The Joe Rogan Experience - #1943 - Joel Turner

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Joel Turner is the world’s leader in target panic science, a master educator in shot control, and the founder of ShotIQ. www.ShotIQ.com

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day and we're up what's up joel how are you good to see you brother i'm good thanks for having me man i'm very happy to talk to you because uh you know i think that what you teach applies to not just archery, but applies to life and applies to anxiety filled situations. And you have figured out this one element of archery that so many people can't seem to put their finger on. And it's the anxiety of the shot. Yeah. finger on and it's the anxiety of the shot yeah you have figured this out in a way that is so useful and it's it's so repeatable and it's i think it's so important and i think a lot of people are gonna go what you're gonna just talk about archery shots i think this applies to life

yeah what you've done with your your shot iq, and so let me explain to people that don't understand this. Bow hunting and archery, especially competitive archery, it oftentimes boils down to this one moment. And when you have one moment and there's so much anxiety on this one moment, people have a tendency to panic and to rush through things. And I think people have found that in life, in many situations, in different occupations, in different practices and disciplines. This anticipation and anxiety of one moment where they lose their mind and they don't even remember what happened. It's like, oh! And they can't keep their shit together. And they can't keep their shit together. You have figured out a way

To make a system where you you have very clear Defined guidelines that people can follow where they could stay in the moment and not lose their fucking mind at this moment of Anticipation right and I think the success speaks to itself your son Who's an incredible Archer who's been taught by you, using your methods, is now, what is he, number one in the world? Well, the ranking system is weird, but he's won every major indoor archery event that there is. And he's 15. Well, he just turned 16. Oh, boy, he's old.

He's driving now, so that's scary as hell. So he won Vegas at 15. I mean, he turned 15 the day before, and then he wins Vegas, which is the biggest indoor archery shoot there is. It's huge. Yeah. And then just to watch him up there is just amazing. To know that, I mean, I can watch him. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is going in, right?

Just you can see it in their eye. And I see this in their eye. And I see this in a lot of people that they don't have that look, you know, it's, they have that anxiety, that look is like, oh, what's happening? And they're just letting things happen. And with Bodie, he's just like, this is going in. It was so funny because he just won Lancaster, the Lancaster Classic, which is another huge indoor archery shoot. And when you shoot Lancaster, you have to, you're in the practice range. And he came in first seed because he shot the second ever, well, there's been, I think, five people now in history that have shot a, well, four people that have shot a 660 qualification round.

Now let's explain what that means. That is hitting a penny every time 60 arrows in a row. Which is insane. At 20 yards. The amount of concentration involved in that. And a lot of people are like, 20 yards is not that far. Listen. It's a penny.

You're shooting a penny and you're shooting it 60 times in a row. In a row, right. Which is just the possibility of just a little fuck up. And when you're at like number 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, and every one of them, flop, flop, flop. Yeah. So he shoots a 660. So he shot one last year, 660 last year. So he was the third one in history to do it.

And then this year he did it again. So now he's the first person in history to shoot two 660s back-to-back. So he comes in the elimination rounds, wins those, and so he comes in first seed for the big shoot-off, which is you're up on a stage and it's just you. It's head-to-head, so it's you and another person. And when you start, you come in first seed. The person that's in front of you that maybe came in fourth,

fifth, sixth, whatever, they get to shoot out on the stage against somebody. So they actually get to zero their bow because the lighting's different and it's huge. I mean, you're trying to hit this penny and then they have a 12 ring that's the size of their arrow. Basically it's like 27 diameter, 27, 64th diameter. It's no bigger than their arrow. And that's off to the side. And it's down below. So if you miss that, you get a 7 or an 8, and you're out. Yeah. You're done at that point. So he comes in first seed, and he misses the X on a couple of them. And then the other person misses the X.

And it's funny, because you can see him. He's up there. And he always clicks his sight. And I'm like, how many clicks was that? He's like, it was just enough. I mean, he's like, you can't even tell what he does. So he's just adjusting. Yeah, so he's adjusting to the lighting.

And so he comes and he shoots those two 10s, not an X. And then he starts, then he hits an inside out. And he looks, he turns, I'm in the coach's box behind him. He turns to me and goes, it's sighted in now. And I'm like, sweep the leg, boy. Right? That's what I always tell him. Sweep the leg.

And it was just donut after donut after that. And then the other guy caught up, shot a 12 to catch him. And so now they got three arrow shoot off. And the first arrow is for score and they have that 12 ring and bode is sitting there listening to the guy and bode's got his stabilizer because everybody usually step there's a red button on the stage if you hit that red button you then you know then it's a 12 then you got to shoot for the 12 so he hits the red button but he hits it with a stabilizer so the guy's explaining the shoot off and bode's just hovering his stabilizer

we're just looking at the guy. Right. And he's like, are you done yet? Are you done yet? And finally just dunk. And he hits that red button with a stabilizer and then just shoots a 12 and the other guy missed the 12. So it was pretty cool. Wow. Yeah. It was awesome to see. Tell everybody your background. How did you get into this? Like tell your background with SWAT and all that. So I started shooting at a really young age, but I was, I was obsessed with shooting. Like when we, I have two older brothers and we, when we turned nine years old, my dad would buy us a BB gun and my two older brothers didn't shoot them that much. I broke both of their BB guns. I shot them so much. So when I turned nine,

I got a Daisy 880 power line by God god that is some highfalutin stuff right for me so I get this 880 power I shot it so much I broke it air rifles 22 long rifles I was I was good right you put me on a centerfire rifle like my dad did when I was five years old shooting a 30-30 I was worthless as soon as the soon as you sight on, man, I would just hammer the crap out of that trigger. And that followed me through adolescence, early teens, 20s, right? So we should explain that hammering is like you're jerking the trigger. You're jerking the trigger, which— Anxiety.

Yeah, so now I know that that's the core problem in shooting, right? Your mind will not allow you to cause your body impact as a surprise. And it took me a lifetime to figure out what the true problem was. And that's where everybody's kind of skipped around it. So there I'm at five years old shooting this 30-30. Oh, I pressed the trigger perfectly one time. And as soon as I felt that recoil the second time, when I racked that lever and I shot it the second time, I guarantee you, I closed my eyes, clenched my body as I pressed the trigger. So you're worried about the recoil. Yeah. It all gets linked together. It's smoke, fire, noise, all kinds of negative things that happen, right? And I was experiencing the same thing in archery. I started shooting a bow when I was seven.

And by the age of eight, I'm locked completely off a target, meaning I would draw the bow back and the targets level with me and I'm aiming at the floor, right? And then you would jump that thing up as we see many archers do now. They're locked off target. They jump up and let the string go at the same time. It all gets linked together so that your body can brace you for impact. And people don't see archery as an explosion. They see it as, well, it's just shooting a bow, right? But shot anticipation or shot control is a lot easier with a firearm because the explosion happens in the apparatus. It imparts recoil on you, but it's not actually, the explosion is in the apparatus. Whereas in archery, the explosion

is in your body, right? it's that sudden release of energy that happens so and shanticipation with archery is a hundredfold what it is with a firearm what's also the amount of movement changes so much yeah where the arrow goes right because it's not going as fast right subject to all your little right all the little nuances of it so all those motor programs that get linked to that punching of the trigger, that's what deviates our point of impact. So there I was at eight years old just loving archery, watching that arrow fly, but not good at it, right?

So then I started bow hunting at 14 years old and not doing well. I mean, I was locked off target on these critters and missing and missing and missing. It took me 13 years to kill a bull elk with my bow because I couldn't handle it. I just would lose my shit completely. Like many, many, many people. Oh, it was horrible. So that was my background. So I've got this sounding board of bow hunting where I'm failing. I've got rifle hunting where I'm failing. And then I decided to become a cop, right? Well, before I was a cop, I was a wildlife specialist for USDA Wildlife Services where I got to shoot stuff every day, right? Animal damage control, all that stuff.

And I got to shoot stuff every day with an air rifle. So I was good, right? And shotgun shooting, good at that, right? But when it came to precision rifle stuff, again, I was worthless. I was not your guy to be on a coyote contract when you're having to shoot coyotes in the middle of a city with a suppressed 243, right? It just wouldn't work out for me because as soon as I would get on that thing, my only thought process was it's going to get away. It's going to get away. So that would cause that anxiety, that rush,

and you would rush the shot. So there I was, then I decided to become a cop. My older brother was a cop. My mom was in law enforcement. So I decided to be a cop. And at the range, I knew that when I turned 21, first thing I did was bought my concealed weapons permit in Washington, bought a pistol. And for some reason, that pistol always shot low and left. I'm like, first thing I did was bought my concealed weapons permit in Washington, bought a pistol. And for some reason, that pistol always shot low and left. I'm like, what is the deal with these sights? It's always shooting low and left. So I get in the academy and I bought a different pistol.

I bought a 1911 that's got a much shorter trigger stroke on it. And I basically fixed a mental problem with mechanical means at that point because I got through the academy starting to realize what I needed to do to control a shot. But with that pistol, it was easy. And my buddy was so bad in the academy with his Glock that he had to then – he bought my pistol from me because that's the only thing that got him through the academy was buying my pistol from me. I bought another one. So we both fixed our mental problem with mechanical means. And I ended up taking first in firearms in my academy class, not knowing how I did it. But that's where I started to feel this love for instruction because I got to help some people with it. And so things progressed. Two years in law enforcement, then I got firearms instructor because I had this interest in firearms and kind of figuring things out.

And then I got on the SWAT team, same time, 2003. So that's, you know, I spent 18 plus years on the SWAT team and ended up being the sniper team leader and then eventually the team leader for the team. Ended up being the sniper team leader and then eventually the team leader for the team. But it was becoming the lead firearms instructor for Washington State that got me the experimentation that I needed. Because I was starting to figure out how do I get somebody through a shot? How do I get a police officer to concentrate on a trigger press when it's the only thing that's going to save them or somebody else? a trigger press when it's the only thing that's going to save them or somebody else. And it came to me one day, it was just totally by accident because I'd heard all the normal stuff in firearms instruction, front sight, front sight, front sight. You know, you stare at your front sight hard enough and things are just going to work out for you. Well, that just doesn't happen because in

most gunfights, most people will tell you they never even see their sights. So I had this recruit that we call, we had one in every class, we call him Nervous Nelly, right? I mean, this guy was just super anxious. And you can tell the different personalities that people have. Just when you put a gun in their hand, they're nervous. And this cat, all this movements were super fast. And he was just a jittery dude, right? Nervous Nelly. And he's shooting 20 yards and he's bouncing bullets off the floor at 15. So his rounds are hitting the 15 yard line. And I'm like, oh my God, you know, it doesn't put a lot of confidence in the police force. So I go over to this kid and I call him a kid. He was probably, I don't know,

eight years younger than me or whatever. And I get on the driver's side of his pistol. I'm looking at his finger. I'm like, okay, I want you to press the trigger just to the pressure wall. Don't make it go off. He's like, okay, yes, sir. And as soon as I got done with that instruction, his finger moved, right, to the pressure wall. I'm like, okay, start pressing the trigger, but don't make the gun go off. And so as soon as I saw his finger move, I start talking to him. All right, keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing. And as I'm watching his finger, I'm looking at this and I'm like, it's moving at the same rate I'm talking. And he's working through it. And all of a sudden, pow, it goes off to the surprise

right through the 10 ring and the target. He's like, sir, that scared the crap out of me. I'm like, yeah, it's supposed to. So then the next time he shoots again and I changed my cadence of speech, which changed his cadence of movement. And that's when the light bulb went off for me. I'm like, okay, we got to figure this out. I had complete control of this kid's mind at this time. But I had to get him to do that. And that's where this whole thing started into neurolinguistic programming and all the sciences that we went down the rabbit holes on to really figure this stuff out. And so what did you learn from neurolinguistic programming that applied? Because I didn't know what that was. Right.

I'm just a simple guy, right? Can we get coffee in here? I didn't know what that was. So I have lots of very smart friends. And so one of the doctors that was on a sniper crew for a neighboring agency, he was their ER doc because most SWAT teams have an ER doc that's assigned to the team. And so I'm training him in some of this stuff, and he's like, oh, that's neurolinguistic programming. I'm like, stand by, doc.

That's a big word, right? I got to know what that is. So I started looking into that, and it was mostly like Tony Robbins, self-help, get yourself out of addiction, you know, get yourself out of the gutter type stuff. But what I took it as is it was the route to concentration. Because what you say is what you think. And I needed people to think and to concentrate on a specific movement. And when you, what I'm asking people to do is just shy of impossible. Like, I'm asking you to override your own central nervous system with concentration.

