What to Do During Your Winter Layoff

First, you’ve got to take time off. And if you have been keeping a log, refer to what you’ve done in past years. If not, then start keeping a log. You can go to the log page on the Knowledge Vault.

Here’s where the log pays big dividends. If you’re keeping a log and you can look back when you started your year the last few years, you will be able to know when you should start. You’ll also know how much you will need to shoot but you should put the gun down for at least six to eight weeks and go fishing or hunting. Do something else. Give your brain a break.

At the same time, have a date that you’re going to start next year. Make that date firm on your calendar. “On January the 12th. I am going to start shooting again because I have a tournament on April 1st.” It will differ based on where you live. In Florida, most of the shoots are in the winter, but not so much in Kansas or the Dakotas, or Montana. If you’re going to some shoots in March, then mid-January might be a good starting point. If not until the end of April, then mid to the end of February.

Based on your previous layoffs, it’s important to look at how long it took you and what you did, and how many flats of ammo you used to get back in shooting shape. You got to take a break. If you do not take a winter break, you will experience a slump in your game that you cannot shoot your way out of sometime between June and August. It’ll just happen. It’ll be a funk. It could last two weeks, it could last four weeks.

Typically, the only way you can come back from that is to take a break. Put the gun down for ten days. It’s important that you take a winter break. You need to spend time with your family. And also, it’s important that you schedule a break during your shoot year for two consecutive weekends and the week between. Or maybe another week, but either side of this window.

It’s important that you put the gun down for at least two weekends and a week. And we would tell you two weeks, including the weekends on either side of them. Just put the gun down. Plan it during your year. Plan it after a big shoot. It doesn’t matter where you plan it, just make sure you plan it. Because if you don’t, you will experience a slump for the latter part of the summer.

It’s just really important that you take a break. You can do it too much.  A man can only eat so much chocolate pie. It doesn’t matter how much you enjoy shooting. You need to take a break.

 

 

This is an excerpt from the October 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.