On the value of a good coach

[Nicole Hamilton]

This is a bit off-topic as it has to do with shotgun, not the pistol or rifle topics we normally talk about here on TT, but I had such a great time yesterday, I felt like I just had to share it.

I've just recently gotten interested to learn to shoot shotgun. It's fun because the clays are such reactive targets, not like the paper bullseyes we shoot at in everything else. When you get a good hit, the clays smash to smithereens. But of course, the problem is to make that happen.

In shotgun, it makes all the difference to find a gun that actually fits because there's no rear sight on the gun. The only rear sight is your eye so the gun has to fit so that your eye is always in the same place. I'd been trying different friends' guns without success 'till finally, someone let me try a Browning Citori Trap XT that did fit. So I went out and bought one and that solved the first part of the problem.

But I was still struggling to break 7 or 8 out of 25, even in straight-aways, which are the easiest. Until yesterday, I'd only been shooting shotgun maybe a half-dozen times, so maybe that's not terrible, considering, but it certainly wasn't what I wanted.

But a couple people mentioned there was this amazing coach, Chuck Dryke, out in Sequim (pronounced "squim") on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, who'd coached his son, Matt, to an Olympic Gold in international skeet at the 1984 games. So yesterday, I went out there with a couple guys from my club for a day of instruction.

Wow! Now I understand what a really good coach does: He helps you do things you didn't think were possible. Helped along by some beautiful weather, it was one of the most fun days ever.

I went out thinking I'm game for this no matter what, because I don't worry too much about making a fool of myself. (Like everything else, this is just something that comes with practice.) But otoh, that is what I expected would happen.

But Chuck had us starting off with some exercises where he trains you on how to watch a fast-moving object before you pick up the gun that work like nothing I've seen before. There are two tricks he taught us.

The first is to "soft-focus" your eyes where you expect to pick up the target, not where the target will first appear. If you try picking it up where it first appears, you can’t do it because it gets away from you and you’re left trying to catch up. But if you focus your eyes so it’ll first appear in your peripheral vision, that gives you time to begin tracking it as it comes into the center of your vision. Then it’s no problem at all to stay with it and you can even focus in on just a part of it (like the leading edge) and watch it really easily. It doesn’t even seem fast anymore.

He uses several exercises to teach this, but the one I found especially impressive was with a setup he had on the side of a building with a big bead painted with red, white and green stripes pulled by a machine on a rope loop so it would appear at one end, run about 35 feet, then disappear every few seconds. If you tried watching where it would appear, it was impossible. But watching the middle of the building, you could pick it out easily and focus in on, say, just the red part.

The second trick he taught us was to lock your eyes onto the clay before moving the gun. If you start moving the gun before you’ve totally locked onto it, it draws your focus away from the clay to the moving barrel of the gun because that’s up closer to your eyes. So you never get a good lock on the clay. But if you lock on the clay, never looking away from it, before you start moving the gun, it’s totally different. Every time I missed, it was =always= because I rushed and started to move the gun before I had locked my eyes on the clay or, alternately, because I relaxed my focus on the clay.

The thing is, I'd already heard all this before, but somehow it hadn't really sunk in. But the way he did it, it worked.

When we went out to start shooting, it was a different experience. Instead of struggling to get a few straightaways, suddenly I was consistently getting most of them and that was with regular trap, where they go at different angles, and in sporting clays, where they come out of different houses. I hadn't believed I could do this.

I ended up shooting about 300 rounds of 12 ga, which in the past, would have left me a cripple but not yesterday. This was =such= a great day.

Anyway, this made me a believer that if you're lucky enough to find the right coach, it can change everything.

[Guest T]

"Right coach can change everything"

I agree with Nicole. Let get share some information about good experience by working with "Right Coach" at rifle, pistol or shotgun.

[_Axel_]

I grew up shooting skeet, but never was very good at it, even tho its fun. I agree a coach is the best way to become good in any sport or activity!

Hope u wont go over to the dark side permanently Nicole, there are allready millions of good women in shotgunning, but much fewer in pistol shooting (it seems to me)! ;) Im very glad every time a see a "girl" on the pistol range, for the future of the sport we need more women participating!

Clays are fun tho, and shotguns are very interesting!

