Putting Your Plan Into Action

All right, everybody, welcome to the second season of The Journey podcast. I know that may be a little confusing, but for those of you who are joining in late, basically, every month of the Journey podcast is going to be a new series with a new tie, like a new title, a new theme, new topic. And we're going to progress forward in all these different categories of important things that we need to do in order to do and accomplish the main overarching goal of the whole podcast for this year, which is helping you to accomplish your goals by the end of 2023. So the series one was all of January, and that was called the beginning. And series two is going to be all of February. And we are going to be calling it first results. Because basically, now some of you are starting to shoot some of your first big tournaments this year, and putting your plans into action. So we are going to use that as the focus for our discussion for the next month. So before I get into everything, I'm just gonna give you a little episode summary outline of what I'm going to cover in this episode. First off, is introducing that new title of series two, which is first results. And then I'm going to go into a quick summary of the series one content, just in case you're joining us. Now, I'm not going to actually talk about any of this stuff that we discussed in those episodes, because you can always go backwards and listen to older episodes. But I am going to just centrally lay out the questions that we answered that were the main focus points for all of the previous episodes in January. And then after that, we're going to get into the series two content, this is not going to be a super heavy episode, it's basically going to have three different talking points after that outline. And for the purpose of that there isn't much to do right now, other than understand what to expect going forward. And, you know, go through a little bit of the homework. But essentially, the three topics that I'm gonna be covering for this episode are going to be explaining what to expect coming up. So essentially, for those of you who have been following along with the content of this podcast, and doing the homework, and, you know, taking notes, and following our plans and implementing the stuff that we've talked about in terms of practice, and structuring out a year long plan, when you go into your first tournament, what do we expect, that's the first main thing that we need to talk about? Then after that, I'm going to get into basically how to handle what to expect coming up in tournaments. So when we get into understanding what it is that we actually should expect, and what probably will happen for a lot of you, the next thing we're going to, you know, just follow curiosity on is trying to figure out what to do with that experience in our first couple tournaments, or first tournament. After that, we're going to talk about, you know, essentially answering the question of how to handle that brings up some things that are kind of important for what we need to be doing during our round and how we need to differentiate our tournaments from our practicing and our learning. So we're gonna get into some key components of a successful competitive routine. So that's those three topics, the explanation of what to expect, coming up if you have not a tournament yet, how to handle what happens in your first tournament, if it does happen, and then talking about some of the key components of a successful competitive routine. Other than that, the only thing I have to bring up right now is essentially what your homework will be for the end of this episode. So it's going to be pretty easy, no stress, I still want you guys to be focusing on the practice plan that I've assigned the last two episodes, because some of you haven't gotten a chance to do it yet. And that's going to be really, really important. On top of that, we're going to use some of our first results. Not to be a little corny or anything, but we're going to be using some of our first results to essentially structure and guide practice plans moving forward. So I want to get through the first one before anything else. So basically, the homework after this episode is going to be to go to the Journey podcast website, which is D radulovich.com/podcast. And You're gonna see a survey there that basically asks you to list out what tournaments you're planning on going to this year. So you obviously don't have to write down like little monthly tournaments unless you'd like to. But the thing I'm looking for our, what major tournaments, whether that be regional championships, state championships, US opens National Championship or World Championships, what are you going to I'm trying to get a breakdown, you know, essentially, of the participation of those big tournaments, with all of you guys as listeners, because I'm going to structure a plan, like, I'm going to structure the content of this podcast around the schedule of the tournaments that are heavily participated in by all of you guys. That way, we can actually kind of work together to all get ready for these tournaments. And I can pull you along with me, using my knowledge and understanding of what types of things to expect that tournaments with certain target setters or at specific places, and at different levels of competition, and I can essentially, as we go and progress through the podcast, you know, transfer over all of that knowledge to you. So in order to do that, I need to know what tournaments you're planning on going to. So that's why I'm asking. So that's your homework real easy. Other than that, that's the end of this intro, and we will make this one somewhat short. Oh, actually, that is not the end of this intro, I will say that, for those of you who may be a little confused as to when episodes are released, for the Journey podcast. The easiest place right now to find all of the content is on YouTube. So if you go to the Journey podcast YouTube website, you can find that link on my on my own website, but go to the YouTube channel, for the Journey podcast, all of my live videos are there, all of my actual recorded episodes are there. And you can find everything on there. And I am working on getting the audio version of those live podcasts submitted into the audio only recordings that get to the podcasts apps. That's why basically this past week, it may look like there was no episode, but there was it was just on YouTube. So one thing I will recommend, though, for those of you who are listening to this, and think that you normally do like to listen, and not watch on YouTube for the Live episodes, not so much so far. But coming up, I am going to be incorporating a lot of content, and on screen graphics and demonstrations on the videos. So it will be important for you guys to participate on YouTube. The most recent episode, which is season one, episode four that we called What was the name of it, how to create the perfect practice, perfect practice plan. That one was on YouTube Live. And that was kind of like the first iteration of stuff, where we're going to be pulling up shoot analysis sheets, videos, to analyze of people shooting, I can have important things on on your screen that you can watch. And it's just more fun to interact and engage with everybody on there. So you can read the chat messages interact with people ask questions, always a great resource. It's really, really fun. And it's, it's a blast. So first off, thanks for thank you guys who have participated in them for coming. The last one was literally four hours long and everybody stayed for the whole time. That's freaking amazing.

Yeah, so that's it. So basically, if you're looking for season one, episode four, it's on YouTube, for now it will be published to audio only on the apps, hopefully actually at the same time that I published this one. But that's all intro is over. Let's get into it. Okay, so series two. First results is what we're calling it. The this is something that I had planned since November of 2022, when I was laying out all the content that I wanted to talk about for all of 2023 for the podcast, and I seem to have been pretty good with my prediction of what was happening or what would happen. Because so far, I have had a few emails from you guys, not everybody. There's a lot of people that listen to the podcast. But there has been a good percentage of you who have sent me emails with pretty much the same question and it's come up a few times. I'm on the YouTube Live Events. And so I had planned to name this the first results. And essentially, for this whole month, talk about how to interpret the first results that you have after trying to change things in your game, whether that be mechanical, or routines or mental stuff. But essentially, anytime we make a change in what we're doing, it always impacts something, whether it be good or bad. Now, hopefully, if we're making a change, it's a good change. And the only way to know that is to have knowledge of it being a good change. So I can tell you right now, that everything that we've talked about on this podcast so far has been backed either by 20 plus years of my experience in playing this game, winning every major championship that there is to win, or my 15 plus years of teaching this game and my experience on how people learn what order they need to learn things in, what type of things that they're trying to learn negatively influenced their shooting, so far, and but positively influencing in the long run. And then just my experience with being on the journey of with students in them learning to be more proficient in shooting. On top of that, there has been a lot of information that has been backed by like neurological research and studies and a lot of really, really good sources. So everything that you're hearing in here is objective, and not subjective, that's very, very important to know. Because, you know, it's easy to start to doubt, something if it's not working if we don't understand how the brain learns, and how new habits are introduced into our game. So with this whole month being about the first results, we're going to talk about, you know, what type of things that we can expect. But then also, later on in the month, how after the tournaments are over how to take those first results, analyze them go in depth in a holistic approach to understand everything about our game, whether that be the visual mechanics, the physical mechanics, your routines, your preparation, your presence, your mental game, everything and being able to analyze all of that, from shoot, to shoot, to be able to improve it in a linear upward trend from from tournament to tournament. That's basically what this month is about. So because it is about that, it's going to first start off on kind of, you know, projecting what's going to happen first. And that's going to be what the content of this episode is. So before I get into that content, what I want to do is just summarize the content of the last season. So the last four episodes of the podcast, I know that it may be redundant for some of you. So if you don't want to listen to it, feel free to look at the timestamps in the podcast and skip through this part. But it is going to be important, even if you've listened to every episode, because I'm going to lay out all of the questions that I was trying to answer for all of you in all of the content that I've created over the past month. And I want to use it as a filter, I want you guys to use that as a filter to be able to say, you know, listen to me read these questions off. And if you feel like you still don't have an answer to them, or you still don't understand that concept, then it will be important for you to go back