Training, Practice, Tournaments

By: Paul Giambrone, III

These words came to mind when I was  working with some  students recently in Corpus Christi, TX.  The topic of practice came up and what a good practice routine would be.  At the conclusion of my lessons, I send follow-up emails to my students with notes, diagrams, and a basic practice schedule to use when training.  It is the same one that I posted a couple of years ago in an article about practice.  The routine starts off with baseline (stations 1, 7 & 8) and incomers the first couple of rounds.  It puts it in a format in which you can practice this with others while they blast away at their regular round.  Some of my students have told me that when they do this, they often get teased by some of their regular shooting buddies, until they start showing significant improvement.  Once this happens, those guys that were doing the teasing, started following the schedule and started seeing improvements in their games.  Imagine that.  So why?  What is the deal with these targets that helps shooters better their game?  It’s simple.  These targets are what I and other instructors consider the “basic shots” of the sport.  Ones that should not be given up.  In other words, targets that we really shouldn’t miss (unless extreme circumstances arise).  Have I missed these targets before?  Of course!  Did I miss any in my 2012 season?  You bet, but very limited.  Actually, it was only 4 for the entire year.  The rest of the misses for the season were outgoing targets, which I consider legit misses because everything happens so quickly.  Therefore, if I can limit or eliminate the misses of these “basic shots,” I will surely improve my averages and my scores.  This is why I have my clients work on these targets first (not to mention these targets make up 2/3 of the round).  That’s right, 16-17 shots are either baseline or incoming targets.  Finally, if we can’t hit these basic targets, why even worry about the out-going shots?  Just a thought…

So I start my students off with these shots not only because they make up a large portion of the round and need to be taken very seriously, these targets are also confidence boosters, which leads me to the first word in my title: Training.  What is training?  Isn’t it the same as practice?  Actually, I consider training to be taking a lesson from a professional instructor and/or practicing working on the things you and the instructor worked on.  For example, let’s say your coach worked with you on keeping your head down and gave you a drill to practice.  Well, instead of trying to practice this all the way around the skeet field, work on this mechanical issue on the basic shots first to build the “new feeling” and gain some confidence.  Once you are keeping your head down on all of these basic shots (and hitting them solid) and have a good feel for keeping your head down, then proceed to shooting the outgoing shots.  Once you get the feel on all of the shots, THEN and only then work on practicing a regular round of skeet.  This leads us to the second word: Practice.  I like to think of football for this example…  Usually there is some kind of a scrimmage or walk-through before game day.  This is what I consider practice in skeet.  Shooting regular rounds is like a scrimmage!  You see, in other professional sports, the teams and individuals do different drills to work on their technique (training).  Once they go through the drills for a couple of days, they work on the actual game plays and/or scrimmage/walk-through (practice).  Which leads us to our last point: Game day or tournaments.

In tournaments, like game-day, there will be some adjustments to be made, but nothing major.  This is the mistake that so many shooters find themselves doing on game day…making too many adjustments.  How many of us have found ourselves thinking of the following things after missing a couple of targets: “I must be lifting my head.”  So the next several shots you focus really hard on keeping your head down… so much attention on keeping your head down, you forget to look in the correct spot for the target, leading to another miss.  Then you think, “I must not be setting my eyes.”  So then, you start focusing so hard on setting your eyes, you forget to move on the flash, putting you behind, and leading to another miss a couple of targets later.  Next thing you know, you are so focused on all of these “mechanical things” that it “could be” and the targets look really small, they look fast, your confidence is shot and now we are in a flat spin and can’t control your mind anymore.  Sound familiar?  I know it all too well and have made this mistake several times until I figured out one simple thing.  When game day gets here, very little adjustments to mechanics can be successfully made.  You have been training all week or maybe even weeks for this upcoming tournament and your sub-conscious mind has been programmed to do certain things!  You can’t undo all of that in an afternoon event.  At this point, you can’t reprogram or retrain anything…  You kind of just have to roll with what you have and do the best you can.  Keep it as simple as you can.  All of the days leading up to game-day are the days for you to work on your “mechanics.”

I did mention that there are some adjustments to be made on game day, so what are they?  Pretty simple actually.  The only things that I ever change or adjust to on game day are hold points and look points.  Most of the time, it is just the hold point.  If I line up on a high 2 and it feels really fast, chances are I was holding too close to the house so I will move out a little on my double and see if it feels better.  Keep in mind, when I say move out, I am only talking about a foot or at most a couple of feet.  A great example for me was in St. Joe earlier this year at the Kolar Mid-America.  I was going through my normal routine when my lead off shooter shot his first High 2 of the morning and boy it looked fast.  I made sure I was completely focused and ready when he called for his double and sure enough, it blew by my eyes and my hand.  Knowing this walking on the station, I went ahead and adjusted my hold-point out about 1 foot from normal.  I am sure glad I did, because it still looked like it was moving at super-sonic speed.  After shooting the low house single, I evaluated the situation and knew that my eyes were in the area I wanted them and I was mentally ready, but the target still seamed fast.  I adjust another 2 feet out (huge adjustment) and what do you know, it felt normal.  It felt like the speed it was supposed to feel like.  I then took this theory over to High 3 and discovered that I needed to move out a couple of feet as well.  So I tried it on High 4, then on low 4 (because my normal hold point on Low 3 felt a little fast as well).  This helped prevent any misses in the first round and got me settled in.  What did I learn from this event?  My reflexes were just a little slower than normal on this particular morning.  No big deal, just had to make the adjustment.  And realize, once I made the adjustment and it felt right, I didn’t make ANYMORE CHANGES.  Keep it simple, so you do not get too side tracked like in the beginning of the paragraph.  But please notice, before I made any adjustments, I made sure that I was MENTALLY READY!  If you are not completely ready when you call for the target, whatever visual feedback you get is void.  Only when you are completely ready can you get correct feedback.

Tip of the month:  A couple of things to think about.  1) Look at your last practice, tournament and/or league night and think what your score would have been had you hit all of your baseline and incoming shots.  2) Learn to train and work on certain things before shooting regular rounds of skeet. 3) When shooting the regular rounds, keep the adjustments simple.  Meaning move your hold points slightly in or out if you feel something is wrong or make sure your eyes are at the right elevation (should be in the flight path).  4) Lastly, stop trying to fix your mechanics during a tournament.  Stick with what you have and keep the adjustments simple.