[Nicole Hamilton]

Oh, I don't think I'll be going to the dark side any time soon. Right now, that shotgun's pretty outnumbered in my safe by all the pistols and rifles. It's something like 35 to 1.

[_Axel_]

I was talking to some other woman on the net about getting a proper coach, she was just practising to get her gun permit on a club here in sweden. I told her that the complaints she had about getting totally bruised up could be corrected with a good coach, but she insisted she allready had one...

Shotgunning is not really a "black art", even tho they dont have proper sights, its real a science! Michael Yardley´s book "Gunfitting" is a small book u should read if u plan to keep busting clays! good luck!

[Nicole Hamilton]

Michael Yardley´s book "Gunfitting" is a small book u should read if u plan to keep busting clays! good luck!

Thank you! I'll look for that. The book that Chuck Dryke gave me to read is "An Insight to Sports" by Wayne F. Martin, OD. The whole point of this book (and of Chuck's instruction) is that it's all about learning to use your eyes.

[Tim Conrad]

No question that a good coach is vital for a new shooter. Doesn't have to be Olympic level, just someone who knows the good habits. As a coach, the hardest task is getting a shooter to un-learn a bad habit. I had the good fortune to have access to Dan Iuga when I started pistol. Never shot very well (may have something to do with lack of practice) but I learned the right way to do it. As for the 'dark side'... bustin' stuff is fun.

[Pradeep5]

Does shotgunning (where you need to lock on to the target) and pistol (where you need to focus on the sights) mean that they are mutually exclusive? Or at least a "bad influence" so to speak?

I know Bill Demarest in his interview on Pilkguns/Potter Firearms used to do a bit of air rifle to change things up, seems to be more of a mutual relationship.

That said, as long as you are having fun, keep going! 300 rounds would definitely have me crippled :)

[Nicole Hamilton]

Does shotgunning (where you need to lock on to the target) and pistol (where you need to focus on the sights) mean that they are mutually exclusive? Or at least a "bad influence" so to speak?

I've heard that, too, but I'm having a little trouble believing it.

What I notice is that the key in all types of shooting is that you have to have complete control of what you look at. The moment you relax your focus, drifting even a little from the front sight to the target in pistol or from the clay to your gun in shotgun, you miss the shot. Yes, you look at different things. But this session with Chuck Dryke really was helpful in understanding that it's all about using your eyes.

[Jose Rossy]

Does shotgunning (where you need to lock on to the target) and pistol (where you need to focus on the sights) mean that they are mutually exclusive? Or at least a "bad influence" so to speak?

They are not.

Before I got interested in rifle shooting, I was an avid shotgunner, concentrating on skeet and sporting clays.

Now I don't shoot clays as often, but when I do my mind and eye make the switch from concentrated focus on the front sight to concentrated focus on the target with hardly any effort. The really perishable skill is learning where to focus to find the small, fast moving target in the first place, as Nicole noted.

I can even go from a shotgun with a single trigger to one with double triggers without missing a beat.

The human mind is amazing if we don't get in its way.

[GaryN]

I have to agree completely with Nicole.

I started shooting 10m AR, self-taught...bad idea.
I was shooting so BAD I was ready to quit.
How bad was it? I was struggling to keep my shots inside the 1 ring. And there were more than a few targets with less holes than I shot. :-(

Out of complete DESPIRATION, I found a coach with the help of some of the guys here on TT.
Short story, in about 2 hours he completly rebuilt my stance and gave me the basics so I could keep my shots inside the 1 ring.
And in a few weeks the majority of my shots were close to or in the black.
Pretty good for a casual weekend shooter.
And I was now enjoying myself.


Nicole, my shotgunning is 100x worse than my air rifle ever was. It was so bad that I have not touched a shotgun in years. I fell of the bike and decided not to get back on.

[Tim Conrad]

Shotgun requires much faster eye-hand coordination than rifle or pistol. In international Trap, you have less than half a second from when you call for the target to when you shoot. New meaning to the term "over hold".

Still, from many years of observation, I think crossover training is good. I shot a lot of prone, some air rifle, air pistol. Trap was always more fun, even though I never hit much. You still have to focus, aim, and pull the trigger.

Like the commercial, good coaching ? Priceless.

