Ladies and gentlemen, return guest here, Devin Anderson.
This time we are not talking about investments, we're talking
about performance with mostly sports, but maybe you can find
other applications. I very much enjoy talking to
Devin about this stuff. Devin is a very real shooter of
Clay's and some of what he and I bounced off each other at a
breakfast last week really resonated for me with my golf
game. I think it can help in tennis
and I think there are other applications.
I hope you enjoy it. I like doing this kind of stuff.
It's going to continue, so enjoy the episode.
No disclaimers needed on this one.
All right. So ladies and gentlemen, excited
to have Devin Anderson back. This is the second time that
we've recorded in person. So that's a unique guest in that
way. But Devin and I were grabbing
breakfast the other day and we got into a discussion about I
guess, performance in mostly athletic pursuits, but I may get
more into other stuff too. But Devin, I was, I was hoping
that maybe you could go into a little bit about your shooting
sort of practice and, you know, then we'll take it from there
and talk about some of the stuff that we talked about at
breakfast, but just kind of give people some background.
Sure. So my day job is that I'm a Co
founder of an investment advisory firm and I have a
family and all those responsibilities.
But the the last third of my life is I shoot shotguns
competitively, specifically sporting clays.
So that's a game all about being able to.
In that game, you don't know what the targets are in advance.
You show up, you look at them and you know a minute later or
90 seconds later you're shooting them and they could be anything
and they change. There's professional corsetters
and every time you go to an event it's different.
So there's a lot of complexity in that.
You must plan and then execute on that plan.
So that's a lot different than many disciplines where the
targets are going to be the same every time.
You know it's the same American trap or international ski
targets on every field, right? They're measured and set to very
specific distances and speeds. So become but where that
matters, though, with respect to performances, you'd need to the
game requires this very interesting mix of conscious
evaluation to make a plan, but then unconscious execution to be
able to step in and actually do it.
And that's where this performance under pressure bit
becomes really hard. There's there are so many
parallels to particularly golf and tennis.
Shooting is unique, though, in that it has very low
physicality, right? I don't even need to be in
shape, right, As long as I could stand up and move my arms
around, right? I can shoot a shotgun, but it
has a lot of repetition in the game that golf and tennis do
not. So what you end up with is this
very distilled mental stress of being able to, of having to be
able to make a plan and then step in and execute that same
thing, let's say three to five times a row, which makes, which
makes the game mentally very difficult.
So like when you are, when you're planning, are you able to
see you get, you get 2 clays in every pole I believe, right?
So the game is most. It doesn't have to be, but it's
mostly pairs. So you see what the pair, what
the presentation is going to be in advance and then you have to
make a plan to be able to execute on.
How many minutes do you have to make your plan once you see
these things? Well, you, you shoot in a
rotation, you know, there'll be a group of four to six people in
a squad trying, you know, going from course station to station
in a course. If you're 1st and you're the
first person to to shoot that particular stand and you are in
the box for the view targets, you're going to see the view
targets and you have to go right away.
So it it may be less than a minute.
That kind of sucks. Well.
I mean, you get to the point, though, where you're planning at
a speed that I don't think it matters too much It, it can be a
disadvantage in some situations where you know, you've got very
close decisions and it does help to see somebody else do it
first. You can't end up with that.
But I think among the people that are good for the most part,
you get good enough for reading the targets, you get get enough
experience it it's not so much of an issue.
I think just stepping back though, the interesting thing
with all of these games is like kind of why do we do these
games? OK, So like if I asked you for
some, you're a golfer, why do you play golf?
What is the thing about golf that keeps you coming back time
after time? And I'm not looking for like,
well, I learned to play from my dad and, you know, I'm a
competitive person. I think all that stuff kind of
goes. That's just table sticks.
There are many things that could fulfill that competitive need.
What is it about that game? What is it about the experience
of being out there that keeps you coming back?
Yeah, I mean, I think 1 is being in nature.
I enjoy that quite a bit. 2 is the difficulty of hitting a
perfect shot is is in and of itself a pursuit that I enjoy.
Then the difficulty of doing it over and over and over and over
again is something that I enjoy. And then the frustration of just
like a short lapse of time, right?
My fatal flaw seems to be that I get quick and I hit duck hooks
when I get quick and the ball is traveling reasonably fast and,
and far, and that means it's out of bounds.
So, you know, I'll have two to three swings around that'll cost
me four to six shots. And that's the difference
between, I don't know, somewhere between 75 and 78 and 84 and 86
or whatever. I love how hard it is and I
don't know why I love how hard it is, but I mean the the idea
of trying to, it's funny because 72 is not perfect, but that's my
idea of perfect. Like the idea of trying to
perfect that game is what I'm chasing.
So I'm going to take what you said.
I, I spent, it was a little bit of a loaded question because I
think I know the answer and I think that answer is universal
among every golf, tennis player, shooter.
And that's to do any of those games.
Well, your performance exists right on the edge of your
conscious ability. Well, exists not on the edge.
It exists beyond your conscious ability to execute those things.
So those games are moving fast enough and with high enough
difficulty that you're actually not thinking about your
execution of a golf shot or a sporting clay shot or you know
your forehand and tennis, you're not thinking about those things
consciously. You're seeing it and you're
letting your body do it unconsciously, subconsciously,
right? And the feeling of letting your
subconscious perform something that you could never do
consciously is really exhilarating.
And then then the second part of your answer, which was the thing
you said about doing it again and again, the ability to summon
that capability on demand. So I think it's funny when you
ask people why, what keeps them coming back to competitive
shooting or tennis or whatever it is you you get a lot of
answers. But I never get this answer.
But then when I say it this way, they're like, yeah, I get yes,
that's what it is, right? So then the question becomes,
how can I summon my unconscious execution at will?
And that's the hard part. There's a lot of people in these
games that are great on the practice stand, OK, In my world,
OK, they can go to a lesson and, you know, turn targets inside
out for two hours during a lesson.
And then where they can go duck hunting where no one's keeping
score and shoot great. OK, You hear all the time I
hear, oh, well, this guy's a great hunter and he shows up and
shoots 65% on when when there's referees out there, right?
Or the same thing. You see the guys on the practice
range in golf creaming them. So the question is how do we
cope with the pressure and can you do it on command?
And that's actually because you're fundamentally after an
unconscious activity. That's actually the exciting
part, I think. Yeah, I would very much agree
with that. And it's amazing.
Like, I don't know if you watch that documentary or, I don't
know, it's a documentary full swing on Netflix.
So you know, Brooks Kepka is sitting there and he's talking
about Scotty Scheffler and he's like, I guarantee you he's not
thinking about a thing right now.
And it's so interesting that like when it's going well, it is
that that bordering like like my swing thought when I'm really
swinging well, I think about turning my hips.
That's it. I don't think about anything
else except for hitting the shot.
And I don't know, it's like it's an intoxicating feeling to turn
your mind off and be. Able to execute yeah, so that's
exactly right. So, so I think ultimately it's
the unconscious execution part that makes these things so
interesting. And by the way, I mean it, it
comes out very so clearly in these types of sports
performances. There's but there's many, many
analogies. OK.
So a good friend of mine is an oral surgeon.
We shoot together and he describes, he describes surgery
the same way kind of in this in for the things that he does a
lot kind of the in this flow state, right?
We can talk about what that means and how to and how to get
there, which is maybe the more interesting thing.
