Learning to Compete

There’s a difference in shooting a shotgun and learning how to compete.

First of all, you have to be able to shoot a shotgun and break the target the way you want to break it and where you want to break it without thinking about it, and trust your subconscious. Then once you get to that level, then you got to start learning how to compete. Those are two entirely different things.

One can practice both at the same time. But eventually, you have to go out and not only have to train single targets where you can control the breakpoint, but you’ve got to learn how to shoot five pair in a row. You really do learn what’s important, because you learn how fragile your brain is to those outside interventions that don’t really belong there – those wandering thoughts that come out of your brain and make you have that concentration lapse for that one target.

But instead of losing it and throwing your shells, you’re able to compose yourself, take a deep breath, realize how absolutely foolish that was. Get back into your little zone, tend to business and out of the last 89 targets not miss anything.

Yeah, they’re easy targets. But eventually you have to face that scorecard with three down, two stations to go enough times to where you know the ridiculous things that your brain is going to say to you. And you’ll know how to do a mental anecdote so that you don’t go down that little rabbit trail because your brain is going to screw you up. It’s your brain doing it to you.