and find that in the previous content. And it would be easy to do because everything again, is labeled within the timestamps of every episode. And the way I'm going to list this is I'm going to read essentially the title that is on the timestamp, and then I'm going to read the questions answered in each category. So let's go through and do that and basically use those filter questions for you. All right, here is the quick summary of the series one content. So we'll start off with season one, episode two. We're going to skip episode one because Episode One was just laying out the structure of the podcast but series one episode two is called setting goals. and building a plan. In the first category of goal setting, we answered the questions of how do I set goals in a way that help me accomplish them? Then what different types of goals should I set? What is a good time frame to set goals within? So we have those three questions. Next category that we talked about is the important traits and skill sets required to set goals and build a plan. within that category, we had four questions that we answered in the content of this episode. The first one was what do I need to have or be able to do in order to accomplish this? What do I need to know about myself or be able to do in order to accomplish my goals? Why do I need to understand what traits and skill sets are important to accomplish my goals? And how do I find all of this out about myself? So the if you remember real quick summary, in the goal setting, we talked about three different types of goals. And then in the important traits and skill sets, one of the biggest things that we talked about was being able to go through and do a personality test and figure out more about who you are, how you respond to things and how you interpret just the world around you. The next category that we talked about in this episode were or was self analysis or self assessment, we answered four questions. So why is it important to be self aware? What do I need to be self aware about? How do I run a self analysis? And what do I use the information that I gain from a self analysis for? That basically revolved a lot around using a shoot analysis sheet or notes, journaling, taking voice memos, anything like that. Then the next category that we talked about was building a plan. This is was a little bit heavier of a of a topic in this episode. Again, four questions. First one is how do I build a plan? Second one is, what do I need to include in a plan so that it leads me towards accomplishing my goals? Third one is what a structured plan looks like for somebody who hates structure. And the last one was the importance of having balance in your plan. That one is a lot. And I'm not going to summarize it here. Just go back and listen to the episode trying to make this quick. The last two categories were staying focused and disciplined. And then the last one was, what do I do if I'm not seeing an improvement or making progress towards my goals? That one didn't have any questions underneath it? Because it was essentially just asking a question as the title of the specific content. But as far as staying focused, and discipline goes, the question that we tried to answer was, how do I stay on track and keep making progress and getting better? So that covers all the questions that we answered in season one, episode two. Moving on to season one, episode three, this one was my favorite episode that I've done. And I can promise you guys that I am going to come back to this type of content and go more in depth in these specific categories. And then I actually am in the process of working on having some really cool guests, like not shooting related guests, but really, really cool guests that are that are very,

highly regarded in the field of what we covered in this episode. And I'm going to pick their brain on a live podcast. So that's, I'm super excited about that. But essentially, the title of this one, the third episode was understanding the mental component to optimizing practice. Essentially, this was laying out all of the neurology of learning a new physical skill. A couple of topics that we covered here. The first one is the difference between an open loop and a closed loop skill. We talked about how shooting is one of those but it can also be the other depending on a very specific practice routine that you do. i Can you tell I'm not giving away answers. So you go back and listen to these if you didn't listen to him yet. The second thing that we covered the second topic was essentially laying out the three different components to learning a physical skill. basically talking about what three things are required to, in include in the process of trying to practice something new in terms of movement. I'll Give that one out in case you guys don't go back and listen, because this is really, really important. Essentially, the three things are your sensory perception, the actual physical movement, and then proprioception. If you want to know the defined, detailed laid out information of each of those three things, for sure, go back and listen to that episode. Also, I'm going to say a lot of you thought that an 11 minute teaser video that I released on YouTube and social media was the whole episode of season one, series one, episode three. But that was just a teaser episode. This episode, I believe is around three hours, two and a half hours of a recorded podcast. So if you thought that you listen to this one, and it was like 11 minutes long, then basically just know that it's not and go back either to your podcast app or to YouTube, and look for what that title is, which is understanding the mental component to optimizing practice. The next category that we talked about on this episode was understanding how the brain learns and controls movement. Essentially, we laid out the difference between those CPGs, which is a central pattern generators, your upper motor neurons and your lower motor neurons. And essentially, which one of them is involved in proprioceptive ly controlling your muscles, which one of those is, is involved in consciously controlling your muscles, and then which one of those is actually the one that controls the physical movement of your muscles. So it's important to understand the three different things. Because that way we understand how to actually consciously pay attention and what to actually plan on doing in practice, if we really actually want to rewrite the neuro chemistry of how our brain performs certain tasks, and controls our body to do them. Super important to understand how the brain learns controls movement. The next category that we talked about was the neurological importance of failure and learning and how failing actually helps you learn faster. This one is absolutely fascinating to me, if you have not listened to this episode, yet, and you're like, I'm not gonna waste three hours. First off, I'm, if that's what you're thinking, I'm feel sad that you think that it's a waste of three hours. But if, if that is your if that is your approach, no harm, no foul, but I will say, if there's one part of this that you listen to, on this episode, listen to this little portion of it. Again, you can find it in the timestamps of this episode, but the neurological importance of failure and learning in credible, amazing, I don't have any other words, I'm not going to keep going deeper in all these, I want to waste time. The next category that we talked about in here is the the question of, essentially, is high repetition actually good for learning. And then what are some other approaches to practice that we can take in that regard? And then the last one, the last category and topic that we covered in this episode, was answering the question of what is an ideal scenario for trying to learn something new, and that's the very end of it. And I literally go through and I lay out everything, both things that you can control and things that you can't control and set you up with an ideal situation for being able to make the most out of your time in terms both time and money actually in terms of trying to get better at shooting. The thing that I will say is that this is 100% true. i In all honesty, I should charge I could charge in my own mind. I could justifiably charge $5,000 for the information that episode because not kidding you had I known that stuff when I was learning this game $5,000 Would pale in comparison to the amount of money I would have saved a trying to learn this way. No joke, the amount of money that listening to this episode will save you in terms of understanding how to get better in basically hacking your brain's ability to learn a physical skill is I can't put a value on it because and I literally talked about it in that episode where I lay out for you, you know This scenario where if we don't do the things I talked about in that episode, essentially all of your practice is actually further in graining bad habits. And the only thing that's happening is you are further diluting this ratio of an understanding that your brain has in terms of what is good movement and what is bad movement. And that if we don't do what I laid out, in this episode, what ends up happening is that when you're shooting a tournament, in order to make the correct move, you will have to be conscious in what your body is doing. That's why so many people shoot this game, through the lens of consciously deciding what mechanics that like what method in terms of do, I want to do swing through sustained lead, pull away, you know, what is the size of insertion? How do I create a connection and establish harmony, all of that stuff. If you're consciously doing that, then you're practicing incorrectly. And if you listen to this episode, you can learn how to practice correctly. So that in a tournament, what you are going to be able to do is literally just look at the bird, and allow those CPGs, the central pattern generators to control the movement of your body, because you have through this type of practice, taught yourself what type of essentially neurological signal signals need to be sent to those lower motor neurons in order to do what you're trying to do consciously. But this time, actually nonconscious. So save yourself a bunch of time and money and get to being as good as you want to be faster by listening to this, and then basically always practicing this way, I can't stress it enough. I'm bummed out that I didn't think of this. Or find this information when I first started. So anyways, that's my end of my little rant on series one, episode three. The last Episode Episode Four was a YouTube Live episode. This is the one that may not be on the audio. Only podcast apps right now. But you can find it on YouTube. The title of this one was called How to create the perfect practice plan. And again, basically the reason why it's on YouTube is because there's a video to it, where I bring up a bunch of stuff. We go through different users submitted things, we analyze some submitted practice plans, answer some questions, and then I lay out the following information. The first question that I answer is how do you structure a practice plan? Then the next one that I get into is what information do you use to build out a practice plan? Basically, how do you focus and direct your planning for your plan? That's a weird sentence. Then the next category that we went into was how do I get the information that I need to use to build out a practice plan? And then after that, I covered what you should specifically basically answering the question of what should I specifically focus my practice session on individually like every time I go to practice? How do we answer the question of what should I practice today?