But he describes surgery the same way.
So I've actually, I worked with a mental coach guy named Henry
Hopkin in the UK. And, you know, some of his other
clients have included, you know, F1 pit teams, OK, like those
guys changing tires and working on course.
That's not conscious activity when you're doing it in three
seconds or 4 seconds or whatever it is, right?
There's all sorts of, you know, bomb squad guys, OK?
Like there's all sorts of of activities under real pressure.
Now those are examples of lethal pressure, not a game, right?
And so a lot different. But you know, there's all sorts
of examples of having to perform under pressure where I think the
techniques we're going to talk about and like the structure of
how to approach performance under pressure matters quite a
bit. When we first had this
conversation, you talked about the F1 guys and the comment that
I believe you made is like when the pit crew, when it goes wrong
is when the guy starts to actually think and get in his
own head. You just watch it, you see it
right, Like you know when as like the I don't know the I'm
not a car racing guy. I don't know anything about it.
But like you see like the bolts and stuff or the car part, like
rolling across the ground, like we're now conscious, right?
Like in now we're not it's not going to happen in three seconds
anymore, right? So that's the question then is,
is there a process that we can follow now that we understand?
Like that's what we're after, OK.
And by the way, big people think that sports psychologist and
there's actually a lot of bad sports psychology out there, I
think, but this is universal, all sports psychology.
Read all of like the serious work on this or the people that
actually get paid to provide this advice to.
By the way, every high end athlete that exists is coached
on this stuff, right? Like no one, no one does this
without by just by themselves. Although except now that I've
said that we, we have this joke in shooting that if you want to
be really, really good shooting, you have two options.
You either have to be so completely self aware, a self
unaware, like so unaware of yourself that none of this
matters. And I actually do believe there
are some people in my world like that.
They just have very low self-awareness.
And so they don't let they don't inject their conscious thought
into their performance because they're never aware of their
conscious thought, right? Those people are pretty rare.
The other option is you have to be so self aware that you can
master these things, but in the middle is dangerous ground
because now you're performed like your conscious self starts
showing up and with your swing thought or while you're in the
middle of trying to execute a sporting clay shot and now
you're in a lot of problems, right?
So you're kind of, so your two options are like, you know, near
autism level, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but
like near autism level, low self-awareness or extreme self
actualization, right? Bulls are the two paths to
success for unconscious performance.
I I believe. But The thing is, you don't get
to choose which one of those you are.
You got to, yeah. What the cards you're
neurologically dealt. With so I played yesterday, I
played with a guy who is, he's got his tour card.
He doesn't play in every event. He's he's not like exempt.
So he's got to play his way in and he shot 66, I shot 84 and he
looked at me after the round and he was like, he's like you
clearly have game and like you're just the tee shot away.
Like consistently hitting the tee shot away from being like
really good, but that like just the tee shot away.
Yeah, big. Deal.
Yeah. I mean, it's fucking night and
day. That's the difference between
being like kind of good at it and being really good at it.
And, and what I find fascinating, to your point on
what you're saying is like, I am the guy in the middle, right?
And like, I mean, yes, statistically I'm like a pretty
decent golfer, but relative to what I think I should be, I'm
way away from where I want to be.
And I know it's all in my mind, but in a weird way the key is
like learning to turn my mind off while also being completely
tuned in. So the first step in all this
stuff is skill building. So people ask sometimes where
does confidence come from? Or they'll say, well, well, you
just need to be confident. OK.
So I think there's some like immutable laws.
I, I believe the first one is for most people, you can't lie
to yourself. Meaning I can't just order
myself to be confident. Doesn't work like that, right?
I can't look at a golf shot, look at a target presentation
and say, you know, and just convince myself that I can
execute it perfectly. I can't order myself to do it.
Not how it works. Now, interestingly, there are
people out there, including some like Olympic athletes that would
tell you that through routine, you know, you can convince
yourself right by by trying to like rebuild yourself image and,
and, and having mantras and this sort of thing that you can
essentially convince yourself. That's a trick.
I don't believe that's true. I think in your heart of hearts,
when you look at something that you need to execute, you know,
whether or not that's within your acquired skill set or not.
And there's no line to yourself. So if we take the no line to
yourself thing for granted as a given, then as a natural
consequence of that, your first step towards towards, you know,
true unconscious execution is building skills so that you can
do it unconsciously, right? But here's the rub.
Skill building is necessarily a conscious activity.
Performance is an unconscious activity.
So you have to learn, you know that particular golf shot,
particular sporting clays target particular tennis shot.
When you're in the process of learning that, you will be
conscious about what you're physically doing.
You may have to do drills or you may have to do it in slow
motion, or you, you may even like look at the ball or the
target a little differently than you would during if you were
doing it for a score or you were actually trying to perform.
Because you have to teach yourself through repetition what
that action feels like. That is a conscious activity.
Where I believe most people go wrong is that they don't
understand that what's going on in your mind while you're
practicing is needs to be different than what's going on
in your mind when you're performing.
And if those two things are the same, we're just out of the
gate. We have a problem.
Practice is about skill building should be about skill building.
It should be about taking elemental parts of whatever game
you're playing and building the skills that you need to execute
the tasks that you need under when you need to perform.
OK. So you know, in my world, it's
about there's many elements to it.
There's, you know, practicing specific kinds of targets so
that you have experience with them, You're comfortable.
How you use your eyes, like fascinating stuff doesn't matter
so much in golf because you're striking a stationary object.
But in tennis and sporting clays, the way that you use your
eyes in your periphery, you can actually massively improve the
way your eyes perform by learning how your vision works.
How so? Like what's an example?
OK, so if I'm shooting a target that was close to me and
traveling away, OK, at a fast speed, I actually, if I tried to
look at it with focus very close to the trap, even if I could
achieve focus at that speed, by the time I can physically move
and intercept this target with my gun in order to make a shot,
my eyes are well outside of the time frame for which I can hold
that focus. The amount of time that you can
achieve high detail center vision focus, it's very small,
OK, And I would be well outside that side.
It turns out your periphery vision is far more powerful,
right? In a way that you don't
understand, because as you experience your life and walk
around the planet every day, you don't really think about what's
going on in your periphery. You think about what's going on
in your center focus. So if instead of looking for
detail as that target's moving very fast very soon after it
leaves the trap, if instead I focus my eyes out farther away
and beyond the plane of the target, and I just allow my
periphery to see that flash and I begin moving on that flash.
Your periphery is actually so strong it will put my hands and
my body on exactly the right line.
And as I'm approaching a point where I can achieve center
vision detail, I'll be dead in time with the target and ready
to go. So inexperienced shooters will
often say to experienced shooters, oh, well, you shoot
them so fast, I can't shoot them that fast.
The reality is I'm not moving my hands any faster or slower than
you are, but I'm using my eyes in such an efficient way that
time slows down for me when it doesn't for you.
And when they try to replicate what I do, they end up moving
their hands very quickly because the information that they're
getting into their eyes isn't helping them.
And it's much different than what I do.
And by the way, this is not a phenomenon.
It's just shooting at tennis. It's everywhere.
There's this really awesome documentary called In Search of
Greatness. I can't remember the guy, the
director's name, but it has Jerry Rice in it.
And they, Jerry Rice was talking about catching passes.
And he said, you know, when I'm on, I look over my shoulder and
I can see the threads on the football in slow motion.
OK, That's because Jerry's, he's doing what I'm talking about.
