On a recent Coaching Hour podcast, entitled “How to Go From 75 to 90,” we asked participants to share with us any misconceptions that they had on their way to the 90s, or misconceptions they’ve observed in other shooters trying to become more consistent.
And, WOW, did we get some real observations from real shooters out there!
It seems that the majority are looking for a quick fix. The most frequent quick fix is to try to copy the way someone else shoots. Almost without exception, consistency is the most elusive trait that most, if they could, would buy at any price except changing the way they approach practice and training.
The mystifying thing is that these are shooters who were better than our clients in the beginning. They watched the clients with little sympathy and a lot of sarcasm in the beginning as they struggled, while they were trying to build a game on our system of shooting.
They made remarks about just shooting singles, working on controlling the target from in front and matching speed at the end of every shot. Shooting every shot with a detailed pre-load of the movie of how they wanted the shot to come together in the beginning and then how and where they wanted the shot, working on breakpoints, shooting targets sweet, early and late.
“The game is a game of pairs, not singles,” they’d say. “How could shooting only singles help when the tournaments are always pairs?”
Another client chimed in, depressed about her progress. We asked if she had been shooting singles with a pre-load, which is what we told her to do.
“Well, I did for about three weeks,” she said. “But then I took another lesson from a great shooter and he said I needed to work on my transition from the first target to the second target, so I’ve been doing that.”
How was that helping
with her shooting?
“I seem to be regressing and my timing is all
out of whack!” she replied.
While we agreed that she probably did need to work on her transition from the first bird to the second target, our question to her was, “If you can consistently shoot the first bird of every pair in a breakpoint that makes the transition visually and physically easy to the second target, do you think that would make your transitions more consistent and easier?”
“Oh my,” she said. “If I had only listened to you and followed through
with what you told me to practice after shooting with you for two days, I would
have been miles ahead by now!”
“When all else fails, try doing what your coach told you to do!” we responded. “Missing the target is not the problem: it
is the result!
This is why we would rather have you for a couple of days to really imprint what needs to change rather than a couple of hours,
There is no “magic bullet!” There is no magic lead formula that someone can give you that will enable you to shoot without thinking and consistently hit more targets than someone who has done it hundreds of times. You can’t think your way to the right way of thinking; you must act your way to the right way to think.
There is not a coach or champion that can give you his or her game! While thousands are looking for the quick easy fix, it does not exist in sporting clays (or in life for that matter). As Craig Hill once said on a Coaching Hour podcast, “you get out of it what you put into it.” If you want to become a champion at anything, you gotta put in the work. And that is what keeps all but a few from becoming great at anything.
The same occurs concerning coaching. The more a person coaches and the more mistakes they have made while practicing coaching, the more lethal they become at diagnosing. And the more they have been through the cycles of improvement with different shooters, the deeper they can go into the shooters’ problems to get to the root cause of the problems.
The experienced coach has to see less, and in some instances doesn’t even have to see the shooter shoot and they already know based on the shooter’s answers to some carefully worded questions what the underlying problem is. The coach can go about explaining in-depth to the shooter the change they will have to make to move onto another plateau!
They have seen many shooters at all the plateaus and are experts at diagnosing the root cause and obvious symptoms. In the beginning, they were guessing. But with experience, they become more and more lethal on “seeing” through the obvious and diagnosing the root cause of the symptom. This is what separates being coached by a good shot or a top shooter and an experienced coach. While you can learn from both, each has something different to give.
An experienced shooter can share with you how they do it and how they apply it in competition. The experienced coach can share with you how thousands of other shooters have perceived your problem and how they helped themselves turn it into something positive for their games.
Your choice of coach is up to you. We would tell you to seek coaching from several different coaches and shooters and choose the one that fits your goals and that is available to you consistently. Shooters who shoot at high levels must have spent most of their time shooting to have a game that is at the top level. Coaches who coach at the top levels spend most of their time coaching, not shooting, and don’t necessarily have the time to train and have a competitive shooting game. But that in no way would keep them from being able to coach at a higher and higher level.
We have never had to coach a target we could not hit with our gun or the client’s gun, right or left-handed, with our head on or off the stock so the client can see the bird-barrel relationship over our shoulder.