After that, we went into talking about a few different types of shooting practice. The and actually, what I'm going to do right now is, I was not planning on this, but I'm going to just really quickly read them off just so you understand what different types of practice there are. That way, the if you want to learn more about them and you haven't listened to this episode, yet, you can go on YouTube, and watch it. But basically, the different types of shooting practice are practicing physical mechanics, practicing your visual mechanics, doing a routine based practice a what I like to call problem solving based practice, a tournament simulation, a confidence or trust building practice, what I like to call exploratory practice, which is my personal favorite, and I can attribute almost 80% or so of the stuff that I know about how to shoot to this type of practice. Then there's also like practice designed to build proprioception that can all be done at your house. Like in your in your room. There Then there is closed loop practice, and then pressure and repetition practice. So if you want to know what those are, go to that episode, go to the end of it, and scroll around, and you'll find me listing them and then explaining what they all are. And then also giving an example like literally giving you a, a legitimate practice plan for all of those different types of practice. And so that's a pretty valuable episode. So basically, that is the content so far of series one, the beginning. And I would say that it was pretty fun, I really enjoyed going through and doing that all with you guys. I was very surprised, caught off guard and excited by the participation, not only in terms of the submitted homework, and all of you guys following the podcast and participating along with it, and doing the surveys and how many people have been using shoot analysis sheets, but also the participation in YouTube Live videos, it has been so much fun to do that, I look forward to those every time that I have them with you guys. And I'm so much so that actually that I'm trying to kind of figure out a way to kind of incorporate more YouTube stuff into this podcast, because it's just a blast. It's it's accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish, which is build and a great community of people that now are starting to know each other, even though they've never met, interact and engage with each other, feel comfortable enough to harass each other a little bit online and make some jokes. And we just have a lot of fun. So it's been a blast. Thank you guys so much. And I'm excited to get into series two with you guys. So I guess we'll just end it there in not the podcast, but this part of the podcast. And we'll get into the actual information for this episode, which is essentially an explanation of what to expect coming up, if you have been following along and doing all the stuff that we've been talking about. Alright, so just getting straight into it. What to expect coming up, whether you've shot a tournament so far this year, or this is your first one coming up soon on your calendar, you're going to probably be experiencing something different, because are different than what you normally experience while you have progressed so far in your progress in your journey of shooting. The I would say probably the caveat to that would be though the exception to the rule would be that if you've if you've taken lessons before, from somebody that talks about or teaches some of the things that have been in the episodes that I've released so far, and most particularly the content in the third episode of the season, first of the first series, where we talk about essentially the, you know, the mental component to optimizing practice, and like neurologically hacking, learning a new physical skill. I would guess that unless you're a student of mine, or if there is another coach that talks about this kind of stuff, like you keep in mind, they can use their own way of explaining it, but basically get you through this thought, you know, take get you to take the same path, then, you know, totally changing your approach to learning how to shoot has some side effects. And the bad thing is that the side effects can result in some pretty discouraging results. But the good thing is that those discouraging results really only happen if we do something wrong. So the if you have shot a tournament so far, and your score was not to be desired, don't worry, because we're going to talk about that. So if you want some like real, live conversation about this topic, I'm just gonna preface it before I get into it. That it kind of by accident, but a little bit by design came up in the episode for that is on YouTube right now, where I specifically pit the submission for a practice plan that somebody sent in that basically within one practice session in two different sets of 25 targets, they experienced hugely contrasting results in their performance. Now I know this is just a practice. But the, but it's going to be something that a lot of us experience in, in a match, I also actually brought up a little bit of some another listeners experience over in England, going through the same thing where literally back to back they had been following along with all the content that we've been talking about the episode had scheduled their practice, and really felt like they had an incredibly valuable practice session, where they experienced results, and the level of awareness that they had never achieved before. And the proficient proficiency level in terms of how many of their braking was better than ever. And then they went to a tournament, and shot the best score they had ever shot before in that tournament, it was an easy target. And then immediately following that tournament, they decided like, I'm going to capitalize on this more hit that whole practice routine, even harder with a slightly different focus based off of what I learned at my previous tournament, and then go to another tournament. And they again, had fantastic results in practice, went to the next tournament and absolutely bombed 20% lower score than their average. So I went through and kind of answered that question on the fly on a podcast on YouTube, but I wanted to get into detail a little bit more on it. So essentially, in order for me to explain what to expect, the negative side of what to expect, we have to kind of pull back and go a little bit backwards in time to some of the other content that we've talked about, which is actually breaking down the neurology behind how we learn a physical skill if we do it right, and what we laid out in terms of how to structure that type of practice. And then the difference between all the stuff in episode three, which is when your CPGs, or central pattern generators are controlling your lower motor neurons, vers when your upper motor neurons are controlling your lower motor neurons. So because this is not a whole episode on neurology, I'm going to throw out the fancy words and bring them bring in some just easy words to understand. So that way, as I'm explaining things, you have to try to remember what I'm talking about, we're going to substitute CPGs, the central pattern generators for the phrase of non conscious control, and we're going to supplement the upper motor neurons for the phrase of conscious control, and then the lower motor neurons is just going to be the messenger system. So basically, if we go back into that episode, and let's say that you're really putting in a lot of effort and trying to practice this way, one of the things that I hit really heavily in that episode was talking about the importance of failure in your practice, essentially, you know, making sure that we have correctly assigned those,

our sensory perception to one very specific, conscious thing in terms of movement, and then going through and practicing. And I talked about how every time that we miss if we fail at the movement, not just every time we miss, but if we fail at the movement, that cues, our conscious awareness to the fact that something was different. And missing allows for increased neuroplasticity during the process of learning a physical skill. So that's why it's so so so important. Because that's looking at this from the reverse side of the equation. In order to allow missing to be valuable, then what we need to have happen is we have to consciously assign our attention to something that is experienced consciously while we are making the movement that we're trying to learn. And because if we don't do that, going back to that episode, again, what ends up happening is that our conscious attention is on the result of the shot. So it's on the target. And then if our conscious attention is on the target, then if we, because of the fact that shooting is, has external feedback in terms of the target breaking, when the target breaks, and our conscious attention is on the target, and we don't have a level of physical self awareness during the shot, then the brain says, Oh, great, we hit the target, let's throw some dopamine out there. And because that was a good shot, and then over time, basically, your brain will learn to catalogue and save all of the, the movement that happened in your body, in the category of good for every time that you get that dopamine release. And if you are focusing consciously on the wrong thing. And your value system is in the target, which it generally is, if we are not focusing on something internally, if we're looking and paying attention to the target, and the gap and the lead or the picture, whatever, then we're really only caring about the result. And so if when the shot breaks when the target breaks, and the brain catalogues that as good because it got the dopamine release, then there's a huge high probability that the physical movement that we did the motor controls that happen during that shot, were not good. Because if we're consciously paying attention to the bird, we're not consciously paying attention to IE controlling the body, which means that the motor control that happened was sent by those CPGs, which are the non conscious controllers of your of your muscular movement. So basically, what happened is we broke the target not having physical self awareness, because we did it non consciously, since our attention was consciously on the bird. And it doesn't make any progress in terms of learning. That's a three hour podcast summed up in like, a few seconds. So you're not going to get super in depth on that. But go back and listen to that one if you want to. So, we talked so much about how important it is to re assign our conscious attention on our body on our movement. Because now, what happens is two things. Number one, if we can assign our conscious attention to the movement, it detracts from our conscious attention on the bird. And that actually makes it harder to proprioceptive ly connect to the target. So that means that it makes it harder to feel and create actual external synchronization with the target, because we're not feeding the brain enough visual information from the bird, because our our conscious attention is not on it as much. So your break percentage will go down. But that's a good thing because of how that failure increases neuroplasticity. And every time that you miss, you're going to be it's going to remind you essentially, consciously cue