He's learned how to use the combination of his periphery and
center vision in such a way that it looks like time is slowing
down to him. So look, but to watch him at a
distantly, he's doing this as he's running down a football
field at full speed. And he's a huge guy, right?
But to him, his perception of the event, it looks, it's like
time slows down and it's all about how your eyes and body
come together. And it's a it's a learnable
skill, But we could spend a whole bunch of time just on
that. But that's just one thing that
you could go out and practice, right?
So the point is there's in my world, there's, you know,
specific targets, there's eye development stuff, there's body,
what we call frame. Like there's body and posture,
things that matter. And some really weird stuff,
like when you lean over and you begin to look out the top of
your eyes, it begins to change how you perceive speed and
distance and your ability to keep your eyes fixed on a
target. It's like so.
Well, that that would mess up with your your peripheral
vision, I would think. So yes, all of these things
interact with one another, but the point is, step one is you
got to go out and build skills. And as you build skills, you
will begin to develop confidence in those skills.
And that's where confidence comes from first, right?
The bedrock of confidence has to be your skill building.
But that's not what a lot of people do.
What what I mostly observe is that to go out and practice and
the practice is just about, well, trying to see if I can hit
the target without really trying to develop a specific skill,
right? The practice in golf is, well,
I'm just going to go to the range and see if I can hit, you
know, if I can, if I can hit some straight balls, not at a
specific target, right? Like the reason they're those
flags out on the end of the range are there for a purpose,
right? So then if if what your practice
is, I just want to see if I go out and hit straight balls, but
then I show up on the golf course and now I've got to hit a
target, I haven't actually been practicing the skill that I
need, right. So, yeah.
So the people, what adds up happening instead is people go
through practice and they don't really, they aren't really
developing skills. So then they show up to perform
and what's going on in their mind is the same thing that
what's going on in their practice.
I'm just trying to hit a straight ball.
It becomes super conscious, which on a on your best day you
can get away with. And this is another thing that
happens. The day-to-day variability in
your ability to execute and your ability to use your eyes in
sports varies tremendously. Like this is something I'm
really in tune with because sporting plays and shooting is
such a visually oriented game. Tennis is is, I understand I'm
not a tennis player, but people play tennis tell me the same
thing. That's just a visually oriented
game. I can tell you, like on one day,
I'm having a much harder time keeping my eye on the target
than I am another day. And I, I don't know where it
comes from. Maybe it's rest, maybe it's a
little bit diet, maybe it's my blood sugar level, you know.
So you try to do things to control those when you have a,
an important competition, but there's just going to be some
variance in your unconscious performance, right?
So on your best day, maybe the guy that doesn't really practice
the way he should shows up and he has a great day, right?
And that happens 10% of the time, right?
You can do that 11 great round, right?
Then shows up the next kind of call.
I kind of screws it up a little bit and then every once in a
while has a melt, just a total meltdown, right?
And then the question is, well, what?
Where do these meltdowns come from?
Well, it comes from a cascading effect of didn't really build
the skills that I needed. Then I showed up and some things
went wrong. And because my confidence isn't
rooted in my skills, it's instead rooted in my results, I
now become even more conscious of my execution.
I'm now, now I'm trying in my sling or in my shot to do it
better while I'm doing it, which doesn't work right.
I become even more conscious and become even then I the results
get worse and then you become even more results oriented now,
like I'm even more worried about my results as they're happening
between holes, between stands, whatever, right?
And then because you're worried about that, now your decision
making goes in the toilet or you're not planning your shots
as well, right? And then you're not playing or
you're doing things you're like, oh, well, I'm not hitting that
kind of shot well today. So even though that should be
the ideal plan, I'm not going to do, I'm going to do something
else. You start making sub optimal
decisions, which even those can be conscious or not.
And then the whole thing just spins around until you're
totally out of control and you shoot 20 strokes off or, you
know, 15 targets off of your average because you're just,
you're, you're in a meltdown, right?
But that's where it comes from, right?
Is this progression of if your confidence isn't coming from
skill building and instead coming from your recent results,
things begin to unravel under stress?
Yeah, yeah. Preach.
Something that's interesting that you said about the target
being on the range. I had had a previous guest, he
actually said that he in Minnesota, one of the benefits
to teaching kids in the winter is that he puts these little
foam balls out there. And because they're just foam
balls, it enables the people that he's working with,
predominantly high school kids, to focus on the actual swing
change as opposed to the result that occurs from the skill
building. So the ability to build the
skill and detach yourself from the poor result then inevitably
occurs when you're consciously trying to build the skill is
actually a benefit. And to your point, when you get
conscious out on the course or I'm sure when you're shooting,
that's when like the reaction time slips.
Well, it's not just reaction time, it's your whole.
It's the trust that you need to have in order to get out of the
way to let your body finish the motion that you need to make,
right? So that's about trust and
conscious thought is the enemy of that trust, no doubt, right.
If you're, if you are thinking like if you're trying to control
what your body is doing, that means your subconscious is not
controlling it. So the, you know, we're, we're,
we're eventually going to get to like routine and elements of
routine. But really the whole purpose of
routine is to keep your conscious mind occupied with
something constructive so that your unconscious mind can
execute the physical activity that is required.
You described to me when we were having breakfast, you were
having a great round and you were really unconscious and you
were letting yourself be unconscious and you were able to
visualize a shot and it would just happen.
Yeah, yeah. So there will be as I'm sure you
can identify with. There's days where that that
state comes easier. There's days where you're able
to trust yourself with that more than others.
Now there's and and I don't think, you know, I've talked to
a lot of people into the shooting world about this, less
so and golf and tennis, but I don't know that anyone really
knows where that comes from. OK, So when I hear people talk
about getting in the zone, well, I start cringing because I think
it's really unconstructive to think about the zone as an
ephemeral state versus a process because I'm going to feel
different every day, OK? What I can't control that.
What I can do is control the process that I follow every day
to get myself prepared and and then during the execution of my
performance, right. And while I'm out of
competition, the flow state isn't a thing that's with you or
not with you. Sometimes I think the flow state
is the process that you follow to attempt to get there, right.
And sometimes, sometimes it's going to be easier to get there
than others. Sometimes you're never going to
like fully click. But if you have good routine and
good process and your and your confidence is coming from your
skills and you're, you know, as I don't know in years, I'm going
to say this as minimally results oriented as achievable, right?
I think for a lot of people that are successful in business and
life, and then, you know, then take that and they want to take
that skill set and go to and apply.
That's the same things that they did to be successful in business
that to be successful in in performance sports, right?
I think that's a very natural approach that people want to
take. The the problem is that it
doesn't their different skills, right?
The ability to plan and set your conscious thinking aside when
you need to perform is just completely different than the
kind of taskmaster approach that's required for practicing.
So I mentioned that I've worked with a, a performance coach and
he at when we first started working together, he did this
really long multi hour interview kind of covering all the aspects
of my life, including, you know, kind of my work life, home,
family balance versus shooting. And he asked me at one point he
said, why do you think you've been successful in the other
areas of your life? I kind of, I think I gave the
answer that like every business person would, which is, you
know, like I, I'm tenacious and you know, I have this kind of
very diligent taskmaster approach where I just keep
grinding away at it until I've got it right.
