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Brian Ash

Brian’s Blog

To say Brian is a chip off the old block would actually mean he’s two chips off of two amazing blocks. Brian has been shooting most of his life and finds great pleasure in teaching others the art and skill of the business end of a shotgun.  Send Brian a message if there are any areas of information you would like for him to respond to.

In order of date

How Shooters’ Perception Evolves

Let’s get back to the evolution of perceptions shooters go through as they gain more and more experience in deliberate practice and shooting tournaments. Everyone has a sequence in their brain that ...

December 29, 2023

The Rhythm in Your Routine

It is not so much what is in your routine that is important, but the rhythm of your routine that allows your brain to know exactly when you will be calling. This in turn allows the brain to begin doin...

December 22, 2023

Creating and Strengthening New Sequences

Consistently pointing ahead or in front of a steadily moving object is a new sequence in our brains. And like everything else we do, it must be repeated enough times so that it happens without us havi...

December 15, 2023

Skill and Repetition 

We have discovered many things in our years of shooting and coaching, and one of the most startling ones is the direct link between the quality, frequency, and intensity of a shooter’s practice and ...

December 8, 2023

Eye Dominance and Visual Delay

The instant the new shooter says something about the confusing picture, they are immediately misdiagnosed as “cross-dominant!” There is a perception out there that if you are right-handed and righ...

December 1, 2023

Dealing with Compliments Effectively 

Eventually, your game will elevate to another level and your fellow shooters will begin to notice your scores are either becoming more consistent and/or higher. You will begin to be complimented on yo...

November 24, 2023

Light Cheek Pressure

Something that must be considered is the amount of cheek pressure required to shoot the gun consistently. If the salesman says you will have to cheek the gun a little tighter, don’t buy the gun. Yea...

November 17, 2023

Flushing Birds

When shooting flushing birds, you can’t use shooting sticks and you can’t take a little extra time and aim. The target is always moving at an unknown speed and most of the time an unknown distance...

November 10, 2023

Building Your Habits in Practice

Skill building is a process that few really understand. And even fewer are willing to put in the time and repetitions necessary to really build skill in their shotgun game. There are so many shooters ...

November 3, 2023

Keep a Calm Mind

You are going to miss. Accept it and move on. But knowing what missing does to your physiology can be very helpful. While we’ve observed that different shooters react in different ways, they all spe...

October 27, 2023

How to Turn a Negative into a Positive

If you are competitive in skeet or sporting clays, eventually you’re going to have one of those days where you could not put a three-word sentence together and your game is as mixed up as a soccer g...

October 20, 2023

The Unique Challenges of Wingshooting

Game shooting offers its own unique challenges when compared to clay shooting, not the least of which is that the game bird has a brain and can change its line, speed, and angle with a mere flick of a...

October 13, 2023

Visualization in Sporting Clays vs Trap and Skeet

In sporting, the ability to visualize in detail the movie of the shots you are about to ask your brain to create is critical. But it’s increasingly more difficult due to presentation being different...

October 6, 2023

Go Out and Have an Honest Practice Routine

Push yourself to the limit and make a commitment that when you get to the gun club, you’re going to go out and practice, and start working on specific issues. And if you can’t do it, you n...

September 29, 2023

All the “Be Sure”s

Positive soundalikes: they sound positive, but they’re a way for your brain to say, “Hang on, now, be careful. You’re down three. Be careful. Come on now, be sure now. Be sure you see th...

September 22, 2023

When You’re Out of Sync

I’m sure you’ve all experienced times when your synchronization and flow between your hands and body are gone. And try as you may, your body is all out of sync. Whenever you feel your body...

September 18, 2023

The Power of Affirmation

If you hear it, you must instantly turn the phrase around and make it a positive affirmation for you. This will take some real work on your behalf. But after a week or so, it will turn into a fun game...

September 8, 2023

Commitment to Your Plan

You must become totally committed to how and where the shot you’re about to take will come together – both in practice, and on game day. But you’ve got to be committed to doing it li...

September 1, 2023

Be Lethal on Easy Shots

Do you want to get out of the C-Class plateau? Then learn how to be absolutely lethal within 25 yards. If you’re going to shoot tournaments, it’s not the long stuff that kills you: it&#821...

August 25, 2023

Are You Comfortable? You’re Not Learning!

People are afraid to try things that they perceive is out of their comfort zone. And your learning occurs at the edge of your comfort zone. If you’re comfortable, you’re not learning. You ...

August 18, 2023

Force Your Brain to Recall in Practice

If you’re not forcing your brain to recall, and put together different circuits, you’re not preparing for game day. When you walk into a sporting station, you’ve never seen it before...

August 11, 2023

Assessing Your Own Performance

How far you’re able to mount the gun in front of the bird is really determined by how many times you’ve mounted it out there. It’s more determined by how many times you’ve moun...

