Dan Schindler's Blog

The Consistency Blueprint — Part II

The Consistency Blueprint — Part IIThe Mental Game Starts Before the First ShotFour tractor trailers pull up to a vacant building site carrying twenty-one tons of lumber, supplies and tools.Great.Now where’s the blueprint? ...

The Consistency Blueprint — Part I

The Consistency Blueprint — Part IThe #1 question I hear in my lessons? Why am I inconsistent? Thursday, Station 4, XXOXXXXX. Saturday, same station, same targets, OXXOXOOX?Another serious question: is your shooting method dependable? Can it? ...

One Shell. One Target. One Marriage Proposal.

Before every lesson, I ask the shooter sitting in front of me one simple question:“What is the most important thing you want to accomplish today?”Usually, the answers are pretty predictable.Break more targets.Become more ...

1 Shell. 1 Target. 1 X.

1 SHELL. 1 TARGET. 1 X.Recently, as many before him had done, an experienced shooter traveled 1,500 miles for two days of Sporting Clays instruction.We’d planned to meet the evening before his first lesson, and soon we were sitting across from ...

The Recoil Tax

More recoil can mean less control, greater fatigue and fewer X’s. Dan Schindler and Stan Peter explain why choosing less can produce better performance.Good judgment comes from experience,and experience comes from bad judgment.~ Barry ...

The Miss You're Not Seeing

“How can you trust what you don’t see?”You missed? Here’s the good news. Every missed target leaves evidence in the shooting box. Primarily random gun movement (RGM). A sudden swing stop. Eyes glancing back to the barrel. A ...

When An X Lies

“To improve your shooting, change will be required.How can you change what you don’t know?”Breaking a clay target is easy.Anyone can do it once.The second target? The third? The fourth?What happened to easy?Like many experienced ...

Annie's Life Changed That Day

It’s about a lot more than just breaking the target.“For those who come seeking our advice . . . our task is not to instruct but to enlighten.”Daniel L. SchindlerShe came to River Bend with a group of maybe ten ladies. Most ...

Good Luck With That...

Why Luck Is Never a Shooting StrategyOne shell.One moment.Where you have your attention is already deciding the outcome—X or O.The mental game. How do we make it actually work? Not with vague, inspiring statements that leave us wondering what ...

Before A Shell Goes In The Chamber

A True Story About Understanding, Consistency, and Solving Decades of MissesA Quick Note Before We ContinueOrdinarily, this would be presented as a two-part article. However, the lessons, discoveries, and breakthroughs shared here are best ...

No Magic Beans

How to Make the Mental Game Work for YouA step-by-step guide to getting into the Zone — and staying there.A few years ago, I recorded an audio program on the Mental Game after years spent competing, coaching, and trying to better understand ...

Groundhog Day at Practice

Different Shell, Same Miss, No Improvement.The truth is, we all want to shoot better. More consistently. Yes? Amen.Allow me to borrow a comment from my last article on swing precision…“Albeit with good intentions…trial and error ...

Your Gun Didn’t Miss

We’ve come a long way from bolt-action shotguns and manual trap machines.The thinking? Not as much.Many shooters are still relying on outdated beliefs—ideas that occasionally break a target but rarely deliver consistency.And sooner or ...

After Years of Inconsistency, Every Target Began Breaking

There’s a reason shooters can break targets one round and struggle the next—and it has very little to do with talent.In fact, billions of targets have been broken using natural eye-hand coordination alone… just not ...