And he's like, great, OK, He's like, but I'm here to tell you
that by definition, the things that you did to be successful to
this point will not be the things that help you get to the
next level by definition, because if they were, you would
already be doing it. He's like, so we can just
accept, you know, as a precept. Clearly you've got to add
something to get to the next level.
And that something is, you know, recognizing that there's this
necessary difference between conscious practice and
unconscious performance and then building a, a system, OK, which
is routine in order to unlock your unconscious performance as
consistently as possible. And by the way, and the
interesting thing is we, we can sit here and talk about
intellectually or conceptually why all of this matters.
But interestingly, you don't actually have to know any of
that for it to work. I could just teach you a
framework of routine, teach, tell you none of the reasons
physiologically or psychologically why it works,
and it would not matter. What matters is that you just do
it. And that's a lot different than
skill building when you're trying to build the skills of
making the gulf shot or shooting.
When it comes to routine, I think it's intellectually sat
like to the intellectually curious, it's interesting to
know why it works, but you actually don't need to know any
of it, right? I don't need to tell you about
like synapses and all this stuff in, in dopamine and like all
this stuff that goes on in your brain.
It actually like it's interesting, but it doesn't
matter. What matters is that you follow
the sequence of events that will trigger the things in your mind
and help your body create these cues that will help you perform
under pressure. Yeah.
People can reference our first episode and I'll link to it.
But unless I'm mistaken, part of your business is hedging tail
risks. Yeah.
We, we have some long, long volatility focus for some
mitigation strategies, yes. Now, when those tail risk events
occur, maybe I mean it's not a split second at all, but it's a
sort of a condensed period of time that the market reacts, I
would think. Do you have any of this stuff
that that pops into your head in those like does does some of
this crossover to your work or is that a completely separate
skill set? I mean in the sense.
That there's process, yes, but you know, all this like routine
and pressure under performance stuff that I'm talking about
really applies to executing unconscious activities under
pressure, right? Because, you know, again, just
fundamentally, the game is moving so fast, you don't have
time to react to a conscious. And by the way, there's
actually, you know, we could keep going with the sports
analogy. So there's this, there's this
just amazing clip of Kobe Bryant that I love where someone's
asking him about. He's talking about doubt and why
it's so unproductive to like worry about your future
performance. There's a lot of little gems in
that clip, but one of them is he's like, look, all you can do
is train as hard as you can, step out there and let it flow.
And then you see what happens. Well, then you take that
information and then the next day, whether you win or lose,
you're going to show up the next day and start all over again.
So you take that information, it that goes into your training
regimen, you trade as hard as you can, but then when it's time
to compete, you just step out and let it flow.
I even think the choice of words he uses there is informative.
He uses the word flow, right? I mean, if you've ever, I feel
like it's harder to see when you're farther back at a
basketball game, but when you if you get seats really close or
hockey's like this too, I feel like when you get really close
to the side of the court or the rink and you see how fast these
guys are moving, it's not conscious activity.
They're not thinking about what they're doing.
It's unconscious activity. So, so like this stuff matters.
It's a little less applicable to, you know, I think business
because most of our business stuff is not real time
unconscious decision making and performance.
It's very conscious execution of strategy, right.
But that said, we certainly have process in our business, right?
We have, you know, a set even in an even for our, you know, our,
we run discretionary strategies. We have an expectation of how
things evolve in a process that we follow, and then we exercise
kind of discretion inside of these small bands, like we're
not just totally making it up as we go along.
Yeah, I was more thinking like COVID, some of those days it
didn't even feel like you had time to process the information
and you almost had to, like, know what was going on.
I don't know. Yeah.
I mean, I don't want to turn too far left into like theories on
investment management, but we're of the belief that you need to
manage to the risk, OK, rather than think about the risk in
terms of your dollar allocations, OK, you need to
think about when an event happens, what's the what is the
actual price change to that thing, right?
And you need to manage to that. So when the when the COVID, you
know, likes, we weren't live and for that, but you know, when you
have moves like that, for us, the risk is dictating how we
react when we get to a certain risk level, We rebalance.
Now the exact point, right? You know, do we rebalance when
we get to short 70 deltas or short 90?
And dude, that's where the discretion happens.
But we know inside this range, it's it is going to happen,
right? So there's process still and
we're coming into it with a plan, but that plan is focused
about the amount of risk we're taking and the rate at which
prices are changing. Rather than thinking about the
world kind of statically, which is I, I'm going to allocate this
many dollars to this and this many dollars to that.
And then I'm going to wait three months and see what happens.
Right, Much different orientation.
Yeah, that makes sense. The other thing I was thinking
about when you were talking is baseball's got to be incredibly
this way, right? Like if you're trying to think
about as a pitcher, like am I flipping my wrist the right way?
Like you're going to miss it? I would I assume you miss your
release point and then for as from a batter's perspective you
have like no time to process I mean.
Go to a batting cage, try to hit a 60 mile an hour fastball, and
then realize that these guys are hitting balls that are 90%
faster than that, right? So that's all, you know,
hitting, you know, that's all unconscious activity.
But again, the great baseball players, they say the same thing
that Jerry Rice does. They're they're so in tune with
using their eyes that they can see the thread on the ball
spinning. So again, like you see the the
same, the same themes emerge over and over and over, right.
So you're hitting a baseball as best as I understand it, you
know, it's about using your eyes and reacting to what you see.
Now I can barely because I, I don't have the skill of being
able to see a baseball. I just see that 60 mile.
I just see a blur, right? I'm sure if I got a batting
coach, if you could tell me this is where you need to focus and
this is how you have to use your eyes.
Just the same way that if I was coaching a shooter, I can tell
you, here's the target. Put your eyes out here, focus
them here. Use your periphery like this.
Like I'm sure it's possible, but in with time and practice, you
would get there. But it's the it's all
fundamentally the same, right? This sort of skill building,
conscious skill building, using your Physiology to the best that
you can for that game, and then being confident you can do that
and wrapping a routine around it so that you can essentially turn
the thinking off and let it go. So, so the question then is, OK,
well, that sounds interesting. How do you do that, right?
Like what is a routine, right? Is it some guy out there like,
you know, flicking his waistband and his hat around?
Is that a routine right? Because you you see that in all
these sports, right? People with like very
complicated pre shot routines Like do I need to have that?
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, right. I'm kind of making a joke.
To me the answer is obviously no.
Well, like Nomar Garcia, Para, you remember that guy?
Like I don't want to have to touch my wrist that much.
Yeah, exactly. But he's doing it for a reason.
OK? And The funny thing about
routine is like they'll mimic someone else's routine, but
they're but the person mimicking doing isn't doing it for a
reason. I've so many interesting
examples of this, but what matters, so kind of what matters
here though, is that the routine has to meet certain objectives.
So let's talk about the first thing to realize is that
planning a shot is not routine. That's planning.
Planning is a conscious activity.
OK, so your routine doesn't even really begin until once you've
stopped planning, right? You look at your golf shot, I
look at my targets, OK? Tennis doesn't really have any
planning, guys hitting the ball at you, right?
I make my plan and then the conscious part is now over.
Hopefully no more consciousness. Then I would tell you.
There's kind of, now we're talking about routine.
There's kind of four big phases of routine.
The 1st is you have to physically get yourself set, OK?
Clothes, glove, hat, glasses, your posture, OK, all of those
things you, your feet planted where you want them or you've
got to be physically set. Step one.
Step 2 begins and ends with some sort of visualization of what
the shots going to be. Visualization is an interesting
thing in that. I think that is planning, no?
