Part 2
So when I left off, I was on Station 5 realizing I was in trouble. I was exhibiting rather poor form in order to compensate for being beat on the second bird. Even worse, this was on the 'easy' stations.
So the question I had to answer is why was I getting beat on the second bird. Fortunately I had someone watching me, who was only too eager to tell me what I was doing wrong. Anyone who has watched me shoot will tell you that I have an exaggerated follow through, and that I shoot the first bird early. When shooting doubles, to compensate the early first shot, I need to continue swinging until nearly the centre stake and then swing back into the second bird.
The combination of the follow through and the quick first shot was essentially causing me grief. I was swinging too far, so far that the second bird was passing me and forcing me to quickly catch up. Typically I would do this using the 'throw the gun' trick.
So fair enough, problem identified. Now for the hard part, trying to fix it.
For me, Skeet is a game of repetition. When I get on the station to shoot, I set my feet, find my hold spot and call for the birds. I am not thinking about lead. I am not thinking about where to break the birds. If all is well, I AM NOT THINKING AT ALL.
It was suggested that if I broke the birds later, that I could avoid the lengthy follow-through, keep the second bird in front of me without a ridiculous move involving moving the gun with my arms.
This was well and fine, but, it involved thinking. I had to find a way to break the bird later. This turned out to be very difficult for me. Once I broke the bird, I had to change my move to the second bird causing me to think again. If I found that I was not in front of the second bird, I had to take an extra moment to swing my body to get in front of the bird before pulling the trigger... more thinking.
To say I struggled with this would be an understatement. I felt and absolutely shot like a D class shooter. I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. I'd shoot the first bird too early, and get caught with a dead gun (I balked a few times on the second bird as a result). I got caught swinging my arms a few times. I got caught following through too far. Trying to think about 3 different things instead of 0 was causing me lots of grief.
After I finished embarrassing myself on 5 I was back to my notebook writing down things I was doing wrong, and some possible suggested solutions.
After we were done with the easy stations (3 and 5) we went to the hard one, and the real reason for my attending the clinic, station 4.
My problems from 3 and 5 were even more apparent at 4. The solutions were the same. Break the first bird later, and follow through less. I struggled even more.
I worked pretty hard to stop moving my arms. Several pairs later I got to the point where I was getting able to do that without thinking about it (very desirable). I had about a 90% success rate with that, failing only when I got seriously beat.
I continued to have problems breaking the first bird too early. I finally made a significant change to my hold point, bringing it about half way between the house and the centre stake. This helped a lot. After much struggling I started to have some limited success.
We started to move as a group between 3, 4 and 5 to start putting what we've learned into practice. Essentially we had been taught everything that we could be taught, and the rest was just implementation.
My struggles continued as there was still too much thinking required at each station, often resulting in forgetting something. Even with the new hold point I was ofted swinging too far after the first bird.
Things finally started to click at stations 3 and 5. I was finally able to automate the new steps and moves (reduce thinking again). I didn't make as much progress at station 4 as I would have liked, but the groundwork has been set.
To change things up, we went back to stations 2 and 6 (just to ensure we didn't screw anything else up by making changes up top). Sure enough, I missed the second bird on 2 (shooting about 15 feet in front). This was pretty standard with the entire group (there was a pretty significant timing change). Fortunately this just required a minor adjustment and no additional thinking.
Essentially we shot until we were too tired to continue. I shot 16 boxes to get to this point. I would like to say that I finished with a straght round of 3,4,5 doubles, but that wasn't the case. Fatigue really took over. Shooting any more would not produce any more results that day.
I finished the day as follows;
-Identified a few major flaws in my doubles game
-Solutions for the major flaws in my doubles game
-New (lower) hold points for doubles at 3, 4H, 4L and 5
-relative success at 3 and 5
-6 or so pages of notes of things I am doing wrong, things to do to correct the problems and tips of things that were working.
Things identified to work on.
-Need to work on getting better breaks once I start getting timing solid.
-Station 4 in general.
-making sure I don't slip back into my old habits.
Essentially, I indeed bought into Todd's analysis of my game. His solutions are dead on. It is going to take a lot of work on my part to fix it. It is going to take even more work than I had to put into my singles game.
After the lessons were done, we had the required 'bull session' where we shared stories, but as you might expect mostly listened to stories Todd had to tell.
All told, it was a very worth while experience. I don't get to have expert analysis of my game done very often. I am very eager to get back out onto the field and work on things. The test will be in about two weeks at the Ontario Skeet Championships in Oshawa.
Brad.
