Today Christian and I are going to demonstrate how a coach and a new student can get the most out of their relationship. Now all this doesn’t start here on the range, it starts back in the club house with the coach asking the right questions. The point of asking the questions inside is to get to understand the student and also you get to see what they know and understand about the game. Let’s start off with some background questions. Like, how long have you been shooting so far? How long have you been shooting international?  Who was your first coach? What are you looking at getting out of this lesson today

Christian: Really fine-tuning my mechanics. That seems to be what I need and also, really improving my timing in doubles.

Vincent: Those are all major parts of the game. I certainly think we can do that but we have a couple of other things we need to get done first. We’ll check gun fit and eye dominance and then we'll get out on the range.

Now the way I like to test eye dominance is, if you have a right-handed shooter, you take your right hand of the student and I want you to bring it up and cover my right eye. Right finger, right eye. Okay now one more time. Back up. Down. Back up one more. All right, good.

Now Christian’s right finger came up and covered up my right eye which properly illustrates him being a right eye dominant shooter. We’ve established that Christian is right eye dominant and now we need to go and check his gun fit.

So what I'm going to look for is I need to look straight down his barrel to make sure that his eye is properly lined up so he that he can break a target. We’re going to look at the chamber of the gun, make sure that it’s open and that it’s clear, there are no shells in here. There’s my fingers in the chamber.

Now close it up. What I have to do is I have to have him mount the gun and point it at my right eye. Now looking at his gun, his gun fit is good. What I’m looking for is his eye is lined up right at the top of this barrel here at the back, lines up the middle bead which touches the bottom bead. Now what this is forming is a figure eight. The top of this bead and the bottom of this bead makes it to where you can shoot the target and have the bead sitting at the bottom of the bird.

For the first shots on the range, I always let the student shoot a round on their own just to observe the fundamentals. I do this so I know what changes to make and where to make them.

Now see you’re getting a little bit in the front because you’re moving too fast. Slow down, match it to the target and you’ll be right on it.

Vincent: Good, good. Now the student has a role in this, too. He has to provide feedback to the coach so that I know how to make adjustments. Now if it doesn’t feel easy or if it doesn’t feel good, obviously something needs to change.

Now keep an open mind, always try to learn something, but remember, always have fun.