At our total immersion Advance Classes last February and March, we used the ShotKam and had advanced shooters shocked at the difference between their perception of what they were doing and the reality! After all, what it looks like is the real conundrum, and then what it looks like to each shooter is the real confusion. But when the perceptions of the shooter are based on what it really looks like, it’s hard to look reality in the face and call it a liar!
In the past 26 years as professional coaches and the previous nine years as competitors in sporting clays, we have seen the game change four different times. And as the game changes, what we did as competitors and what we did as professional coaches changed.
In the beginning, you can associate the changes with the evolution of trap machines. In the beginning, a lot of hand traps or 110-volt machines ran off generators. As the traps got better, the battery-powered machines allowed for much more creative presentations and eliminated the need for trappers on every machine.
With the machines we have now that can be tipped and tilted in just about any direction, target presentations have been radically shifted to some amazing and visually confusing presentations, creating visual illusions that some shooters have real trouble with.
Gone are the days of separating shooters by throwing a few long crossers in the mix, because the shooters and equipment (both guns and ammo) have gotten way better. Shooters who have been shooting their whole lives have had experiences that now enable those who have put in the time to become amazing shots.
Target setting has become an art form. Some target presentations thrown today if thrown as little as 6-8 years ago, would have been looked at as unreasonable – and in some instances just downright stupid.
What we see is, due to the ability level of today’s shooter, the only way the target setters can separate the top shooters is to give you less time to take the shot. This can be seen in different presentations, making you shoot the first bird in a pair earlier in its flight path than you are comfortable with, for you to have time to get to the second shot.
This evolution has been fueled by trying and failing again and again. Then there’s finally a breakthrough and a new level of performance for a while, and the sequence starts all over again. It has been interesting to watch the evolution of the game for the past 34 years. And wow, has the U.S. got some shooters that can compete on the world stage and shoot some amazing scores with amazing consistency.
We have in the past urged any shooter who has worked with us to seek knowledge from many sources because we don’t know it all and don’t profess to. Just because a shooter comes into our harbor for help doesn’t mean we own them.
As we’ve said many times, “There is constant teaching and sharing that goes on in our game among friends and even strangers who will gladly help you with how they break a target. And if you can do what they do as well as they do it, then you have a better than average chance of hitting it the way they do.”
While the level of shooters has elevated dramatically due to the experience they have from competing on the world stage, the level of our coaches in this game has improved dramatically – not necessarily due to their shooting, but their experience as coaches. Gil helped start the coaching program years ago and was in the second Level l, helped teach the first Level ll and was one of two out of 24 candidates that passed the first two Level lll.
We have been coaching professionally for 26 years now, and we know how much our product has changed and evolved due to the science changing and the game changing, and also due to our experience as coaches. We each coach over 1,000 shooters each year and witness about 250,000 cartridges fired in anger at clay targets and game birds. When you do the math, that is a lot of experience in coaching over a 26-year period.
Have we made some mistakes? Of course. And we have had some successes, of course. But what we are most proud of are our students who have excelled at a rate that their commitment would allow, and how their lives have changed due to our coaching, encouragement, and most of all helping them learn from failure through our simple game.
The coaching market has constantly been evolving, and we have been amazed at the number of shooters who are seeking out coaches with experience coaching and shooting. We think both have something to offer!
We have heard the comment both online and in conversation that, “If you want to become a world champion you have to take lessons from a world champion.” While that is certainly understandable (and in some ways true) what we have found is that the number of shooters that have the means, the time, and the desire to become a world champion are few and far between. That number would be no more than somewhere in the mid-double digits worldwide.
If we never coach another All-American in our career, then so be it. We will be fine with that. You really don’t coach an individual into becoming a world champion; you just help them find that champion within themself. And there are a lot more shooters out there who just want to get better.
Just like in “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” when we can help shooters become better people through helping them with the struggles they encounter in this game, then that is reward enough for both of us and our son Brian, too!
At the end of the day…
It matters less the difficulty of the targets….
It matters more how you play them…
It matters less who wins or loses…
It matters
more who you become!
– Gil Ash