That is just shy of impossible. But it's not impossible if you know exactly how to do it. But when I ask that question of all the people that I train, it's like, how do you concentrate? And nobody has the answer. They tell me, well, you have to focus. You have to block things out. You have to do this, do that. How? They never tell me how to do it. I'm like, yes, that is concentration for you. But how do you do it? Especially how do you do it when somebody is trying to kill you? Right? How do you get

that singular minded? And that was the big question. So that's what I took from neurolinguistic programming. And so I wrote I wrote what is called the mental mechanics and instructors guide. And it had kind of the sequence of drills and how to get somebody's mind into this. And there was this there was a guy at the academy that we did not like each other. And for some reason, he was a kinesthesiologist or almost. He was a big martial arts guy, knew movements, knew how to train movements. And he came to me one day when he became the lead of the, he became the head of the firearms program. And he came to me one day and said, what you're doing works, but it's not right. I'm like, okay, I need to know what's right then. So he goes, you but it's not right. I'm like, okay, I need to know what's, I need to know what's right then. So he goes, you got to take my class. I'm like, okay, sign me up. Right. So in that class is where I learned about open and closed loop control systems. I learned about visual proprioception, how you actually aim and how you don't have to put

consciousness into an aim. And let's explain open and closed loop systems. So open and closed loop. So open loop is where that's any, it's a control system in your mind that governs your movements. And open loop is where your mind wants to go because it's efficient, it's smooth, it's automatic, right? So when you first learn a movement, you may learn it in steps, and it's very choppy, and you have to think about each specific motor program that you're doing. But then you eventually put that into a package through practice, right? So we go from the cognitive stage of learning to practice stage with the goal of becoming automatic. And that's where people do the same thing with shooting.

But in shooting shooting the only thing you're getting more efficient at is bracing you for recoil you're not getting more accurate i mean there's there's 80 year old dudes that come to my class that have been doing it this way for 70 years and they just get worse right archery is one of the only shooting is one of the only things the more you do it the worse you get especially archery. If you're doing it wrong. Yeah. If you just follow the natural path of the human mind and learning, you're going to get worse because you're going to get more efficient. Your subconscious thinks you're getting better because you're getting better at bracing for impact. That's what it's

built for. But consciously we know like, oh, I didn't control that one. And then it's like, well, I control about 50% of them, right? And then it just gets worse and worse. So your mind open loop means your brain, Huberman's going to kill me for this, because this is so simplistic, right? I'm sure he gets way into this. But open loop is your brain sends a motor program to the effector. The effector is just the muscle group that receives it. So in that, the motor program is usually too fast for you to gain feedback in it, like shooting a basketball, swinging a golf club, right? Those are all movements that have to be smooth to keep the totality of the movement going. But in shooting, if you use open loop for the trigger,

it's too fast and you're not doing anything to mitigate all the other muscle contractions that are coming in to brace you for impact, right? So it's the flinch. It's all that stuff that gets put in there. And so that's open loop. That's where your mind wants to go. It's the default. If you don't think about something, you're going open loop. Like when people black out and stuff, they go super efficient on the trigger. They don't remember what happened because it was a negative event and it was all subconsciously driven. Now, closed loop is a movement that's slow enough you could stop it anywhere within it, right? There's a certain speed at which you can gain the feedback that you need to, say like in the signature test or if you're pressing a trigger, right? Or if you're working

your hinge, you're working that thing slow enough, and you're concentrating on the movement, and you're working it slow enough, you could stop it anywhere within it. And that just doesn't happen. It has to be decided upon, right? And that's the big kicker. That's where people try to jump over the problem because you have to decide. If you're doing a movement that's going to cause an explosion and you're trying to do it slow enough you could stop it, that will never just find you. You have to concentrate on that movement. So you got to know how do you concentrate, right? Well, you got to talk yourself through it and you got to know what decisions you need to make at what moments in the shot,

because there are moments in the shot when autopilot is going to try to take it, right? And that's what happened to me for 13 years in my bow hunting career from 14 to 27, I was going completely automatic, right? I was so engulfed in trying to kill that critter or aiming good or whatever it may be. My mind was never in the movement that it needed to be. So that's the difference between open and closed loop. And when that guy told me what you're doing works, but it's not right, he taught me about open and closed loop control systems. But what he never taught me and what I noticed from all the textbooks and all the stuff that we did, it had never really been put

into shooting. It had never truly been put into shooting. So he kept asking me, what's this decision you keep talking about? What's this decision? I said, well, you have to decide to go closed loop. It's not just going to happen. He's like, I don't think so. I'm like, let's go to the range. Right? So we go to the range, and he did the same thing that everybody else did. He couldn't get himself to go closed loop because he just kept trying to do it. And he understood this.

He understood it, but he didn't understand the mental portion of it. So because everything that he'd ever taught was basically closed loop to start with because always martial arts movements. It was always closed loop to start. And then you move into open loop. And that's the good stuff. Right. Whereas in shooting, that's why we use shooting for such concentration practice because there's nothing like it. There's really nothing like it.

I'm glad you brought up martial arts because martial arts is closed loop when you're learning it. Yeah, absolutely. And then open loop and application. So you learn all these movements and then in the fight, things just happen. Right. You just throw the kick and you don't even know what's happening. Right. And it's happening.

And you're staying in this sort of like empty zen mind space where you're just trying to like utilize the techniques and know you know what to do. Your body's trained, and then you react and you move accordingly. Right. But the problem with that is that is the worst mindset possible for bow hunting. Yes. Which is crazy. It's completely opposite. Yeah.

Right? Now, getting yourself to concentrate. And martial arts has used mantras for thousands of years, right? This sound means this, this sound increases power, whatever it does. So you're talking yourself through it, but when it comes to the actual application of the action, like you're talking, you can't get conscious with it. You have to keep your conscious mind out of it. Like it's the science of choking, right? So the basketball player, he's shooting a free throw and he's got this routine, right? He spins the ball, bounces it three times, shakes his ass

a little bit, and then he shoots, right? Well, then it comes to the game winner. He spins the ball, he bounced it three times, shakes his butt. Okay, I got to break the wrist perfectly. And so he adds consciousness to a movement that should be open loop, and that's why they missed the game winner, right? Just like Bodhi shooting the 60th arrow for his 660, that's where most people screw up because they change their thought process, right? Well, with shooting and what we teach, it's how do you stay in that shot process no matter what, right? It applies to so many things.

It does, yeah. It really applies to pool in a huge way. I play pool a lot, and there are shots that are difficult shots, and they're game-winning shots, and you have to stay in that moment. You can't go, I hope I don't miss. If you say, I hope I don't miss, you miss every fucking time. Right. You have to stay in the movement.

Yeah. And you have to do exactly what you teach with archery. You have to say, here I go. Yeah. You have to do your warm-up strokes. You have to make sure the shaft is going in a direction that you want the cue ball to travel. Yeah. And then you have to go, here I go, and release. And you have to know that you're shooting a perfect shot.

And you can still miss because it's fucking hard. Right. But at least you're missing the right way. Yeah. And the problem is, like, with me, on this journey, 2008, I shot the first controlled shot I'd really ever shot on a game animal. But I didn't blueprint it. And that's the problem.

How so? What do you mean? People have success. Like, they won the game with that shot, but they don't blueprint how they did it. So they can't possibly repeat it. It's a mystery, right? So in 2008, I shot this big old hog and I shot him like, oh, yay me. I finally controlled myself on a shot, but I never blueprinted it.

So 2009 comes along. I shot a couple bulls in 2009, one in New Mexico, one in Arizona. Punched the crap out of the trigger on both those bulls. Just got lucky. But I was successful, right? 2010 comes along. I shot my first controlled shot on an elk with my longbow, 41 yards with my longbow.

It was the most gorgeous arrow flight. I mean, it was perfect, but I never blueprinted it. It was just another yay me moment, right? So 2011, 12, 13, and 14 come along, and I killed a bunch of critters in those in that time frame but i wasn't controlling my shot still but i was at least present enough to be aiming and all those things but i still wasn't getting through my shot essentially punching the trigger so december 14 2014 was my big that was i shot a big black tail buck and I didn't control my shot.

I shot him at eight yards, shot him right in the heart and it was raining and it was right before dark. And I'm like, I was happy that I, that I shot the buck good, but I was pissed because I didn't control my shot again. And realized that by this, I'd been a SWAT sniper since 2003, right? Scared to death. Scared to death on how it was going to go because all that time between 2003 and 2014, thank God I didn't get in any tactical situations where I had to actually press a trigger because it would have been just like a coyote. I guarantee you it would have been just like a coyote. And that's where a lot of cops are these days. They don't know what's coming and they don't know how to control themselves at this moment of truth. So I've got this sounding board of bow hunting where I'm still, some are good, some are not good.

It's still a mystery to me because I never blueprinted it. Right. So December 14th, 2014, I shot that buck and I was pissed and I sat in my tree stand. Now it's dark and it's raining. I'm like, I got to figure this out. Right. Because it's just a ticking time bomb in the tactical world for me to be in a, in a tactical situation. So I sat there in that tree stand. I'm like, what was it about that shot in 2008? And what was it about that shot in 2010 when I actually controlled myself? And I was so conscious in those two shots that I'm like, it was the decisions. It was the decisions that I made. Because I remember before, I remember on the hog in 2008, I drew back and I had the same

anxiety and all the craziness going on. And it was the same feeling of weakness that I wasn't going to perform well, but I was at full draw. Now I'm locked off target, which hadn't happened in a long time. But I was so conscious in that shot, for some reason, I don't know if I was pissed off or what it was, but I went, I ain't doing this again. And I let that shot down. And the next time I drew my bow back, I'm like, I ain't doing this again. And I let that shot down. And the next time I drew my bow back, I'm like, I'm shooting the shot perfectly or I'm not shooting it at all.

And that was the first time that I'd ever, it ever meant more to me to stay in the shot process than to actually kill the critter. And that was a huge thing for me, but I can, I never blueprint it. And then I remember on that hog. So the second time I drew my bow back, before I drew my bow back, I said, I'm shooting this shot perfectly or I'm not shooting it at all. And I started to draw my bow back. And as I drew my bow back, I felt it slipping again, right? And I said, nah, I'm going to do this right. That was another decision that I made, which upped my presence. Didn't know that at the time, but that upped my presence. So I got the full draw. Now I'm aimed exactly where I need to aim. All I gotta do is let the arrow go. It's aimed perfectly. All I gotta do is let the arrow go.

But because I'd upped my presence so much I remembered, oh yeah stupid, you gotta pull through the clicker. Right? Had a little clicker device on my longbow which when you expand through that it clicks mechanoreceptive trigger, all that stuff. So I'm at full draw. Here I go. That was the first time I'd ever said, here I go in a shot. I said, here I go. And that reminded me, oh yeah, I'm supposed to talk myself through this, right? This is 2008. So I was starting to figure some stuff out in the firearms

world. Keep pulling, keep pulling, keep pulling, keep pulling. Click, boom, I shot that shot. It was perfect. But again, like I said, never blueprinted it. 2010 comes along, same thing. I'm behind this screen of pines. There was a hole. This bull comes down, water hole, turns broadside, looks the other way.

My buddy gives me numbers. He says 41. I'm like, at 41, I know I got to put my point 18 inches over that bull's back. And so I remember I'm on my knees. I'm like, I'm shooting this shot perfectly or I ain't going to shoot it at all. Up my presence, made that decision, what we call the original decision. Started drawing my bow back, felt it slipping again, right? And you know that feeling where it starts to go. You're like, nah. Anxiety. I'm like, nah, I'm going to do this right. And I got the full drive, put that.18 inches over his back.

Here I go. Keep pulling, keep pulling, keep pulling. Click, boom, I shot that arrow. I can see it to this day. It was just gorgeous. I mean, I X-ringed him at 41 yards with my longbow. It was so cool. But again, I didn't blueprint it.

So sitting in that tree stand in December of 2014, that's when I said, I got to figure this out. And that's when I, that's what I figured out was the decisions. I mapped the decisions it took to keep myself present so that I could concentrate. And that day I said, I'm never doing it again. I'm never shooting another uncontrolled shot on a critter or whatever it was. You know, I'm still a cop at that point. And I'm like, I'm going to do it right no matter what, no matter what. And so what was the process of figuring out a repeatable blueprint? Okay. The blueprint was, so I started thinking about this so that I could actually blueprint these things. I'm like, okay, what is it?

The blueprint is this. It's four questions. So when you shoot that perfect shot, question number one, what was I thinking about after here I go? Because all the stuff up to here I go is pretty much the setup of the shot. You've got your aim. You've got tensions. Maybe you roll to the click in your hinge. What am I thinking about after here

I go? And what you need to be thinking about is nothing other than that shot activation movement. What is the movement that's going to cause this explosion? Where do I need to put my concentration? It's got to be in nothing other than the movement, but you'll find in archery and shooting, most shooting sports, people leave their thought process in the aim where it does you no good, right? So question number one, what was I thinking about after here I go? Question number two, what was I saying after here I go? What words or sounds did you use to guide your concentration? So you now know what you need to be thinking. You know exactly what you need to be saying or what sound you're using, if it's a hum or an audible exhale or whatever it may be. Question number three, could I have stopped it? Were you so keenly concentrated

on your shot activation movement that you could have stopped it anywhere within it? And if you can say yes to that, that's a big ask, right? But if you can say, yes, I could have stopped it. That means that you were truly in a closed loop control system. And the only way to get into that is by having enough determination to make a decision so that you're present, so that you can concentrate. So those are the fundamentals of precision shooting. after? Here I go. Could I have stopped it? And finally, what decisions did I make to get myself in the process for this one shot? Because it all only lasts for one shot. And then your mind completely resets it. Like, I didn't like that. You surprised me with an explosion. Got me this time. Not happening again. So you have to go through the same process over and over and over. And the decisions get easier to make, but they still have to be made. Well, this is why I think this is important. And this applies to so many things in life because so many movements and things and actions in life are, they're sort of powered by anxiety.

