Do you find yourself shooting well during lessons with your coach or instructor, only to find yourself struggling afterwards, either in practice or competition? It’s fairly common, and while you can always go back for another lesson, you’d be better served in the long run if you can learn how to coach yourself. If you aren’t currently working with a coach, then this will help you as well.

Start off by thinking about the way your coach talks to you. Coaches who understand shooting as well as they should almost never tell their students that they shot over or behind a target. Instead, they talk about the execution of the shot. Did you feel like you had enough time? Did you feel as if you had no connection to the clay? Did you feel rushed? Good coaches know that the solutions are usually found in the shooting stand, not out at the target. Almost always, a miss is the result of a failure to follow fundamentals, not how much lead you gave the bird.

But many people forget about that when they’re practicing. If they start missing the target, they start tweaking their lead instead of going back to the fundamentals of the technique they’re working on. I’d rather see you to coach yourself to get back on track.

When I’m coaching, I frequently use a three-step mantra to help a student who’s struggling after hitting the target a few times. I’ll tell them to 1) see the clay coming; 2) Get connected and sync with it; and 3) get your eyes on it. If you follow this, you’ll be coaching yourself on three extremely important variables of the shot.

This is better than simply guessing what you did wrong and trying to fix it. First of all, you might guess wrong and your “cure” might even make matters worse. Instead, you want to go back to the process that allowed you to hit the target in the first place. In practice, you can always take another view pair and then walk through the steps again. Chances are good that you’ll start crushing the bird again.

Not long ago I had a student who started out crushing a long, fast midi – the type that challenges everybody. But after hitting the first four or five, he started missing, and missing, and missing. What was he doing? He was worried about his lead, and he kept trying to give the bird a little more lead or a little less. It wasn’t working, and even if he had, he was trying to consciously measure a lead – never a good idea.

I stopped him there and told him to go back and revisit his plan and setup, look at the bird one more time and rehearse the shot, and then execute, using that three-step mantra. Guess what? He started centering the bird again. As we discussed later, the student was hitting the bird at first purely through his “shot library,” remembering similar targets he had performed well on in the past. But when he missed, his confidence dropped and kept dropping with every miss. That’s when we start trying to aim or measure leads and the wheels come off.

A quick fix is often to keep your eye on the clay and finish the shot visually. As a shooter, I often remind myself of the same thing. Before I started writing this article, I was practicing a trap target from a FITASC low-gun start. When I missed, I didn’t know exactly what I was doing wrong, but I knew which variables were important to make that shot.

So instead of wondering about what I did wrong, I focused on what I should be doing. In the case of the FITASC trap shot, I generally emphasize the movement of my front hand. After a box of shells, I realized that I was overdoing it and needed to get my back hand working more with the front. That helped me move with the bird a lot better.

Then I tried to pick up the bird a little sooner by placing my eyes closer to the trap than I might on a sporting course. I kept my eyes on the bird through the gun mount instead of seeing the bird come out and then moving on it. That would make it too easy for my eyes to lose connection to the clay. So I coached myself through that. I didn’t know for sure that I might be doing that incorrectly, but I knew that was something that I would tell a student to do. So I coached myself, not trying to figure out where I went wrong but concentrating on the things I had to do correctly to improve my odds of success.

I also assumed that I might have gotten a little too fast with my mount – again, a common mistake made by my students. So I told myself to do what I would tell them to do: Slow down, mount a little more in sync with the clay, and recognize that I had more time that I initially thought.

You should coach yourself the same way. If you’re struggling, refocus on the most important aspects of the shot. It’s very difficult to know where you missed the bird with certainty with consistency, so tinkering with your lead/sight picture is the wrong answer. Give yourself constructive feedback, going back to the things that your coach might have told you if she were peering over your shoulder. You don’t have to worry about where you missed the clay. Worry about what you need to do to hit it.

Remember that when we’re learning a new technique or training for an event, we’re going to be a little more conscious of our process than we would be during a competition. It’s OK. Your goal should be to be somewhat conscious while you’re executing a new skill set. Over time, you will advance to the point where you can perform subconsciously.

Don’t worry so much if you miss a target or two! People often miss even when they’re doing many things well. That’s part of building a skill set and ingraining in your subconscious. Sometimes your skill level is at a point where you’re only capable of hitting four out of five targets at a given station. You shouldn’t ask yourself why you missed the one. The real reason for the miss is that your skill level at that moment only allows you to hit four out of five. That’s the measure of how proficient you are at executing all the small, moving parts that add up to a successful shot.

So coach yourself through those parts of the shot. Remind yourself that when the bird comes out, you’ll start your hands moving and get in sync with the clay. Get connected to it, and as you do that, your eyes lock on. Maybe you add a bit of gun speed to stretch out your lead, and you fire. Bird comes out, start my hands, get in sync. I get in sync with the clay. I get connected in front of it. As I get connected in front of it, my eyes are locking on. Maybe I have a little bit of gun speed to stretch it out, open my lead up. Over time, that skill set will become automatic.

The worst thing you can do is to keep shooting the target over and over, calling “pull” as quickly as possible in hopes that you’ll somehow start hitting. Everybody does it at times. When I was taking lessons with Dan Carlisle, he’d often give me things to work on. If I came back and wasn’t doing as well as he thought I should, he’d tell me straight up that I wasn’t practicing – I was just shooting. He would remind me every time that real practice involves coaching yourself through the problem by actively being conscious and concentrating on executing the most important fundamentals. That was a big lesson that helped me not only be a better shooter, but alsoe a better coach.

Even if you’re having success with a particular pair during practice, remember to coach yourself through the process. You want that to become second nature so when you’re competing you can shoot in your subconscious as much as possible.

Today I shot a case of shells in practice, and I never fired more than three shots in a row without thinking about what I was doing, I was working on a little flaw in my game, and I had to pay attention to it. Once I get it under control, and I will, then I can work on executing more subconsciously. You should do the same.