your attention to Okay, what did that feel like. And hopefully, if you did it correctly, your conscious attention was on what it felt like in one specific category. And you'll be able to understand what happened and understand what it felt like. And you won't get that dopamine release, because the target then break and slash or you realize that the movement that happened was not what you were trying to do. So the brain says, okay, no dopamine on that one, let's just delete the sink, the sequence of neurological signals that got sent out and we won't store that in our non conscious memory, so to speak. And so that's what we need to do in practice. Otherwise, every time we shoot, we catalog those dopamine releases with bad movement, and we never overwrite the already learned non conscious movement. And so that's a very different approach to shooting than we really are ever used to if you've never had a coach talk to you about that before. And so going out and doing it is kind of a culture shock to the system. And the mistake that very easily can be made is that we take somewhat of that approach, or we experience the value of that in our practice, and we we incorrectly think that it's important to be able to do that in a tournament. And so then when we're in a tournament we Hold on to some level of conscious attention of the way that we're controlling our body to move. And then we experience very, very bad results. So that's what we're going to talk about. Essentially, what happens is, and I had to predefine that whole situation so we can understand. And in summary, basically, it's that, in practice, when we're doing it correctly, our conscious attention is on controlling our body, because we have to not let it be done non consciously, because that's the bad movement, we're trying to learn new movements. So to overwrite non conscious memory of movement, we have to consciously control the movement. And that means, by definition, our conscious attention is not on the target. In practice, if we're trying to learn physical, you know, learn better physical movement. So here's where the really, really interesting part comes into play. And that is the way that your eyes work neurologically. And I talked about this and that episode two, but I knew that it would, I kind of foreshadowed what would happen in that episode, I didn't really talk about the fact that it would, I did say, this is a very important thing to try to avoid doing in a tournament. But it's just so hard to differentiate between these two things, if we're doing them, you know, for the first time, or if we're very new at it. So it's easy to make this mistake. And that's why I wanted to make the first episode about this. So if you remember me talking about the difference between smooth pursuit, ocular movement and psychotic ocular movement, then you'll remember that smooth pursuit movement is the type of movement that only can happen if we have our conscious attention assigned to something in our vision. And, and the psychotic movement is something that happens without conscious attention to something in our vision. So neurologically, it is not possible, it is not humanly possible to allow the smooth pursuit ocular movement to happen in your eyes, if you are not consciously engaged with something in your vision that is moving, or if you're not consciously engaged with something in your vision that is not moving, but your head or body is. And that smooth pursuit, vision is a style of movement, where like, if you hold your hand out in front of you, or your finger out in front of you, or anything, and you look at it, and you move your hand, but not your head, your eyes move with it, you never lose sight of it, and you can feel your eyes moving very, very smoothly. That is required for a non conscious connection to the bird and you hear me talk a lot about proprioceptive movement. proprioceptive movement is hugely driven by that as the foundation of the visual information that you're getting. So

the like, it's very, very important to define very plainly and simply smooth pursuit equals conscious attention to the target. Psychotic movement equals non conscious attention to the target. The difference in terms of visual information that we get between the two different styles of vision is that smooth pursuit vision. Essentially, if I'm going to overly simplify the difference between the two, it would be that smooth pursuit vision is like a very, very high frame per second video, think of like recording a slow motion video on your phone. And then psychotic movement would essentially be a super low frame rate video on your phone, where it looks like, it would be hard to actually a phone won't record this way. But if you've, you know, go to YouTube and search, you know, five frames per second video of anything and and you'll see that the video looks very like choppy basically just looks like pictures that are happening really fast. Like if you're flipping through a picture book, you can see every individual frame, whereas slow motion be like 240 frames per second. And so it looks really really slow and smooth. And that literally is a perfect example for the difference between how we consciously perceive the target while shooting dependent on the two different styles of ocular movement that we're using. Go back to the fact that smooth pursuit Vision, smooth pursuit, ocular movement in your vision is solely dependent on your conscious attention. And here's where the problem comes into play. If you can't already see where I'm going with this, if we pull in our approach to practicing in a tournament, and we are consciously aware of the movement that we're making, and we're consciously controlling the movement that we're making during the middle of the shot, then by definition, you neurologically are detracting from your conscious attention from your vision. Now, that smooth pursuit vision is not a binary thing compared to psychotic, it's not like you either are in psychotic movement, or you're in smooth pursuit, vision, smooth pursuit movement, it there, there really is like a spectrum. And the more consciously engaged with the target that you are, the better connected that your eyes will be. And then therefore, the better connected that your body will be. And this is the experience that some of us get, if you haven't yet already, were the targets, you see it all the time, when people post things about like the best, you know, around never shot, everyone always says, you know, the target looks like, looks like it's in slow motion, and they look this biggest trash can lids, and I could see all the detail, and it just looked like I had so much time, the reality of it is that you're just perceiving it the way it actually is, as opposed to when you're trying to either pay attention to the way that your body moves, or you're trying to pay attention to the gap or the gun, you're essentially somewhere underneath or not all the way at a fully engaged smooth pursuit style of vision. And because of that, the the visual information that you're going to get from the bird is not going to be good, because it's literally the way that your eyes are moving is in a bunch of mini or micro psychotic movements. So little tiny snapping movements. And every time that your eyes make that style of movement, every time that they snap position psychotically, your brain shuts off the image that it gets. And so if you're using Microsoft codec movement to move your eyes to connect to a bird, then essentially what you're doing is you are losing a bunch of frames per second in the image in the moving image that you see. And you are. So before I get ahead of myself, the the visual image that you're going to get is going to make the target look very jumpy, very fast, kind of blurry, somewhat in the background, it will be hard to focus on. And all of those things increase our emotional anxiety or amperage, and that in itself leads to more physical tension in our body, which leads to a lack of the ability to finally, and precisely control the movement of your body and gun. So even if you're trying to consciously control your gun with a lot of a lot of focus in a tournament, because of now the predefined value on the bird since it's being scored, it just basically leads you into a domino effect of a bunch of bad things and an end an inability to be able to actually perform at the level that you have the ability to perform at. So the basically we can take that information and then add on top of it, the fact that the sense that we have our conscious attention on the body and the eyes like it Brainfart because of the fact that we have our attention on two things at once, we're not fully committed to one or the other. And then we're segmenting our conscious attention, which means really that we are like back and forth between paying attention to the bird and then paying attention to the body and then paying attention to the bird and paying attention to the body all in very short amounts of time. Because you can't consciously pay attention to two things at once. So really what you're doing is you're compartmentalizing your awareness. And that leads to the really bad movement on top of that, the Think of it this way. In practice when we're trying to consciously pay attention to the body control a physical movement to learn that physical movement, that's where all of our attention and intent is. But in a tournament or split, so we are doubling up how bad we're able to move, because we are shutting off the brain's ability to proprioceptive ly move the gun non consciously, because we're, we're consciously deciding to pay attention to the gun consciously. So that doesn't allow it to be done proprioceptive ly and non consciously, but we're not just even doing that, at a basic sense, we're only doing that 50% of the time. And it's not like we have a uninterrupted 50% Focus on the conscious movement of our body, we have a compartmentalized and segmented focused on the movement of our body. So the actual physical movement that ends up happening is worse than even can happen in practice. So it just is pretty drastic, and the and that's just essentially what ends up happening right off the bat, neurologically, and physically and visually, but when you bring in the whole aspect of the psychology of this, and the fact that you're in a tournament, and obviously, you're experiencing some bit of culture shock, and, and a an awareness of like, Whoa, what is happening, this is terrible, then doubt starts to set in, not just in, you know, the ability to take the shot, but down in your understanding of the mechanics that you would decide to use or the plans that you're making. And then it leads to all over confusion. So this is essentially in a nutshell, what to expect. Or an explanation, if you've, if you're listening, and then something like, oh, my gosh, this just totally sums up the last tournament I went to. So the I'm sorry that you went through that, but it's actually very, very good that you did, because it brings, again, a level of self awareness of what happens as long as we can go back and, you know, analyze the mental state that we're in, when it happened, the the correct approach, so let's take all of that into, okay, that is what can happen if we put our intent and our conscious awareness in the wrong box, so to speak for for a tournament.