They're powered by like, you sp just look at these spazz out because you're not in the moment you're just reacting right whereas what you're doing and what you're teaching with archery and what i've learned from you is that if i say to myself while i'm shooting if i'm talking to myself and I go through this whole list, center the bubble, center the sight, you know, relax the shoulder, draw, pull, pull, pull, release. And when it releases,

I'm in control of the whole thing from top. And there's all these anxiety-driven thoughts that just, get it out. Go. Just do this. He's going to get away. Something's going to happen. You're going to miss.

Right. But if you stay in your own thought process and talk to yourself. So when I'm at full draw on an animal, I'm like, pull, pull, pull, plop. All I'm thinking of is these mechanics of making that shot release instead of all that other shit. By forcing myself to say pull, pull, pull at the final things, I eliminate any possibility of shit going wrong. Because all I'm thinking of is those words. All I'm thinking of is that movement and those words and it's magic. And so many people in the world of bowhunting don't

know this more people know this now because of you but I remember when I first found your stuff online I was like okay this makes sense because I knew it was a mind fuck and I was shocked at what how mind fucky it is because I'm a martial artist so I'm used to just reacting to things. I'm used to relying on training and this moving automatically. But you cannot do that with archery. It requires stillness and calmness and being centered and in the moment in a very unusual way.

That's like pool. And that moment of everything relying on this one thing that you're doing, all your success and failure, you might've shot thousands of arrows in practice, but that doesn't mean jack shit. Right now you have to get this one arrow out perfect. And it might be a giant animal that's a screaming bull and you're shooting through a window of two trees it's 12 inches wide at 50 yards away and you're like holy shit yeah there's so much like oh don't hit the tree oh don't fuck this up oh you fucked it up last time you can fuck it up again don't miss and right all those different things, if you just have this thought process in your head,

going through your pre-shot routine perfectly, pulling back on the bow, centering your bubble, centering your P, pull, pull, pull, swap. It just goes off. Yeah. It's just so unnatural for you to control an explosion. There's also this thing where you want to pretend like you know how to do it now. Like, I got it. I got this. I don't have to think about that anymore. Yeah.

I don't get target panic anymore. Yeah. I've got this. Yeah. But if you do, you'll mind fuck yourself and then it'll happen again. Oh, absolutely. It's waiting. It's always, it's the default. You punching the trigger is the default. And we watch this all the time with professional archers.

Their career does this, right? It's up and down. And to a point where people sometimes are like, oh, the commentator's like, oh, God, right? Because their thumb's not even on the button, right? Like, oh, my God, if he can just get his thumb on the button, he'll be okay, right? And it's like, man. And then they super weight their bow because they don't necessarily understand how their eye actually works. And they use stabilizers to calm their mind.

And it's just it's completely opposite of how things actually work in your mind. in your mind. But when you think about the history of instruction, I mean, archery is a martial art in some cultures, right? In Japan. It is a martial art. I think of it as a martial art. But when you look at some of the texts that are associated with that, it's this blank-mindedness and all this stuff. However, most of those cultures use what's called a mechanoreceptive trigger, and people never knew about it, right? Why is it in keto-archery that the tip of the arrow is so much bigger than the arrow, than the arrow shaft itself? And in those old texts, the arrow is not ready to be loosed until the point touches the knuckle, right? Those are all. So mechanoreceptors, I'm sure you know this,

but they're sensory receptors in your skin cells that give stimulus. So like if you and I are sitting here BS and I put my hand down on a hot stove, the mechanoreceptors in the skin cells of my hand send this to my brain. That's hot. My brain then sends the motor program that gets my hand off the stove. It's how Olympic archers shoot with a clicker, right? So they draw their arrow back and they've got it underneath the clicker. And then as they pull the tip of the arrow out from underneath the clicker, it click against the side of their bow. That sound wave is picked up by the hair

cell, the mechanoreceptors in the hair cells of the ear. It sends the stimulus to the brain. The brain sends the release motor program. So, you know, you'll watch them. They're expanded through it. Click, boom, they'll shoot the shot. Same in Kudo archery. Same in Bhutan, right? In Bhutan, they tie a wire underneath their arrow. They'll wrap a little piece of wire or a piece of wood on there like a toothpick that will touch their knuckle, right? So there's been these ways of doing things for millennium, right? But we all want to be more pure, right?

We all want to, oh, traditional archery is just, you know, drawing back your longbow and letting it fire. Well, that's, I mean, you go to any traditional archery event and you see most people don't even get to full draw before they let it go. It's sad. It's sad to watch. I had a moment in South Texas recently where I was hunting Neil guy. And Neil guy are a particularly fascinating animal because they evolved around tigers.

Right. They're jumpy as hell. I've never seen an animal move that fast. I've never seen an animal so jumpy other than axis deer, which also evolved around tigers. jumpy other than axis deer which also evolved around tigers um so uh i have this um this bow that has set up a garment site which i love yeah and what a garment site is it's a range finding bow site that uses a dot so instead of having a pin so just explain it to people at home the way you cite an archery bow a bow bow for bow hunting, a bow for archery, is there's a program that you run the arrow weight through, the speed of the arrow.

You shoot your arrow through a chronograph. The weight of the arrow, the draw length, and all these different components go into a program called Archery Advantage. And that program will give you a sight tape. You put that sight tape on your bow, and it's calculated to the weight of the arrow, the speed of the arrow, and it shows how much drop the arrow is going to have over 20 yards, 40 yards, 50 yards. And it'll show you exactly where that pin has to be. So you would have to range with a laser range finder.

You get your number. Oh, it's 56 yards away. And then you dial it perfectly to 56 yards and that will calculate exactly where that arrow is going to be when it gets to 56 yards. What I love about this Garmin sight is at full draw, you just press a button and it ranges and then it gives you a pin. Well, I'm at full draw, you just press a button, and it ranges, and then it gives you a pin. Well, I'm at full draw on this Neil guy, and I've had a couple of problems with this bow sight where it didn't range.

So I'm at full draw, and I have a 90-pound bow, so it's a lot of weight. It's very heavy, and I'm pulling it. It's not a heavy bow physically, but it's heavy to pull back, and I'm holding it back, and's not a heavy bow like physically, but it's heavy to pull back And I'm holding it back and I press it nothing and I press it again nothing so then there's all this shit in your head It's like oh Jesus. He's gonna get away. Oh, no, you're gonna make a bad shot all the and I'm like no no no no no No, no no no good, and then the third time I press it finally I get a pin and I'm like like, pull, pull, pull, flop. And this arrow flies perfect. It hits this animal quartering away, broadside, punches straight through the animal, and the arrow goes 30 yards away.

But the Neil guy runs like nothing's wrong with it. In a full sprint, when the arrow hits it, I'm like, oh, no. I'm like, how am I even going to find this thing? 130 yards it went until it died, but we didn't know where it went because it's heavy brush in South Texas. And I'm talking to the guide and he's like, when we shoot them

with rifles, we have the guide, we have the client who has a round in his rifle and then the guide also has a round. So the client shoots the Neil guy and then the guide also has a round. So the client shoots the Neil guy, and then the guide will do a follow-up shot because that's how tough they are. I'm like, maybe you should have fucking told me that before because I was not even with him.

I had snuck away. I'm like, just stay back because I'm going to try to move around these bushes and get within bow range. And so I'm thinking, boy, I'm pretty sure I made a great shot. Like I have to, I don't know. So luckily we mapped the area, we do a grid and we find the animal.

He's only 130 yards away, it's a perfect shot. Went straight through. These animals don't bleed. They're the weirdest animal. They're amazing. When you shoot an elk at 30, you know, I think this was a 52-yard shot. If you shoot an elk at 52 yards, when you go to the spot where it hit, you're going to find drops of blood, and you're going to be able to do a blood trail, and you'll be able to find your animal.

And they don't run like Neil Guy run. Right. This thing runs at a cheetah clip. I mean, full blast, full sprint, and just till it died. But it was a perfect shot. And it would not have been, I mean, the anxiety of the sight not working, me pressing the button, nothing. Me pressing the button, nothing.

Oh, fuck. Right. And I'm at full draw here, and I'm like trying to stay calm and stable, and then finally press the button and get the thing. But if it wasn't for being conscious in the shot, pull, pull, pull, swoom, and I hear that whap, you know, that sound that you hear when it hits the vitals, when it goes through the ribs, through the body,

and it went out the front shoulder. I mean, it was a perfect shot. But it was because of your program. It was because of your teaching. And this was after I'd already worked with you and Peter Atiyah at his house And we were messing around so I had it very keenly in my head what needed to be done, but you practice it, right? So the difference is is that you're a very determined person and that's the missing ingredient in most people is They're not determined enough to actually make the decision. And so they go shoot their bow.

And they shoot their bow and they're punching the trigger maybe just a little bit, right, in practice. So they're literally practicing their own failure in a high-stress event, right? So they're punching a little bit, a little bit, and their mind's just making them a little bit more efficient, more efficient. And they're practicing this efficiency. They're practicing their open loop trigger work. And then it comes to a high stress event and then it all, they go ultra efficient. And none of that stuff that you're talking about is in their head. They're only thinking, holy shit, I don't have a pin. Uh, we'll just make things happen. And your autopilot will take it away from you like that. But you, because you practice making decisions, you practice finding determination. These are strange things to practice, but we're just using archery or shooting firearms or whatever it is.

We're using those as the medium for practice of these very mental things. You use your bow to practice your concentration, right? You saying pull, pull, pull doesn't just happen. It has to be decided upon. And that's what long ago that guy at the academy could not figure that out, and his ego was too high to actually go, oh, maybe what you're saying actually has some merit. Because what am I? I'm just a dumb cop, Right. So it was, it's very interesting, but I see people all the

time go to the range and they practice their own failure. Even professional archers do the same thing. And then they meet, then they meet Bodie and the shoot off and Bodie's going to shoot his process no matter what. Right. So it's, it's really cool to see that and to know, like, you put Bodie on a critter, it is done for. Because Bodie is a stone cold, man. Well, the fact that you've trained him since he was a young boy, and this has been the way he's learned archery. Like, with his age, at your understanding of it, it all came about really at the perfect time. It was the perfect storm. And, you know, Bodie started shooting a bow at 10 and a half months old.

I mean, I had at two weeks old, I had him in a front pack and, you know, shooting. He's seen thousands of arrows go down range. I had a bow in his crib. And at 10 and a half months, he finally picks that thing up upside down, right? He would prop himself up against the couch, draw back, fall over, and then, you know, shoot his little string off. But then at two and a half, he's shooting balloons, flying balloons with his bow in the kitchen, suction cup arrows. At three years old, I buy him his first compound and index finger trigger at three years old, and he's punching the crap out of that thing. Of course.

At three years old. That's all his mind knows is to brace for impact, right? So at three, I bought him a tension activator release. And what that did, just like me in the academy, I fixed a mental problem with mechanical means. So at that age, what does a three-year-old have for determination, decision-making skills? Nothing, right? So even up into early teens, these kids today don't have enough determination to override their own central nervous system. So you put them in a tension-activated release that makes decisions for them. Push the safety in, draw the bow back and aim it. Safety's still on. That's the calming effect. Safety's still on, weapon's not even hot yet. They get their aim done, and then they separate from that by letting go of the trigger or letting go of the safety. And then if they don't pull, their bow's not going off. So it makes the decision

for them. So from about three years old to about nine years old, that's what Bodhi shot was a tension-activated release until I saw it in him that that's all he knew and that he could run anything. Right. And he's heard me do the speech. And so many times that I didn't sit boaty down and go, okay, boy, this is how we're doing it. He just heard it so many times and me teaching other people and me, you know, showing him like, we don't do that to the point where he would go to the range, little tiny kid, right. And he'd look up at somebody. Oh, you punched that one. Boy, that guy's way bigger than your old man. So let's just on that, right? But it was so funny.

But now it's just, you know what's happening in Bodhi's mind and you can see it in his eyes. You see that squint, you know, the concentration is there. And the only advice that I ever give him is keep it moving. Because I know that if he keeps his release moving, I know that his conscious mind is in his release. And it's not in the aim. People, they are so infatuated with the aim. It's just, it's crazy. They all try to control something that they have no control over.

Once you put the pin on there, it's done. Just watch it to keep it, right? Watch the picture. And people are like, do I concentrate on the pin or do I concentrate on the target? I'm like, you don't concentrate on either one of those. You just watch the picture. Make it so they're both fairly in focus. They're on different focal planes, so they're not both going to be in focus.

