The Improvement Journey
In our Coaching Hours for the last few years, we have been discussing how you can bring your game to new levels. When you understand that you have to build your own game and cannot use anyone else’s, it puts things in perspective! We have been talking about skill building, but most wing and clay shooters continue to hope they will someday just better understand what it looks like to become consistent at shooting a moving target with a shotgun.
Most shooters are satisfied with their ability, but they don’t go to the range and practice because they don’t understand what they must do to get better and become more consistent. And everyone wants to become more consistent with their shotgun.
Shooters think there is a “magic bullet” that tournament winners know. If they could just know or see what the pros see, then they too could shoot like them. Our research has shown this attitude of the quick, easy fix fits their paradigm of wanting to get better but not wanting to work for it.
Put in the Time!
To get a different result, you’ve got to change your
approach. That requires the one thing that shooters will not do: put in the
time and work to build the skill the right way so they can depend on it.
Almost without exception, shooters will not really do the
work needed to build their skills so their game can elevate to higher levels.
They take lessons built around learning a technique that someone else has put
in the time to master. And they think if they understand that technique well
enough, they will be able to reproduce it well enough to improve their
consistency. It doesn’t work that way.
Trying to hit a moving target with a shotgun is perhaps the
most visually confusing task that anyone can attempt. What it looks like must
be learned and then repeated enough so it becomes a skill. Taking a lesson from
a professional coach is the quickest way to improve your shooting, and we have
found that learning in a group for
two to three days optimizes the learning. Shooters are amazed as how much they
learn from hearing the same thing said in different ways. By the time they are
in the box to shoot, they get it so much faster.
There is a lot of shooting advice out there. But few, if
any, have studied skill building in the brain as much as we have. Focus is an
evolving phenomenon from beginner to master class. The conundrum is that the
better you get, the less you must see to perform at higher and
higher levels.
What the brain perceives as you become more skillful is an
amazing evolution. We’ve been studying and documenting it for 27 years as
professional coaches. There are certain steps that you must go through as a
shooter to keep pushing your skill to higher and higher levels! These steps are
not based on how someone else did it or what someone else sees. It is based on
what you have specifically done and where you are in the evolution of your
vision when shooting a moving target with a shotgun.
In the end, it takes a greater and greater commitment to
train longer and at higher levels to achieve higher and higher successes.
Sooner than later, that commitment is not met with the desire of shooters to
put in the time. That leads to looking for a shortcut: trying to see or do what
other shooters are doing. Newsflash! You can’t do what another shooter can do. That
shooter has put in the effort and work to achieve higher and higher successes.
Skill is not built that way.
The brain understands skill as a sequence of events. Through
repetition, it allows it to anticipate ahead of what you are about to do and
take over the task of orchestrating the shot while you focus on the target.
Skill is what you do when you are not thinking! But shooters worldwide are
still trying to understand technique as it is described in articles like this
one. When they try to implement even the simplest technique while thinking
about what they are doing, they fall way short.
As Vicki said in a seminar, “Thinking while performing
is a distraction!” Wow, what a concept!
Most shooters never take their practice game to higher
levels. Therefore, they are not building long-term memory that they can trust. So
they begin to hope and try to think their way through the sequence.
Practicing Different Trajectories
Well, let’s talk about how you should practice and what you
should do when practicing. There are four basic trajectories in wing and clay
shooting: right-to-left, left-to-right, crossing, and quartering. Our advice is
to pick one of the crossing trajectories and shoot nothing but that for a whole
session. We picked the crossing trajectory because it requires the most
movement and the most amount of lead. Sooner or later, you must face both and
get comfortable with them. It will take about three or four trips to the range,
shooting 150-250 targets each time, to begin to be able to begin to be
comfortable with the move and mount on one of the crossing trajectories.
You might look at this as boring. But discipline to single
out one of the four trajectories to train on and build long-term memory is a
necessity for improving your ability to shoot with any consistency. Once you
have spent your time and shot 1,000 crossers from the same side, then switch
the direction to the opposite side and begin the process over again.
Once you have done your 1,000 shots on this crossing trajectory, go to the quartering shots and do 750 shots at each. At this point, you will have begun to create a feel for each move and mount. If you want this to happen sooner, then do your mounting at home doing the three-bullet drill and the flashlight drill that we have talked about. We can say from experience that if you will touch the gun every day for 10 minutes or so and combine the home drills with the trips to the range, you will see improvement much more quickly!
Why Singles and Not Pairs?
Some of you out there that will say that sporting clays is a
game of pairs, not singles. Why shouldn’t we be spending time shooting pairs
instead?
First, you will never shoot better than your basic move and
mount, and you will never master the moving and mounting of your shotgun. It is
a continuing journey of improvement. Second, let’s look at the game from a
strategy standpoint. This game is really about the first bird in the pair. If
you can consistently hit the first bird in the pair where it makes the second
bird easiest to see and move to, then you can play shape on the second bird
when breaking the first bird.
As you might guess, once you begin to be able to move and
mount the gun consistently on all four trajectories, your practice should move to
hitting the bird where you need to. That way the second bird is easy to see and
easy to hit. We call this moving the break point on single targets. While you
are practicing your move and mount, you are also practicing the timing it takes
to make everything come together in the chosen break point.
Our research shows if you hit the first bird on a pair, your
percentage goes up to 80 percent on the second shot. If you miss the first bird,
your percentage goes down to 20 percent. That shows you how important the first
bird in a pair is.
Create Your Own Long-Term Memories
All of these shots must be preceded by a detailed
visualization of the last 10 to 15 percent of the shot. And your shot must be
executed based on the prediction. This is the only way for every shot you take
in practice to be filed in your long-term memory. The more shots you have
deliberately filed in your long–term memory, the greater the number of shots in
your library, and the easier it becomes to trust yourself and not think during
the shot.
The problem most shooters experience is that they do not
predict and execute based on their prediction. This creates their frustrations.
Regardless of the result, they don’t get better and they can’t trust themselves
to take the shot without thinking.
You must build your own library of shots. Through repetition, the brain recognizes what you are about to do as the sequence begins and it takes over the shot after you begin the sequence. The more deliberate you are in your practice, the earlier in the shot the brain can take over. It can actually change what you are doing as you are doing it. You just come along for the ride. When this happens, shooting/performing with a shotgun really gets fun – whether you are keeping score or not, and whether or not the birds have feathers or paint on them.