No, because a planning is is evaluative.
It has an evaluation aspect to it.
OK, so planning is I could start my barrel at any of these spots.
Which one is it going to be? I can plan to break the target
at any of these spots. Which one is it going to be?
There's an evaluation element to planning.
Visualization is what am I going to see and possibly even feel
with my body as I'm doing it. It's rehearsing the thing that
you've already evaluated. You do need, as you go from the
step one physical plant stuff into the visualization, you need
to have a physical cue. OK, so this is actually how your
body works. You can link physical activities
to things that go on in your mind.
Doing the same thing over and over elicits the same thoughts,
right? Hopefully familiar, comfortable
thoughts. That's part of the routine.
So whatever that cue is, I can tell you it.
For me, once I've physically got myself set up, as I'm putting
the shells in the gun, that's what I'm doing.
My visualization, Literally, as they're going in there, I'm
looking down at it, but I'm not thinking about putting the
shells in the gun. I'm thinking I'm visualizing the
shot that I'm about to make. Visualization is a weird thing
in that for some people, it's a picture of what it's going to
look like at the moment of performance, right at the moment
I pull the trigger. Sometimes for other people, it's
a movie, like they see the shot coming together.
Different things work for different people.
You just got to figure out what that is for you.
Right? But I can tell you for sure that
you must take the visualization box somehow.
OK. And then at the end of the
visualization comes another trigger that tells you it's time
to go to the next phase, which is the actual unconscious
performance. Now, you asked me when we had
lunch, you know, do you need, do any of these need to be a fixed
amount of time? The answer to that question is
no, except this part from the time, whatever your cue is to go
from phase two, your visualization to phase three
execution, that needs to be the same amount of time every time.
And what that cue is for you again, you have to decide.
But I can tell you it has to be something.
So for me, I finish visualize and then I I shoot an over under
shotgun. I close it.
That's the cue that it's now time to perform.
And there is a fixed amount of time between when I close that
gun and when I call pole for the target.
Every single time. It's extremely consistent.
The purpose of that is that you, you want it to be consistent.
The reason that has to be a fixed amount of time, it's
because you've made your plan. You've got yourself set.
You visualize what you're going to do.
This is now the point where unconscious thought popping in
is the most destructive. You've decided what you want to
do. You've loaded yourself up for
it. Now you just need to do it.
No more evaluation, right? Evaluation right here is where
people really get in trouble, right?
You might as well not even have the routine if you're going to
go start evaluating again after you've done all this work like
for, you know, in my world. So people they get ready and
they've kind of done all these things and now they're staring
out into the field And I just thought I like, no good can come
of that, right? Or imagine you, you set up your
goal shot, you're standing over the ball and you're just staring
at it. Why?
Like the only thing that can happen is unproductive thoughts
popping up into your mind, right?
So if you have this fixed amount of time between your queue, I
close the gun and the time I and my execution, I call for the
target. That helps you that it helps
mitigate these unconscious thoughts from popping in.
Then phase three is hopefully an unconscious execution.
I've called for the target. I'm going to make my move.
I'm going to pull the trigger, I'm going to break it or not.
And then there's this optional 4th stage, which is if it
doesn't go as you planned, OK, if I didn't hit the target or
you know, I felt something went wrong that I didn't like, I
potentially have to do some more planning.
Now I potentially have to go back into, make some
evaluations, reset my plan, and then I go back to my
visualization. So that's the framework and
those are the steps that you're going to have to go through
planning conscious part, you know, that's the first thing.
And then once you have a plan, get yourself set, there's going
to have to be some visualization and then an execution and then
an optional re evaluation if you need it.
And before looping back to that visualization and you've got it.
And then you and you've got to have some cues.
You got to tell your body it's it's time to move from one phase
to the next with a physical movement.
OK, because, and, and that's important because that physical
movement will help, that will help train your mind to follow
this process all the time. And if you take all these boxes
and you go out and you practice your routine.
So this is kind of another wild thing about practice.
There's skill building practice, which is always that we've
talked about conscious, right? Like I'm, I'm kind of
consciously evaluating what I want to do.
But then there's execution practice, which is I'm just
going to go out and actually run my routine as if I were
performing. Now it's not as good as, as if
you were performing because there's no pressure, but you're
actually practicing your routine, right, which is a
second kind of practice and, and a very important kind of
practice. And you can go do that.
You can go to the, you can go to the range and, and have a plan
for that practice session of having no skill building.
I'm only going to work on my routine and smooth my routine
out and be comfortable in my routine.
And that is a worthwhile and important goal.
And I, I think very, very few people do it.
And as you do that, you can kind of make that better by trying to
introduce some stress, right? So if I've turned up at my, for
my practice session and my goal that day is to practice working
through my routine, you can do things to try and put some
pressure on it to simulate competition.
So for example, one of the things that in the shooting
world that we'll do is I'll take some not super hard, but middle
difficulty to upper middle difficulty target.
And I'll just stand there until I can hit ten of them in a row.
Not just hit ten of them in a row, but hit ten of them in a
row in my process. OK.
And you want to talk about the confidence you can get from that
now? Like you're building confidence
in a belief that you can do it under pressure.
It's still not as good as actually having to do it for a
score under real pressure, but as you get to 7 or 8 becomes
harder to hit the 9th, it becomes harder to hit the 10th
right. Yeah, because you're like, if I
don't hit this I got to go back to 1 and I don't want Steve gear
all day. Like do you know how many, how
many times I've been out at the range and I just want to go
home? I've been out there for 2-3
hours, you know, I've shot 67800 targets.
I want to go home and I can't get the 10th 1:00 and I've and
I've, and I've done it now 567 times I've gone, I've gone
through four boxes to try and get that 10th target right.
Like the pressure that that creates.
And you could, you can imagine doing the same thing with golf
right on the range, trying, trying to put it on the, on the
practice target. You know, the, on the pin that's
out there, right? The pressure that that builds
not only helps you do it under pressure, but it makes you more
comfortable with the pressure when it shows up in a
competition. I was in a lesson one time and
the guy that I take lessons from, Anthony Matarese, you
know, widely, I think viewed as the, you know, the kind of the
preeminent shotgun instructor in the United States, if not the
world. We were shooting as kind of very
delicate, slow off speed target. And he said to me, he goes, you
know, because that's a good target.
You should just be able to come out here and hit twenty holes in
a row. Well, after my lesson, I went
back there and try to do it. I could get 14, but I couldn't
get 20. I just got I, I tapped out like
I, I mean, literally shot all the ammo in my car trying to do
it. So I'm back in the clubhouse
afterwards and he's like, yeah, I saw you out there.
Still at, still at that same one.
I said, yeah. I said, listen, I was trying to
get 20 in a row. I said I got 14.
I didn't get 20. And he didn't laugh at me.
He goes, he's like, oh, you actually tried to do that?
He's like, that's kind of crazy. He's like, I can do twenty of
those, but I do it in my mind. Little different.
Little different but. He's also at a much higher level
than I am, so there's real value in that sort of practice, but it
takes some real grit to be able to turn up and do it right.
And that's a long way away from practicing skill building, which
is a long way away from just trying to show up and hit some
ball straight right. Yeah, I don't know if you deal
with this in shooting. The other thing that I that I
find is I missed 2-3 footers yesterday.