But they are so infatuated with it. That's why they weight their bow up so much. They can't step away from it. And certain personalities have a difficult time stepping away from the aim. They want to control that. You can't control it. No matter which way it moves, its next movement's always back to the middle. So let it do its thing and don't slow it down too much. So you know where you want to hit. Yeah. And just concentrate on that spot. Just watch it. Don't concentrate on it. If you put mental concentration into it, like if you're thinking about like, oh, I got to get it right now. It's never going to happen

because you're going to go open loop on the trigger. If your thought process is in your aim, you will go open loop on the trigger. You will punch the trigger every single time. The weird thing about it is it's so counterintuitive to not worry about your pin moving around. Because your pin is going to move. It's impossible to be perfectly still when you're holding a bow and you're drawing back. It's like there's going to be a minimal amount of movement,

no matter what. But your subconscious mind will always bring that pin back to where you want it to go. And you just have to trust in that process. And that is a mindfuck, people. Right. Because you're like, no, no, no. I got to – when a pin gets there, that's when I'm going to release it. Right. But you can't do that.

It's never – it's not actually there anymore though. By the time you process that – and that's why people super weight their bows. Like you'll see a lot of pros have like 50 ounces of weight on their bow because, and that's strictly for their human psyche. That is to calm themselves down because they see that slow pin movement. But what we're trying to get is a surprise break, right? You're trying to get it, concentrate on this movement so you don't know when your bow is going off. So you can't, your mind can't put the pre-ignition movements in there. But then you couple that with a super slow pin movement. Well, now it's in the nine ring. And if you keep going, you have the surprise break. If it breaks in the nine and it is a nine, like

on a Vegas face target, if it breaks in the nine and it is a nine, it lands in the nine, then your bow is obviously too heavy. You've slowed the rate of return down too much. It's just like, you know, you have to be able to break a shot in the nine and it still hits a 10, if not an X. And that's how we tune Bodhi's bows. Everybody's like, oh, Bodhi's so steady.

He's not that steady, right? People think that because they don't see his stabilizers moving very much, but he keeps them light so that his pin can break anywhere in the gold and it'll hit an x that's how we do that right we're not trying to catch it because that's open loop trigger work but some guys do catch it they do and some of this is what's weird right there's some guys like tim gillingham and kyle douglas who are like elite world-class archers who hold their bow steady. They put the pin right there, and then they pop.

They hit it. Very contentious issue. Yeah. So when you talk to those people, they are of a very specific personality. They're calm dudes. I talk to them all the time. They're calm dudes. They're good dudes.

They're just calm. They have a specific personality. So they super weight their bow and they're able to process that and they get it there, but it bites them in the butt every now and again, right? So, and you can't stop that because you don't know what pre-ignition movement's coming. And you see that in the shoot-offs where, you know, they shoot amazing to get to the shoot-off, but then there's one in there that they didn't catch, right? That they went open loop on. Well, they go open loop on all of them, but there's one that they got a little too efficient with it, right? And this is nothing against those guys. They're amazing shooters. That is the other way of archery, right? Super weight your bow and catch it when it's in the middle. But you have to have a super light trigger to do that so that your pre-ignition movement is minimal, right? So you

don't have to have much of a movement. I mean, it's so light when you actually work on their triggers. That's the other way of doing it. That's not what we do, right? I want fast pin movement and I want closed loop movement on the release. And that seems to be a higher level. Like when you go to Vegas now, there's a whole other level, right? You have to be on your game. It is very high level now. So what they're doing is almost like obviously they're amazing archers. They're so good at what they do.

archers. They're so good at what they do and they have sort of decided to eliminate some of that anxiety by having a very hot trigger and just getting it so they know they can get that pin right there and just touching it when it's there, which works a lot, but not always. Not always. Not always, which is a mind fuck. Yeah. Like how can you be one of the best in the world and be doing something wrong? Well, it's not wrong. It's not wrong.

It's just a different way of doing it, right? It's not wrong by any stretch of the imagination. I don't know that it has the potential of closed loop release movement. It's close. So they could do everything they're doing but incorporate closed loop movements and it would be even better well potentially they would have to probably lighten their bows up and become friends with the movement because if you have that super like their pin moves really slow so if they have it moving slow and they continue with that movement if it breaks in the

nine it's going to be a nine because it can't get back to the middle fast enough with how they have it weighted. They have to have the pin movement so slow that it comes into the middle and there's enough time for them to recognize, okay, it's in the middle, send the signal to the release, right? And this is all happening in, you know, thousands of a second, but it's only there for a microsecond, right? Until it floats out. And the problem with that system is if you go open loop on the trigger, you don't know what pre-ignition movement's coming. Is it a micro collapse? Do you grab your bow slightly? Do you winch your face? All those are going to deviate your point of impact. And you're trying to hit a penny every time. You know, that's just an indoor archery. If you're shooting like safari, you're shooting 101 yards.

If you go open loop on the trigger with that, who knows? Your miss could be bigger. Archery is such a proving ground for mental control. And it's one of the things that I love about it. One of the things that I love about it is like archery doesn't give a fuck how many people like you whether whether your friends text you back whether your wife is upset with you archery doesn't give a fuck right like if you don't do it right it doesn't land where you want it to go and i know that sometimes i can do it right yeah and so there's this mind fuck where I'll just be,

like I have to stop practicing sometimes because my shoulders are sore. I've shot hundreds of, I've been out there for hours. I'm like, okay, now your body is not recovered enough to do this. You gotta stop. I get obsessed with it. And what I'm obsessed with is this ability

to recreate the movements and the mindset that you need in order to do it efficiently and accurately and then do it again and again and again. And then you also have to avoid this thing where I like to sometimes I'll make a shot. It's a perfect shot. And I'm like, good, I'm dialed in. And then I don't do all those things when I'm drawing back. I just draw back, I center my peep, and I just fire another arrow. And it doesn't matter if it went in there. I'm like, don't do it that way because you're not doing it the way you're going to have to do it if you're on a big bull in the woods.

If you see a big bull in the woods and it's the 16 yard gap in between two trees and that's where his vitals are, you gotta have all your I's dotted and your T's crossed. You can't just rely on the fact that you've already shot 50 arrows in a row because you haven't. You've hiked up this mountain, you're exhausted. There's all this shit going on.

There's so, it's such a mind fuck, like almost nothing else I've ever done. Because besides pool, which is also a mind fuck, but in pool you get to shoot a bunch of other shots. Yeah. You get to shoot the one ball to the two ball. You warmed up to the three. Yeah. You get good position on the four. You're rolling.

Uh-huh. With archery, every shot is the nine ball. Every shot is the money ball. And you only get one shot. And you might go five, six, seven days without shooting any shots because you're out there hiking and carrying your bow and trying to sneak up and get downwind. There's so much going on that that moment is so hypercharged.

It's like no other thing that I've ever done. Yeah. It's using the shot though. Like that shot where you had that shot was perfect. Like, okay, I'm good. And then you shoot again. The difference was you didn't decide on that next shot. You didn't make the decision that made your presence increase so that you could remember to do all those steps. And it's using the shot and using the stress. You know, like when I go elk hunting, it's just I'm using that elk for a stress test, right? And it's so powerful to be able to control your mind in such a situation. It is amazingly powerful. It makes other decisions in life so much easier,

right? Like if you're getting ready for a, I don't know, getting ready for a presentation, if you're doing surgery, whatever it may be, you can get your mind where it needs to be. It's so funny because I have some surgeons come to me for shooting practice and we do the signature test. I'm like, do you hack on people with a scalpel like that, doc? And they're like, no. I'm like, how about we buckle down and do it like you may do a cut and incision? Like, okay, I get it now. Right? So it's interesting. Any type of precision professional that has to do a movement in a high stress event, how do you get yourself to concentrate? And it's even more important when you're on the instructor end of things. How do you get this other person to do it, right?

Getting them to talk themselves through it, getting them to make the decisions. And that's what we've done. We've mapped all this stuff out so you can get other people to do it for themselves. And it's, you know, we just use archery because, like you said, there's nothing like it. Nothing. It's, you know, we just use archery because, like you said, there's nothing like it. Nothing. It is such a crazy thing to be able to control a movement that causes an explosion.

What's fascinating to me is it's made my rifle shooting so much better. Yeah. I'm so confident with a rifle. Yeah. When I zoom in on something with a rifle, when I'm looking down that scope and I've got that crosshairs on it, I know all I have to do is just pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. And especially if I have a rest. Oh, sure. Like if I'm prone and I'm like laying the rifle over my backpack and you have all these

points of contact, it's so much easier. It's so different. And that the difficulty of archery, it enhances and educates all these different aspects of your life when it comes to dealing with stressful, high-pressure situations. Right. It makes you stay in the moment. Because you have to stay in the moment in stand-up comedy, too. When you're doing stand-up comedy, you can't think like, oh, I hope they laugh at this next one. Oh, I hope I don't fuck this joke up. Oh, I might be losing the crowd. You can't think like oh i hope they laugh at this next one oh i hope i don't fuck this joke up oh i might be losing the crowd you can't think any of that you have to be if i'm talking about coffee or something like that whatever i'm talking about on stage i have to

be thinking about that coffee if i'm not that audience knows it they smell it they're animals they're like this motherfucker's not even thinking about what he's talking about. They know. It's a weird thing. And it's the same kind of thing. Like, you have to be in that mindset. And I've had shows before where maybe I was too relaxed or too confident or too whatever. And then you'll stumble a little bit. And then you got to reestablish where you're at. And you got to stay.

And you're like, uh- and like uh-oh uh-oh we're losing control here you might have fucked that joke up get back in the mindset yeah think about where you're talking about bring these people back to you get in there and it's kind of it applies to so many high pressure situations is that the mind gets away from you yeah you see it in traffic accidents where people panic and they hit the gas instead of the brakes. Or they just fucking, they don't know what to do. They freak out because they can't stay calm in the movement, in the moment, and just concentrate on what they're supposed to be doing rather than the desired result they want to achieve. And that's where I think archery is one of the ultimate proving grounds.

Yeah. For mental control. Like I said, they may have done it before. Like, you know, they may have done it before, but they never blueprinted how they did it. You know, and that is so huge. How do you get yourself in that zone before your deal on stage or whatever? You know how you do it now because you've done it hundreds, if not thousands of times. But when it comes down to like life or death stuff,

that's where, you know, you're a very determined person just in the way that you live your life. It's Cam, very determined person, right? So that's how you get to where you get to. It's the first ingredient in this whole control factor is having enough determination to do that. And like you have a why. You have a why as to why you're doing this. My why was I was scared to death, man, in the sniper world. I was like, man, I hope it doesn't go bad. And I'm like, that can't be the mindset.

Holy mackerel. But it is the mindset of most cops because they don't have a why. You know, if a cop's never been in a gunfight or a shooting, their why is artificial, right? And that's, it's scary the first time that you do that, you know, having that why and seeing like, I was in an HR where I, you know, had to use lethal force on a person that was, I had to put a round this far from another human being's face, right? And it was, that's my why.

So when I do training on the team, it's like, you guys don't understand when you see, when you're looking through your optic at a reticle and there's somebody's face on the edge of the, I mean, their face is fully in your scope and the reticle is right on the edge, right? And you have to put the round past their head. That's your why, right? So that's your why for all this tactical training that you do. But if you've never been there and done that, you have to learn how to manufacture determination, right? Can you imagine what failure would be in that situation? Well, tell the story, if you don't mind, the story you told me about the guy who was methed out.

Yeah. So I got a SWAT call out of a hostage rescue. There was an unarmed barricaded subject with a hostage. And you never know, that's all the information you get on the call out, right? So we go there. I get there and it was weird because on the brief, I walked up to the house and the SWAT commander briefed me at the head of the garage there. And it was light colored concrete. It's dark. You know, we didn't have a bunch of lights on because the operation is active in that house right there. But the room was in kind of the back of the house. And I remember he's talking to me, telling me the situation. And I'm looking on the ground and I'm like, what is all that stuff on the ground, right? And I'm looking at these dark patches on the ground.

So I turn my flashlight on and it's blood. There's blood all over the place on the walkway down from the garage. And I'm like, what is up with that? And he's like, well, this guy stabbed his cousin and then took his own daughter hostage. Used her as a human shield with a knife to her. So that's how SWAT got called and all this stuff. So I get there, and I'm up on a ladder over a wood fence and we're about, I'm only like 15 yards from the window, but we can't see anything in the window. And the negotiator's on the phone

with this guy and he's not really making a lot of sense. He wants to talk to his girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. He's got his daughter in there with him and we can hear her through the wall, right? We can hear her. Sometimes she's screaming. Sometimes she's crying. Sometimes she's laughing. So we don't know what is going on in there, right? And this goes on for, the negotiators are on the phone with him for a while. And then finally the decision's made, like we have to get in there because it's starting to go south in negotiations. And we lost comms with the guy. So you're worried he's going to stab his daughter. Yeah. Well, we don't, I So you're worried he's going to stab his daughter.

