The question of “what it looks like when the shot is taken” has been the subject of many intense (and sometimes heated debates) on the porches of gun clubs and hunting clubs around the world for hundreds of years. Sometimes some alcohol and tobacco are involved – after the guns were cased, of course!
The simple phrase, “Focus on the target and get the gun three feet ahead and pull the trigger” is simple enough. On the surface, it seems like a logical picture in everyone’s mind until you try to implement it. We don’t know how many times we have heard, “focus harder on the target” or “apply more conscious focus to the target” or “I just lost focus on the target.” So this begs the question, if you lost focus on the target why did you lose it? And where did it go?
If you need to apply more focus on the target, where does that focus come from? Do you carry 10-15 percent of focus around in your pocket so you can just use it when you need more focus on the target? Where does the focus go and where does it come from? And why do we have such a hard time controlling it? It is the same in sporting as it is in skeet!
Well, probably the best place to start is to look at what focus really is. In the beginning, focus is visual acuity on the target, which is where the phrases, “focus on the front edge” or “see the rings on the target” and “see it spinning” come from. In the end, focus becomes concentration on because as sixty-plus-year-old shooters, we can’t see the front edge of a 40-yard crosser but we can certainly concentrate on the area where the front of the target is, which is a great advantage in sporting clays.
Our friends on the skeet field have got to look at focus in a little different way. But they, too, go through the journey of focus being “seeing the target clearly” in the beginning, and in the end, focus becomes “concentration on.” Said another way, in the beginning, you must learn what it really looks like to focus on the target and have the gun in the periphery. In the end, as focus moves from “visual focus” to “concentration on,” it becomes visual and mental focus on what you are doing each time you call “pull!”
Let’s have a look at skeet first and then we will tackle sporting clays. Skeet is a game of known distances and target speeds and is played to perfection. But one main difference we see is that the game you practice is the game you are tested on. Said another way, High 2 is the same at Triple B in Los Angeles as it is at Greater Houston Gun Club in Houston, Texas. This is why skeet is such a mental game.
We called our skeet-coaching friend Paul Giambrone to ask him what he thought about getting the physical down and making it automatic before you can work on the performance side of the equation.
“If you have a shooter with a phenomenal mental game but no mechanics that are automatic, that person will never shoot to their full potential,” Paul said. “If you have a person who has perfect mechanics but no mental routine, they too will not shoot to their potential.”
We asked Paul what comes first: master the fundamentals and then performance, or the other way around? His immediate comment was, “A shooter must master the fundamentals before they can attempt to master the performance side of the equation.” He emphasized in his game of skeet, the importance of body mechanics and balance as well as understanding the sight pictures are essential. He did agree with us that it is how the shot comes together that creates the correct lead. While the correct lead is important, it is not something that is looked for as much as something that is a result of focus and gun speed equaling bird speed.
So where does the focus go in skeet, you ask? Well, according to Paul (and we wholeheartedly agree) it is either on the target or the gun. And the more of the gun you see, the worst you will shoot, and the less of the gun you see the better. In fact, Paul told us that understanding the fine line between seeing enough of the gun to be consistent and enough of the target to win is what separates the top shooters from the rest. We could not agree more!
Now, let’s have a look at sporting, which is quite different from skeet in that each station is different and the course has not been shot before game day. It must be consciously analyzed and then shot without thinking or looking at the lead. So, the deal in sporting is first to use your experience and target inventory to analyze the pair and determine where to break the first target so that it makes the second target easily seen and broken. Then do that three or four times in a row without missing.
What we are learning now is that a person’s ability to imagine or see in their visual process the shot they are about to shoot and to be able to see it vividly without having to think about it will directly determine how well the person will shoot the shots. We have referred to this in the past as “preloading the shot.” the trap that most sporting and skeet shooters fall into is preloading a snapshot of the lead, not a movie of how the shot comes together. This requires them to think and analyze the lead during the shot. And when they begin to think, nothing good happens. In fact, as Vicki said in a recent seminar, “Thinking while performing is a distraction!”