That the first one I kind of pushed and that one doesn't
drive me nuts. But the second one it was on the
very next hole and it was a hard breaker right to left and it was
downhill and I just like hit it like such a Pansy that it broke
across the face of the hole and I missed it.
And I said to the guys I was playing with, I was like, I
don't know why my mind is comfortable missing a shot by
under hitting it, but I'm not comfortable being firm.
Now the answer is one way I have a tap in for five and the other
way I have like a four footer coming back.
And that's I don't want a four footer coming back.
But I think it's, I think it's interesting.
I don't know why at certain points like just a moment of
doubt will creep in and create such a bad result, like right
before pulling the trigger. There's there's a couple things
I I would say there. The 1st is that you were afraid.
You had some fear at some level, conscious or not.
Yeah, which makes no sense. Like it doesn't fucking matter.
But there was some fear. Anytime you're competing and you
have any sort of fear about a shot whatever at the end of the
round, you need to go write that down.
And I keep idle journal, OK? And I write about all my
competitions in there. And the most important thing
that I write in that journal is when I was afraid of something.
Because when you're afraid of something in competition, that's
the first thing that you should go practice, OK?
Interesting. So you were afraid of it for a
reason. Now you would just missed a pot
on the previous hole. So maybe you were a little
careful. So we talked about one thing.
We talked about shooting is the difference between careful and
careless missing. When you're a developing shooter
golfer, it's probably a little better that you have careful
misses because you're still kind of in the skill accumulation
phase, right? What you need is lots of
repetition. You're trying to build skill and
you know, I don't mind a careful miss at that stage.
You don't want to be careless when you're developing because
you don't know what you're doing, right?
You don't, You're not just you don't want to be throwing the
gun around and throwing the club around like, you know, careless
is a real problem when you're developing.
Interestingly, that inverts when you get good.
OK, now being care careless. I would rather see an
experienced person have careless misses because it means that
they aired a little bit more towards trusting their process
versus a careful mess. Probably meant that you weren't
trusting your process. Yeah, that makes sense.
So a care, a careless miss is almost, if anything, it's it's
a, it's a byproduct of maybe overconfidence bias, but at
least it's an earned right when you're good.
Well, I wouldn't, I understand why you say that, but I think
that what it really comes down to is the difference between
being, I can tell you what the numbers are in shooting because
I know I've experienced them. I don't know what they are in
goal in shooting. The difference between being an
80% shooter and an 88% shooter, well, that's too wide between an
84% shooter and an 88% shooter. OK, those four targets, that's
trust. You're not breaking 84% without
most of the required techniques to be able to do it.
You're going to get the next 4 by being able to trust that you
can do them under pressure. Where are you 87?
I changed my I started wearing glasses last year.
I had a weird year but I tried 87% last year.
What's like elite, elite, elite? 91.
So. So what's that delta between 87
and 91? How wide is that gap?
It's a lot. It's a lot of experience, but
specifically not necessarily experienced with targets,
experience with pressure. It's how you cope with pressure
and how good you can be with trusting the skills that you
have. And this is kind of where I'm
going, right? The reason that I want you to
write the fear down in the journal is that so you go
practice the things that you're scared of so that you have more
confidence about them so that you have a chance of trusting it
more, right? So the best shooter in the
United States right now is guy named Brandon Powell.
Brandon says all the time in interviews that he lets his
trust run so far that he believes that he probably misses
a few because he trusted it too much.
But that's still better than than if he didn't do that, If he
started to get a little careful and it went wrong, probably miss
more. So the problem with really
getting the trust up is that you feel like it might betray you,
right? But I think the truth of the
matter is not trusting your unconscious execution, not
trusting your conscious execution conditioned on the
fact you've actually done the skill building.
And I'm, I want to, that's really important.
I want to come back to that. Assuming you've done the skill
building, not trusting your conscious execution is a far
bigger mistake, right, than being careful.
And that that's Brandon's point, right?
Like, look, I might miss one that people think is silly, but
I ain't going to be. But still, I'm still going to
have more than everybody else, right?
And he did and he asked for the last for the last few years,
which brings me out. Just as a little side note,
there's a lot of like bad advice out there.
And I'm, I don't know what the golf analogies are, but I can
give you, I'm sure you, if I tell you the shooting 1 you
could probably find in the ollies 1.
I hear people say all the time, well, just look at the target.
If you just look hard at the target, it's going to your
body's going to sort itself out, right?
And you hear all this quite crazy stuff, like you got to see
like, you know, little dark spots and detail on the target
and, you know, stare a hole through the target.
I hear all. Yeah, aim small, miss small
types. I hear all this stuff, OK?
And the thing about it is that it's not totally wrong.
You do need to look acutely at the target, but there's a
difference between visual acuity, the detail that you see,
and visual discipline, which is the process of keeping your eye
on the target. OK, but see, none of that
matters if you haven't built the skill to be able to execute the
movement. So you can go up to a guy that
has five 6000 tournament targets or experience and you can tell
him to look at the target until you're blue in the face, he's
still going to miss. So all of this.
Stuff. Why is that?
He just doesn't have enough experience, Yeah.
Right. His body doesn't know what it
feels like to make the moves. He's not.
He's going to. He gets up.
There's this in shooting sports, in archery and kind of
everything involving shooting, not just shotguns.
There's this concept called target panic.
Target panic is basically when you you kind of come close to
the moment of pulling the trigger and freak out a little
bit, right? Yeah, dude, it's like when I'm
on the tee and I'm trying to hit a cut, right before I pull it
back, I say don't double cross this and hook it, and then I do
that well. OK.
Interestingly, yeah, that's related.
But the way that we get rid of that, though, is by filling our
conscious mind with our routine, right?
Keeping your conscious mind occupied on that visualization,
you have your cue, and then you're off.
That's the whole point of that fixed amount of time is to get
rid of exactly what you just described now.
Those if it creeps in though, like in shooting, can you
restart your routine, start over?
Yeah, yeah. That's what you need to do is
just stop and do it again. So on Sunday I was on a very
high score. I'm on the last stand of 14.
The last pair I've dropped five targets.
OK, so if I hit these next two targets, I will have shot 95 out
of 100. I'm I've already hit there's it
was a four pair stand. I've already hit three pairs.
I've just got to hit the last pair.
So there's no doubt I can physically do it.
It's just a question of can I keep my shit together long
enough to hit the last two? I'm in my routine.
I'm as I'm closing the gun for whatever reason, a cart goes
behind the stand and it caught my attention.
OK, now the weird thing about distractions.
You can actually perform distracted, but what you can't
do is perform while thinking about if you're distracted.
See the difference? Yes, the second one is
conscious, right? The first one is not.
There I know. It's kind of why if you have
like a consistent noise in the background, not such a problem.
But to your point, like a cart disrupting silence, it is
different. Hearts.
I mean, look, gun ranges are busy places.
There's crap going on behind the stand all the time.
Most of the time I like, I don't even hear it.
But The funny thing about your perception is that sometimes
these things grab. There's a difference between
perception and attention. I can perceive something but not
pay attention to it, right? Like I'm aware that there's a
window over here and there's trees and there's wind, but I'm
not paying attention to them, right?
So whatever reason that cart, not only I perceived it and it
got my attention and literally I opened the gun.
I even took the shells out. OK, I took the shells out.
I put them back in my pocket. I moved my feet, I looked at the
trap and I said, sorry, cart got just got in my head.
I'm I'm just going to restart. And I went through my whole
routine again. I replanned my feet.
I got my body and shoulders and everywhere where I was
comfortable, I put shells back in.
I visualized close the gun, call for it.
Senator, I'm shot in 95. I will tell you I've been in
that situation a lot of times where I didn't reset and I want
I don't have the data, but easily more than 50% of the time
I'm not. I don't get it done if I just
try to force through the distraction.
And the big difference is I can tell you that for me, when a
distraction occurs, if I catch myself thinking about if I'm
distracted and even the slightest degree, automatic
restart. Yeah, well, that thought to the
earliest comment that you made about we're all sort of chasing
the edge of subconsciousness. The second something enters your
conscious mind, you are out of the other state, and the other
state is actually the performance state.
No doubt. And The thing is that once you
can actually kind of fall into this unconscious performance
state by accident every once in a while.
So that's why when the guy, you know, when the guy that's
usually shooting 95 every once in a while shoots 82, but he
kind of fell into it by accident.
Who knows why or how he got there, right?
We we don't know, but he got in there and he was performing.
So he stayed confident throughout the whole period and
he and he got it done, but he doesn't know how to replicate
it, right. So one of the things my coach
Anthony often says is, you know, it's one thing.
To be performing well when you're on the good side of the
confidence curve. The question is, and the thing
that separates the long term winners from everybody else,
what are you going to do when you're on the wrong side of the
conference curve? How do you take a, how do you
stop that? That meltdown that we talked
about, that meltdown process that we talked about earlier,
How do you stop that? And you know, you're not going
to perform your best on your day, but you can save it.
OK. On Saturday, I actually, I
wasn't feeling that well. I was having trouble keeping my
eye on the target. I still scrapped out 86, right?
Not not a good score for that course.
Kept me off the podium despite shooting very well the next day.
But I still finished tied for fourteen in the overall event of
400 plus. OK, if I would have let the
Saturday go into a meltdown, you know, now, who knows, right?
And I could have been in the middle of the whole field,
right? So the question is, what are you
going to do when it's not going well, right?
And the answer is, you know, you got to have a plan.
We've just spent an hour talking about the plan is I have a
routine, right? I have this thing that insulates
my unconscious behavior to the best of my ability.
Have you found any correlation between?
I know that you've said that a routine can be any amount of
time, but have you found a correlation between like like
something? My bias would be to say that a
shorter routine is better because there's just fewer
seconds for your conscious mind to take over.
I would agree with you. For me, that's the case.
And if you watch shooting is interesting because we have lots
of repetition. If you watch some people, even
when they're shooting well, the the total time that they take to
go through the routine and execute a shot is exactly the
same. Other people will get faster the
better they do, and they're doing it intentionally.
OK, so that guy I mentioned before, Brandon, who's right now
is the best in the US, he will actually get faster as he gets
deeper into the stand. So the time between pair 2:00
and 3:00 will be more than the time between pair 3:00 and 4:00.
And if you watch him, something literally looks like he's
ejecting the shells and, like, throwing the next one in as fast
as he can. And he'll even say like, you
know, I just wanted to get him dead and get out of there
because he's so like locked in to what he knows he needs to do
that he it's just a matter of executing that works for him.
I know other people that that doesn't work for.
So I think it's, that's a very personal, personal thing.
Then the only absolutes are you've got to tick the boxes
right, Got to have planning, you've got to have set up,
you've got to have visualization, you've got to
have execution. And there's got to be a physical
cue that gets you from one of those things to the next.
You've got to be able, you know, those I think are absolute.
The time between your cue from finishing your visualization to
execution, I think that's got to be as close to constant as
possible. I'll keep that unconscious
thought down. But you know, I know that I
can't go to, I do speed up a tiny amount, but not a lot.
I, I don't like to go too fast, just me.
But I think that, you know, the goal is to keep your conscious
mind occupied. It's easier to do that on
average for the average person for less time than more time.
Yeah, I have to, I have to think so because the more time you're
sitting over it, the more, I mean, it's it's your point, Like
the person that finishes the routine and then they're staring
down the range, right. Even if you're staring down the
range for five seconds every time. 5 seconds is a.
Long time you. Could think a lot of things in
five seconds. That's right.
Like I got to think that you finish it and go.
And it's especially dangerous what once you've completed a
visualization, You should be moving on to execution.
If you're standing there staring at the ball, staring out into
the field, it's there's just no upside.
There's no upside. There's you.
There's nothing that you can be doing in that time that you
shouldn't have already done, right?
You can only invite conscious interruption and that and while
you're doing that. Yeah, that makes sense.
So you're working on a project. Do you want to leak it or do you
want to wait? We'll wait.
Yeah, it's not. It's still coming together.
I am working on a project. It's about this plus many other
things. It's about development of
shooting development, but it's all man, I'm I'm a year away at
least again, I just started interviews like it's going to
it's coming, but. Well, I, I like, I like the
insight that you had out of it that, that we're really just
chasing the edge of subconscious and conscious.
I, I think that's correct. That's.
What it's it, it, that's what's exciting about these things,
right? Like this notion that you can
just turn up for some sport and you can do this thing that's on
the absolute edge of human perception and physical
possibility and you can do it at will.
Like that's, it's like, it's, it's like superhero stuff
almost, right? Like you're, you're really
pushing the edge of your physical and perceptual
abilities and to be able to do it on command, like what?
That's exciting, right? And I, I think that's the real
appeal to, to, to these sports, whether people kind of realize
it or not. And when they get that special
day where they kind of fall backwards into the performance
and they're reminded like, oh, wow, This is why I'm out here.
Well, I'm here to tell you that with, you know, kind of, I don't
want to say careful work, but by following, by setting up a
routine, by structuring your practice the right way, by
recursively taking the things that make you afraid and cycling
them into your practice. Like you actually can put a
process in place that will put you in that state more often
than you would ever imagine. I remember asking Henry, I was
like, Henry, well, I'm shooting. Well, it seems like every time
slows down and like it almost seems like the targets stop and
it's so easy. And you know, if I could get to
and I just I'd seen him, I'd been at a competition here in
Florida in February. My on my first ever session with
him was in Dallas in the following month.
And I, I described to him one specific stand was really hard
stand and there was three, you had to do it three times.
And the first one was just dead perfection.
And I said I felt like time slowed down.
I said, I remember Henry. I felt like I had the target on
the end of a stick and all I just had to pull trigger.
And then the next two times didn't come together.
I was like, I was like, if I could do that.
And he goes, yeah, that's what we're doing here.
He goes, that's the whole point of what I'm about to teach you.
And I'm like. Wait a minute, that's a Japan
before, do you? Mean to tell me that like I can
make it like that all the time and he's like, it may not be all
the time, but I'm going to teach you the best possible way to get
close. And he was right.
What a high man like, like the day that you can, you know,
actually summon that on command. Yeah.
And and so you know that the process for guys like you and me
is, but it's it's really something to watch the greats of
whatever sport you're into that really can do it on command
unconsciously. Yeah, there's not, you know,
Tiger Woods isn't out there thinking about it.
He did all the thinking on the practice field.
Yeah. He's just out there doing it.
Yeah, right. But a bunch of steps you got to
get to before you get there. Yeah, no doubt.
Well, thank you for stopping by and talking about this.
I I love the first conversation. I I hope that people that are
listening like this one, I think they will.
Yeah, I think if you're into if you're into sports and you
struggle with why am I awesome 20% of the time, OK, another 60%
of the time and then 20 and then another 20% of the time I'm in a
meltdown. Hopefully the hopefully this
this helps. Right.
And I would, you know, if you're interested about reading about
the stuff, the old Barbara Tella books, golf was not a game of
perfect. In the inner game of tennis, he
talks about these constructs in terms of like the self one, self
two thing. It's all the same.
There's plenty of good sports psychology out there that some
of them are academic others. But you know, ultimately this is
what I just described is what's in those books, right?
There's no magic beans. There's no secret knowledge.
This is it. It's just hard work to practice
it. Yeah.
And I, and I think that I mean you said, you know, if you're
good 20%. And I think the more interesting
question is like, let's say I'm good 75% of the time.
Why is that last 25% so hard to close the gap on?
Because like a majority of the time I'm good.
Oh yeah? Well, but it gets even more
complicated. It's harder to win your second
big tournament that it is your first.
What that? Expectations now, now you have
all this performance stuff and you start to feel like you
you've already proven that you can do it.
Yeah, you've proven you can do it.
And so now, like all the all the pressure goes up.
Yeah. Or let's say you've won some big
stuff, whatever big is for you. And then you turn up at your
little local tournament with hardly any competition where
you're the favorite to win by a lot.
That's a whole different kind of pressure.
Yeah, right. So this it manif that pressure
manifests itself in different forms and evolves differently as
your career progresses. And it's all a little different,
but you know, the bedrock coping mechanism is this.
It's to just keep on your process and do your best not to
become results oriented in the middle.
Yeah, try to have fun in the meantime, right?
OK, so that's now you're I, I know we're at the end here, but
that you're asking the fun thing is interesting.
Fun is when you perform well. I always have fun when I perform
well. I don't have a whole lot of fun
when I don't. So people say to me.
It's actually kind of a byproduct of the process.
I hear people say all the time like, oh, I'm I'm just going to
go and have fun, OK. Or the the a thing that
popularly is said in the northeast part of the shooting
world is something like if I shoot to win, I often lose, but
if I shoot for fun, I always win or no, Yeah.
Or if I shoot for, I don't know, it's some saying like this, but
the the point of the saying is if you shoot to win, you'll pull
a lot of pressure on yourself and you most often won't.
OK. To which I say, yeah, but if you
don't shoot to win, you're almost never going to.
OK. So rather than avoid the
pressure, change your relationship with the pressure,
right? Have coping mechanisms, have
confidence that aren't is not rooted in your results, and then
just deal with the pressure, right?
Learn to learn to take it and then have the goal to win.
But to run away or people say, well, you need to, you need to
act like it doesn't matter. Impossible.
You can't lie to yourself. It does matter.
If it didn't matter, first of all, one, we wouldn't be out
there keeping score all right, and two, you wouldn't be out
there to begin with because there would be no, it's the
objective measure of your ability to summon it that's
exciting, right? So like the whole, you know,
just have fun slash act like it doesn't matter thing.
I I mean, I just call total bullshit on that because you're
right. Like I'm having the most fun
when I'm performing well and my all of my work is coming
together. That's fun.
OK, Do you know how many straight up depressing and sad
plane rides home I've had home from coming coming from
competitions? I had years of them.
I mean, maybe the first eight years of my shooting career.
That's mostly what they were, right?
Because I you takes a long time to win.
OK. It takes a long time to even do
well. So like, either you learn that
that's part of your process and accept it or you quit, you know,
or you start kind of believing this nonsense about, well, what
you should be doing is having fun.
No. That is kind of a loser
mentality, isn't it? I mean in a way.
You said it, yeah. Yeah.
I don't know anyone who is consistent.
Consistence may be a strong word.
It's hard to dominate these games because they're so
complicated, right? But the people at the top of
them didn't get there by believing, only half believing
that they could. Yeah, right.
They believed that they could based on their work and skill
building and experience, right? And you got to really care in
order to put those hours in. So to act like you don't care is
fucking bullshit. Going back to your previous
comment about like, you got to believe what you're telling
yourself. Because I know I'm the one that
said to have fun, but I don't actually believe that I'm going
out to have fun. I believe I'm going out to
perform. And when I perform, I have fun.
And that's. OK.
Now, OK, I do have to say that I think that they're we're talking
about this is all in the context of maximizing performance.
If your goal is not to maximize performance, then a lot of this
changes. There are plenty of people in
shooting, plenty of people in golf, plenty of people in tennis
that are there truly for recreation and they do like to
turn up an event, maybe to shoot harder targets or for the social
aspect of being at a big tournament where their goal is
not to maximize performance. OK, to those people, I mean, no
offense when I say the fun stuff and that your goal should I I
mean no offense to those people, I get it.
You're there for a different reason.
They're totally great. And actually we're happy to have
you there. Like not everyone has to be
there for cutthroat competition. You're trying to push themselves
as hard as they possibly can. That's what I like.
Doesn't mean that's where other people are like totally OK.
So I think it is important to recognize like the different
goals that people have with the stuff and not everyone is there
for the same reasons that I am. But if you are there to maximize
performance, I'm 1000% buying everything I've said here.
Yeah, well, I'm with you on that.
Relatedly, I have, you know, I mean, it's interesting.
Sometimes I've performed well while having some like, you
know, booze on the course or whatever.
And I always get disappointed when that happens because I'm
like, man, why did why did it take the booze to let go, right.
How do I let my mind let go without that rather than because
it's obvious it's in me, right? It just fucking showed it right?
So like, why can't I turn? Because you just haven't
established yet the right tool set, the right process, the
right routine that helps you access it, right?
Which I say, you know, there's a framework that requires
customization. I would say that it took me well
over a year and I shoot a lot of competitions.
I shoot 10,000 plus registered targets a year.
It took me well over a year from the start of my routine
development, when I first started really committing to it,
to getting it to the point where I really felt like it was
helping OK. Took Wow just to the point where
it was helping, not to the point where you like had it.
Then took a lot more time where it was like solid, right?
And it went through a lot of iterations like that.
I remember I went through a period where I was taking a
really a long period of time and my friends were like, dude, why
are you so slow? This is brutal.
Would you stop it? And then it's because I was
still working through what all of my pieces were right of, of
what I was putting in those boxes in the framework, right?
And then I'd speed some part up and then I'd screw up another
like, and it was a full like year of iteration before.
Like I got the routine into something that I like and it is
repeatable and I'm comfortable with like.
So that's a big. Commitment.
Right. To take something that you care
about and put this thing into it.
That's going to take a long time to work out, but.
It's worth it. Yeah, that's what the people the
top have done. Duh, that's right and that's
what it takes. Not fake it right and believe it
when it counts. And that's the other, Yeah, the
whole don't lie to yourself if you know you've done that work,
OK. And when you have a mess or a
bad shot, if you can say to yourself, I made the wrong plan,
right? I did not make the right plan.
Or you know what? I executed that poorly because I
got a little conscious, but I know how to not do that now.
Like you don't even go close to the meltdown rabbit hole.
You don't even go near it, right?
Just go back to your process because you believe that you
have one. But the only way that I think
that belief is sustainable is if you do.
Noted. Well, thank you very much for
sharing your knowledge. I appreciate.
It man, thanks for having me. I love this stuff and that was
great. It's a lot of fun to come and
see you again. All right, good deal.
Have a good one.