If you're listening to this, and you're thinking, well, I already had a few tournaments. And I did not experience that, in fact, that was actually really good, or just no change whatsoever to my score, then you are in the opposite category of essentially being able to expect the positive or neutral response to being able to go through all of the stuff that we're talking about, and implement it into a tournament. If that is the case for you, then there's not really much that I need to talk about in this segment of this individual podcast, because essentially, what I'm going to be explaining in the next category, which is how to handle what to how to handle the situation. That can happen if we approach the whole tournament in from a negative perspective, or with the wrong intent and focus, everything that I lay out in that category is going to essentially be what you're already doing. So you know, the, I would recommend listening to it, just so you can reiterate, one of the most important things to do in the process of learning is to have a high level of self awareness of the whole experience in a holistic way of what you are going through. And a lot of times what can happen is that basically, we, for lack of better words, essentially, accidentally experience success without being consciously aware of what caused the success. And if we aren't aware of that, then it's hard to replicate the results. So I would say if you feel like you have had good results in a tournament, and you aren't experiencing what I just laid out for you still listen to this next segment, because it would be pretty beneficial. And basically, it's going to be the filter that I want you to use in an approach for all the tournaments that you shoot coming up and not just while listening to his podcast, but all the time forever, basically. So we'll get into that next topic, which is how to handle what to expect coming up in tournaments. And I'm just not really realizing how terrible of a title name that is. So we're going to change it mid episode, we're just going to call it, how to handle the negative side effects of learning in a tournament. There we go. All right. So basically, the thing that you want to hold as like the Holy Grail of how to approach a tournament, is that it does not matter what you are in the middle of learning right now, it doesn't matter how good or bad you feel like your physical mechanics are, every day all day long, your ability to move the gun non consciously, will be better than your ability to move the gun consciously. And honestly, this even holds true if you are a brand new shooter, I know that that may sound like pure chaos. And a total lie of me telling you that if you've just started shooting, and you think that, you know, the most important thing is to aim the gun and put the gun in a specific place every time you go to pull the trigger. But I am telling you that if you allow your brain to get the information that it needs, by looking at the bird and engaging in smooth pursuit vision with your eyes, you literally can have no idea how to move the gun, and you'll be able to move the gun better than if you try to consciously do it. So let's just take that as a defined objective fact for now. And actually, as I'm talking about this, it's bringing up a really cool idea that in a YouTube Live, I would really like to show some videos of this happening. So because this is what I teach, and I periodically get students who really have very little, if any experience shooting, I use a slow motion video and a lot of the lessons not in a lot of in all of the lessons, a lot of the time that I give the, I always get really cool videos of the these people who have incredibly low experience, I should say incredibly little experience shooting, but making a beautiful proprioceptive connection to the target in the movement of their gun. And it's a really cool thing to see. And in every single lesson that I start off with somebody new, not just a new shooter, but also a new student, even if they're a skilled shooter, I always talk about this. And I can tell a lot of times the looks that I get on their face, as I'm explaining it. And luck is basically like, yeah, we'll see about that. But it's the other luck that I get, when I show them the video of them doing it is really, really exciting. And it's actually not giving credit to me at all as a coach, because all that's happening in these videos is that your your brain is moving your body totally non consciously in a way that beautifully connects, synchronizes and harmonizes with the with the movement of the bird. And it is a really, really cool thing to see in slow motion. So I'm gonna put that up, we'll bring videos of that up on a YouTube Live event. Probably not this Wednesday, because it won't be enough time for all of you guys to listen to this and know to expect it but maybe next Monday's episode anyways. So essentially, that's hold that objective truth that every time that you go to shoot, it will be better to engage consciously with the target only. And to create smooth pursuit ocular movement in your eyes, to establish synchronized movement with your eyes, and then therefore your body and gun every single time that is better than consciously moving the gun. Because we can only consciously compute one thing at a time. And it becomes not only harder to do, but also like way less fun to shoot a whole tournament driving like unconsciously it's just not fun. So basically, the approach to take in terms of how to handle this while you're while how to handle avoiding this problem from happening as you go to a tournament is don't try to do anything. literally as simple as that don't try to do anything. But then you get into, you know, the question that that presents, which is like well, I don't understand how I'm supposed to progress through a tournament course if I'm not trying to do anything. I'm just supposed to not plan anything. No the end answer to that is definitely not, we definitely want to consciously plan and put effort into the round. But the, the only time that we want to define as being not physically conscious or aware is the moments between when you call poll, and when you pull the trigger for the last shot of that single bird or pair of targets, that's the moment that we don't want to be conscious of our movement. Because that's really the only time that it's important to be able to engage in that style of ocular movement, and then therefore proprioceptive physical movement. So then that leads us down the road, to understanding what really actually is important for being able to put up around and implement the things that we're doing in a tournament. And I just say, put up a good round. Sorry, man, sometimes when I get excited about stuff, my brain goes so far ahead of my mouth that I skip words and sentences. It's cool and exciting to talk about this stuff. So yeah, what, whatever. So anyways, the important thing to do is that we want to put in place a system that allows us to cognitively separate the things that should be conscious, and the things that should be non conscious, and also take into going to a tournament, the understanding and acceptance that we practice in order to rewrite our ability to move non consciously. So that in a tournament, when we move non consciously, we move correctly. And if we, if we hold that statement, as a general theme, to our approach to shooting, then it's, it's hard to go wrong. And it sets you up for success. It sets you up for the quickest pathway towards success.

Because number one, it it gives you the approach of saying like, okay, in practice, I have to be conscious. And that allows you to learn quicker, but then in a tournament, we have to not be conscious, and that allows us to perform better, it also means that it puts a heavy emphasis on making sure that your practices are deliberate and planned. Because if our understanding of practice is just going to shoot, then that's just a non scored tournament. And there's no conscious awareness of the movement, there's no conscious driving of the movement, whether that be with your body, like whether that be you're consciously focusing on your physical movement, or you're consciously focusing on your, your ocular movement. Either of those things don't happen consciously if you're just going to shoot. So that's why again, it's also important to go back and listen to series one, episode four, where I talk about the different types of shooting practice and give examples of those. Because if you don't know how to practice correctly, that's a great place to start. So anyways, back back on point, if we hold that as fact, for our tournament, like, if we hold that filter as the holy grail of the approach to how we look at practicing vers competing, then it makes it very, very easy to understand what has to happen. And the if we also understand that it's, it's important to consciously put effort into a round, then we have to look for opportunities that present themselves for that to happen naturally, so that it doesn't impede on our conscious awareness on the target during the shot. And this is also why if you've ever taken a lesson from a lesser experienced coach, or competitor, that a phrase you may hear quite frequently is look at the bird or see the rings or, you know, focus really, really hard on the bird on the target and look for some type of detail. All of that kind of stuff is essentially a placebo or bandaid to get you consciously occupied and looking at the bird. It is not riq actually this brings up another cool side tangent. Everyone talks about the importance of visual acuity, like the importance of how much detail that you see. And there's actually the neurological science would show you that how much detail you see on the bird is irrelevant. The only thing that it does is, well I for shooting actually nothing, it's just important that you look for it. So that's kind of a weird perspective. But it is very, very true, it doesn't matter how much detail you see, it just matters that you look for it, because looking for it, the act of looking is a conscious engagement of your attention to find the thing. So a lot of times, you know, the thinking about a way to, to present this to you guys. If you, let's take it this way. In lessons or in books or articles online, you may have seen somebody talking about, you know, find the thing that stands out to you on the target the best look for that. And that will help you consciously engage your vision, I will present you an alternative perspective, I want you to find the thing that is the hardest for you to see on the target. And I want you to look for that. Because it's very easy to get to basically be ignorant of the fact that we are passively looking at the target, using some style of micro psychotic movements. If we're just looking for the easiest thing to see, there's a big sunspot or a black writ, you know, ridge around the bird. And you can see that without really looking at it, well, then you can see it without really looking at it. And once you see it, you can maintain being aware of that, but at the same time being consciously attentive to something else. But if you pick something that is the hardest thing for you to see that you can only actually see, if you're looking intently with high levels of focus on the bird and look for that while you're shooting, then you know when you see that, that you are engaged in your highest level of smooth pursuit of vision. And this is why it doesn't matter how much detail you see. Because you if you literally have you know, terrible vision and forgot your prescription lenses, but you can see, you can see anything on the bird or you don't see the bird at all, you just see a blur. And it's just very, very hard to see the top middle center of the blur, then just look for that. And that that is enough to engage your conscious attention, which is enough to flip the neurological pathway this to flip the signals being sent into a different neurological pathway that controls your eyes in the correct way. So basically, the going back to three tangents ago. Oh man, it's just the way my brain works. But going back there, and we were talking about the importance of finding a place and time to input, the consciously controlled things where we can put effort into the round. And actually try, what we end up finding is that all of that there happens before we even get into the cage. So like the best opportunity for you to do the things that are consciously engaging with it, you have to pay attention to all happens before you are before you walk into the box. And this is a moment in time, where during a tournament round, where I see. Man, I hate to say this number, but I really do it is true. I would say 90 plus percent of people that go to tournaments completely under utilize if they even use it at all, all of the time outside of outside of the moment that they're in the cage. Most people approach shooting in tournament like this. They look at the view the view pair and they basically look at it until they pick where they want to shoot it. And then after they do that they're good to go. They either start talking to their friends or doing whatever it is that they're doing in between in between shooters, and then when the person that is up before them is shooting, they may you know watch a few pairs of them shooting but they're just watching it. They may be moving their hands with the birds to to either look for lead or something like that. And that's basically it. Then they get into the box and then they just do it live so to speak and This is a huge waste of opportunity. The if the Wow, man, that was funny if but if the if the shooter if you utilize that time to do the stuff that you're doing in practice, which is assigned conscious attention to something in your body, and you rehearse that, while paying attention to it, that gives you net positive gains. And so we want to break we're going to, to help define this, we're going to break these segments of what happens before you start shooting pair, the segment of time into three different categories. The first category is going to be called your research phase, the second category is going to be your planning phase. And the third category is going to be your rehearsal phase, then there is a fourth phase, but that happens in the box. And that's called the execution phase. And I am in the next topic, in the next category of this episode, we're gonna get into heavily get into those three, those first three, and then I'll just roughly talk about how to implement that stuff in your execution and make sure that your execution phase is focused on the right thing. So off to the next one, which is the key components of a successful competitive routine.

