Hitch's Training Blog

A gunfighter needs to have a little swagger. When you come to an event you need to believe that you are the toughest gunfighter there. You may not be the quickest or you may not be the most accurate, but you are the toughest.  But you need to be careful.  There are little things you can do to booster your confidence.  Have confidence in the system, it will carry you through day, even a bad day. At a titled event, Gentleman George asks me if I was Lil James' grandpa because he loads like me.  Lil James only loads three and if the hand judges asks him why, he says "That is all I need."  It is a statement of confidence.  It can be unsettling to your opponent, if fact Dirty Dan used it against me Saturday in the shoot-offs, sending me to boot hill in 3 shots.  Little statements of confidence can be helpful. They remind you that you are the toughest gunfighter there.  I only load three because it is generally three winning shots.  If I miss or l...

Winning Flyer:  A comment was made about walking the hits to the light and then having a flyer on the third or fourth shot. This is quite common.  It happens to me frequently.  I am not sure but I think it is just a variant of the 2 up fluster.  See August 7, 2017, post "2 up fluster" on ShadyMtnTips.blogspot.com.  At Rio this last Saturday I think the majority of my wins were on winning flyers. Dance with the girl you brought:  A comment was also made about falling back into an old draw.  This time of year many of us are working on new draws or new stances.  It is sometime easy to fall back into old habits, if you do, you end up shooting the old draw, not the new one you are practicing.  Generally, I say never ever change your draw during an event because if you do you are lost.  The exception to that rule is when fall back into old habits, then of course, the sooner you get back to the draw you have been practicing the better.  ...

Mental Toughness : More matches are won by mental toughness than by quickness or accuracy combined.  The remainder of this session (20 weeks) should be spent trying to achieve a system that promotes mental toughness.  If you have a finalized draw no matter what your quickness you will win your share of matches, but to be truly competitive you must develop mental toughness. I have given you my system.  You don't have to use my system you can develop your own but it should have the same basic elements.  You need a mental routine, a physical routine, and a waggle.  The point is to shoot from the subconscious. We are all better than we know but our minds keep getting in the way.  The elements give you something to do. A draw should be like a breath.  Your quickest shots will surprise you.  You will not know how you did it.  Mental Routine:  Evaluate the last shot. Let see, I was 6 inches to the right of  the target and low, I need t...

"Life has a way of making the foreseeable never happen, and the unforeseeable that which your life becomes."  Everett Hitch, Appaloosa. One week and 150 rounds into my new draw, my new draw seems to be about 20 milliseconds slower and more accurate than the thumb roll draw.  This is just the opposite of what I expected. I may be slower because the draw is not fully committed to the subconscious and therefore I am shooting from the frontal lobe.  Any thought slows you down.  Most of my shots during a match at Rio were within a few milliseconds of each other and generally about 20 mls slower. The increased accuracy may be coming from the fact that my muzzle height is now higher and less angle is required to the center of the target.  Most of my variance at Rio was horizontal although I did have one match where I walk the hits vertically. At Rio I started the event at 1.33 (.58+.75) and finished the only shooter clean at 1.56 (.56+1.0).  Unfortunately ...

I started my new draw December 2. Hopefully, it will be a little quicker.  Today, I started my bucket work.  I setup my portable target. Since I changed my draw I needed to recalculate my target height. My new height was 46 inches.  (47-45=2/15=.13*5=.66+45=45.66 rounded up to 46)  Two lines one 2.5 inches low and one 2.5 inches high. This the same as shooting at 15 inch target at 15 feet. First five shots: Next five shots: First 25 rounds on my new draw. A little low but I am not concerned it will come up over time. I am chunking data and learning how to move the new draw up into the target zone. I got 2950 more rounds to go.  I am a high shooter normally in an event so starting low is better: After this Shady and I did a Shady/Ruah Speed run. I hit 14 of 15 shots but grouping was poor. It will get better. The point of the training system is to get your draw finalized and to get you to shoot from the subconscious. Once you get there, the menta...

We do not practice accuracy.  All of our practice is speed work.  When you are doing training you should go as fast as you can go comfortably. You are finalizing your draw and the draw you want to finalize is your quickest draw.  Whenever you change your draw, you have to go back and refinalize the new draw.  You do not need the clock to do this. Time does not matter.  You will get quicker and quicker the more you do this. The reason we do not practice accuracy is because it can not be done.  Accuracy comes from a finalized draw and shooting from the subconscious.  Shooting the same each and every time without thinking. If you try to hit the target or hit a specific location on the target, you are shooting from the frontal lobe. That slows you down and causes you to miss.  "Any thought changes the expert into a novice." The Sports Gene. We want to finalize our draw to the extend that we will hit the same location in same time with every shot....

Here is a list of Alleluia Shooters on this session: Paul Nicolas             a/k/a     Lazuras Allen Bauer Lewis Berman Nicholas Vincze Dan White Rick Mcanally          a/k/a Whiplash                                                                    (Multiple Champion) Dee Qualls                a/k/a Possum Dennis Diaz              a/k/a No Daisy                                   a/...