Next General Meeting

from 2023December Markham Newsletter

BUD WOLFE CLASSIC

On Request From Secretary

On page 14-15 you will find the Bud Wolfe Classic program and awards payouts. Lunch will be served by Flavor House Grill. I’m looking forward to attending the shoot, but I will not be shooting the event. I’m having surgery on Thursday, December 14th for my right shoulder. I just got back to shooting after my left shoulder surgery in January this year and now I will be back to rehab and waiting until June or July before I can shoot again. Hoping for no complications this time.

Youth program has been busy. We are surely missing Steve and the extra set of hands. For anyone interested in becoming a coach, give me a call. We could use the extra help and I cannot begin to tell you how rewarding it has been for all of us over the years.

erts has been doing a great job on the Sporting Clays program. Hoping that the Bud Wolfe will be back over 100 shooters like it has been in the past.

Skeet shoots are still very small. The snowbirds haven’t migrated like they did in the past. Hoping numbers will pick up in 2024.

Just so everyone knows the ATA Trapshoot for 12/17 has been moved to:

Trapshoots have beenwell attended lately and Jon Rob-

I look forward to seeing all of you at the Bud Wolfe.

Joe

Loitz 954-857-5278 jloit@bellsouth.net

CLAYTARGET NATION—Nov. 2023

John Shima introduced the blended focus idea several months back as a way some people see the target and gun. With blended focus for example, visual focus is a blend of 70% on the target and 30% on the gun. According to John, as we get older, we tend to shoot more visually and we fire when the lead picture looks right. The intention to break the target can affect this by causing us to shift focus between the gun and target. To fix this to more visual focus on the target he suggests we use two watching drills. John wants us to shift our mental focus and intention away from trying to break the target to paying attention to just looking at the target and “watching it continuously until it breaks”. The first drill uses stations 2 through 6 and involves just the incoming targets: four L2, four L3, four H4, four H5 and four H6. The second drill uses all outgoers: four H2, four H3, four L4, four L5, and four L6. Load only one shell at a time. This makes you concentrate on each target, rather than rushing through the exercise. The idea is to improve mental and visual discipline. Concentrate on the pre

-shot routine and how you use your eyes, using the correct focus on the target and not a blended focus approach. Your last thought before calling for the target is to watch the target not look for the correct sight picture. Count how many times you properly execute the shot visually not how many targets you break. Concentrate on the process not the outcome.

Gil and Vicki Ash are inveterate sustained-lead shooters and coach this method as the best method for shooting a flying target. They believe the best way to approach breaking a target is by being in front of it. They also understand, we are not predisposed to looking in front of target as it moves through the sky. They admit you have to commit to practicing this before you can consistently create the perceived lead you need to as you shoot. Experience shooting targets at different speeds, distance, height, and direction is required before your brain will consistently tell your subconscious how fast to move the gun and in what spatial relationship you need to perceive the barrel in relation to the target. Only by having done it successfully and deliberately numerous times will the idea sink into your sub-conscious. Seeing a target behind your barrels is not intuitively natural without the practice and experience. This is why they emphasize visualization as another aid to learning how to shoot sustained-lead. Your brain needs to picture what you want to do. It needs that prediction if you want a break the target. Visualize the shot, execute it, adjust, and practice what’s successful.

Bill Elliot gives advice this month on tournament shooting and selfawareness. Don’t try new techniques on tournament day. If you are a pullahead shooter on crossing targets, you are out on the course. Also list the things you are doing well and what you need to work on. Visualize what you want to accomplish when working on your problem targets. Video is also a good training aid. Have a partner take video of don’t go trying sustained-lead. More importantly, be self-aware that you just tried sustained-lead on a target when you usually shoot it with pullahead and you missed. Self-correct and go back to pull-ahead. Review your shooting log on a regular basis, monthly or more frequently. Again, more importantly, review the log and make notes on what to work on or what to remember when your shooting. Using a ShotKam is also a great idea. You may want to have a coach review both for a more in-depth opinion of the video. Agood coach will see things you don’t. Finally, don’t judge your shooting on tournament day. Pretty basic stuff, work the process and let the score take care of itself.

Match stress surfaces frequently when expectations are not met. When things start to go south with your shooting, self -doubt raises its ugly head and with it comes a loss of concentration and an abandonment of the pre-shot routine and adherence to working the process. Michael J. Keyes, M.D. explains factors contributing to match stress this month and while he always produces interesting articles, his solutions are sometimes lacking in practicality. His best advice this month is experience, training, and getting guidance from a coach. You need to experience match pressure before you can develop ways to relieve it. Michael talks about emergency doctors who go into their field with great confidence which helps them through the pressure they experience. Their overconfidence is their motivation to improve. They learn through self-assessment, simulation, mentoring, and research. For a shooter this means learning how to diagnose their problems on their own or with the help of a coach. Visualization, coaching, and reading articles like these are additional aids.

Self-assessment also means knowing how match stress affects you and what works to get the mental train back on the tracks. This means when you experience it, get that log book out and record your feelings in the situation. Review it for solutions you’ve learned in the past and apply them when they are needed.

Shotgun Sports– November 2023

Visualization:

“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head,” Nicklaus said. “First, I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then, the scene quickly changes, and I see the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there is a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.” Jack Nicklaus.

If you have any doubts whether visualization works, the above quote from Jack Nicklaus should eliminate them. When it comes to GOAT’s, Jack is still the GOAT of golf: 18 majors, 19 runner-ups, 74 top-10 finishes in a major. Michael J. Keyes, M.D.’s November article on visualization is a good breakdown of the how’s and why’s of its effectiveness.

According to Professor Russell Hurlbert, 50-70% of the population doesn’t have an internal dialogue going on in their heads and it’s suspected that there’s a similar inability to visualize. Obviously, Jack Nicklaus can create a vivid visualization for a golf shot. Let’s assume you can visualize and go from there. Visualization is truly only effective after an individual has reached an intermediate level of ability in whatever task they want to do. Like any problem, you need to be able to manipulate it in your mind to find a solution. Without the proper amount of knowledge, understanding, and experience, visualization will not be as effective. Once you have reached the proper level of experience and understanding then visualization can and will be a very effective tool.

Let’s assume you have reached the level required to make visualization effective. There are two aspects of visualization making it properly effective, vivid imagery and mental practice of the skill. Jack Nicklaus has given us a fine example of the vivid imagery we want during visualization. In his example, he tells us he visualizes before every shot. Michael advises practicing recalling, “as precisely as possible, your technique in great detail.”

The idea is to recall this and automate your technique, making it “more efficient and more consistent.” Gil and Vicki Ash, who are true advocates of visualization, advise, creation of, “a visual prediction of where and how you want the shot to come together and then executing that prediction.”

At a higher level, visualization is an extremely effective problem-solving and relaxation technique, using it to calm yourself as you visualize your shot before calling for the target. Research has proven, use of visualization before sleep has a better chance of producing a solution to problems on waking than just walking around and mulling it over in your mind. Also, visualizing different approaches to a problem or going over several similar but separate problems stimulates the mind to find solutions more quickly. As an aid to mental training, Michael believes by using visualization, “shooters will be able to anticipate and control the effects of stress while improving their consistency and automatic skills.” Visualization works for many athletes, give it a shot and see what it does for you.

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