Clay target consistency - Quickly adjusting to any target or background

Trapshooter, Drew asks Bob Palmer: How do you adjust between different trap clubs, be it different backgrounds or different target setups?

In the video below, Bob Palmer, High-Performance Expert, and CEO of SportExcel, gives Drew some strategies to deal with this issue. The written version follows the video.

That is a great question about adjusting. I live in Canada and in the winter it gets very cold. However, my dog goes from room temperature to minus 16 degrees F and all it takes a simple shake of her body to adjust. Perhaps it fluffs up the pile of her fur. Whatever the process, the adjustment takes about two seconds.

Ideally then, your adjustments to different backgrounds and presentations should be that fast, so that you don't even notice the difference. However, to get that fast, you have to practice.

Practice with varied presentations

One of my clients trains for his trap competitions by playing other clay target games such as skeet and sporting clays, just to keep himself sharp and to be able to adjust quickly.

Visualize

Go on the internet and view the terrain of your next shoot—Colorado to Minnesota. Then visualize yourself shooting in that terrain, always adding adrenaline of course and feeling good and smoking the targets.

Train your visual acuity

You can train your visual acuity with a book called "Where's Waldo". You learn to be very good at spotting the Waldo character on a page. When you can do this quickly, even with some of the other items in this mishmash and profusion of color, you'll be able to get any target to pop off the sky in any background—any light.

So there are three things you can do to help you to adjust just like my puppy instantly adjusts to cold. Practice different presentations, visualize and train your visual acuity.