As we study the research of skill-building from many different authors and researchers in vastly different fields, there are some common threads that keep popping up. One is that you can’t think and do. If you are thinking while doing, what you are doing will suffer.
In our journey as professional shooting coaches and competitors, we’ve learned that what shooters perceive when shooting moving targets are not only different but in many ways unique to the shooter and their surroundings.
Four years ago when our son Brian joined our journey, he was amazed at how our system of coaching and shooting actually took the target setter out of the equation. He was shocked when he learned the real reason shooters missed targets, versus what he thought as a target setter. We think the biggest thing he discovered was just how much muzzle awareness, shooters of all levels really had in their game, either in the setup or worse in the shot. That awareness was made worse by shooters trying to think their way through the shots, both in practice and tournaments.
“If you are thinking, you are stinking!”
In our travels and sharing with Brian what we now know compared to what we thought we knew 15 years ago, it has become obvious to us all that our system of shooting has evolved, as well as the different ways of presenting our system of shooting. In fact, we understand more and more the evolution of how the brain perceives and controls what happens when a shooter shoots a moving target with a shotgun. Wow, has it changed in the last 15 to 20 years… but then, the science of visual-motor skill has changed as well!
One of the obvious things that Joan Vickers brought out in her study “The Quiet Eye” was that the eyes must be still just prior to the execution of a skillful act in order for it to be performed consistently and at higher levels with less thought and visual input from the eyes. It is this evolution in visual perception that is the subject of our discussion, and how the brain evolves to be able to do things at higher and higher levels with less and less visual input in shooting moving targets with a shotgun!
Wow, have things changed in our minds. And what a change Brian’s perceptions went through as he made his way through our Knowledge Vault. When he went to work for us, that was his first assignment. He was overwhelmed with the amount of data, but when he finished it, it immediately brought him up to speed to begin the second part of his training: shooting the OSP system with us.
He quickly learned that his perceptions as one of the country’s best target setters were pretty far from the reality of what was really going on in the shooter’s minds when they shot practice and tournaments. Almost every shooter out there was trying to think and reason their way through the shots in practice. And in the tournaments, they were trying to “not think!”
This is where the saying “if you are thinking, you are stinking” began. While you cannot “not think,” you can certainly control what thoughts come out of your mind when training or performing.
We find in shooters from all over the world that they are shooting with an argument in their brain. And in some instances the argument is violent. Nothing good ever comes from it. Many of our youth shooters are shooting with an argument going on in their heads. They are afraid to say anything about it for fear that they will be seen as weak or having a mental problem.
Well, the argument comes from shooting in your short-term memory. The main subject of the brain’s argument is the “lead,” and this argument occurs maybe a third of a second before the trigger is pulled.
It goes something like this:
”Push
out. Push out. It’s too close…”
“How
far?
“I don’t know… Let’s try this.”
“Okay… BOOM… S**t!”
We find the overwhelming cause for this intermittent back and forth in your brain is there is no detailed preload of what the shot is really going to look like when the shot is triggered. We call this “committing to the shot you are about to take.” The ability to do this begins on the practice field, because, unlike the way most shooters practice, in order for your game to move to higher and higher levels you must first change the way you practice.
In his book “Peak,” Anders Ericsson describes deliberate practice as a necessity for the elevation of skill-building and performance. Deliberate practice is structured practice that is designed to keep you in the sweet spot between where you are simultaneously confident and just out of your comfort zone, always stretching for learning specific new things that will improve your game and performance. This means that failure is inevitable, and as Ericsson puts it, a necessary part of learning and expanding skill at any level and in any arena.
In our game, we see shooters practicing by closing the gun and calling for the target without even the slightest thought as to what the shot will look like when the trigger is pulled. This would be anything but deliberate. The other thing we see is that shooters practice what they do well instead of practicing what they need to be better at.
Deliberate practice comes from having an experienced coach evaluate your game, understanding your goals, and coming up with an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. Together, you set a course that deliberately exploits your weaknesses and turns them into strengths.
Shooters don’t like to do this because they look at it as work not fun. It is a hell of a lot more fun to take a flat of ammo out and shoot random targets “looking hard at the front!” and “pulling the trigger when it feels right!” And if a miss occurs, just load again and ask for another target. Just one more!?
A thought from the back of the mind occurs…something about “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Or “does the fact that there is a stairway to Heaven and a highway to Hell have anything to do with the anticipated amount of traffic expected on each?”
So let’s talk about what has created the greatest amount of successes in shooters, some of whom we have never met but are getting incredible results.
We now travel with a ShotKam whenever we are coaching. In the beginning, we were a bit timid about using them due to their weight and the amount of time it took to install them on a shooter’s gun. The most recent evolution of ShotKam has helped many shooters instantly tell the difference between the perception of what they were doing and the reality of what they are doing, especially at our Advance School at 74 Ranch this past year.
Being able to shoot ShotKam shots of targets the shooters could not hit and then letting them review the footage of the exact target they were about to call for gave their brain an exact image of how the shot should come together. And wow, what a result.
They instantly began to visualize the shot as a movie, not a snapshot. And their brains began to repeat the shot with success after seeing it happen only once. Being able to have a detailed visual of how the shot came together and what it would look like when the trigger was pulled (the muzzle speed being the same speed as the bird’s speed) produced amazing results.
In the rare instance of a miss, it was as if the shooters already knew the correction instantly. They immediately made the correction and smashed the next shot. It was as if the shooters were able to better visualize in detail the shot they were about to take as a movie, and their brain just responded in kind.
This is the result we are getting all over the country. Just preloading the shot before closing the gun and calling “pull” enables the brain to know exactly how you want the shot to come together. It executes the shot consistently and effortlessly and the argument is gone. It is as if both sides of the brain agree on what is about to happen.
In their book “Be A Player,” Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson extensively discuss the argument and how it affects players on and off the course. When you try to shut down the left analytical brain, the argument begins. Their take on it is to not shut it down. “You cannot not think” or “stop trying to stop thinking!”
Their answer is to engage both sides of the brain by giving each a specific task to do that maximizes each hemisphere’s expertise. They go to great lengths to describe how to tie up each side of the brain in golf. ANd we have adapted their reasoning to apply the same parameters to shooting a moving target with a shotgun.
Our left brain (or short-term memory) is capable of orchestrating 40 bits of data per second while being judgmental and evaluating things. This is why it gets us into trouble so often. It is really good at remembering things for a short period of time and then forgetting. Our long-term memory (or right brain) is capable of handling huge massive amounts of data in extremely short amounts of time. And its memory is infinite.
Everything you have ever done is stored in your long-term memory. This part of your brain can evaluate and orchestrate 11 million bits of data per second and can anticipate as much as 1/3rd of a second ahead of what you are doing. In doing so, it can alter human behavior as it is happening.
Just to be clear, there is no skill in your short-term memory. All of your skill is stored in your long-term memory.
So, we task the left brain to evaluate which side of the barrel the target is on. We ask it to judge when the gun and bird are going the same speed and allow the long-term memory to take care of the size of the gap while we are matching gun speed to the target’s speed. And when the left brain says “now,” we take the shot and the target breaks. No argument.
We are not thinking about the lead, which you all know will not work. In fact, we are not thinking at all because we have engaged both sides of the brain. And they agree when it looks right to shoot.
We now can preload the movie of the shot coming together and close the gun and call “pull,” having committed to the shot we are about to take. The shot is taken according to our visual preload and both sides of the brain do what they do best. The target breaks the way you planned it.
