In our last epistle, we ended with the line “you can’t be in the present if you’re thinking.” This month we decided to expand on that a little bit and look at what kind of thoughts fear brings to our minds and what it actually does to shooters.
Being in the present is something that all the “mental gurus” talk about. It’s a logical thing to accept that you must be present to win. But how to be in the present and the benefits it brings is not often talked about or easily achieved.
The due diligence of most shooters when it comes to practice consists of how many times they visit the range to practice, how many shots they take, and even the score they shoot. Most are trying not to miss and that’s all they think about when they’re shooting. The keyword in the last sentence is “thinking.” You can’t be in the present if you’re thinking about anything. Until you practice that way, you ain’t gonna be able to achieve it on game day.
Martina Navratilova once said, “Every great shot you hit in a match, you must have hit hundreds of times in practice.” Eventually, we hope, you will understand that you will never shoot better than you practice.
You can practice your mechanics until you’re blue in the face, but you will not be able to compete well until you practice with the same mindset that you want in competition. Most shooters look at the mental game as something that, if they understand they can produce. It doesn’t sound logical to “not think,” but just like your gun mount, long crossers, and true pairs, you must practice not thinking.
This concept was first introduced to us at the first Beretta Championship held in the U.S. in Maryland in the early ’80s. Gil ended up in a shoot-off with Olympic skeet champion Matt Dryke. While waiting for the shoot-off, Gil asked Matt what it was like to be in the Olympics shooting for our country, and how and what he concentrated on.
“Concentration is the art of thinking about nothing,” he said. That has stuck with us since then and continues to be redefined as we go along our journey with all of you.
Not thinking sounds simple and implies that it can easily be achieved. But that’s where the simplicity ends for most of you. The thing that takes you out of the present, and is at the root of almost all of your thoughts on game day is – you guessed it – FEAR.
I know it sounds like we’re beating a dead horse here. But as professional instructors and life coaches, we’ve found the only thing that overcomes short or long-term memory loss is either repeating something many times, charging a lot for the advice, or both.
You can ask George Conrad, editor of your magazine. He’ll tell you we’re not making our house note each month writing this column for the magazine. That would make this advice free for your membership. So, since we can’t charge you a lot of money for this, we’re left with repetition to emphasize some things.
Stop and think about how many decisions you make when you shoot a round of sporting clays. How many more decisions do you make when you shoot a competition? Why do you make these decisions? Well, the obvious decision is to hit the targets and to win. But how many times have you found yourself in this situation, and the motivator for the decision changed from hitting the targets to “not missing” the targets and hoping you win?
This is where we find most competitors. And it’s here where all those random thoughts begin to flow through your mind. Those thoughts are anything but positive because they’re grounded in the fear of missing.
We remember when car radios had only two knobs – on/off/volume and channel selection. If you wanted to play a prank on the owner of the car, you’d turn the volume knob all the way up, switch the temperature control on the AC to hot with the fan switch on high, and turn the blinker and windshield wipers on high without them knowing it. When they put their key in the ignition and turned it to start the car, everything would come on at once and the car would go from quiet to anything but, and a few minutes later they would notice the AC was blowing hot air, not cold.
We see this on a daily basis in competitors and have talked about it in every arena we coach. We’ve talked about what “shooting not to miss” does to your performance. It takes you out of the present and either puts you in the future or the past. But we haven’t talked much about what it does to your focus on the target.
Fear always puts the gun between the eyes and the target and takes your focus from the target to the gap between the gun and the target.
Let’s face it, there are only two things you can look at when shooting a shotgun – the target or the gun. You only have 100 percent of focus. Every percent you put on the gun is taken off the target and vice versa. You can’t have it both ways. Sooner or later you’ll understand just how much focus you must have to hit all targets consistently.
We’ve learned that it’s not your ability to focus on the target that keeps you shooting the scores you’re shooting; it’s the fear of missing that shifts a percentage of your focus from the target to the gap, which includes the gun.
Every shot begins with 100 percent of your focus on the target. But as the target and the gun merge together, there is a shift of focus towards the gun. Most shooters don’t realize what shifting their focus to the lead does to their performance, because they don’t even know they are shifting focus. We call this a sliding focus ratio. To win consistently, the shooter must have a minimum focus ratio of 95/5. That would be 95 percent on the target, with no more than a 5 percent awareness of where the barrel is.
You hear people say they are focused 100 percent on the front of the target but they see the barrel in their periphery to get the lead right. We don’t know whether that’s a paradox, oxymoron, or just B.S. But we have become aware of two things with respect to target focus.
First, you only have 100 percent of focus, and every percent you put on the gun is taken off the target. Second, the barrel is there and will be a part of the shot. But you can learn to accept it in the periphery, focus beyond it, and maintain a 95/5 or better focus ratio on the target. That will let the lead take care of itself.
Remember, you can’t be in the present if you are thinking about anything!
We see this sliding focus ratio as the culprit of inconsistency in all shooters until they get into AA or Master Class. And even those shooters have a sliding ratio, but not on all targets. It’s most often misdiagnosed as a “mental problem,” but that’s a discussion for another day.
Our research has shown that top-level performances require a focus ratio of 95/5, or more like 98/2. On some shots, shooters don’t even see the gun. On those shots, they would have a 100 percent focus ratio. We’ve also found that top performers not only know what kind of focus ratio they have to have for a winning performance – they know exactly what it looks like to them.
How do they know, you ask? They, too, have become hesitant in the past when on a good score, and have switched from shooting the targets in the breakpoints to shooting not to miss. And they’ve done it enough times and their results have been consistent enough to know it has never worked in the past and will never work in the future.
As they looked back at what happened, they began to realize that their focus began to include more of the gun the more careful they got. They lost their feel and rhythm and the targets began to break when they hit the ground! Remember, fear puts the gun between the eyes and the target.