Yeah. Well, we don't, I mean, he's already done that to his cousin, right? I mean, stabbed him in the face and the legs and the arms, big K-bar knife. It was not a good situation. So yeah. And he's already used her as a human shield, right? When the cops, what happened is there was a big fight went on. The cops got in, got everybody out. Then they realized the daughter was hiding behind a couch. So they go back in. They restack up. They go back in. Now he's got the daughter around the waist using her as a human shield, knife to her, and he kicks the door shut on a bedroom. That's what starts the SWAT call out.

So I'm looking at this window. It's got blinds on it. You know, negotiations are going south. We lose comms with the guy. So finally, we're like, we got to get comms with this dude. So we're going to put a throw phone in. So we put a throw phone. A throw phone's like a, it's like a box. It's got a phone in it so the negotiators can talk to the dude. And so we put that in there. My buddy rips the blinds out. We rip the blinds out. There's the dude again. I can't see him because I can only see like half the room, and he's in the right corner of the room, and I'm over this fence, and the window guys are yelling at him to drop the

girl, drop the knife, you know, get him on the commands. And he's kind of working his way along the wall. He's got her around the waist. So he would hold her up above, you know, so they can't get a shot. And so he's moving his way across the wall. And then he moves his way across this wall and ends up in this corner, sits down and pulls her up over the top of him. And so the window's on the same wall as this corner, and I can't see any of this stuff.

I'm the sniper team leader. So I work my way around, and I get to this gate. I'm like, they called fire priority to the window team. I'm like, I'm on the wrong team. Because there's like six dudes at the window and nobody's shooting. I'm like, why in the F are these guys not shooting? Cause I couldn't see what they saw, but it's just what's going through my head. So I, I get off the ladder. I run to this gate and I'm, it's weird. The stuff you remember, they had this, it was like one of those latch type of locks and it had a bolt

through it with the nut all the way buried. And this bolt was like, it felt like it was this long, right? So I'm having to unscrew this fricking bolt, right? I'm screwing, it's the finest threads I've ever felt, right? So I'm unscrewing this bolt. Finally, bing, I get that. I go through the gate. I come around, I come up to the window and there was another officer that was, had his, basically his face planted against the window so that he could just barely see through this sliver because it was on the same wall. And he wasn't shooting, and I'm like, why are you not shooting? And so we actually ended up having to remove him off the ladder because I don't know what he was thinking. He wasn't hearing us.

We were given a command to get off the ladder so I could get up there and evaluate the situation. And I'm shooting my sniper rifles. It was a gas-operated.308, and lowest power on the scope was 4.5. And I told the admin years ago, I'm like, I need lower power because it's going to be close probably when it does happen, and sure enough, it was. So I get up on this ladder, and I put my face against the wall, and I can just see through the sliver. I can see him sitting, and I can see her sitting in his lap, basically, and he's got his arm around her. And so the team keeps giving him commands, and I'm looking at this shot,

and I'm evaluating what's going on, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to myself I'm gonna have to shoot him left-handed and I'm thinking lowest power is four and a half so I do an optic check on the wall I'm like that ain't gonna work so I'm thinking to myself I'm gonna have to shoot him with my pistol when you say optic check it's because it's moving too much no because it's too much magnification so there was a picture something on the wall. So I brought my rifle up and looked at it. I'm like, that ain't going to work. It was just blurry.

It's four and a half power. The shot's only 11 feet, like 12 feet, 11 feet. Oh, my God. So I'm like, this isn't, I don't have the right tool. So I'm thinking, I'm going to have to shoot my handgun. And then I'm thinking, I always preach, handguns suck for killing stuff, right? So that's why I always tell my guys, handguns suck for killing stuff. We don't use handguns if we don't have to.

But I'm thinking, I got the wrong tool. What am I going to do? So I'm thinking, wait a minute, stupid. There's six guys standing at the window that have the right tool, right? Because they all have their assault rifles. And so the first guy, and it just happened to be the guy that we pulled off the ladder I'm like give me a rifle he's like what oh give me a rifle so we we swap rifles and he says HK 416 and the reason he said that was because on HK 416 if you flip the safety twice you go to full auto

right so don't want to do that right in precision environment, right? So I'm like, roger that. And so I got up and the window's broken at this point. So when you step up to the window, you're literally walking on broken glass. Okay. So I step up, pop, pop, pop, pop, the glass all pops underneath my feet. And I pushed the rifle. I got to shoot left-handed, right? So I pushed the rifle in and I come around the corner. Now the rifle butt is in my bicep with somebody else's rifle, right? But I know this rifle is zeroed because it has to be zeroed because to get through my qualification a month earlier, it had to be zeroed, right? So I knew that things were good,

but I also knew that you got to aim two and a half inches higher than where you want to hit because that's a mechanical offset, right, the difference between bore height and sight height, 2 1⁄2 inches. So I push the rifle in the window, and I come around the corner, and I look, and the little girl is looking right at me, right, because all the broken glass. So she's looking right at me, and I bring the reticle up, and it's full pop brightness, right?

I can't see anything because he had it set for a white light shot. So when you turn your super bright flashlight on, on your rifle, it will blare out your reticle. So you've got to have your reticle turned way up. Well, he had it set for a white light shot, but I wasn't going to do a white light shot. So I looked at him like, oh, no. So just like you're thinking your thing didn't turn on when you're looking at this nil guy, I'm looking at this red sun in a dimly lit room and I'm like, this ain't going to work. So I pulled the rifle back out of the window and now I got to work on the buttons on this site. Well,

this isn't my rifle, right? So now I got to find the button that dims the red dot. So I'm messing around with this thing and the whole team is outside and they're watching this, right? Because they're going to go on my shot. Now this dude had the door barricaded with a TV and a TV stand, all that stuff. So they were going to have to hit the door hard, but they were going to get a running start at it. But I moved them out because they were right on the other side of the door, but I didn't know if my round was going to go through the wall or not. So I moved them out. So we got them out. So they're all watching this shit show, basically, of me on this optic.

And they're thinking, what are you doing, Turner? Right? And I'm thinking, I'm like, I just got to get this thing turned down. Right? So I mess with the buttons and I finally get to the right one. So I'm like, okay, good. So I go back up to the window. You know, glass breaks again.

Pop, pop, pop underneath my feet. I come around the corner. Does this guy know you're there? I don't know because he was, I mean, who knows what kind of mental state he was in. And I was trying not to be too, that's why I didn't turn on any lights or anything. So I come around the corner again and I look in there I'm like okay I got the right brightness but it's too close right like her head was like an inch because what I'm looking at is this so like this is the back of her head I'm looking at his eyeball so I got like an inch I'm like nah it's too close and remember remember that almost, so this was on, this was in December,

a year earlier, it was 364 days after I made that decision in that tree stand, when I mapped things, right? So now between 14, December of 14 and December of 15, now I'm, I have control of what's going on. And I made that vow, right? Long ago that I'm not going to shoot an uncontrolled shot. So I come around the corner and I'm looking, and she's of course looking at me and it's close. I'm like, nah, I ain't going to do that. So I'm waiting. And then he moves his head back, right? I'm like, okay, two and a half inches of mechanical offset, but his head, his head, his face is all like, okay, two and a half inches of mechanical offset, but his face is all covered in hair, like this giant mop of hair. So I couldn't see the geography of his face at all.

Like I'm going, I want to put it in his eyeball, but I don't, I can't see it, right? So I'm just going by the curvature of his forehead. I know I got to aim two and a half inches over that. So I put it up there, safety's off, fingers on the trigger, and it and a half inches over that. So I put it up there. Safety's off. Fingers on the trigger. It's a two-stage trigger. So I took the first stage out. Here I go. I remember saying that.

And then when I'm working on rifle stuff, it's kind of an audible exhale. So, right? So that's my concentration guidance. So I put it two and a half inches over where I wanted to hit. Safety's off. Takes the stage out of the trigger. Here I put it two and a half inches over where I wanted to hit. Safety's off. Takes the stage out of the trigger. Here I go. And he moves his head back, right? And he pops it back against the back of her head. And it's funny, the stuff you remember, because I remember his hair swishing, right? And he's, so now he's back and it's too close again. So I'm like, I'm waiting.

right? And he's, so now he's back and it's too close again. So I'm like, I'm waiting. He moves his head back again. So he moves his head back again. Now I've got better, you know, it's faster for me to aim where I need to aim. So I put it where I need to, stages out, here I go. And the shot broke and the rest is history. So it, but. Worst case scenario in terms of tension, in terms of consequences, messed up guy, knife to this girl. I mean, it's just the whole, that was the culmination of everything. That was the start of Shot IQ. Cause now I'm like, this is no bullshit, right? This is how to concentrate in high stress events, right? So, and it was cool because I had, I had lots of high level military operators that I was able to

bounce ideas off of, like, cause I'm not getting in gunfights every day. So I go, Hey man, is this real? Or is this not real? Like, yeah. How'd you figure that out? I'm like, I don't know. I'm just a dumb cop, man. Just, just thinking, you know? And so I was able to bounce things off of people that were actually, that had been there and done that. And that's, you know, when you're looking for solving a problem, you have to find those people that have solved it before, but it's so rare to find somebody that solved it before and blueprinted how they did it. You know, that's, what's rare in the instruction and just in life in general. There's lots of mentors out there that have been there and done that in whatever field you're looking for,

but did they blueprint it? I know a lot of bow hunters just bow hunt a lot, and that's their blueprint. And a lot of these guys are very effective trigger punchers. And one of the reasons why they could do it is because they're shooting at animals all the time. I mean, I know guys that hunt 200 plus days a year. So the time between the last arrow they shot on an animal is very small. So they're more calm. They're more prepared. Yeah. They've inoculated themselves to it. But when you ask these people, even if they're trigger punchers, they will still do a couple of very specific things. They will separate from the aim somehow, however they do it, right? And they all say something. Every one of them to a person. I've interviewed hundreds of snipers,

successful rifle hunters, successful bow hunters, and they all say something at full draw. Because that's what keeps you in the present moment. Because that's what keeps you in the present moment. That is the- And that's what keeps you in a closed loop. That is their decision, right? Yeah. Whatever it is, right? Whatever they say.

You know, when you look at these people, like, how did you figure- who taught you how to shoot? Well, my grandpa, my dad, whatever it may be. But nobody ever teaches that because we don't ask the right questions, right? We don't go, hey, you know, professional archer, what are you thinking about when you're at full draw? And most of them couldn't even tell you. So you ask the question, what do you say?

Oh, I don't really want to tell you. It's kind of embarrassing and whatever. They all say something. It's always different, but they all say something. That's the pattern of success. I asked Remy Warren about this, and one of the things Remy says is he it's he goes it sounds crazy but I try to be the arrow sure I mean it's really I love that like you are the arrow like the arrow goes where you want it to go so be the arrow yeah like he is

when so he's shooting he's not going well I hope it did right he's like looking at that animal he's like that's's not going, oh, I hope it hits. He's, like, looking at that animal. He's like, that's where I'm going to hit. Does he say that? I have a B-E arrow. I believe so. I mean, you have to ask him. I'm pretty sure that's what he says.

That's the thing, man. Everybody says something. So that's how he gets his consciousness into whatever that is. Now, if we take that and we refine that and put it into the actual movement that we want to happen, that's when you get to that higher level, right? It's so fascinating how the mind is geared to survival, geared to react quickly to high stress, panic situations, the adrenaline pumps, but you don't have an operator's manual on how to navigate the various stages of anxiety and these states that only occur rarely under very high pressure situations. And you don't have a lot of experience with them. Like you see that in street fights where people who don't have training,

they have no idea what to do. And you see world the walls just close in on them i'll never forget this um this i mean this is a clearly untrained person we were at the comedy store and the comedy store is on sunset in hollywood and uh there was a fight that was taking place across the street and there was all these cars that were passing by while watching these guys yell at each other and push each other and then i see this one guy whose eyes are squinting and he's decided to like he he's decided to engage in this guy and i don't know if he's in time i'm sure i'm sure he's intoxicated but they're talking shit and they're pushing. And then all of a sudden I see him literally like closed eyes, like squinting head up in the air, and he's swinging like with open hands. And then a bus goes in between him and I and the guys fighting.

And then when the bus passes, he's out cold. Oh, geez. He's out cold and the other guy walks off. And I'm like, wow, like watching that guy panic and watching that guy in a situation where he'd probably never been before, didn't know what to do, had talked himself into this terrible situation

where he's an untrained fighter, an untrained guy who's fighting with another person. And this guy's also untrained. They both sucked. But this one guy kept it together slightly more and cracked this dude with a haymaker, I guess. I mean, I don't know, but he was just out cold on the street. And I remember thinking, wow, anxiety is crazy.

It's, it's those, the heart beating, the adrenaline pumping and all that stuff. It's like those moments overwhelm people where they can't stay in the moment. And I think what you've done with your Shot IQ course is you've given people not just the tools to be effective at archery, but the tools to understand how to control your mind during high-pressure situations and stay in the moment and do the thing that's difficult to do under those high-pressure situations. And not just want it to be over with quick. You just want it to be over with. And you see that in fights, too, where guys swing when the guy's nowhere near them. They'll just do stuff because they just want to.