So in the order that they happen, the first one, like I said, is your research phase. So your research phase, and take this with a grain of salt, because you can name them anything you want. And if you've had lessons with other people, other instructors, I'm sure, I hope that they have talked to you about the importance of different having different phases of your round, especially like when you need to do this stuff that I'm about to talk about. But they with a high degree of probability have different names for these categories. So you can name them whatever you want, these are the names that I use. And if you had lessons before, you may hear the similarities in the important things, there's gonna be some differences probably, but there's the theme is the same. So your research phase, this is essentially an information gathering phase. In terms of this, if you want to understand the independent variables that you would be researching for this in terms of your physical mechanics, if you I mean, I, I'm only going to be able to give you my variables in terms of the physical mechanics that I teach. But you can find all of that by filling out a shoot analysis sheet, because it actually asks you in the research phase of about in your research phase, are you looking for this? Are you looking for this or you're looking for that and basically, it's, it's going through a checklist of all the things that are important to have information on for those targets or target and either going through a process of testing them out to so like, let's say you're isolating one variable, and let's just we'll just talk about something very, very simple that everybody, I'm sure it would be aware of what I'm talking about hold point. Okay, so in the research phase, this is where you're going to be researching your home point, hold point, if you're trying to be as good as you can, don't just go into the box and just hold your gun wherever find a place to start your gun, that works perfect. And the only way to find that spot is to research it. So you're going to want to test more than one spot. And this is essentially the theme that we do for all of the variables. These are things like hope, you know, testing out different spots for your whole point, testing out different spots for your focal point testing out different spots for your breakpoint, testing out different spots for different positions of your body, your foot position, your balance, your weight distribution, all this kind of stuff. And you may be asking like well, how do I test them out? You know, I have one way of doing it. Other people have other ways of doing it. But essentially, you you know, I like to give away a lot of information as much as I can for free but the thing I have to try to be ethical about is that there are a lot of people that, you know, have paid and do pay me for this information. And it's not fair to them if I just give it away for free. So if you have specific questions on that, then I would just ask that you do the same as them that way, I'm being fair to all of my other students. But you a simple thing that I can just tell you, that obviously makes sense that, you know, there are ways of doing this that make it incredibly efficient with time. And so that you don't have to sit there and infinitely tested different spots or different positions and things. For every one of the variables that you would want to be researching, you can do this for. But basically, a simple explanation of what happens is that you just try a bunch of different spots. And if you're inefficient in doing that, then it can take you, you may not be able to find the spot before it's your turn to shoot. But basically, just keep trying different spots until you feel like it's perfect. And as far as the research phase goes, it doesn't just include those very basic variables. It also includes things like how does this target make me feel emotionally? What does it do to my eyes? How do I see it? What's the hardest thing to see on it, if I try really hard and can see it? It's going to be important to research all those things. Because all of those things influence what happens when you call pull and don't think about what happens, so to speak. So the research phase, is that information gathering phase where, you know, I'll give you a scenario because I think that's fair. Let's say that we have and I brought this up in episode two, I think, basically, there's a target that let's say it's a cornering bird sitting 25 yards in front of me. And on the right side of the field. And the the trap is going up at about a 30 degree angle, and it's leaned over to the right, at will say also a 30 degree angle, but it's cornering, and so it's going left. So as you can imagine, this bird would would basically be flying like up and to the left. But because of the leaned trap over to the right, it's going to curl back over to the right. And let's say that it's full spring. So it's incredibly fast. And it's edgy, because it's cornering and leaned over, and just altogether not a target that makes you feel really at ease. Okay, so on top of finding hope points and focal points and everything like this, it's going to be important for me to research how I feel and how I automatically respond to the bird if I don't think about it, because I need to know, or I'm going to plan on shooting this on autopilot, so to speak, and what is autopilot for me on this target? Well, my emotional state and the visual information that I get on this bird influences what autopilot is. And if I'm not going to be consciously aware of controlling the shot, I need to know what's most likely to happen. And so, for me, I can tell you in the scenario that that bird amps me up, it gets me nervous, I know that I'm going to want to respond with my hands at the speed of the bird. Because it looks fast, I'm thinking it's getting away and I need to go to it quickly. And I say hands on purpose, because the hands are not the part of the body that I want to use to move my gun on this. And so I know altogether that basically what's going to happen is that I'm going to make a bad move, it's going to be too fast, it's going to come from the wrong place in my body. And I'm going to panic a little bit. So if I understand all of that about myself. Now I can ask myself all right, I have two paths to take here. And I have to pick one. The one is that if this amps me up and it freaks me out and that amperage and emotional state leads towards bad movement. How easy will it be for me to control my emotional response to the Burke? Is it possible for me on this bird not to feel that way when I call pull the other path is if the answer to that first question is no. Then what is required in the other variables in terms of whole point focal point, a break point, my total approach to my actual plan, what what I have to plan so that if I feel that way, those movements Don't cause a miss. Basically, the movements that are bad that I can't control I don't like what would I have to do in my setup, and plan so that those bad movements that are going to happen, don't net me in missing the bird, or at least, you know, cushion the negative impact to the result as much as possible. Basically, when you look at that, and you think, Okay, what would be the easiest approach, and then you go with that one. And that would be, you know, like, if I feel like I'm at a very calm overall emotional state right now. And it's just because of this bird that it's amping me up, then I would probably opt for, you know, the correct hole points and everything and breakpoint and plan and approach to the target. And I would just put a greater emphasis in my pre shot routine of calming down using relaxation and breathing. And I would make sure that my eyes are nice and calm. And still, when I call pull instead of kind of somewhat being on autopilot in my pre shot routine, and possibly not having that happen. If let's say that I can't

calm down, because I'm in the middle of either shooting a really, really good round, or I can possibly win this tournament, if I do well in the station, then I know that there's a lot of external situations going on that I may be aware of, and I can't be unaware of. And it's going to just be very, very hard for me to control the emotional state that I'm in. So I would opt then for a different plan. So maybe I would have the further out whole point so that the bird doesn't rush me, and it's not going to force me to move so fast, I may plan a different breakpoint, I may plan, having my eyes a little further outs that don't make a big psychotic movement and a jump early on, when the target comes out, all of these things are going to lead to having a higher degree of probability that I will break the bird. So that's the research plan. It's literally testing different things. And basically, you're you're looking for which of those paths do I take, because when you take one of those paths, then that immediately injects you into the planning stage. And so the planning stage is basically what I just went through. But it, I don't really need to go that much in depth in it. Because basically, you're taking that information from your research phase, and you're using it to make informed good strategic decisions for how you want to approach the target or presentation. And this is not something that a lot of people do, a lot of people just look at the bear, they pick a break point, and they walk up and they just, you know, put their gun where they feel like is a good whole point. And then as soon as their eyes stop moving, they may call pull. So that's, you know, something we want to try to avoid. I know in talking about all this, it may sound somewhat overwhelming, like I can't focus that much in around. That's way too analytical, I just want to go shoot. And you know, you, if that is the approach that you're taking, then I have two responses to you on that. The first one would be that, really check yourself and see if you're saying that, because you just don't want to do that stuff. Because it is a lot of work. And I know that you know dependent on the reason why we're at the tournament, it may not be worth doing all of that work. Like if you're at this tournament strictly for social reasons, because you want to enjoy having fun shooting with your friends, there's no need to do that. I'm specifically talking about a tournament that we're trying to have a good performance at. So if that's the case, and you are able to and willing to focus, these are things that in one, like through one way or another, we do have to do you, you really can't be the best you can be without having a plan. So whether you want to do it in that problem solving approach like I do, or you just want to pick something, the thing that matters is that we at least have a plan. And we're at least researching different places. And I should have said this before, while we are in that research phase. The way that we are helping ourselves make those decisions is by doing what we do in practice, which is having conscious awareness and attention on our body. So a research phase. Man I'm I can't believe I left this out. The research phase is not just like critically thinking through those decisions. It's actually testing them out with your full body. And it's important to do this by moving your body like If you would, when you have the gun in your hands, not just moving your hands, just moving your hands does you nothing but show you what the lead should look like. So we want to, you know, move our body in the right position with the right foot position with the right balance and weight distribution and right posture and everything, we want to move our body in our research phase to research those points, like we would if we were shooting with an attention consciously on the way our body feels when we move that way. And dependent on how you get feedback, proprioceptive feedback from your body, you will know Oh, that one felt good that one felt that that place there made me