This situation was re-created by Robert Gray, a psychologist at Arizona State University when he took a group of outstanding intercollegiate baseball players and asked them to swing at a moving ball while listening for a randomly presented tone to judge whether the tone was high or low in frequency. The note-listening task had no detrimental effect on the efficiency of their swings because when hitting a baseball, the swing is an automatic function and happens without thinking! But when the hitters were asked to tell whether their bat was moving up or down at the instant the tone sounded, their performance levels plummeted. Why? Because this time the added task forced them to direct their conscious attention toward the swing itself. They were consciously monitoring a stroke that was supposed to be automatic. The problem was not a lack of focus but too much focus on the wrong thing! Conscious control had disrupted the smooth workings of the subconscious system!
So when shooters call for the bird, regardless of how smooth and efficient their move and mount, (sporting) or their swing and balance (skeet), any conscious engineering of the lead will render the shooter helpless because they are thinking about what they are doing. “Thinking while performing is a distraction!”
What we have discovered in our research is something that is now really clear. It was present in all our great performances with a shotgun in our 40-year careers, first in skeet, then in sporting. When we shot our best, it was like the preload was automatic. But it was not a snapshot; it was a movie.
In skeet, when we stepped onto the pad we knew exactly what was about to happen and there was no doubt. We did not have to try to visualize or remember what it was going to look like because of how many times we had done it. Our preload of the shot was vivid and it was a movie of what was about to happen. We were free to look at the bird and let the shot come together as we had preloaded it.
In sporting, when we saw the show pair we instantly knew what choke we were going to use and where to break the first target to make the second one easily seen and broken with a minimum amount of movement. It was as if it was automatic and the preload came easy and it was instant. It was a movie (not a snapshot) of lead, so we were free to concentrate on the targets and let the shot happen according to the preload we had just seen in our mind.
So what does all this information mean to skeet and sporting shooters? In skeet, the shooter must master everything that is done before calling for the bird so that it is done the same way without thinking every time on every station. And yes, this includes the lead on each station. What we see is that shooters do their job of making everything that leads up to pulling the trigger automatic, but when it comes to the lead they want to become involved with just how big it is and their performance suffers instantly. It is the same in sporting, with one exception. In sporting, our targets are never the same, and we must use our conscious brain to make the plan on the pair. Then after that, we turn off our conscious brain and allow our subconscious brain to take the shot.
You see, the same dilemma occurs in both games. And like the baseball players who were forced to think during their swing, our performances suffer whenever we switch from reacting to thinking.
Oh, and where does it go? Well, all indications are that if it ain’t on the target, it is on the gun. Most shooters find themselves with the disease of “gap-itis.” While it’s not terminal, it will make you talk to yourself!
SIDEBAR
What is Skill?
Our brains are wired to do something enough times correctly so that it eventually becomes a skill. When it becomes a skill it is passed off to the subconscious part of the brain and happens more efficiently every time that particular circuit is fired. The reason for this is that it frees up the conscious mind to focus on more important things. Because it no longer has to focus on what the subconscious is doing, things just happen and they happen with very little focus on anything at all.
Remember the baseball players in the example above? They all had really great swings and because their swings were subconscious they happened with little or no conscious focus or thought. Whenever we perform a skill, we really focus on very little, if anything, while we are performing. For something to be a skill, it has been passed off to the automaticity part of the brain.
In skeet and sporting alike, the lead is one component of the shot. But like the baseball players, thinking about it and trying to consciously adjust it while performing will make you perform like a novice. When you visualize the shot as a movie, then the correct lead is a product of how the shot comes together. And the more the brain knows how you want the shot to come together, the better and more precisely it can fire the circuit. The preload is designed to give the brain explicit instructions before calling pull so the brain can react implicitly once the target is seen.
Remember: “Thinking while performing is a distraction!”