[2650 Plus]

Just my opinion, I think good coaches teach you how to do something Others, not so good tell you all the things you shouldn't do, and spend far to much time on history lessons. One uses a positive approach the other far to negative. Communication is key and easily becomes a road block preventing the smoothe flow of information. Demonstrations can help overcome many mis understandings. How about a bit more discussion on this subject.? Good Shooting Bill Horton

[jackh]

I have not had a coach for over 30 years. I had one 1970 to about 75.

[bryan]

shot matt drykes shotgun at forte benning while I was training leading up to the 84 olympics.
first time I shot a shotgun, completely missed the first half, hit nearly all the second half, at least they stopped rolling around the ground laughing for the second half.
took a few goes to hit the low house standing between the 2 houses.

is a long story why I had a shotgun shoved in my hands and marched out to the range fairly late in the day, but it started around the pool table!
something like how could you miss something that big with a shotgun?

it also was fuelled by, how do you bounce a ball off the sides with such big holes around the table! I was young, and these guys were the top in both trap and skeet. including both the world record holders!

hopefully I have learned to keep my mouth shut, but the point was with some expert coaching I was hitting targets easily.

I have had many coaches over the yrs, most were useless, just text book coaches, that is they learned everything they know from a book.
when starting out these coaches are o/k, but as you get to higher levels, you need a better coach, they are thin on the ground.

If you wish to be the best in the world, you need a coach to take you there. seen some olympic champions with personal coach, manager and massuer. how could they not win!

good coaches arent given enough credit.

imho

bryan

[Hemmers]

My club (Southampton University, UK) is lucky enough to have Don and Mary Maiden as Club coaches. Mary has about 30 years experience as a County coach for Hampshire in the UK, and shooting runs in the family.
More to the point, if you don't recognise her name, you should recognise Don's - he coached Malcolm Cooper and Alister Allan to collect 4 medals for Britain in 3P Small-Bore Rifle in the 1984 and '88 Olympics, and endorsed a series of heavy duty rifle cases (they tossed one out a plane to simulate careless baggage handlers, rifle inside was fine, as were the sights!)

Their enormous experience really shows in the club. It's won the UK Inter-University championships for 4 consecutive years. Several Unis field 1 or 2 shooters who are GB Jr Squad and the like, but the rest of their octet is a bit mediocre. While we have 1 or 2 "heroes" at the most, having a team of decent shotoers is what helps the most.
I've now been shooting a little under 2 years (I started when i came to Uni, and I've just finished my second academic year), and I'm shooting 575s prone outdoors, and competing at County Junior level in the indoor Winter Postal season. The 575s aren't great, but I've only just started getting my own kit (new Jacket at easter, new rifle on order, yay!), and part of it is just experience, or lack thereof, that I'm rapidly acquiring by going to every Competition or outdoor training session I can lay my hands on.

The leaps and bounds the freshers show at the start of each year is astounding, and largely due to them, as well as the dedicated committee (many of whom, like me, have learnt everything they know about shooting and coaching from Don and Mary to start with!).

Good coaches are amazing, and can fundamentally change your shooting. Even if you're not lucky enough to have access to a coach in the manner I do, and have to shell out for a half-day with a coach, as I've been told, £150 is probably better spent on tuning the nut behind the butt, not buying gizmos to add to your rifle, which may or may not help your scores.
Books, such as Ways of the Rifle and physiology books are also very good for a fundamental understanding of how the body works, how different muscles will affect your position and how they interact with each other. There's a lot you can do to get the maximum value from the time you spend with a coach, rather than rocking up and saying "make me shoot straight" and having to start from scratch.

That said, it's not always a coach you need, but just someone to be there for encouragement, even if they're just taking photos of your position so you can see what you actually look like, and figure out why you feel so uncomfortable! To take an example, I took up 3P last October. There are 2 others in the club who were already very good, and I was the first of a wave of members who are now expanding from prone-only to 3P. Now one of them does have a "Club Instructor" ticket, but more important than that, was just the fact he bugged me constantly "doing some standing/kneeling tonight Rich?" and got me to practice. Yes, when I was doing practice cards, he'd wander over on the point when he'd finished his card and start correcting things, but it was the bugging and getting me to practice and play with my position in the first place that I feel was most important. After a winter of practice and competing in the NSRA's S&K indoor league, I'm punching out 960s outdoors. Hopefully I'll break 1000 before 2008 (although I'll be happy as long as I stay above 950!).