Every shooter out there would probably give you a different definition of what practice is. They’ll tell you how they practice, why the way they practice was the most beneficial to them, and how it justifies why they shoot the scores they are shooting.
We have done a number podcasts about score plateaus, what causes them, and how to push through to the next plateau. In fact, we’ve addressed the subject in a few of our books. But shooters seldom practice deliberately enough to create consistent improvement.
This, in great measure, is why shooters get to the mid-70s and stop improving. They try different things that they hear other shooters talking about doing in an attempt to get better, but they continue to fail. They eventually give up, but continue to that one day they become the consistent shooter they want to be.
We see many shooters keep doing the same old things, hoping to someday have the epiphany that turns mid-70s into mid-90s. But there are no epiphanies that turn you into a consistent mid-90s shooter overnight. Skill-building does not work that way. Skill is not transferable and has little to do with your understanding of the sequence of events that have to come together to hit a moving target with a shot cloud.
You can understand that the gun must be pointed ahead of where the target is so that the target and shot cloud occupy the same space when they come together in the breakpoint. But until you have done it thousands of times, you cannot consistently do it.
We all have been surprised by a target for one reason or another.
When your eyes found it, you mounted the gun and shot at it and it magically broke. Your thoughts went from urgency to “Wow, I really did that, so I’m going to do it again on the next one.” You call “pull” knowing where the target is coming from and with plenty of time to get ready, your eyes filled with determination to repeat what you just did without thinking and break the next target just like you broke the one before.
With everything set, you call “pull” and try to execute the shot just as you had done on the previous shot, but the result was not the same and the target finally broke when it hit the ground.
If you have shot a shotgun for any length of time, this or something similar has happened to you or a friend.
The inevitable question comes: “Why can I hit it when I was surprised but not when I am ready for the target to come when I call ‘pull?’” Long story short: if the target is still, you can think your way through the shot. But when the target is moving and you must see the target where it is and shoot where it is going to be, you cannot use the thinking brain.
The conscious thinking brain operates as much as 300 milliseconds behind real time and your subconscious brain operates only five milliseconds behind real time. So, on the previous shot when you hit the target, you just looked at it and shot at it and the subconscious brain put the gun where it needed to be to hit the target.
But on the last one, you were thinking your way through the shot using the brain (which is behind real time). While it looked the same, you missed the shot behind.
Ask anyone whether they had rather shoot in the conscious mind or the unconscious mind and everyone will quickly agree that they had rather shoot unconsciously. However, few if any are ever able to pull this off with any consistency – much less on demand. So, if everyone would rather shoot in their unconscious mind, why does almost every shooter out there end up in their conscious brain when trying to perform? The short answer is that they have not put in the structured time practicing, training, and honing their hard skills so they that can be fired automatically over and over without thinking!
Skill-building is about repetition in the beginning. Then it becomes about deliberate repetition. As the number of repetitions increase, it eventually becomes a habit that is repeatable with less and less thought. Here is where most shooters stop honing their skills. As a result, they find themselves on a plateau and not getting better.
In working with shooters around the world, we have borrowed a page out of Daniel Coyle’s “Little Book of Talent” where he talks about hard skills and soft skills. Both must be continually honed and practiced.
In our game, hard skills would be your basic move and mount, your grip on the gun, your anchor point when you call for the target, your initial move of the muzzle, your grip pressure in each hand, foot position, focal point etc.
All these skills (anything you do with your body and/or the gun) must be practiced to a certain level of proficiency on the four basic target presentations: left-to-right and right-to-left crossing and quartering targets. Understanding the difference in the left-to-right and right-to-left sight pictures must be learned and practiced because they are very different. How you perceive them is an evolution.
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