MAGAZINE REVIEWS

CLAYTARGET-NATION - March 2021 Over the last 14 years I’ve read over 100 shooting articles a year. That’s just the instructional articles. I read all of the ones on ammo from Tom Roster and L.P. Brezny and some of the new gun critiques also. The instructional articles come under several headings, but the two main ones are the lengthy textbook kind and the actual shooting theory ones. Textbook articles give you long explanations of how your mind works or your eyes. These are great for a coach who can turn that information into something useful when working with a student. For the average shooter they are tedious and never finish with any solutions to your problems in the real world. This is the nature of Ed Lyons’ article this month. It’s more of a textbook chapter than one of instruction. He provides good explanations on the eye and its function in the shooting process. For example, he notes disassociation of the eyes from the target to the barrel obviously causes visual dissonance disrupting the sight picture usually ending in a missed or at best a chipped target. Most of the article is a dissertation on the eye, but Mr. Lyons does give us good advice along with his physiological explanations. Dry eyes can be a problem, especially early or late in the day. Recently my vision was foggy one morning at the Florida State Trapshoot. I stopped by and asked my friend Dr. Frank Rively, an optometrist who specializes in shooting glasses, for some eye drops. He handed me a bottle after putting some drops in my eyes. It took about 15 minutes, but it did fix the problem. The old saw “use the palest lens to allow the most light into your eye” should be taken with a grain of caution. Mr. Lyons notes, if you are light sensitive using lighter lenses can obviously be counterproductive. Same is true with people sensitive to glare. Stick with the darker lens. Getting regular eye exams is implied as he talks about having the highest visual acuity possible. Seeing the target with more acuity allows for better visual fix on the target and better definition. An Insight to Sports by Dr. Wayne F. Martin is a classic book on vision and its relationship to the shooting sports. Dr. Martin outlines several eye exercises to improve your visual muscles and their ability to see and concentrate on a moving target. While not mentioned in the article, Mr. Lyons does talk about the eye muscles 6 and how they effect your ability to see.

Leaving early or moving before you see the target, is a universal problem, not only in skeet, but in all the shotgunning sports. I tell my beginning students, “You can’t start swinging until you see the duck.” Tim Short addresses this in his article. Leaving early means you inevitably shoot in front of the target, but the real problem is you never sync with the target’s speed. Skeet shooters are told to leave on the target’s blur or flash in your peripheral vision. Leaving early results in a headlong swing, having no relationship to the speed or altitude of the target. His solution to leaving early is to wait at your look point to see the a solidified target in your central vision before starting your move. He says allowing a nanosecond of hesitation before your central vision centers on the target will improve your visual fix on the target. Studies have proven this nanosecond to be around one tenth of a second, an extremely short wait. It’s realistically about 5 hundredths of a second before you should start moving. The important take away is getting your eye centered on the target and keeping it that way. To put this in scientific terms, a 44 mph target travels 6.5’ in one tenth of a second. Since the center hoop is approximately 64 feet from the trap machine this means you have less than a second to react and break the target if you want to be a competitive skeet shooter, so every tenth of a second counts. His whole contention is that we “move on the blur of the target at the center of your eye hold point and track the target from inception to the break point.” Can’t disagree with his point. Getting a fix on the target is the crux of all shotgunning and if this works for you it may eliminate moving out of sync with the bird.

Gebben Miles breaks practice into three phases to get the most out of your sessions. Like all coaches will tell you, shooting a round of 100 targets over 14 or so stations isn’t true practice unless you are working on the pressure of the competitive environment. The first phase is Conditioning. This is intense training, using a field with 6-10 machines and shooting 250 targets during two sessions in the day. You are conditioning yourself against physical and mental fatigue. He starts by dry firing at 20-40 targets to assure his move is “solid and crisp.” He starts with singles then moves to different doubles combinations. If he has a problem target, he will move closer to it until he learns it, then will move further away to learn it at distance. Next he works on pairs until he’s broken 4 in a row and starts over with a different pair. He may do this three to five times in a week. That’s 1,500 to 2,500 targets in a week. Whew! Skill building is next. This is about stance, posture, move, mount, and consistency. Mindset and developing new techniques are also part of this. If you have a problem target this is the phase where you work on it. He states he once had a problem was trap targets on the second shot of a true pair. He spent a whole flat of shells on these targets. He also used a trap field and skeet field to work on them. My guess he was shooting the trap doubles in reverse order shooting the angle first then the straightaway. Same on a skeet field, shooting the doubles in reverse order on 1-3 and 5-7. He also uses the “ladder drill” for problem targets at distance, shooting 24 targets at 26 yards, 30 yards, and 36 yards, working his way back to 60-70 yards, even up to 120 yards. Finally, the sharpening phase. This is competition practice. Shoot the course just like you are in competition, even keeping score. If you find problem targets go back to the conditioning and skills phase. Gebben also suggest working with a coach if problem targets continue to vex you.

Interesting article from Gil and Vicki Ash this month on how to quantify a course. They present a chart developed by one of their students that keeps track of the direction the targets are coming from throughout a course. The walk-away from this is that some courses may tend to be right to left or left to right courses. If you find the majority of targets over a particular course tend to come from one direction or another, practice up on those targets the day before a tournament. You also may find some course setters like an abundance of trap style or teal targets. Interesting trend analysis. Give this article a read if you get a chance. ——————————— Mark Chestnut gives us an article this month on tower targets, getting advice from a fellow instructor Arnie Little of Edmond, Oklahoma. First and foremost, focus on the target. Tower targets don’t typically have any background to give them perspective as to speed or distance. Pick a break point where you see the target clearly. Once committed to the break point, determine the best hold point for it. Keep your gun below the target line so you can see it clearly coming off the trap. Stance is critical to these targets. Set your feet towards the trap if it is a true incomer or toward the break point on crossing or quartering targets. Mark also suggests keeping your feet closer together and keeping the gun sufficiently out in front of the trap, 10 to 12 feet. Many clubs don’t have tower targets. You may have to travel to get access to them for practice. Find a club that has several towers and practice them on a regular basis, especially if you are going to compete at a club that is going to present them. South Florida Shooting Club has several towers with a variety of presentations.

John Shima combines both types of magazine articles into one, textbook and instructional. Like Gebben Miles’ article, John breaks practice into three parts. Basic practice, skill building, and scorebased practice. This matches up with Gebben’s conditioning phase, skill building, and sharpening phase. John is a great advocate of Anders Ericsson the peak performance guru from Florida State University. Professor Ericsson is famous for prescribing deliberate and purposeful practice. The goal of practice is two-fold, learning new skills and turning them into unconscious habits. Deliberate and purposeful practice do this. Purposeful practice is required to develop new skills. This practice must have a goal and must exceed your usual comfort zone. Practice with a speci c purpose, creating or improving an established skill. Basic practice under John’s de nition creates the required mechanical skills needed for ultimate mastery. Nothing can move forward without good technique. This is the beginning of habit building and the blocking of bad habits. Skill building practice is applying the habits created through good technique to speci c presentations. Finally, score based practice simulates competitive practice such as keeping score during a round. Also, include drills such as running a post or station before leaving it. This improves your ability to concentration and your ability to manage control over your conscious mind. Deliberate practice is also where you set reasonable benchmarks and increase them over time, striving for a perfect score. Remember, careless practice produces bad habits which are hard to unlearn. Deliberate practice requires rst establishing good fundamentals, then adding coaching to give feedback and advice on practice routines needed to push you to the next level. One nal take-away. Your conscious mind is there when doing basic practicing and skill building to evaluate and correct. During a competition, leave it behind, control it, and let your unconscious release your good shooting habits to their best affect. Watch the target break.

How do we get past a plateau in our shooting? More targets and range time is obvious, but what else can we do? Paul Giambrone III presents suggestions as to things that may also be holding you back on your current plateau. Gun t is step one. If your gun doesn’t t you it will impede your progress. Poor gun t affects your stance, mount, and your visual eld. Get some advice on your gun t from a quali ed expert or coach. Everyone’s different when it comes to gun t, so be careful the advice you get is good. Are you making a good rotation with the target is the next step. Paul and I both advocate a full body swing to the target. A full body swing is simply more athletic and will cause less muscle tension and constriction when you move. I differ from Paul in his advice to swing from your heels. I prefer swinging off the balls of my feet. You decide. Hold and look points are also critical to improvement. They both work in concert. Once you establish the best hold point for your style, the look point becomes critical. Paul suggests looking half-way back to the window from your hold point. Everyone is different. Some people can look almost to the window on every station. I like the halfway back look for High 2 and Low 6. Otherwise, I look just off the window except for High 1 and Low 7 of course. How you set your vision at the look point is also important. Look into the flight path, not below it. You want the target to cross your central vision, look up. Soft focus and the Quiet Eye are required to fully pickup the target. Any eye movement as you call will put you at a distinct disadvantage and usually results in a recovery shot. Look off into the distance and through the flight path. As Paul notes, in a perfect world your barrels won’t be visible if you gaze properly at the look point. Finally, you must perform you pre-shot routine consistently. Plan your shot before you step onto the station. Know where your hold and look points will be and how you will position your feet. Step onto the station and set your feet and stance. Only accept a perfect mount. If it’s wrong star t over and remount. Set your concnetration to seeing the flash of the target and go into soft focus, concentrating on picking up the target. Hard focus on the target when it appears and follow through watching the target break and follow the pieces. If something distracts you, take your gun down and remount, reset your visual routine, then proceed with the shot.