Shooting Without Thinking

We think it would be good to talk about one more step in the performance part of sporting clays that not many of you have considered.

When you look at a target for the first time, your long-term memory sees it and instantly searches the inventory of similar shots that you have deliberately practiced or deliberately shot in a tournament. It takes the beginning of one and the middle sections of two others and the ending of yet another and synchronously puts them together as a new sequence, instantly! That new circuit is then handed off to the working memory who is charged with actually firing the sequence the long-term memory had given it.

This is why it is so important in your prediction process to be able to visualize in detail the shot you’re about to take and to commit to taking that shot where and how you are going to. “I don’t care what happens, but I’m going to do it this way and right there!”

This allows your working memory to execute the shot without thinking! The reason most shooters are shooting with an argument in their head while the target is in the air is because they are not practicing deliberately. Instead, they are just calling for the targets, chasing them down and trying to fix the shot as the gun and bird come together – and they’re calling that practice!