What Fear Does

Expectation comes about because of fear. Fear will bring the eye, the bird, and the gun together.

Fear puts the gun in the way, puts the gun in the equation, and the first thing that fear does to you, if you have any amount of fear in your mind about a target you’re about to shoot for whatever reason, your hold point is going to move back to the trap and/or your eyes are going to move when you call “pull,” and that is a manifestation of fear.

You may believe you can hit it, but if in your heart you don’t know, you haven’t done it a hundred times, fear is going to be there. It’s going to pull the gun right back to the house. Fear is going to make your nose be over the gun and going to make you cut your eyes because you’re afraid you can’t get the gun up quick enough. Anytime the fear emotion comes in that computer, it’s going to want to bring your eyes and that gun together. It’s going to want to put the gun in the equation.

Dry mounting the gun in your pre-shot routine is a form of fear. I don’t think I can do it. When you line up in the hold point and you look at the muzzles in the hold point, any awareness of the gun and the setup is a form of fear. And we’ve all talked about that if you see the gun in the setup, you’re going to see it in the shot.

When you get jammed by playing too close to the bird for any number of reasons, that’s a form of fear. Fear wants to put the gun between the target and the eye. It’s all fear. Playing too close to the bird, playing the bird, not the breakpoint is fear. It’s a form of fear.

What does fear want to do? Fear gets the conscious brain involved and wants to make you choke the lead. Fear wants you to be analytical. Conscious, not unconscious. Checking the lead is a form of fear.

Fear will disguise itself in many ways. If you can’t get to the breakpoint early enough and let the bird come to you, that’s fear. When you move too fast, that’s fear. When you mount and chase, that’s fear. That’s doubt.

Mounting the gun quick and chasing after the bird is fear. You want to get the gun up so that your analytical brain can get in there and do something with the gun. When you change your goals and you enter a competition wanting to be true to the breakpoint and you stink it up on three stations and all of a sudden you go to the default goal of not looking bad, that’s fear.

 

This is an excerpt from the July 2011 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.