Self-Correction for the Intermediate Shooter
What’s the solution for an intermediate shooter who’s shooting 65 to 79 or 80 percent?
They’re looking at the gun in the setup. They’re trying to be perfect in the first 85% of the shot, especially in the hold point. There’s still too much muzzle awareness in the setup. They’re trying to fix the shot at the end on the difficult presentation. They get jitters in tournaments. They’re concerned about peer pressure. They got the target coming to them half the time. They’re learning to follow the target with their nose most of the time.
And the solution for the intermediate shooter is to shoot lots of tournaments without checking your score. Just go to the shoot and learn to concentrate on the targets you’re shooting next. Begin to be more visual with your approach. Still train on more singles than pairs. Begin to develop your routines and be the same on every shot regardless.
The intermediate shooter has made a serious commitment to do better. He’s taken lessons. I don’t know who he’s taken lessons from. Probably one of the pro shooters.
We had a man in a clinic recently who said he had lessons from eight pro shooters; four before, and four after he had lessons with us here in Houston.
“You know the unique difference in OSP?” he asked.
“Well, there’s quite a few,” I said. “But I’m anxious to hear your differences.”
“Every pro shooter that I went to take a lesson from, the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘this is the way I do it,” he said. “I’m quite a bit older than they are. And I can’t do what they do. But OSP gives you a system of shooting that you can learn to apply, regardless of how much experience you have, and how old you are. And that’s a huge difference for somebody wanting to learn on their own.”
So, the solution for the intermediate shooter is to shoot lots of tournaments without checking the score. I wish I could get every intermediate shooter out there just to go shoot every tournament they could without trying to win. Just go to the first station, look at the targets, adjust your chokes, do whatever you do, get in your routine. Call “pull,” break the targets, when they tell you you’re through, get out, take a scorecard and go to the next station.
When you get to the last station, don’t think about what you shot. Think about how you felt, how in control you were.
When you get more shooters to do that, they will begin to learn to compete while they were learning to be a good shot. But they don’t do that. They’re too tied up in trying to win their class.
Winning is part of it. And all of you like those little trinkets that say “first in A class” or “third in B class.” We all like the trinkets. It’s understandable. But we’re trying to put forth an ideal pathway for people to improve and eventually learn to self-correct.
This is an excerpt from the May 2021 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.
