then they’re excited, and they’ve learned something, and they know what to do to correct their mistakes.
All right. Anybody got anything to say?
Gil: I have a little bit to add. I know this probably shocks you.
Vicki: Surprising.
Gil: I sent a text to Leif last Saturday:
“Your ability to put the gun further and further in front of the target is equal to or less than the square of how many times you’ve done it with a detailed visual plan. Thoughts?”
Here’s what he told me:
“This applies directly to being able to get the gun further and further and further in front, and why it’s so hard for people to break through this ceiling. You can’t visualize something you’ve never done. The more you’ve experienced it, the more it becomes a visually accepted picture in the brain and the information processing system.
Think of this – when we use our natural pointing ability to point at everyday objects, it is ingrained in our motor cognitive skills to point at, or relatively near most of the objects. However, ask someone to point at the clock on the wall but instead points their finger 15 feet or further to the left or right of it, and the information processing system crashes. So, the person automatically brings their point back closer to the clock because this is a visually accepted picture for the information processing systems.
Pointing further and further in front of the target will therefore require systematic, deliberate practice, over an extended period of time to be able to retrain the brain to accept further in front. This is a particularly challenging skill to develop, mostly because our natural processing systems have been automatized for us throughout our lives, for us to point at or very near the objects we encounter.”
I remember early on, Brian, when you were just starting to work for your mother and we went to Kiowa Creek. There were 15 people for three days, and we taught in the snow every day. That’s the first time you’d ever seen snow. During the lecture, Brian was in the back of the room, looking out the window, watching it snow. I said, “Son, what are you looking at?” He said, “Dad, I’ve never seen snow.” One of the guys that was shooting with us said, “You’re gonna learn to hate it by the end of the day.” [Chuckles]
But as we were driving out of the parking lot to clear blue skies and warmer weather, out of the backseat come from my son’s lips, “When will they ever stop looking at the gun? [Laughter] And what I just read you was a synopsis of why it’s so hard to get people to get their head off that stock and get their nose back on that trap and get their eyes away from that gun.
Their whole lives, when they look at something and point at it, their processing system has pointed the finger close to the object. So, it’s deeply ingrained and automatized in their brain. It’s a little trick that we come up with.
I asked Leif if there was a trick, and he thought about it, and he said, “I hate to confess this, but I did it. I got trash cans at 50 yards and put them 25 feet apart. And I did the three-bullet drill at 50 yards so my brain can see what it looked like.” I’m gonna try that on [Cherry] next time I’ll shoot with her, to get her brain to accept it. Because it’s hard to get that gun way after in front of that bird.
Bob: She’s doing better at it.
Gil: Was she? Excellent.
Bob: She can knock down targets quite a way out there.
Gil: Yeah. It’s a frustrating part of this game, to learn to shoot long birds. And it’s kind of like credit: you can’t get it unless you got it. Sooner or later, somebody’s got to take a chance on you.
We call it the aiming perception. But I never had put two and two together like Leif answered me on that text. I wanted to share that with y’all tonight, because that’s why that muzzle is so attractive to us. And by the same token, once you’ve done it enough where the gun’s been way out there, that tendency tends to diminish. And the brain can accept that gun further out in front. So, it’s just something you got to go through.
I want to close with one little short thing that Leif and I talked about today: skill development. It takes a lot of time on tasks. The quality of the time and the amount of time are important. Here’s why it’s so hard to do. It’s hard to notice tangible results for a long time, especially when you’re working at the edges of your ability, because there’s more failure than success.
He mentioned to me that he’d been to the 74 Ranch for six or seven years, and this past time he really realized a marked improvement in his ability to shoot those targets. It’s not a quick evolution, which is why we keep saying shoot singles with routines. There are no shortcuts, yet everyone is looking for the shortcut.
The resistance to change, something to make us better is due to not wanting to go through the restructuring and the fear that restructuring brings. Without the restructuring, it is very difficult to go to the next level. The weekend shooters do it ‘til they get it right. The winners do it ‘til they can’t get it wrong. And there’s a whole lot of bullets in between those two scenarios.
So, we’ll leave that with you tonight, guys. Thank you for dialing in and listening. Bob, thanks for spurring the conversation. Brian and Vicki, thank you all for summarizing what Leif did. And if y’all have any questions or anything you’d like us to cover in our next Coaching Hour, send us an email, pick up the phone and call me. We want to explore things that you want us to explore.
And I will be doing another Leif French interview this month. As soon as it comes up, you guys on the call list will be the first to know it’s up. I look forward to going on this journey with him. And I have to tell you, he’s just as excited to do this as we are. It’s really exciting for him. I’m glad y’all are willing to go on the journey with us.
So, that said, goodnight, everybody. We’ll talk to you next time. Thanks a lot.
