Honing Your Self-Talk
Most of the time self-talk is just babble. It’s just going on and on and on. There are times and places for self-talk, but most of the stuff that we hear on the sporting clays course is a justification to people around you that you know...
Letting Go and Setting Goals
If you’re competing to have a very open look at who you are and your abilities, then you have to admit to yourself that when you go to a competition you have to let go of caring about how you shoot. You’ve got to let...
Struggles Are Good
A student of ours once came to me and said, “Man, I’m really having a problem on the first two stations.” “Well, that’s a good thing,” I said. “What? That’s a good thing?” I said, “That means once we get that solved, they’d better look out, huh?” “I hadn’t...
Jitters and Your Learning Curve
All of the disappointments that shooters go through are just spots on the learning curve. You know the ones I’m talking about: The first station jitters, the last station jitters, the station running jitters, the long crosser jitters, the window shot jitters, being in the lead jitters,...
Looking Behind the Barrel
The very act of putting the gun in front of the target without seeing it makes the shooter want to look at it. When the target comes to the gun, the gun is part of the picture. This is significant because the target is the...
What You Need to Ask Yourself Before a Shoot
You need to determine how far you’re comfortable traveling to a shoot the morning of the shoot. Experiment. Look for patterns. Some people might be comfortable traveling for two-and-a-half hours and taking an hour break before you shoot and then shooting that day. We encouraged one...
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...
What Caused the Errors?
Deciding what caused the errors is the most critical part of self-evaluation. That’s one of the unique things about our system. Once you start working on being really smooth, once you’re early in the breakpoint, you can better evaluate why you missed. When we show our...
Talent vs. Skill
Talent is the ability to anticipate into the future without fear. Skill is the ability to do what you do subconsciously. Let’s use a fishing metaphor, shall we? Your subconscious skills are running the boat, checking the wind, and setting up a line where you’re going to...
Fear is a Precursor to Courage
Fear always pulls the gun into the picture. Fear always puts the gun between the eyes and the bird. “I have a hard time admitting that I was afraid,” a student once told us. “But the more I thought about it, it is fear. I’d never...