And they leave their face exposed and they throw technique out the them. They'll just do stuff because they just want to, and they leave their face exposed, and they throw technique out the window. It's just anxiety. And knowing that these things exist and having like a followable course where you can, this is what's going on in your mind. This is how you control your mind, and you have to talk to yourself.

You have to be to yourself. You have to be able to stay in the moment. And the best way to stay in the moment is to actually have words going off in your mind. Yeah. Yeah. And I get the opportunity to talk to psychologists, and I just had one at the house that came for a clinic. And he, it's funny when you talk to these people, because it's hard to find a psychologist that has been there and done the things that we're talking about. And they usually go too deep. So there's a depth that you can't go past because it becomes intangible. Right? So when you're, I asked the doctor, like, doc, am I right when I say this? And he's like, oh yeah, that's this and this and this and this. I'm like, is that how you teach it?

Well, yeah, that's what I talk about. Well, it's too deep, right? It's intangible. When you talk about- But people aren't going to carry it with them in a high pressure situation. How do you increase confidence at the moment of truth? How do you get your conscious bubble to get the same size as your self image bubble? It's all intangible stuff, right? This is what I'm talking about is how do you get it? It's tangible. This is the tool that you need to use. This is why you're using it. And this is what happens, right? And people take instruction and they're looking for the magic pill, right? Like, oh, if I take your course, is this going to fix me? Not if you have that approach, it's not, right? Because I can't teach you determination. I can help you find it, right?

Like in SWAT training, a lot of times we have to run 100 meters and shoot 100 meters, standing unsupported, eight-inch steel plate. Doesn't sound sound that hard but when you're huffing and puffing and if you go open loop you're going to miss so i remember this one time one of my snipers is he'd run a hundred meters get get to where i was shoot pow miss 20 push-ups right 20 push-ups run 100 meters down and back come up pal miss and i'm like 20 push-ups so he does 20 push-ups come back down pal miss 20 push-ups this time i got down the ground with him i said what's your job he said sir my job is to hit the target i said that's not your job your job is to move the trigger slow enough you could stop it that's your job right if do that, there's no way you can miss the target. And so then after that, there was no more misses.

But he didn't have his job defined, right? Your job is not to kill the bull elk. Your job is to not even to shoot the shot. Your job is to move your trigger slow enough you could stop it. When you do your job, your actual job, the results take care of themselves. And there's a lot of stuff that we have no control over. You can't control that access to your jump and your string, right? You can't do that. You have to stay in your job, but you got to have defined what is that? What is the true problem here, right? And I, you know, I was just like anybody else trying to figure out this shot control thing, but I didn't know what the problem was.

Nobody had actually defined the problem. Your subconscious mind will not allow you to cause your body impact as a surprise. That's the problem in shooting in general. Anticipation. Yeah. And once we figured that out, now we can start to attack. What sciences do I need to figure out that deal with this stuff? And I was lucky to have the right people in the right places to figure this stuff out.

But it's putting it in that package so that you can define your job and then how do you attack it, right? It's such an amazing thing that you've done that I really feel like it should be mandatory. I really feel like it should be mandatory. I really do. I think there's so many people that go out into the woods to hunt archery, and they don't know what's going to happen when they pull that trigger the first time. They've never done it before. So the first time they ever do it, it's like, whoa!

Yeah. You know, if they knew what you're teaching, I really think that the rate of success would go up exponentially and the rate of bad shots taken would go up as well. That would go down. I really believe that people would be far more effective. I'm just trying to erase the mystery in it, right? Like when you shoot your next shot on whatever hunt you're going on or whatever you're doing, you know how it's going to go. There's no mystery to it. You know you're going to draw back and aim.

You know that you're going to roll to the click in your hinge. You know you're going to say, here I go. You know you're going to say, pull, pull, pull. There's no mystery to it anymore. Whereas most people, they have mystery in their shot. They don't know how it's going to go. They hope it goes well. in their shot. They don't know how it's going to go. They hope it goes well.

And then there's this thing that people do where the moment the shot goes off, they move their bow because they want to see. Sure. It's a pre-ignition movement. Yeah. They call it peaking. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a real problem with bow hunting. If you stay in the process we're talking about, you can't peak because you don't know when your bow is going on. So your body doesn't know when to do that. It doesn't know when to do all these weird pre-ignition movements that it does to brace you. And you don't even know you're going to do it until you do it. And then

you're like, what the fuck is wrong with me? I remember being there, man. I remember I missed so many. I mean, I'm a two-time world elk calling champion. I can call elk in like a chicken on a string, but I could not hold myself together. It was ridiculous, man, the sum of the shots I took. I'm like, what just happened? It's like somebody else shot the shot for me. Complete blackouts, all this stuff. Well, it's amazing that there's all these different people that come up with all these different methods to try to beat target panic.

And one of the things they do, they work on the mechanics by blind bailing. And what blind bailing is, for the people who don't understand archery, is you literally stand in front of a large target, like a bale, like a bale of hay, and you stand close to it, and all you're doing, you're not even thinking about where you're going to hit. A lot of times you close your eyes,

and you're just going through the mechanics of the shot so that the mechanics of the shot get programmed into your system, which gives you a little more confidence eyes and you're just going through the mechanics of the shot. So the mechanics of the shot get programmed into your system, which gives you a little more confidence that you know how to do the mechanics, but it doesn't stop you from freaking out at the moment. It just doesn't. And so all these people that have all these different methods, it's really like someone who doesn't understand what's really going on trying to explain it to someone who also doesn't understand what's really going on.

You know? Yeah. Like, is that good for defining and refining your movements as an archer? Certainly. You should teach someone how to blind bail when you're first learning archery because you want them to be able to understand how the shot should break. Exactly. because you want them to be able to understand how the shot should break. But without the knowledge that you're presenting of what's going on in that high-pressure situation, they're going to spaz out and they're going to go open loop.

Yeah. But in the instruction for decades, that's been it, right? Blind bail. And people spend months, like you should blind bail for six months, or maybe you start with a close target and then you move it out slightly, slightly, slightly. All that is trying to get you to do is separate from the aim. So just let's cut to the chase, man. Right. Don't waste six months of your life shooting a blind bail. Let's shoot a good shot, blueprint it, understand exactly how you do it. And then you have to test it on a target. And, you know,

some people are like, well, as soon as I, and this is even in my course, and I have to take this out because I filmed that course in 2015 and 16. And since then, the online course, I've got lots of updates to it. But there's one portion of it that I need to take out because in there I say, and this is how it was when I first started, when it was in its infancy, if you detect an error, let the shot down, right? That makes sense, right? If you detect an error, let it down. I don't say that anymore because now every time you detect an error, like let's say that you draw back and you're like, oh man, I'm really shaky. Oh wait, I'm not supposed to be thinking about my aim. Let it down, right?

Well, your subconscious just won that shot. It's like, oh, if I get Joe to shake and recognize that, he'll bail out of the shot. Your subconscious does not want you to create an explosion in your body. It never just intuitively wants that. So if it can get you to bail out of a shot, it will. So now when you detect an error, when you are training, when you detect an error, you're not allowed to let down. You have to stay at full draw and fix it in the shot. Recognize the problem, understand how to fix it. Maybe another here I go to increase your presence so that you can concentrate. But you have to fix it in the shot. We don't let people let down anymore. And that's people are

like, oh, the archery instructors are going to lose their mind when they hear like, oh my God, Turner's telling people not to let down. I let down in tournaments. If I have a shot that went stale because I wasn't thinking about the right movement shot, maybe it goes stale. You'll see Bodie do that every now and again. There's a certain point of pressure in the bow where you're not going to hit the X. There's too much pressure built up, right? You're just not going to hit the X. So if you have time to on the clock, you let it down. But recognize what was the problem there? Ah, I wasn't thinking about the movement. I was thinking about my aim or whatever. Very interesting when you look at Bodie's interview from Lancaster in 21 or 22, actually, when he shot that 660, because they interview him right after that shot and he let it down before he actually shot his 60th arrow for the 660.

And he tells you exactly what's going through his head. He says, oh, man, my pin was jumping from red to red. And he left it at that. And I'm like, well, that's why it went stale, because you're thinking about your pin shaking on target, so you're not thinking about moving the release. And then they ask him about the next shot. Well, it was good enough, so I just kept my release moving. Thank you very much. That's where the mind needs to be. But it's so counterintuitive.

It is, but it's just the way it works. Right. And so just cutting to the chase and cutting out all the crap and giving people a specific blueprint to eliminate the mystery in your shot, right. Or in your, whatever you're doing, right? Whenever a precision professional needs to concentrate, this is how you do it in a tangible way. And I feel like there's a way to translate this to many other things. I don't feel like this is just limited to archery. And I think it's, like I said, that it's like the ultimate proving ground for being able to overcome anxiety and be able to stay in the moment.

But I feel like that could be, like the principles that you're applying could be given to all sorts of other high stress occupations. Sure. Yeah. Anytime somebody has to concentrate for whatever it may be, this is how you do it, right? And it may be for a movement. It may not be. It may be a major decision that you have to make. It may be a surgeon, right? It may be a pilot. It may be a jet mechanic. It could be anything where you have to concentrate on a movement where there are consequences if you screw it up.

And concentrating on those movements in the mind and talking yourself through the movements rather than don't fuck this up. Oh my God, I hope I don't crash. Oh my God, I don't cut the wrong artery. Oh my God, I hope I don't do this. It's like the self-talk is so important because if you don't have a positive self-talk, like a constructive technical self-talk, you're going to allow the mind to have a bunch of other shit to think about and concentrate on and focus on. And a lot of that is counterintuitive. A lot of that is counterproductive.

And it's very strange how the mind will sabotage you, but it just will. It just will because your mind's not designed to shoot arrows. Your mind's designed to run away from a cheetah or something. Something that's trying to eat you or a warring tribe member who's chasing after you. You're like, ah, you got to run. You got to get out of there quick. You can't think. Yeah, it's that fight or flight stuff.

Exactly. I mean, you're overriding that every time you shoot an arrow. Yes, yes. And yeah, it's just powerful stuff. I know guys, they take drugs to try to get past it. They take beta blockers to try to, like, kill all their anxiety and kill all of their, I mean, their nerves and their adrenaline. Yeah. But, you know, you can't rely on that.

No. And not only that, they test for those things. Right. Yes, they do. At the archery competitions. Yes, they do. Which is fascinating. Yeah.

You know, it's so interesting that people have been bow hunting for so long, and then you come along with this one method that really changes everything. And I really think it does. I mean, there's been great archery coaches that have come up with ways to overcome target panic. John Dudley came up with this hinge, or rather this silverback release. Tension-activated release. Completely tension-activated. And what that is, if people don't understand, is you don't know when it's going off.

So you pull, and it's set to a few pounds over the draw weight of your bow. So you pull all the way back, you're holding it in place, and then you release the safety and then you pull slightly harder and it goes off. But you really don't know when it's going to go off, but you are anticipating that it's going to go off. And sometimes you're just like, oh, when's it going to go off? When's it going to go off and sometimes just like oh when's it gonna go off? When's it gonna go up? Oh, geez. I hope it works. Yeah, and then it goes off like it could work or it cannot work Yeah, that there's nothing wrong with the tension activated release. It's a great release Yeah

But it would be way better if you knew what the process was what's going on in your mind as you're doing it if you Say here I go, and then you like pull, pull, pull, bang, and then it goes off. Instead of all that, oh, my God, what's happening? I don't fuck this up. Don't miss. Don't wound the animal. Don't fucking shoot over his head.

Don't look like an asshole. Don't hate yourself again. Yeah, there's all that stuff the tension actor release was was quite an invention it it changed like i said was the evolution the first one of those the carter i believe so yeah that's the one i was involved that's when i bought bodhi when he was when he was three years old and it separates it for you it's a mechanical fix to a mental problem. The problem is that it's so based on preload, how much you're pulling when you let that safety off, that there's no professional

archer out there that shoots attention activated release. Right. Because it's not the most accurate system, but it's the easiest one to control because of that safety, right? And it makes the decision for you because if you don't pull, your bow's not going off. So what I do in my clinics, when I have somebody that's not determined enough to make a decision, like they just keep punching the trigger, like, I don't know why this isn't working. It's because nothing works for you in shooting, right? In shot control, nothing works for you. You have to work for it. The only thing we're teaching you is what work needs to be done and how to do the work. But when you take this tension-activated release, if they just won't stop punching whatever other release they're doing,

I'll take that tension-activated release and I'll screw that sucker down where it won't go off, right? So, okay, here's how it works. I tell them how it works. Push the safety in, draw back and aim, then take the safety off, and you've got to pull. Okay, yeah, no problem. So I push the safety in, and this may be a person that hasn't even been able to aim yet. Like they're always locked off target. Safety's on, they draw back and now all of a sudden they can aim because the safety's on. Right. So now they can separate from that aim. They're like,

okay. And they kind of timidly take the safety off. I'm like, okay, now I got to do is pull. So there comes the flood. Right. So they start pulling and they're just pulling a little bit. And all of a sudden they give it this big old yank, but it doesn't go off. Right. Right. So I'm like, okay, push the safety in, let it down. What were you thinking about?

