Well, it’s February and the shooting season is just around the corner. If you are lucky enough to be in the southern part of the country, things are warming up a little, or at least the temperatures are moderate enough that you can get used to them. Hopefully, you have made your goals for the year, because the last thing you want to do is start your shooting season without having your goals set. We can think of no better way to have a disappointing season than to start without having goals to work toward.
Whether your goal is to become an All-American or to win your way out of class, it doesn’t matter. But you must have a goal. Don’t get hung up in worrying about whether it is the right goal or not. Chances are good that you will end up changing or modifying it anyway.
You should have an overall goal for the year and several short-term goals that will enable you to achieve your overall goal. Review your last year’s performance and practice schedule, and based on what you learned about yourself and what it takes for you to perform well, make a schedule of tournaments and practice sessions that you think you can achieve. Write them down in your log and begin your season.
If you don’t have a log, we are sorry, but we will not feel sorry for you. If you don’t keep a log, how do you expect to know where you have been or learn from your experiences? Learning from your past experiences is just about the quickest way to improve we know about. After all, it is not what you know that makes you better; it is what you are willing to learn.
After you have got your goals down, now it is time to go to the range for the first time and smell the gun powder.
What are you going to do? Are you going to go shoot the course and see how well you do, or are you going to map out a plan and begin to train?
We see more people just go shoot at the beginning of the year and they are inevitably disappointed with their performance. Why? They remember how well they shot last year and expect to go out and do the same after laying off for two to four months. Well, folks, it ain’t gonna happen. They might go out and on the first 100 targets and shoot great, but after that, their old game creeps back into the picture and they are not happy. Their expectation and hope of being able to shoot well without putting in the time and effort to train and practice has become their boundary.
Would you like to know a few shortcuts to get your game back on track that we have used with our students? If so keep reading. If not, click away.
One of the biggest things that sporting clays has that the other clay target games don’t have is a tremendous number of variables. It is these variables that both frustrate us and draw us to the game. When you begin your year, we have found that the quickest way to “get it back” is to take the variables out of the game and work on your timing and rhythm of your move on only one target. Yes, that is right – on one target. Performance at any level is about taking out variables, because it is the variables that create the risk.
We would suggest shooting a crossing target at 25 to 28 yards, either left-to-right or right-to-left. It really doesn’t matter which one. But choose one and shoot it over and over in the same breakpoint. The target should not be a hard target; it should be an easy target to see and for you to break. The target should be up in the air enough so you can see the belly and should be floating slowly across the sky. Shoot a box of shells and take a break. Shoot the target in the same breakpoint every time. Shoot only singles with your pre-shot routine and take a little time between shots and use your post-shot routine after the breaks to remember how it feels when it breaks.
The reason for this exercise is to get back into the gun and concentrate on how it feels to break the target. Remember, you are working on timing and rhythm, not score. If you miss (and you will) it is a perfect place to use the OSP correction routine. Once you have corrected it visually, load and shoot another target. Shoot each target with the intensity you would shoot with to win a tournament.
After you have taken a break, shoot the same target another 25 times in the same breakpoint. Slow down and stay in your rhythm. You are not trying to learn anything new here; you are just trying to get back into your timing and rhythm database that you have built over the last years of shooting. You have not lost it; it just hasn’t been used in a little while.
After you have shot six to eight boxes on the same target this way, go shoot a different target for about 50 shots. Again, make the target easy but a different trajectory. Then go back and shoot the same beginning target 25 times and in the same breakpoint. Then go and shoot a different trajectory about 50 times. Repeat this process until you have shot 50 shots at each of the six basic trajectories; left-to-right and right-to-left crossers and quartering targets, teal going up, and teal coming down. Keep the targets easy to hit and easy to see. You don’t need to be shooting anything difficult because you are working on your rhythm and timing.
You will find that your feel will begin to come back and the targets will be slow. In no time, you will be back into your same old rhythm and form. We have seen this curve happen many times and it hasn’t yet shown itself to not work.
Be aware of several things. You will have a tendency to want to rush through the beginning target to get it over with – but don’t. Take each shot with your pre-shot, post-shot, and correction routine (when you miss). In your post-shot routine, it is important to tell yourself that it feels good when it does.
It is also a great idea to shoot a pattern plate each time you go to the range to train. Shoot a box of shells each time you shoot at the pattern plate. Shoot from 20 yards the first two times with an IC choke, and from 35 yards with a mod choke the next few times. This will be a graphic example of how consistent your gun mount is, and you will be able to watch it get back in the grove the more you do it. It is a great confidence builder to be able from 35 yards to shoot a box of shells at the plate and have all the shots hit dead center on the plate!
The reason that starting your year this way works so well is that it gets you focused back on the basics. Whether you are an All-American or a beginner, it is always a breakdown in basic fundamentals that causes the problems you have.
