An Experienced Coach

The most frequent mistake we see all shooters do is not practicing deliberately. Deliberate practice is designed by you to improve the exact part of your game that keeps you where you are score-wise.

In skeet shooting, 25 straight must become a habit. But a good honest evaluation of your overall game and what is holding you back from where you want to be is necessary to establish a practice routine to exploit your weaknesses and turn them into strengths.

This is where an experienced coach can pay huge dividends. Not the guy who shoots better than you, but someone who is experienced at analyzing deep into shooters’ games to determine what needs improvement to give better results.

The brain sees skill as a sequence of actions or movements that, when repeated enough, happen with you having to think about them. Your long-term memory stores them. You learn the skills in your short-term memory. And your goal should be to do them exactly the same every time so the brain is clear about what you are asking it to do.

This is best accomplished through a detailed visual process before you close the gun and call “pull,” and then making the shot according to the plan.

When the preloaded shot plan is equal to the actual shot, your brain will begin to understand more specifically what you are asking it to do. This would be deep deliberate practice which eliminates fear and doubt. This allows confidence, which you cannot practice in and of itself.

You become confident by eliminating doubt through being more and more determined to first visualize in detail the movie of how you want the shot coming together before you close the gun and call “pull.”

We will be discussing deliberate practice in our Coaching Hour on January 17th.