Well, I was thinking about pulling and then there's always a, and then I started thinking about when's it going to go off? How much is this going to take? Why hasn't it gone off yet? And that's the moment at which autopilot, the subconscious comes in and gives it that big old help, right? So then I have them, okay, here's what you need to do. Here I go. Take the safety off.

Then say, here I go to up your presence and then talk yourself through moving. Okay, yeah, sure. Here we go. So they do it. They take the safety off and they start pulling. And then you can see the change. We're like, okay, I guess I just got to pull. So they keep pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling.

They're just shaking like crazy, but it doesn't go off. Safety in, let it down. What are you thinking about? I was just thinking about pulling. Thank you. Now we can start, right? Until you get them singular-minded, then we blueprint. How did you get yourself to do that?

What were you saying? What were you thinking? What were you thinking? What were you saying? Could you stop it? What decisions did you make? Right? I was using attention-activated release for a while. Yeah.

And I was using attention-activated release with your principles. And I shot one of the best shots I've ever shot. There's a photo out there with me and Cam with this elk. Right. Perfect shot, 67 yards, 10 ringdom. Perfect. And it was in that thing because I knew Cam was filming it and it was a lot of pressure he's one of my best friends sure sure you know it taught me how to shoot yeah he's right next to me yeah and it's like this big

fucking elk yes he just got done fighting this elk and he moves and he moves broadside and cam's like take the shot so i draw back i center it i pull it through and it was just perfect and i'll never forget watching that arrow because I have a green Luminok and I'm watching that green Luminok just swap there's right in the spot and After that shot was a perfect shot, but after that shot I realized That's not the most accurate way to do this that I feel like there's something about the tension activated thing. I need to apply that now to a trigger into a hinge. And so I started moving to that and it was this thing like, oh boy, now this is a totally different thing, but go through the same principles again.

And it's helped me tremendously. It's made such a big difference to know that you have to control those movements and you have to have that self-talk. You have to have that mantra. You have to have that thing in your mind where you stay in the presence. Yeah. You should be able to control any release. Yeah. I should be able to fill this table with releases and go, there you go, Joe. And just index finger trigger, thumb button, hinge, tension activated, pick it up, understand how the trigger works, and control it. And is that possible even with an index trigger if you're just pulling the trigger? So even an index trigger, a full draw, if you're just like pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, bink, with the finger.

Usually. So what we do is we teach people to open their whole hand and just wrap their finger around the trigger and then pull their hand through the strap. They're not moving their finger at all. They're just pulling their hand through the strap. It's easier to control this bigger movement, right? So when they do that, that, I mean, that's plenty of motion to be able to do that. And so they just hook in. Here I go.

Pull. But there's a desire to pull with the finger. Right. Oh, there is, right? But when you, that's why we use index fingers. Like if people bring me the worst piece of crap with a whole bunch of travel, gritty sears, all kinds of nastiness, right? I'm like, perfect. Because when you control that one and you understand how you did it, the world is yours, right? And then you get into selecting a release like, okay,

this release, I can go closed loop on this easier. I can evaluate the movement, the pressure increase without a bunch of travel. So now once you have this knowledge, you can actually pick a release that you can evaluate best, right? And it's, you know, it may be a thumb button, it may be a hinge, it may be an index finger trigger. There's all kinds of releases out there. But the whole archery industry is built around target panic. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy, man. Well, being you and having come up with this system and recognizing that, what's interesting to me is I see resistance. And I see people that they get upset.

They don't do it your way, so they get upset that you're teaching this, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't believe this, and I don't believe that. But it's fascinating because you see that with all sorts of other things where there's a high rate of failure. When someone comes up with a solution, everyone wants to think they have the solution. I don't want to mind-fuck myself.

I already got it figured out. I'm a stone cold killer. Once I'm on the target, I never miss. And they say that to themselves because they want to believe that. And I'm not trying to change. If you are a stone cold killer and you have a system on how you do it, that's awesome. But it's when you try to put it to somebody else, right? Like I didn't grow up being a good shot. I grew up being a horrible shot, but just loving shooting so much that I

wanted to figure it out. And then I had these sounding boards of, you know, my determination well was deep with the sniper stuff, but I had the sounding board of bow hunting where I was constantly failing, right? So if you have a system and you know how you do it, if you know exactly how you're going to shoot your next shot, then you don't need to change a thing. But if you don't know, if there's any mystery in that, then that's a problem. I mean, do you want to be the person that, you know, somebody calls you in a big old bull or whatever, and you botch a super easy shot that you certainly should have made? There can be be no mystery so if you don't have mystery more power to you if you you know if if there's any mystery in it you better get it out yeah because there are unique individuals that

just keep their shit together sure that's a personality yeah and it is like these very calm people that just know how to stay calm. But good luck teaching that. Yeah. You can teach someone to not be calm but to work their way through it and still execute a perfect shot. Yeah. I don't usually put relaxation in any portion of the instruction because it's probably not going to happen. Right.

Right. I don't – okay, this is the relaxed state. This is the stage you – how are you going to do that? Well, you can do things to control your breathing. Yes. And you can do things to control your heart rate. Yeah. So that breathing, and I don't know if it was on your podcast,

but Huberman was talking about that. You inhale through your nose, and then you give it an extra inhale. So you inhale to the top, and then you do it again, which inflates different stuff in your lungs. We always did combat breathing, right? In through the nose for four, hold for four, out through the mouth for four, hold for four. That was what we always did in tactical stuff. And that's the only breathing techniques I've learned. I listened to Huberman's thing and I used it at Vegas this year because Vegas indoor archery is strange

because it's just a yellow line on the floor. It's the only thing that makes me nervous. I shake like a dog crapping tacks when I'm on that yellow line and say, this is your first scoring in, and everybody knows what that means. I mean, it is a thing in indoor archery because your target is so small, right? And if Bodie misses the 10 ring when he's shooting for his 900 in Vegas just to get to the shoot-off, if you miss one time, your weekend is done, right? You just lost six figures with one shot.

So much pressure. Right? So it's just indoor archery. And I shoot barebow, right? And it's very competitive. But it's not, I mean, I can miss. I don't have to hit the 10 ring every time. But for some reason, I don't know if it's the expectation, but I shake like crazy in indoor archery.

And I invite it, right? I'm like, yeah, this is a concentration test. Now, I'm getting through my frickin freaking mechanoreceptive trigger no matter what. I mean, you see people shoot their name tags and shoot them into the bleachers. And it's, dude, it's crazy. It is a massive shit show in indoor archery. It is amazing what that yellow line does to you on the floor. But if you listen to your body when you're on that yellow line and it's for score, you can learn so much.

Right? Like I get to shoot at Lancaster, I get to shoot 60 arrows in a day on that line. And Vegas, I get to shoot 30 arrows a day. Right? You get to shoot one, two, maybe three arrows a year at Big Bull Elk. And that's more than most people get. Right? Most people get one shot in 10 years.

How in the world do you practice what's going to happen to your body? So getting on that line of indoor archery, I highly recommend people do that. And, you know, shoot it for score, put some pressure on yourself, right? There's a lot of money at stake with these things. And it's just, I can't find it anywhere else. But after doing Huberman's breathing technique, that was pretty cool this year. It was different. And I watched that. For some reason, I watched it right before I was on the line in Vegas.

So what is the specific thing that you do? So you breathe in through your nose to the top. And then you give it an extra. And you'll feel the tension, right? And then it's a long exhale through the mouth. And I'm sure it does the same thing that combat breathing does, that box breathing, but it worked better. And it's faster, right? Box breathing is, you know, you've got several four counts in there.

We may not have enough time for that. So I found it very valuable. It was really cool stuff. Are you surprised that you're the only one that's put this to archery, that you've mapped this out? And, you know, we're talking about who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people are involved in competitive archery and bow hunting. Are you surprised that the amount of time that people have been doing this and the amount of time that people have been dealing with it? As you said, there's like an entire industry that's built around target panic. But that no one has ever gotten to the root cause of what this is and recognized that not only is this applicable to archery, it's applicable to all high-pressure situations where you have to physically perform. Right. So I think it was the perfect storm of the jobs that I had, right? Again, the sounding

board of bow hunting, the job of, of tactical work. That's, that's not a, it's a, it's a rare combination. So I think I needed it the worst because I was not good. I was not good. I was not in a good place in shooting. It was, I needed it the worst. And that's what, that's what sent me down. I don't know why anybody didn't come up with that core problem. Cause when you talk about it and you, you talk about it to very smart people, they're like, okay, why didn't I think of that? I'm like, I don't know why you didn't think of that but you didn't and now it's copyrighted so but I mean thank God you did

you've changed the way I shoot and I know you've changed the way a lot of people shoot and I've talked to people that use your program and I've talked to like Peter Atiyah who's one of the most brilliant guys I know is 100% all in on what you've taught.

And not just with that, but also with pistol shooting. He's like, it's completely changed the way I shoot my pistol. Yeah. Completely changed my accuracy. The results have been phenomenal. And he's like, it's just so amazing that, you know, a person who, and I think it's very important that you experience so much failure because you had to come up with a method.

Yeah. You weren't like a natural. You weren't like a naturally calm guy who just like figures it out. You're just this stone cold guy that under pressure your heart never beats over 50 beats a minute. It's not you. So it's really kind of an amazing thing that sometimes you'll have these complex problems in these industries that are overwhelmed with people. It's not like there's a tiny amount of people doing it. But one person finds this doorway like, hey, guys, there's a way out of this.

We've got to go this way. And if enough people listen to you, again, it's one of the reasons why I want to talk to you about this. You're going to have a whole fucking show on archery yeah yes but no yeah because i think it applies to so many things in life the ability to stay in the moment and not lose your shit and have in your mind the very specific task you're trying to do and think about that only and do so with words, do so in your mind with words. So even though your fucking heart is racing, anxiety is at an all time high, there's all this adrenaline, you still can execute. You still can do the thing that you want to do. Yeah. It's powerful stuff, man. It's powerful stuff, man.

thing that you want to do. Yeah. It's powerful stuff, man. It's powerful stuff, man. It really, is it, does it feel shocking that you're the guy that's figured this out? I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to you right now, but so it's, uh, I don't know, man. I just, I tried everything, but it's the problem is I only tried. Trying is not strong enough to override your central nervous system. And that's what most people are looking for. They're just trying to do it. I'm trying to get better. I'm working on it. This is not something you work on.

Either you do it or you don't. We just had to figure out what the problem was, you know, and figure out it's not – it's simple, but it is not easy. Simple but not easy. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Do you find that that applies to other things in your life, that you've used these principles in other ways, in other high-pressure situations? Yeah. Well, coming into this studio and seeing how much culture you have, it's like, man, I've lived a very narrow life. So, I mean, my whole life has been about shooting. It's been about archery. Every job I've ever held has had to do with shooting. And it's, I use it, but I find decisions much easier now. I don't have to say, oh, gee, should

I do this? Should I do that? What's the problem, right? Let's find out what is the actual problem? What's the depth I need to get to in this problem? And then has anybody solved it before? And did they blueprint it, right? So figuring out problems in your life is so much easier now because people figured out most things, right? They just didn't happen to figure this one out. So it's, you know, good for me, I guess. But I use it, but I'm a very determined person.

I just didn't know where to put it. You know, I was, I've always been determined, but didn't know where to put it. So I have to show people, how do you manufacture determination? Like, how do you get enough determination to do your cold plunge every day? Right? That doesn't just happen. You decide to do that. So where is your determination come from? What is your why? And my why was that HR that I was in.

That was my why. I knew that was going to happen. I mean, it's probably going to happen. So you have to be ready for it. That's my why. And then it came to fruition and here we are. But people got to figure out their why on what they're doing. And once they do that, they'll figure it out. Have you talked to people that have applied this stuff to other things, that have told you, like, this helps me with other things? Yeah. So we're trying to figure—I mean, I'm constantly racking my brain, like, how can I have the most impact? I've had a lot of impact on the shooting world. How can I have impact most impact? I've had a lot of impact on the shooting world. How can I have impact on

other things? And I've had people tell me they use it for presentations. I've had them tell me they use it for closing sales. I've had them talk about, you know, just how they use it in business, maybe a CEO making a decision. Surgeons, I had a, like I said, I had a surgeon come to me and he said he completely changed how he instructs surgery after the signature test. And after learning, he already knew open and closed loop control systems, but doctors seem to learn that stuff very early on. And it's not used that much in medical fields. So it's way back in med school. So they don't really, it was something they just kind of stored away and they don't think about it anymore. But now when they have to teach somebody how to do something and they see the right movement, they got to, how do I keep that person

in that movement? But you got to know how to translate this. And it comes, you know, guides use it especially, right? Hunting guides. You've seen guides are like, shoot, shoot, shoot. And their clients are like, oh my God, paw. You know, they just spent $50,000 on a doll sheep hunt and the guide's yelling at them to shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot now, hurry up, right? What's the client's mind going to do? They're going to go open loop like crazy. I mean, guides deal with way over 50% miss rate in any field going to do. They're going to go open loop like crazy. I mean, guides deal with a way over 50% miss rate in any field that they do. So I do a guide school where I teach guides,

how do you transfer this to a client instantly, right? When they're losing their mind, how do you get their consciousness into the trigger press? Because that's where it needs to be. So it's just, it's amazing how to do this stuff. It is amazing. And I really feel like this could be expanded. Sure. That you could expand this to many different things and that you could come in and explain to almost through archery. You could explain this to people and they could apply it to other things in their life.

