What an incredible lesson with Scott Barnett
What an incredible lesson…..
I am a firm believer in practise makes perfect and that there is no short cut to putting lead through the barrel. However you need to be practising the right things and removing faults as you go. For this to happen I think it is very useful to have regular lessons, I think it can help spot mistakes before they become engrained habits and also guide your practise time.
I had been suffering a lose of form on what most people would consider easier targets, these were targets that were fairly close and usually going away or quartering away from you. It seemed the harder I tried the worse the results ( which is often the case in this game) and the more rushed I felt on the target. After a number of lessons it was clear that on this type of target my shooting was erratic and my swing wasn’t always as smooth as it should be, the problem was we couldn’t see a root cause.
Scott then suggested that it may help if we filmed me shooting a few targets from various angles and we also used a camera on a hat.
Two weeks later I went for my ‘Video’ lesson. I then went onto shoot an number of targets repeatedly and after each stand we reviewed the footage, after getting over the dislike of watching yourself on film you start to see some useful things. I saw that on some targets I was missing that my arms were starting to take over but still nothing that stood out. I then shot a few more stands and on reviewing the footage from one of the stands we spotted something strange even though I was positive my hold point was the same each time for the targets I missed it looked different.
When we looked closer in 1/4 time, my hold point was the same each time, however while waiting for the clay to arrive my gun creeped backwards towards the trap. This could be the fault we have been looking for.
The next stage was to review all the footage we have taken from the lesson inside and sure enough on nearly every shot we saw this gun creep. The harder I tried the more the gun creeped and hence the more rushed I felt when I had to change directly quickly to get onto the flight line of the clay.
To put theory into practise, we went back out onto the shooting ground to see if we could correct the fault. My task was to keep the barrels perfectly still and once I had acquired the clay move the gun forward and shoot. This felt terrible, it clear that this was a fault, as it was taking a lot of effort to wait for the clay, it seemed like an eternity. The effects on the practise ground were nearly immediate, I was more consistent and didn’t feel like I was rushed.
It is to early to tell what effect this will have in competition but the signs are good and the next few weeks will be spent trying to replace this old fault with the positive style that is replacing it.
It is not often you feel like you stumble across something that is a game changer but after this lesson that was exactly what I thought and it was a big relief to find a fault that could explain so of the inconsistencies I have been having.