Establishing a Baseline Target

You need a baseline target. This is a target that you always come back to in order to get your rhythm back. Because there will come a time, for whatever reason, that the wheels come off and you just can’t do anything.

You need to have a baseline target that you always come back to. For me, it’s a big, belly-on chandelle at about 30 to 40 yards. A big, high looper. I’ve got lots of time to see it. I can see it coming. I stabilize the picture. I can make my eyes go from the whole bird to the front of the bird, left to right or right to left. It really doesn’t matter. I can see the line. I can let it come. I can slow the birds down. It’s a bird that I shot so much of that it’s easy when I watch my rhythm and feel.

And the baseline bird should be the first bird you practice.

You go into your practice session on your baseline bird, and you may shoot that bird for two practice sessions. Nothing but that one bird. You might move your breakpoint. You might back up five yards. You might go in ten yards, but you might shoot that one bird for at least two practice sessions.

Why? Because remember, what you’re doing is a timing circuit in your brain.

The quicker you can get the timing circuit activated so that you feel the target dead before it gets to the breakpoint, the quicker that will bleed over onto all targets. You don’t have to shoot a lot of different targets because of the system you’re in.

Remember, when you start, you’re trying to get your feel and your rhythm back. It’s all about rhythm and feel because it’s timing. Find one shot. Shoot it a lot. Have a baseline bird. Take notes about what you do.

Don’t be as concerned about doing the right thing as you are about doing something and let’s see what happens. But take notes on how much you practice, how many shots, how well you felt, and how many shots it actually took you to get that feeling back once you call “pull,” when the bird is a third of the way to the breakpoint, you know you got it.

“Come on. I got it. Come on. I got you. Come on over here.”

You’re looking for that feeling because that’s where confidence begins.

 

This is an excerpt from the January 2013 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with more than 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.