Is lead part of the input to the computer or part of the output from the computer? You can’t have it both ways, so what is it?
We realize that this question awakens thoughts and emotions that require commitment and responsibility that not all of you would like to have to face. But if we are going to once and for all face lead, we must face this question. It is, after all, the ultimate question.
If you have to program sight pictures, when have you programmed them enough that they become automatic or subconscious? Can that happen?
Try this on for size. Every time we have been in the zone or our students describe a zone experience, there was no gun, no lead, and no mechanical thoughts. There were just targets that resembled trash can lids floating in the sky, and they seemed to break one after the other effortlessly. It was more like a dance. Everything was timed perfectly and in sync. We’d dare say if we asked you whether you’d like to shoot consciously or subconsciously, none of you would answer “consciously.” If you’re trying to create a certain lead before you pull the trigger, it seems to us that conscious recognition of the lead requires the conscious thinking part of the brain. You decide.
To us, waiting to see a picture on a target to pull the trigger is shooting consciously, and the lead or picture is part of the input. Some people, because of the way they perceive, their age, and the number of targets they have shot, can do this. Some people choose to shoot this way regardless of how confusing it is to them, not knowing there’s another way.
Just remember that you can’t have it both ways. You either are going to shoot conscious lead or shoot subconscious lead. Some people choose to shoot conscious lead and eventually all they have to depend on when they perform is the bird-barrel relationship, which, in many cases, leads to many problems that seem to pop up when they’re least expected, and often are disguised as other things.
The problem we see most often is that a person’s perception of the correct lead changes day-to-day and even target-to-target because of the amount of attention that’s placed on the barrel, and therefore taken off the target. One day it might be 90 percent on the target and 10 percent on the gun, and the next day (or even the next stand or pair) it might be 80 percent on the target and 20 percent on the gun.
Then on the days that performance is worse than all the rest, there might be 60 percent on the target and 40 percent on the gun, which leads to many confusing physiological reactions that are difficult to explain, because they are definitely not what the shooter has trained or desires. Quite often, this leads to great frustration and childlike outbursts by otherwise grown, mature adults.
The other thing we’ve observed is that when faced with a situation seen as difficult, for whatever reason, rather than trust the moves and timing they’ve trained, the shooter focuses even more concentration on the lead, which leads to increased muzzle awareness and things like stopping the swing, cross-firing, and flinching. This, in turn, leads to occluding an eye to see the barrel-bird relationship better and switching to a release trigger or pulling the trigger with the middle finger to solve the flinch.
These and other anomalies are caused by excessive muzzle awareness under pressure and a different amount of muzzle awareness shot to shot, stand to stand, and day to day.
As you can see, there are a considerable amount of variables when shooting conscious lead. When you couple those with the variables in our game, it’s easy to be overcome and overwhelmed trying to figure what is the correct lead in the last quarter of a second of the shot… not to mention how to correct the miss when it occurs.
We often hear the comment that people are focused on the target and they see the gun in the periphery. We ask what percentage of their focus is on the target and what percentage is on the gun. That’s when we get that look – the one that says, I don’t know because I’ve never thought about it in that way. But I’ll give you the answer I want you to hear to look and sound smart: “I’m focused almost totally on the front edge of the target.”
Well, considering that the periphery can’t see sharply and can only perceive movement and things that have to do with interpreting movement to the brain, we’re confused by that statement. Couple that with the fact that the arrival time of the information in the periphery to the motor center after interpretation by different parts of the brain is 200 to 300 milliseconds behind real-time, then a few things become obvious if you will let them.
The amount of visual attention given to the muzzle is taken away from the target. Remember, you can’t have it both ways. Yogi Berra can have 100 percent focus on the target and 50 percent on the gun, but then, he is Yogi.
You have only 100 percent of visual concentration and every percent you give the gun to ensure the correct lead has to be taken away from the target. Otherwise, where would it come from? When this visual attention varies on different days, stands, and even target to target on the same day (and sometimes on the same stand), the amount of perceived lead will vary.
The other variable that we see is that when people chase the lead or look for the picture before they pull the trigger, their gun speed varies as they adjust the lead to get it right. We’ve already talked about how gun speed creates consistency whether you are shooting conscious or subconscious lead.
Eventually, you will realize, as we have, that lead is more a perception than reality. And each person’s perception is their own reality. This is why different people perceive the lead on the same target differently, even though it is shot in the same breakpoint, even though all their guns had to be in the same spot relative to the target to hit the target in the same place.
There is, however, a larger segment of the shooting population that, when they try to use sight pictures as input to the brain to determine when to time the trigger pull, they become very confused. We have seen shooters who can shoot with conscious sight pictures, especially in skeet and trap. Those games have known distances, speeds, and trajectories. Because of this, sight pictures can be used as a trigger mechanism to create the shot.
But although these games can be shot this way, the perfect scores that must be shot to win are not shot with specific sight pictures, they are shot with perfect timing and breakpoints.
That will be our topic for next month.