August 4, 2023

The Chains of Habit

Our study into skill building and mental processing reveals an interesting facet: our past heavily colors our perception and reaction to present experiences. Our brain develops filters based on our pa...

July 28, 2023

Developing Constants

A common mistake among shotgunners is to mount the gun, chase the target, and hastily correct the shot at the end – often followed by a string of frustrated exclamations. However, this approach igno...

July 21, 2023

The Impact of Gun Fit and Visualization in Shooting

Gun fit and visualization are two critical aspects of successful shooting, as demonstrated in a recent clinic. The OSP system, with its emphasis on understanding individual shooter needs, proved its w...

July 14, 2023

Refinement and Focus

Achieving mastery in clay or wingshooting is about more than just accumulating hours of practice or mastering the technicalities of the sport. It involves a deep understanding of one’s own menta...

July 7, 2023

Mechanical Fundamentals in Shooting

A key observation from years of coaching is the impact of cheek pressure on consistency and improvement in shooting. Excessive cheek pressure, often believed to provide a more aggressive approach, can...

July 3, 2023

Understanding and Application of Knowledge

All skills start as mere knowledge. However, the crux of mastery lies in understanding when and how to apply this knowledge. Let’s apply this to skeet. Identifying and correcting specific issues, su...

June 30, 2023

Diagnosing Skeet and Sporting Clays Misses

Skeet and sporting clays both present unique challenges. Before you can even begin learning how to compete in skeet, you need to learn how to break targets in the same breakpoints on each station ever...

June 23, 2023

Paying Attention to Your Successes

We’ve learned that, in building a good mental game, you have to look at things for what they really are. Our brains are predisposed to not give successes nearly as much thought or emotion as we do f...

June 16, 2023

Shooting “Bling”

If I could find ten people that would give me a million dollars to have a AA game in sporting clays overnight, I’d make them all drink a pint of goat’s blood and then leave town with their money. ...

June 2, 2023

Expectations and Honesty

Expectations should be about the time that you put in and being honest with yourself. Being honest with yourself is what it’s all about. When you’re in the cage, it’s just you and th...

May 12, 2023

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....

May 5, 2023

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 bec...

April 28, 2023

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 ...

April 21, 2023

Hard Skills – Moving and Mounting

Hard skills are the skills that you have to have a hundred percent correct all the time. It would be a fisherman’s ability to drop a jig not only in the cup but have the jig go on a flight pattern s...

April 14, 2023

Peripheral Acceptance

We all have a problem letting that gun go, and it’s periphery acceptance. There’s no doubt about that. When you exceed your peripheral acceptance, your focus ratio goes straight down the hole. But...

April 7, 2023

The Post-Shot Routine and Happiness

When you visualize what the shot will look like (not necessarily the lead but what the end picture is going to look like) you know you’re going to be looking at that bird away from that gun. Being a...

March 31, 2023

From Thinking (Behind) to Doing (Ahead)

When you’re in the subconscious mode, the anticipation circuit is projecting forward. It is anticipating what’s going to happen and it is coordinating all of your movements to bring about the acti...

March 24, 2023

Practicing Recall

The thing that is least practiced is recall: looking at a target and letting the working memory go to the long-term memory. Then letting the long-term memory make the file and hand it off to the worki...

March 17, 2023

Eyes Still and Hands Relaxed

I want to begin the shot (i.e., closing the gun and addressing the bird) in the same physiological position every single time. It doesn’t matter if there are no clouds. I may look at the clouds ...

March 10, 2023

The Importance of Instant Feedback

Getting instant feedback is critical because it tells your brain whether or not it’s doing what you want it to do. Typically, the only feedback that we see the average performers give to themselves ...

March 3, 2023

Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Scorecard

– Are you in sync and stabilizing every shot? – Are you staying in the shots long enough to have a post-visual routine confirming to your brain to do it again, which in turn becomes your p...

February 23, 2023

Solutions for Beginners

Here’s a solution for the beginning shooter; someone who is shooting between 50 and 65 percent: – Do the three-bullet drill and the flashlight drill until your arms fall off. – Drill s...

February 17, 2023

Setbacks Follow Success

You’ve got to stay in control of your expectations. Without expectation, it’s very easy to perceive the subtlety of what you do. With expectation, you will always perceive the boundary. Remember t...

February 10, 2023

Seeing Over the Lever

If you’re shooting a cross-eyed target with a lot of lead, there’s a technique that can help you. This is especially useful for long, high tower shots, big, crossing belly chandelles, and ...

February 3, 2023

What Prevents You from Self-Correcting?

These are things that keep people from being able to self-correct: – Muzzle awareness. You need to begin to recognize when you look at the barrel in the setup, which leads to awareness in the s...

January 27, 2023

Merging

Imagine what your car would be doing if you merged in front of the car like your gun barrel merges in front of a target. When I tell people this and they finally get it, they begin laughing. But what ...

January 20, 2023

Shooting in the Rain – Get in the Game!

If you want to become a good competitive shooter, just like practicing your gun mount, you got to put a number on your back and get in the game. In your first year in master class, shoot every event a...

January 13, 2023

Process Goals

When you are determined to not move before you see the target, a lot of good things can happen. A lot of great things can line up and take place. We talk about focus so much, and God knows when you ge...

January 6, 2023

Planning and Visualization

In shotgunning, planning and visualization are critical components to success. When faced with a challenging target, it’s essential to approach it with determination and a clear plan of action. ...

December 30, 2022

Repetition Under Pressure

You can practice all you want to, but you’re going to have learn that from being in the game. You’re going to have to get in the game and you’re going to have learn that while you’re in the ga...

December 23, 2022

Self-Correction for the Intermediate Shooter

What’s the solution for an intermediate shooter who’s shooting 65 to 79 or 80 percent? They’re looking at the gun in the setup. They’re trying to be perfect in the first 85% of the sho...

December 16, 2022

Establishing a Baseline Target

You need a baseline target. This is a target that you always come back to in order to get your rhythm back. Because there will come a time, for whatever reason, that the wheels come off and you just c...

December 9, 2022

Practice Shooting Rising Birds

Most shooters can’t hit a teal going up two-thirds or three-fourths of the way up the line. It’s the weakest target presentation for 90 percent of shooters. They’re going to wait until i...

December 1, 2022

Defining “Stabilizing the Picture”

Here’s a definition of stabilizing the picture. At the end of the shot, as the bird and the gun come together, you hold onto the shot just a fraction after you mount so that you’re sure that the g...

November 25, 2022

Anticipation and Focus Ratios

Fear is only in the present or in the past. It cannot exist in the future. It takes you there, but it’s not there. It’s your choice. Fear is a conscious reaction to a perceived set of circumstance...

November 18, 2022

Shooting at Nationals: Practice Pays Off

Shooting at Nationals: Practice Pays Off The targets at Nationals were spot-on. There were no “gimmes.” Every target took work. Everything we shot, from the main to the K-Kup to super sporting, a...

December 15, 2021

How I Got Ready for Nationals

How I Got Ready for Nationals I got to practice a lot more than last year – about 500 targets before leaving for San Antonio. And man, did I learn a lot about what I’ll need to do to get ready...

December 1, 2021

Sight Picture and Speed

There are two parts to every shot: sight picture and speed. It can be that simple at first. But, as you get more advanced, the routine you follow becomes more crucial. As you continue on your journey ...

April 13, 2020

Keep the Barrel in the Periphery

Keep the barrel in the periphery! The barrel is always fuzzy – never in focus – as it has a place on the edge of your vision. A common problem I see all the time is the gun starts in the ...

April 6, 2020

Transformation at Advance School

It was amazing to watch the transformation of everyone that attended the Advance School the last two weeks. As a coach, it makes me so happy to push my students to the next level, even when they can b...

March 30, 2020

Hello from Brian!

I will be available to give lessons at Able’s Gun Club in Huntsville, TX, and our home field at American Shooting Centers. I hope everyone is staying safe. We are all good here in Conroe, TX. W...

March 23, 2020

Note from a Professional Engineer

“I love OSP. In my first lesson, I took two shots and Brian wanted to know if I was a lawyer or engineer. I knew I was in the right place.” – Larry C....

December 19, 2018

Another Novice Success Story

Dear Brian, My son Louis and I took your novice course this summer in Houston. I had a camo Browning 12-gauge two-barrel with a stock that was too short. Since then, I have followed your advice and go...

December 7, 2018

Happy Clinic Student – OSP Method Works!

A letter from another satisfied customer. The OSP method works! Brian, I have video proof that your instruction has paid off for me in a big way. We were using 12-gauge #4 shot with a speed rating of ...

October 17, 2018

Novice Clinics at the OSP Field in Houston, Texas

I teach novice clinics once a month, usually the second weekend, at our home field in Houston, Texas. Boy, have they taken off! It’s a great way to get started shooting a shotgun the correct way by ...

October 15, 2018

Keep it Simple!

It baffles me how complicated people make this game. Why can’t it be simple like 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock, same speed at the end? I had a guy yesterday who would call “pull” and as soon as he...

October 2, 2018

Clear the Mechanism

I thought about this video after the September Coaching Hour. Pretty much sums it up!...

September 25, 2018

Shooting After Months Off

I was at a shoot last Tuesday and hadn’t shot my gun in months. I shot great! I think I missed seven targets. I discovered I need to work on teal targets on the way up. And for some reason, I have t...

September 19, 2018