EYES ON THE PRIZE

Don Brunt examines the part of our physical makeup that many of us take for granted when shooting, but which could make the task a lot easier on our bodies...

- ​​​​​​​DON BRUNT

Getting the right shooting glasses is important – but that isn’t my focus this month. Instead, I want to look at how we use the eyes themselves when shooting and why, quite often, we are under-utilizing the single most important tool in our armory.

The human eye is an incredible device. It can process a piece of information in just thousandths of a second and, in conjunction with our subconscious mind, help us make decisions that we aren’t even aware of. However, when it comes to shooting clays, many of us seem to be reluctant to let our eyes do what they do best!

One of my favorite coaching analogies is: do you look at your hands when you catch a ball? Of course, you don’t. You know where they are because you can see them in your peripheral vision, as well as being subconsciously aware of their position in relation to the rest of your body. In the same way, you shouldn’t need to look at the gun (i.e. the bead, or even the rib) to know where it is pointing. You’re much better off maintaining your focus solely on the target.

The other part of this, though, is that our eyes and brains work together at incredible speed to create a ‘catch solution’ for where our hands need to be to catch the ball; more often than not, our hands are actually moving quite slowly as we catch the ball because we have pre-positioned them based on the brain’s ‘solution’.