feel like I got tense and lost my balance when I went to go fake pull the trigger. And this one didn't I like that one better than this one. That's basically the way you're doing it. So you have to act it out with awareness on your body. So then that's how you get the information together to put together a plan. And that's your planning stage. The the because basically, the research phase explains what the planning stage has in it. I don't need to go too much in depth on the planning stage. But what I do need to talk about is this one very, very important thing about planning. Okay. Everybody, you know, always asked me in a lesson, because I always say this thing, I always say, you know, don't leave your planning stage until you are sure that you have the best plan. There is no point in walking into the cage. If if as long as we're trying to, you know, shoot for score rather than for fun. But there's no point if we're there to try to give our best performance possible. Why would you consciously decide to walk into the box unprepared? It just doesn't make sense. So let's not do it. And so every time I say that, then I always get the response of Well, how am I supposed to know that that's the best plan because I'm learning and I don't know, as much as you do about shooting? And that's a super fair question. And it's a really good question. The answer to it is that we have to break down what the purpose of me saying, make sure that you don't walk into the box without having like the perfect plan. The purpose of me saying that is not because that I don't want you to call pull until you literally have the objectively perfect plan for how to shoot the pair. Because if that was the case, you know, people say I'm slow and shooting. But if I was waiting to do that, before I call people, I would for sure shut down tournaments. And so with everybody else, and the reality of it is, if you're if you are less experienced than actually basically put this way, every person on the course that you are less experienced than you will be able to put together they will be able to put together a better plan than you. And so that's an unrealistic expectation. It has nothing to do with the physical setup, it has nothing to do with the actual physical plan that we put together. It has everything to do with the mental state, the psychological state that you can allow yourself to be in if you have the perfect plan. And the basically what that is, is that when you call poll, you don't have doubt. And I'm going to put a little precursor to what I mean by doubt on that. I don't mean that you don't have doubt whether or not you will hit the bird. You can read a lot of sports psychology that says that that's a really, really bad thing you should never do that the reality of it is we're human beings. And if any person tells you that every time they call pull, they have zero doubt that they're going to miss the birth or that they're going to hit the bird. They are straight up lying to you and they're a snake oil salesman. And the next question you should ask them is what are you trying to sell me a mental game routine or a lesson or something like that? And because they're lying that not true at all, every single one of the tournaments that I have won and lost that I am in that mental state when I go to call poll, though I could I could miss this. In fact, I I include my own analysis of the probability that I will miss the bird in my decision making so I'm limited by choice thinking about how how likely it is that I will miss because I want that information to make the This plant. So let me throw sports psychology upside down for you on that one. But because the purpose of this is a psychological thing, not about doubt that you will miss, but doubt that you are doing the right thing. Because there is nothing more denture detrimental to the psychological state of shooting, when you go to call poll, if as you go to call pull, you're still not sure about what you're doing. If you if you have any doubt that you have the right plan for you, when you call pull, not good at all, because in the middle of the shot, you will get conscious about where the gun is because of that doubt. So we can better define and explain what I mean by this, by putting it this way. When you go to get in the box, do not exit your planning stage. Basically, don't walk into the box before you have

consciously and cognitively realized that based off of all the information that you have, that you have the best possible plan that you know how to create. If there is information that you have, that you didn't use and your decision making, that's not the best plan that you can make. And a great way to put this into perspective is to bring up one of my favorite things that anybody has ever said to me when I was interviewing them on a podcast, which is something that Ben Haas wave told me when I interviewed him when it was I want to say maybe back in 2017, or 2018. And he told me that I forget who it is now that told him this, I want to say a professional rugby player or a rugby coach. But he told him to be the best that you can be at everything that requires no talent. And that's just such an interesting way of putting things into perspective. Because if you are struggling in your game right now, and or let's say you're struggling in the middle of a round, and you ask yourself, is everything that doesn't require any talent to do? Am I doing that thing to the best of my ability? Because if the answer is no, then that's immediately where you need to look first don't need to look at I didn't practice enough I didn't whatever it is, it's about am I doing everything that I know how to do to the best of my ability that does not require talent or skill planning, just literally going through the process of putting together a plan does not require talent or skill, it just requires doing. So we want to make sure that we use all the information that we have, not that I have, but all the information that you have in that moment to put together as best of a plan as you can create. So that when you walk into the box, that if you miss, the first thing that pops into your head is not maybe I should change my plan. Instead, the first thing that should pop into your head is what did I not do correctly that I had planned to do. And the you know, one thing to be aware of when doing that assessment is that you should not expect to hit every target that you go to shoot. I mean, that's what I talked about when I said that, you know, I put in the analysis, my what I believe my probability is to be able to hit the pair or the target or run the station or the park or whatever. Because, you know, let's say that I walk into a station and it immediately looks very hard. You know, if I, if I'm Miss one that may be like the equivalent of a birdie or an eagle if I shoot a seven out of eight on that station for the rest of the people that I'm competing against to try to win the whole thing. But if I think you know, I should be able to run the whole station then. And I miss one I don't want to incorrectly place judgment in something that I did wrong. I and you know, I don't want to lead the fact I don't want the fact that I missed to lead me down the rabbit hole of thinking that I didn't do something wrong and I can't feel I don't remember what went wrong because everything seemed like it was good. And I did everything right. That's just gonna get confusing. So, you know, be realistic with your expectations, but put together a good plan and do it as good as you know how to do and understand that the more you do this, the more you learn. The more that you take lessons, the more All tournaments that you go to your ability to put together a better plan will get better and better and better and better over time. And that's all that matters. So that's basically all I have to say about the planning stage. But the, like the next phase that happens, you know, we're not going immediately from the planning stage to the execution, we want to go into the rehearsal phase. And this is something that I actually didn't use to teach. Because I never really thought about this, I used to just have three phases, it was research, planning and execution. But about over the last year, I basically became aware of the fact that I kind of was not unconsciously doing a rehearsal phase. And I stuck, I'm wondering why I'm doing like, basically, in the middle of a round, after I come up with a good plan, if I have time to waste, I'm continuously rehearsing, so to speak, what my plan is, by pretending to shoot the bird, not just with my hand again, but executing the whole physical movement of my body, over and over and over again, exactly the way that I have planned to shoot it. And so I just never really thought about that being part of the whole system that needs to come together. Because I, in a way, I hate to say this, but I looked at it as just wasting time. But when I started to do a lot of research about a year ago on how your body and brain, not how your body learns, but how your brain learns physical skill, and I started to put together the pieces of what those three core components that are important, like sensory perception, the actual physical movement and proprioception, and then the difference between the CPGs and upper and lower motor neurons. And how all of this happens, started to realize like, whoa, okay, actually, I understand why I'm doing this, because I guess maybe just non consciously, I realized there was a benefit to it. But essentially, if we include this rehearsal phase prior to the execution phase, and you want to put it right before the execution phase, then what's happening is you are without a gun in your hand, you are consciously making the movements consciously, I'm putting a big emphasis on that you are consciously making the movements that your body needs to make without the gun and without actually shooting it. So our value placement is correct. And we will get or not get dopamine dependent on whether or not you made the physical movement correct. And so because of the fact this is, so immediately up against the time that you're actually going to execute your plan, what it allows you to do is basically in a short period of time, input and cement, the physical movement, from the conscious to the nonconscious. And basically, it makes it it helps you get closer towards making the CPGs, a central pattern generators, control your your motor skill, movement, motor control movements. And that's just incredibly important because we, we don't want to do that in the execution phase. So that's basically what we're doing is we're taking man, I just realized how many times I've just said, basically, and I'm sorry, but we are taking what I brought up in the very beginning of this half of this episode, which is the potential problem that can happen. And we're pulling it out of the execution phase, and we're putting it in this new phase that it's going to be all by itself, which is the rehearsal phase. And that's essentially, what the actual problem is, is that we are putting something in the wrong part of the whole routine. If you put conscious control and awareness of your body into your execution phase, it equals bad, okay? But if you put the conscious control and awareness of your body in the rehearsal phase, it equals very, very good. Because it, it allows that proprioceptive feedback and control to happen so that it is very, very fresh in your conscious mind. And then when you go into the box to execute. It's essentially that memory recall is there for it to happen a little bit easier, non consciously, and I will maybe later on I talked about I'd go further in depth with the topic of things that I included in episodes theory of the neurology of learning a new physical skill. When I rehash that episode with my guest that I'm working on, I'm going to talk a little bit about this type of thing. But basically, for now, let's just plan on doing that. Because it will really help you.

