“Talent Hotbeds”
Daniel Coyle, author of “The Talent Code,” has a knack for putting things in words based on his research of “talent hotbeds” - coaching situations that produced high performers consistently. This book is where we first learned about the myelination of circuits in the brain. The...
Opening Your Over-and-Under Automatically
Let’s use opening your over-and-under shotgun as an example. You don’t have to consciously tell your hands where to hold the gun and you don’t have to look at your thumb to make sure it hits the top lever and exerts the correct amount of...
The Pointing Instinct
Since you were six months old, you have been pointing at something you were looking at, so your pointing sequence is highly automatized due to the number of times you have pointed at a distant object. In our game, the gun must be pointed ahead...
Your Attitude is Crucial
The journey to mastery involves controlling and dealing with the many challenges and adversity put in your pathway to teach and test you. Skill resides in the filler in the brain and as you go through the classes you are (or should be) building filler...
Having a 50/50 Point of Impact
We recommend fitting a gun with light cheek pressure and that the gun be stocked so that with light cheek pressure, the Point of Impact (POI) be 50/50. While some shooters like floating a target, we are not among them. We have two reasons for...
Myelin Growth in Young Shooters
Young shooters are easily excited with the rapid learning and skill-building they experience, but they will soon hit the proverbial wall where it takes more effort to move to higher and higher score plateaus. This is described in detail in several different sports in Daniel...
Learning from Your Failures
It’s easy for shooters to dwell on the failure on the last station. But the winners learn from it and move on, and leave the misses behind them in the cage, maintaining a calm quiet mind. Most shooters would let that last stand affect the...
Are You Doing This for Yourself?
Some people think shooting is about breaking targets. But in our experience, it should be about so much more, especially when it comes to learning to perform. We have the privilege of shooting with young shooters as they enter college and go through it. In talking...
A Hundred Percent Effort in Practice
The thing that confuses shooters is that they don’t practice with the required intensity. They're out there going through the motions, having fun. And then when they go to a tournament they try, and their brain doesn't recognize them. They're not relaxed, or happy-go-lucky, they're...
The Downward Spiral
After you enter the downward spiral and are confused for 25 to 30 minutes, you're toast for the day. This is due to your brain injecting cortisol into your system, which is a hormone that kills performance at every level. After 25 to 30 minutes...