Ask The Instructor: Sudden Slump

Question: At some point in a shooter’s journey, it is inevitable that he or she will experience a plateau in performance. Your first step is to try and understand when, how and why this period of diminished performance began. The first possibility to consider a physical cause. Did you start shooting with a different gun, new stock, or make a physical adjustment to your shotgun? Did you experience a loss or gain in body weight of more than ten or fifteen pounds? Such changes can easily affect alignment of your eye over the shotgun when mounted, and thus alter your point-of-impact. Next, try to identify any changes you may have made to your technique. Attempting to adapt to a new engagement technique takes substantial practice and repetition, and might negatively impact your performance in the short term. When integrating a new technique or move, you will initially execute at a conscious level until practice and repetition fully assimilate it into your routine. Only then will you have reached the necessary level of repeatability and confidence to execute the technique in competition. If after this exhaustive self-examination, you still have no clue as to the cause of your slump, then a lesson with a seasoned shooting coach is your next step. Many competitors in B through Master Class come to me for help with precisely this issue. For these shooters, the root cause of their slump is most often a very minor flaw in fundamentals that is having a substantial impact on their shooting. Said another way, a shooter such as this often has a significant opportunity to improve his performance with a fairly minor change in approach. Issues such as gun mount and movement, target tactics, technique, gun fit, stance or gun fit are all areas of potential improvement. Normally, for a seasoned shooter in a slump, a minor adjustment in one or more of these areas is sufficient to place him back on an upward trajectory of performance.