“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost
almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I have been
trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in
my life. And that is why I succeed.”
– Michael Jordan
It seems we have been getting a lot of phone calls recently from people who are not competitive shooters but just want to improve without changing anything. Well, our research shows that this approach will not be productive for the shooter or coach.
So we ask them what areas of their game they think need the most improvement. After a pause we usually get this answer:
“I’ve been shooting for a few years and seem to be stuck in the high 70s [which means high 60s] and whatever I do I can’t seem to get any better.”
When we talk about their shooting goals, what they really want becomes more evident. “I’ll never be a world champion,” they say. “And I really don’t want to be a competitive shooter, but I would like to shoot in the mid-80s on any course. But I don’t what to change anything or practice that much!”
It is then that we think to ourselves, “you and every other sporting clays shooter out there.” Everyone would love to be able to shoot in the mid-80s on every course they might shoot without going through the failure and work it takes to get there!
But where you end up on the scoreboard has more to do with what you do with what we show you than whether or not what we teach works. We will never take credit for your successes or your failures because you are in control of both. And the way you practice and train determines how far and high you go.
So we begin asking some questions to see what the shooter is really doing when they shoot. Here is the general profile:
They are shooting with a mounted gun, looking down the barrel, either with an occlusion or closing an eye, chasing the bird, registering the barrel with the bird, pushing out to the lead, trying to match speed, and then taking the shot, forcing their follow through – and oh yes, they flinch about 15 percent of the time.
When they practice, they never commit to the shot they are about to take. And as a result, their misses cannot be explained but they also miss different birds on different days. There is no pattern they can see to create a pathway to get better.
Another thing that happens to them is they can go out and train on a shot and eventually “find it” and shoot it a lot and have a really high percentage of breaks. Then they come out the next day and miss it again.
These shooters, without exception, are trying to get better without changing. And they are spending most of the shot trying to “not miss.” The paradox in this situation is that the one thing they are trying to avoid is the most essential part of learning anything: FAILURE.
Failure is the first step in learning any skill. And we have come to understand that self-correction, it seems, is one of the biggest things that improve shooting performance and consistency. And it is learned on the practice field.
Our research has proven time and time again that you will never perform better than you practice. And the way to improve your practice is to make more vivid plans about where and how you are about to break the target before you close the gun and call “pull.”
It seems that this commitment to shot the shot you are about to take and your commitment to predict when, where, and how all of it will take place opens the door to better and better scores and performances.
Understanding and practicing the left-to-right and right-to-left sight pictures are paramount to becoming a good shot. The shooter described above doesn’t have a clue about the difference between the two or what either really looks like. This shooter’s biggest problem is that they are calling “pull,” mounting the gun and trying to fix the shot at the end, which leads to thinking. And the thinking brain cannot react fast enough to fix the shot consistently.
The unfortunate thing about building skill is that, regardless of how well you understand what you must do to complete it, your ability to do so comes down to how many times you have done it successfully! The aforementioned shooter is not doing any mounting drills at home and he cannot mount the gun without checking to see if the beads are lined up and his head is in the right place. So 90 percent or more of their thought process in the setup is about the gun.
This is the biggest reason they don’t get any better and in great measure is responsible for their flinching. At the end of every shot, there is an argument about when to pull the trigger. And in some cases, the argument can become violent and the shooter just can’t pull the trigger, which results in a flinch.
You have got to do something about 3,000 times (correctly) for it to become a good habit that you can depend on when performing. Everything you do with the gun must happen without thought, just like brushing your teeth or cutting a steak, or loading or unloading the gun.
You can get your 3,000 reps by doing the OSP three-bullet drill and flashlight drill daily, or you can go to the sporting clays range and actually shoot your gun.
When actually shooting, you will begin to understand things like seeing the target behind the muzzle, moving the muzzle at the same speed as the target, what recoil is like, where your feet need to be, follow-through, and how to correct from a miss. Like it or not, these are things that must be done enough times for you to shoot without having to think about them.
When what you do with the gun becomes such a habit that you know where the muzzle is without thinking about or looking at it, then you can be downrange with the targets. Because you are either downrange with the targets or back in the cage with the gun, and you can’t be in two places at once.
You hear a lot about gun fit and follow-through. And while they are important, here is where we have come to after thousands of shooters and 55,000+ hours each over 26 years as professional coaches:
If the sight picture is correct and the muzzle speed is the same as the target’s speed and the gun mount is a little off, you have a better than average chance to hit the bird. Conversely, if the sight picture is wrong, no amount of perfection in the gun fit, gun mount, foot position, follow-through, choke selection, or ammo selection will break the target!
As professional shooting coaches, we have to demonstrate breaking clays and birds with students’ guns that do not fit us! We will be the first to tell you that the two things most important things for success with a shotgun on a moving target are the sight picture being correct and adjusting the muzzle speed to the target’s speed before you send the shot.
Pay attention to this next comment:
When you combine a well-practiced move and mount with a gun that reasonably fits the shooter, with a clear practiced sight picture and the gun and bird going the same speed, good things happen when shooting moving targets!
We have used the phrase “sight picture” in the preceding paragraphs, so we probably should define our view of sight picture just to be clear. When we say sight picture we mean seeing the bird on the correct side of the muzzle. If it is coming from the left then is should be behind the muzzle to the left and if coming from the right it should be behind the muzzle to the right. Exactly what these two sight pictures look like and how they are different is critical to know what the correct sight picture really is. It is also critical to determine which sight picture you are about to use and what it really looks like.
One other short statement on gun fit. There are about as many opinions on this subject as there are perceptions of what we see when we shoot a moving target. And truth be known, regardless of how your gun has been fitted to you, the fact remains that you are still going to have to shoot it enough so that you get used to it.
The gun mount must happen without thought and must be consistent in order for your gun to shoot where you look or for you to know where it is pointed without looking at it. If you are consistently having trouble getting a good mount and feel that your gun must be mounted perfectly in order for you to hit what you are shooting at, then your gun does not fit, or you have not put in the time to get familiar enough with it so that it mounts correctly every time.
In the gun fitting we have done through the years when you have a gun that really fits and one you have put the time in to learn it and how it moves, then the gun mount is the easiest and most forgiving part of the shot.
Couple a gun that fits and always seeing the target behind the barrel as they come together with the muzzle always going the same speed at the end of the shot, and that, my friends, is a formula to turn failure into consistency.
At the end of the day, one of two things will happen: you are either going to make improvements or excuses. The choice is yours.
