Ghost Videos and Psycho movies
I am seldom late. This morning...I was late. I had it in my head it was an hour to Ben Avery shooting facility. In reality, it's a good hour and twenty minutes...longer with the road maintenance between Aquila and Wickenburg on 60. Even so, I manage to roar into Ben Avery at 9:57 and was saddled by 10:07.
Ben Avery is all things shooting. They have a firing range, an archery range, skeet and a mounted shooting arena. Multi-World Champion Kenda Lenseigne is holding a series of winter clinics. I signed up for two of them. I was a tad nervous...especially pulling in late. I didn't need to be. Kenda is about as down to earth as they get.
Everyone introduced themselves by name and CMSA level as well as what we wanted to get out of this clinic. Of the 10 or 12 people taking the clinic – there were almost as many unique goals. I wanted to work on course management and barrel turns. I admitted I need work on everything thing, but we only had a day, after all. A person can practice all day every day, but if you don't know what you are doing, your likely to be practicing the wrong thing. We started on dry firing drills. Just about the time you think your arm is going to fall off, you live fire the drill. I don't know how clinicians remember everybody's names and what they said they want to work on, but Kenda did. She can also see what you don't even realize you need help with. For me...that's a lot of stuff.
The first thing she did with me and J'Lo is shorten our reins. It was like night and day with my barrel turns. Instead of pulling her face around (actually in the wrong direction) sliding my hand in the direction of the turn and back to center made a huge difference.
We ran several patterns. After running chaotic drills – you almost felt like the courses were in slow motion. Because I wanted to work on course management, Kenda had me run the courses different than I would have run them. I didn't think I could shoot fast enough to run them her way. This is why I came to practice, so I gave it a whirl. I missed a few balloons on the first try. I was shooting too early thinking I needed to rush. Kenda said to slow it down in your mind. It's a mental game. I watch a lot of her videos. She goes 900 miles an hour...never, and I mean never slows that horse down. As she hunts, tracks and shoots each balloon...it looks like she has all the time in the world. I tried to think about that for my next run. It worked! I shot the next two courses clean.
I don't like to look at my shooting videos. You feel like you are going SO FAST...crouched like a mean shooting machine, wind blowing your hair back...hunting, tracking and shooting your balloons. Yeah baby. Then you see the video. The video of you and your horse in a half lope, half cross-fire kind of hobble. If your hat comes off, it comes off forward and falls in your face because there isn't enough wind to blow it back. You're not hunting, tracking and shooting....you are gawking around lost in your pattern with your arm flapping in the breeze...and when you do find your target, you stab it to death before taking a nice long trail ride to your next target.
Kenda shows us our videos after each run. I kind of look at it sideways assuming to see the same awkward, slow motion mess as usual. Huh...that's not so bad. Hey – that ones pretty good! I'm actually gaining speed – tracking my balloons and look more like I'm shooting my targets instead of acting out the shower scene from Psycho.
I know I have a lot of work to do but I feel after today, there is hope for improvement. I know what to work on in practice that will help me improve. I've been practicing the wrong things for a long time. Watching videos of the pro's isn't enough. You can't always tell what your form looks like or if you are tracking, gawking, stabbing or shooting. When I get back home, I'm breaking out my Go-Pro so I can better critic my practices.
At the Grand Canyon shoot, I had a ghost video done. The gal that does them, redid mine because the second arena had poor lighting. The one she redid is me running against Kenda. I'm a little hesitant to look at it – but I will knowing the next one will be just a little easier to watch.
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