*IF* you could ask Grauffel 1 question about shooting, what would it be?

[Sal Picante]

the gf and I are hoping to do a 2 day private with Eric and then a 1 day with Ljubisa in March after IWA.

Learned a lot... Took a copious amount of notes.

I cried for a moment last night, "Why have I been doing it wrong all these years!!?!" - now I can work on rebuilding this shit.

[medmo]

The hard truth is that 99.95% of the people who think they want these achievements will never put the work in to get there.

“If you’re not where you are. If you’re not where you want to be. If you don’t have what you want, want to have. If you’re not where you think you should be at this particular place. It has nothing to do with the system, but it has everything to do with the fact that you’re not making the sacrifice.”
— Eric Thomas

[Archer1440]

Eric's squad followed me at the WS in Thailand a month ago and we chatted a fair bit between runs. One day 1 I asked him how he felt, and he said "nervous, I'm always nervous for the first stage". I was blown away by that, I'd expected him to be well past that, but he said it's what keeps him going too.

Every top athlete I personally know in any sport- some of whom are people you have heard of, or various Olympic Champions you haven't, ALL have that in common. If they say they aren't feeling a butterfly or three, they are very likely to be lying to you.

Interesting aside. Certain beta blockers also have the side effect of removing the usual pre-match stress for most people, which is one reason they are universally banned in most Olympic sports. But, in controlled testing conducted in the 1980's, it was discovered that competitors using these drugs generally did not reach the levels that they would achieve without them. As one of the testers told me "the thing is, I just didn't care. If I shot a 10, I didn't care. If I shot a 7, I didn't care, either."

It is that very heightened pre-competition state that allows the best to achieve their best. You NEED some nerves to do great things.

The difference is how those competitors channel those nerves. Some people are overwhelmed by the stress, while others use it to focus better at the moment of truth.

I am pretty sure the same applies to people who have made their name as gunfighters.

[YVK]

Learned a lot... Took a copious amount of notes.

Top two lessons, in a cliff notes format?

[Eyesquared]

Learned a lot... Took a copious amount of notes.

I cried for a moment last night, "Why have I been doing it wrong all these years!!?!" - now I can work on rebuilding this shit.

When you put it like that I have to ask - what are the big things you'd do differently? I have seen a lot of people posting about doing only 1 run of a given exercise and then moving on. I get the sense from listening to some of the interviews Eric did after winning the 2022 World Shoot that he is big on training to execute stages at a match well and not just shoot well in a general sense.

[Sal Picante]

When you put it like that I have to ask - what are the big things you'd do differently? I have seen a lot of people posting about doing only 1 run of a given exercise and then moving on. I get the sense from listening to some of the interviews Eric did after winning the 2022 World Shoot that he is big on training to execute stages at a match well and not just shoot well in a general sense.

The 1 run things is neat: you're essentially constantly working on the programming/re-programming aspect of your performance.

What am I doing differently?

I've become interested in my shooting again - after doing this, seemingly, forever, one is bound to have ebbs and flows in the performance/shooting - I gave up on Production because I felt like I hit a wall there and it became no fun, irrelevant to what I was trying to do at the time. I've come to really like Limited and maybe even feel ready to entertain shooting .40 again. Something, along the way, really clicked:

A lot of the finer details he had about training to not "max out a PR", but to really build consistency was awesome. People keep posting these parlor tricks and it is of limited value in competition (and perhaps on the skreetz). Brandon Powers is probably one of the only other people out there that I've really spoken to about "how to build"/building consistency.

The mindset of "just don't shit the bed" is really interesting and allows one to "tune" the performance. I shot the hell out of the FL State match (Limited Minor) and came a hair close to winning. I owe a lot of that to his emphasis of attacking/holding on stages based on the HF that others had posted up.

His approach to movement was unique and something I'd come across before (with Bill Drummond). I think I need to dig into that more and see what I can wring out of my performances there. Doing BJJ and S&C has been a huge positive impact in my life. I think I need to revisit some of the training in my movement patterns with and without the gun...

Sometimes you hear the lessons over and over but you're not ready. Then you hear them and boom it all just makes sense. Have you changed in any real material way, or was it a firmware upgrade that switched the flip and you're ready to accept the potential that's been building up in you?