I basically, that's all I can say, it's just really, really going to help you. And it's going to not just neurologically benefit you, but psychologically benefit you because you essentially are going to shoot a pair for three to five times, let's say, non consciously. But in terms of how many times you can rehearse it, you can do that, as many times as you have time to do it. This is why it's so important to take advantage of all this time. Because if we start doing all this, the minute that we get to the station, then you you know, basically you want to avoid the scenario of trying to do all this and the moment of time that just the person in front of you is shooting, because what happens if you don't get to either the planning or the or the rehearsal phase, and you're stuck in the research phase, and now it's your turn to shoot and you don't get to see any more birds. So if we start this as soon as we possibly can, then you know what, if we get it down in in the length of time that we have just one shooter shooting great, you can go sit in your car, and then you can be more social, I would recommend though, for the shooter in front of you, while they're shooting, just rehash your rehearsal phase, and with awareness of what you're doing, as they're shooting, so you can just get back in that mindset again. But if you do it, if you start it, then if you get really efficient at it, or if the pair is really easy and straightforward, you don't have to waste time, but we just don't want to run out of time. So that's basically what the rehearsal phases. And then lastly, the execution phase, and not much I need to talk about here, other than the fact that make sure your conscious attention is on the target. And that's basically it. I literally don't want to put anything else in to the execution phase, because we literally just want to make sure that in the middle of you shooting, you are only paying attention to the target. And I want to differentiate between paying attention to and looking at looking at does not require you to be thinking about, okay, paying attention to equals, thinking about and looking at the target. And then basically maybe thinking about is not a good phrase to use, because essentially what's happening is, you know, you could be thinking about the way it moves that's going to detract from your smooth pursuit, vision, and ocular movement. But the I want you to have the attention of your conscious mind queued on the target, and connecting your vision to it. And you can do that with that placebo, which is trying to find the hardest thing that you the hardest thing to see on the bird as you're trying to shoot it. Other than that, the egg, the execution phase does, you know, you can categorize it from the moment that you step into the box until the moment that you walk out of the box. I like to categorize the execution phase as just the time that the birds are in the air. Because in between that I have a pre shot routine and a post shot routine. Those are obviously very, very important to do. But because of the fact that so many people talk about pre shot routine and post shot routine, and in terms of asking questions about it. And it's literally a topic that you could have a whole podcast about indefinitely and never run out of things to say, I actually don't want to talk too much about the pre shot routine in the post shot routine right now, in this episode, because I'm probably going to save time too. You know, break that apart in their own episodes. And I think that we'll do it more justice. So basically, in summary, it's the, the key components for a successful competitive match would be that you need a good research phase, you need a good planning phase, you need a good rehearsal phase, and then you'd walk into the cage and you start your execution. And the most important part is that during the research, rehearsal and exit, research and rehearsal, we are consciously paying attention to and aware of the way our body is moving and what it feels like when it is moving. Paying and paying and deciding how the body moves so that we do have that conscious awareness. And then in the execution phase, it's all directed towards the bird, let the body move proprioceptive. Ly and non consciously when you're shooting the target, and you will be good to go. So that's basically it. The, you know, I said this was gonna be a short episode, but I'm probably like at an hour and 40 minutes, but at least it's not three hours, I cut an hour off. So we are good on this one. And it was only three basically bullet points. Gas thing, there's that word again, I need to get that out of my vocabulary, I hate it. But anyways, three bullet points for this episode. And that's all there is it's a, it's a really, really important thing. And something that I think a lot of you are going to experience, if you're doing it, right. Which is an interesting to set thing to say that you're going to experience poor performance in a match if you're doing everything right in the process of learning. But the reality of it is that the process of learning requires failure, because that's how we learn. And the more things that we learn through experience, the better well rounded that we are. And if we take that approach all the time, then, you know, we're gonna get good places quickly. So thank you guys, for being a part of this episode, I'm going to finish it off with just a recap of some of this stuff, I'm not going to go through a summary of everything I just talked about, like I normally do, but I will just rehash the homework. Cool. Alright, so wrapping up, we just basically summarized all I said, I wasn't gonna do this, but I'm gonna do it. I'm, I'm a man of not my word. Anyways, summarize all the contents of the previous episodes and explained how there is a new series now series two, first results, and then, you know, real quickly went through that, then we got into an explanation of what to expect, you know, coming up next, if you're following along with all of the content of the episode, and you're trying to learn, and essentially talked about the fact that it's totally normal and expected to experience really confusing results in your first few tournaments, if we put the focus of what we're doing in the wrong place, and so don't feel bad, everybody does it, I even do it all the time. That sounds so egotistical, I don't mean it, like I even do it. But I what I was meaning to say was that in you know, like, even in moments of time, when I'm not learning a new thing, I can easily get sucked into paying attention to how my body feels, you're just paying attention to anything else that detract from the attention on the target, while I'm actually shooting a match, it's just that now because we're putting so much of an emphasis on on, you know, where to consciously assign your attention, it'd be very, very easy to kind of get sucked into doing it in that specific thing. And that's why it's confusing, because when we do pay attention to our body, and we kind of control our body, trying to do correct movement, a lot of times it will feel a little bit better than normal, even if in a match where we're segmented in our attention, because of the fact that it's good movement, it's better movement than the bad movement that we have. And so it gets confusing, because, you know, the, the frame of mind that you will have and be in for the round is like, I just don't understand why I'm not breaking targets. I'm shooting terrible score wise, but I feel like I'm moving good, I don't understand. And so basically, that's what this is. And then from there, we talked about how to handle that in the match what to do, if that's happening, and which is just make sure that you're assigning your conscious attention in the correct place. And then we talked about the key components that I just wrapped up of a of a successful competitive routine, which are those three, but really four phases, the research planning rehearsal and execution phase. So other than that, the just make sure that you remember that your homework will be man, I always feel so weird. Like I'm back in school, when I say things like that, like I'm not, I mean, I am a teacher, but here's your homework for the week.

But if you get the time and you want to participate, and you wouldn't mind helping me out, I would appreciate it if you could fill the survey out that just lets me know what major tournaments you're planning on shooting, because like I said earlier, in the beginning of the episode, I really would like to structure the content of this podcast around, you know, significant points in time, so that we can build up to them together, if there is a high density, saturation, I should say, of the people that are listening to this podcast, all going to be at the same event, because then we can all kind of work together and it'd be, it would be really good and helpful. And I can, I can give you my own personal advice on doing that. And a lot of them will be tournaments that I'm going to as well. So that would be really helpful, I plan on literally being able to, you know, because I know who's setting target to these events, and what these clubs have, as far as terrain goes, that, you know, I can very easily put together, you know, practice routines for all of us to do on the side. At the same time, as we're doing things, focusing on what we're getting feedback in from our shoot analysis sheets, and just general self awareness and assessment. And that would be very fun and cool. So that's all. If you have any questions, you can always reach me at my email, which is podcast at de radulovich.com. I am going to be back down in Florida in about a week or so. And you can find the dates, and the ability to book a lesson with me down there on my website, which is just de radulovich.com. And on that website, you can find the podcast website too, which is just a tab at the top, I have one website for everything. So it's very easy to find. If you are not already go to login to YouTube into your account and find the Journey podcast channel on there and subscribe to us. So I don't know why I said us it's literally just me doing all this stuff. So it's me and my dog, subscribe to me and my dog. And because that way you can participate in the YouTube Live Events. And not just participate by, you know, commenting in chat, but also be able to get be pulled in with video and stuff like that. So very, very cool. Very, very beneficial to the learning process. And also, it's just honestly a whole hell of a lot of fun. And everybody on there is, is just a blast and great senses of humor. And we have people from all over the world that join us on you know, last time we had people from Australia and United Kingdom and Ireland, Greece. And a couple other, there was a I don't remember, it doesn't matter what matters, but it doesn't matter. They say it in his podcasts, but it's just very cool to see great community of people. And I enjoy all of you. Thank you for your time and listening and your dedication to listening to the podcast. It doesn't go unnoticed. And I say this every time but I say it because I mean it. It is a big commitment for you to be a fan of this podcast because I assign you homework. I guess I'm just like that. But you know, it's it's humbling to see how fast it's growing and how much participation there already is. So thanks a lot guys. Stay safe. Enjoy the traveling. I know a lot of you are traveling to tournaments down in Florida right now. And actually there's a lot of you traveling over to Dubai for tournaments. So stay safe, stay healthy and shoot well and remember to pay attention to the targets. Alright guys, we will see you on the Wednesday YouTube live in formal podcast event.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai