Recent Posts
Quarantine Update
Here we are on day 3,080 of quarantine - or it feels like it, anyway. We have had the office closed down since March 20 and have been spending our time cleaning out boxes of stuff. We moved into that office in August 2003 and there were boxes up there that still had the moving company numbers on them! Those were the first to go. After a few weeks, the county opened up the outside ranges, so at least we could do so... Read more…
Deliberate Practice - Perform the Skill Without Thinking
If you practice deliberately and with a detailed preload of the movie of the shot coming together before you close the gun and call "pull," then, through repetition, the brain can recognize the exact skill you are planning to use and can anticipate ahead of every action in the sequence.This allows for you to perform the skill without thinking because the skill now resides in your long-term memory. You trained it. Wh... Read more…
Developing Skill Through Deliberate Practice
When you have been shooting well in the past, nothing matters and everything is quiet between your ears. But how does this "not thinking" occur? When you are shooting well, it’s as if the brain already knows what needs to be done to hit the targets and it just happens without thought. But how does this "no thought" situation really occur? In his book “Peak,” Anders Ericsson explains how the brain sees skill as a pat... Read more…
Negative Self-Talk While Shooting
Our research has shown us that almost every thought a shooter has while performing will eventually bring his/her focus/attention back to the barrel and/or the lead. In some instances, the omnipresence of the seemingly uninterrupted stream of random thoughts turns into an avalanche of eventually negative “gibberish,” none of which if you heard someone else say would make any sense. So, where does this come from? An... Read more…
No Argument in Your Brain
When shooting your round of 25/25 on skeet, there was no argument in your brain! This allows you to access your long-term memory and not think while the target is in the air. We see shooters who are trying to not see the barrel or trying to not think. They continue to fail because you can’t not think. And the barrel is part of the picture. Think about it: The brain can’t do anything unless it first has a pictu... Read more…