Because I find myself using it in other things where I'm in high pressure situations where I just talk myself through it and I stay in in my words and in my conscious mind and it makes a big difference yeah yeah there's there's lots of expansion to do and we're working on that right now why do you shoot a long bow because to me practice, I was like, what the F are you doing? You've abandoned technology in favor of this primitive device. Yeah. So basically concentration practice. It's so much harder to shoot a stick bow. Like I have at my disposal, you know, lots of people send bowdy bows, right? So I have a garage full of compounds. I shot my last critter with a compound in, I think, 2009. Actually, no, that's a lie. I shot a critter with a compound this past

season just for, it was a particular type of bow that I wanted to shoot a deer with. So, but compounds in general, I shoot so much that they don't give me the challenge that I'm looking for. As far as, you know, shooting, competing, I love to watch my arrow fly. It is mystical to me, like Ted Nugent, right? The mystical fly of the arrow, that's been real for me since I was seven years old. So for me to control a shot with a longbow is the ultimate for me. And like I said, I mean, I do lots of elk calling. I call them in close. It's a very effective weapon in my hands.

But a lot of people pick it up for the wrong reasons. They pick it up because they want the simplicity. They want the tradition. They want all that stuff. But then they lose any skill level that they have in their shot. And it's, you know, I originally started shooting barebow years and years ago with no sights because I could never put a pin on the target. So were you shooting a compound bow instinctively?

Yeah. Yeah, I know Nugent shot like that for a long time. And that's where I got it from. I watched his Spirit of the Wild VHS tape when I'm like 10 years old. I'm like, I want to be like Ted Nugent. So I started shooting a compound barebow and I couldn't put my sight on it anyways. You know, my mom bought me a Martin Lynx Magnum and I had sight pins on it. And I'm like, I can't even, you know, like, I can't even get these. Oh, it was a nightmare shooting with your fingers, you know, your brain's connected to your release. So it's just the ultimate challenge for me to shoot these longbows.

And I've harvested lots of critters now, and I'm constantly using them for concentration practice. I just love shooting stick bows, man. It's so cool. I know the people that do it, the people that shoot recurves and traditional longbows, they say that there's nothing like it. They say that once you develop accuracy with that, that it's like Aaron Schneider, who's an amazing shot. Sure. He shot for a few years. He only shot with a recurve bow because he wanted to show everybody that he could be just as effective as hunters are with, you know, traditional

with compound bows and high tech equipment that he could do it with old school. It's, it's a lot harder because I mean, imagine those bulls coming in, you can't draw it and hold it. Right. Right. So your timing of your draw is, is much more. How long can you hold your bow back? I can hold for about 30 seconds and shoot a controlled shot.

But I'm shaking like a dog, crapping tacks. What people need to understand is that a compound bow is very difficult to pull back in the beginning. But the nature of the cam system and the mechanics involved in it, it has a very high let off. So a lot of bows have like an 80% let off which means for the people just listening it's 80% less hard to hold it than it is to pull it yeah so when you're at full draw I can hold a full draw for a minute and a half two minutes and just and stay there as long as I'm not completely trying to be absolutely steady and aiming like I can hold a full draw and just relax my arm

and then lift it up and then go through my shot process and i'm not compromised right but you can't do that with no it just gets it just gets harder and harder yeah so your your body mechanics come into play and you know a holding position and all that stuff and then you know there's this there's this purity of traditional archery where people like they don't want to shoot with a mechanoreceptive trigger. Like, they don't want to shoot with a clicker. They don't want to shoot with— Yeah.

I've come up with all kinds of stuff, tab sear, grip sear, internal triggers, feather to nose, all this stuff. It's all in the online course. But people don't want to shoot it because they don't think it's pure, right? But they're really chasing the ghost. it's pure, right? But they're really chasing the ghost. Like I've come up with some new triggerless ways to shoot triggerless that are really cool where we incorporate like a safety system, but it's very difficult to shoot a stick bow just by allowing your subconscious to tell itself when to let go. You are constantly dealing with pre-ignition movements. Yeah, that's what I don't understand because I would think that with you,

when you want the surprise shot, when you're shooting traditionally, and I know you were using a thumb ring for a while like the Mongols do. There's something to that too, right, where it like passes over it? No. How does that work? I mean you're just basically holding on to that thing. You've got the ring that covers the pad of your thumb and your index finger goes over the top of it.

But you have to release that as well. You have to release it. So we use mechanoreceptive triggers like a grip sear. So a grip sear would be like you put your fingernail on the edge of the riser. So you draw back and aim, and then you start pressing that like you would roll your release. You just start pressing that. When that pops off of there, pops off the edge of your riser. You know you released.

The mechanoreceptors send the signal to your brain. Your brain sends the release motor program. So it's like pop, boop, off it goes. Then your surprise break happens. But you're still releasing it consciously. No. No. Your subconscious, it just sends that motor program, which is open loop.

But it can't get in the middle of that. It's too fast. When that pops, this thing releases to the point where the subconscious can't get in the middle. Why did the Mongols choose to shoot bows that way? So it was all based on mounted archery. So when you shoot, I mean, there are arrows on the other side of the bow. on mounted archery. So when you shoot, when you shoot, I mean, their arrows on the other side of the bow. So when you, when you're riding your horse with no hands, right, you've got your bow in one hand, you've got your arrow in the other, and those come together. They didn't go over the

bow. They brought them together and then they grab onto the arrow. So their arrow was on the right side of the bow, even if they were right-handed? Well, yeah. So they're right-handed. Arrow comes in this way. So then they grab onto the arrow. Remember, they're riding their horse, right? Uh-huh. So they're bouncing up and down, and then they grab onto it, and they push the arrow forward, and they knock it, and they put their thumb around it, and it's the pressure of their finger against the knock that holds it against the bow. So if they're shooting right-handed, is their arrow on the right side of the bow? Yes.

So it's not on the left side of the bow like a compound bow? It's on the right side of the bow. It's on the right side of the bow. Interesting. And it's the pressure of your finger that holds it against there so that when they're riding, they shoot. But why a thumb? Why can't you do that with detritional finger tabs? Because when you grab on it with your

fingers, it's... You're able to push and not put enough pressure on it to hold it in there. And it has to do with arrow paradox and it's all kinds of weird stuff. So when you'll see a horse-mounted archer, when they shoot, they'll actually flip their bow because those bows aren't cut to center. So their arrow is pointed way to the right. Like a right-handed shooter, their arrow is pointed way to the right because that bow,

if you notice, it's not narrowed at all. Or it's very narrow, I mean, just a little bit. So the width of the bow forces the arrow off to the side. So that arrow is pointed way out to the right. So you have to actually flip it so that the string comes behind the arrow so it shoots straight where you're looking. It's called katra. Oh, wow.

So there's, I mean, it's so cool how they did that stuff they are so much smarter than we are now well it's i mean it was out of necessity right because they're using them for war and for hunting yeah so but the the thumb thing had other people figured that out well it was mostly in the asian cultures and because it was mounted archery. The Japanese have kyudo archery, and that's what we know now is basically on the ground a martial art type of archery. But it was originally, I mean, the Yumi bow has got a short bottom limb so that it could maneuver over the horse. Oh. So all that stuff was all war-driven, and with your thumb, you can draw it back so much farther. I mean, you've got short little people that are with a 34-inch draw length.

Right. Because you have extra inches with your thumb. Right. I mean, when I shoot my thumb, my draw length is two and a half inches longer than with my fingers. So I can get into way better alignment. And, yeah, it's really cool stuff. And then the Mongols figured out a way they made, was it out of bone? Mm-hmm.

The thumb ring that they had? Ivory jade. They made it out of all kind of brass, whatever they had. So you can find, Jamie, so you can find Mongol archery thumb rings. Because- That is different than that. Oh, look at that guy. Yeah, you see how his bow is tilted that way?

Yes. So that, he has produced katra with that. So this man is shooting as he's see how his bow is tilted that way? Yes. So he has produced katra with that. So this man is shooting as he's- See his bow flip like that? As he's riding a horse. Now, the Comanche were particularly adept at shooting while on horseback as well. Did they use a similar method? They have.

There's been so many different holds on a string and it was all based on basically wartime and did they have to shoot off a horse or not. There was pinch draws. There was different ways of holding a bow upside down. There was, I don't know specifically what the Comanches did, but all kinds of different ways of holding the string. And it was all based on necessity or the length of the bow, you know, particular length of the bow. So it could be over a horse, shoot it mounted, shoot it, you know, like what we do now. We have blinds that are too short for stick bows, so we shoot shorter recurves, you know. So it's always fashioned to what the game is. The Mongols would shoot while the horse was in the air.

Like they would time the shot so that as the horse was leaping in the air, there was less impact. Yep. So that's when they would... Yep. That's when they would release the bow. Yep. It's all a feeling that comes up and you feel that impact and it becomes a timing thing.

And when you're... I mean, your subconscious can put so many things together. But when you take that style of archery and you put it into precision, it's very, it's pretty difficult. Do you find Mongol thumb ring? Because it's a very interesting thing when you see what it looks like. It's a thing that sits on your thumb that almost looks like the bottom of a spoon. Yeah. And so that's a leather one. If you have like custom thumb rings, like there's another one. Yeah.

So there's one, that bone one right there that you see there on the right-hand side. So that's what it looks like. Yep. So that sits on that ledge, which makes it illegal for competition. But you can hold- What's illegal in competition? You can't shoot rings in competition. Why is that?

Because they consider it a release aid. Because they've never shot one. They don't know how difficult it is, really. Interesting. So that hooks onto that ledge, and you can hold so much weight because the weight. I mean, some of these guys are shooting like 110-pound horse bows, and that's a leather one there. Are you allowed to use a leather one? Yeah.

So you can shoot a leather one. But you can't use one of those bone ones. Yeah, you can't that's a leather one there. Are you allowed to use a leather one? Yeah. So you can shoot a leather one. But you can't use one of those bone ones. Yeah, you can't use a bone one. Because of that little ledge where the string sits. Yep. Yep. Interesting. Yeah.

It's pretty cool. Yeah. And so you said it's all Asian cultures that had figured that out? Mostly. Yeah, mostly. And they're all different types. Like every culture had a different, like the Ottomans had a certain one. They had a thumb ring as well?

Yeah, the Ottomans, the Turks. I mean, it's all different types. Gosh, there's all kinds of them. Do we know the history of the thumb release? Do we know like when that started? I mean, they found it in tombs. Wow. It's old.

I mean, it's how archery started as far as I know. So I just, I love shooting that way. It's, it's really the sight picture that you get when your arrow's on the other side of the bow. And when you have a modern bow that's cut to center, you don't have to do the Katra thing. So when I draw back, like, so when I hunt with my thumb, I don't have to judge range because I'm looking at the arrow from the side, right? Like my eye is not 12 o'clock on the arrow. It's at 10 o'clock. So I pull it back to where the arrow is off to the side slightly. So you're looking right down the arrow shaft. So I'm looking down like at 10 o'clock. My eye is like at 10 o'clock on the shaft. So I can see the ramp from the side so I can see the pitch. And because the bow is cut past center, I can still put the point directly underneath the target.

It's like a triangulation-type aim. It's really cool, man. And are you thinking about it the same way you think about throwing a rock or a baseball? If you throw a baseball, you kind of know how, what the arc of the ball is going to be if you throw a lot of baseball. So you can kind of, like, throw it into that very specific spot. Right. But you're setting it. I mean, you're literally setting it on the trajectory path and you've seen it thousands of times. So

you can draw back and you're like, that's going to do it right there. And they just drop in. It's so cool. It's got to be something that you must practice more than a compound bow then, right? To get that feel of it. Yeah. Your mind picks up the trajectory path very quickly, and then the control is the same. You have to talk yourself through specific moments, but the anxiety is higher because your body is under more tension. Yeah. It's the ultimate in concentration practice as far as I know. Well, a lot of people use it as a method of meditation. Well, a lot of people use it as a method of meditation.

It's not, I mean, it is a martial art, but for a lot of people, there's something about, and I think this with a compound bow as well, there's something about the concentration that's required to shoot a great shot that clears your mind of everything else. It's almost like a cleaning, like a cleaning of the subconscious and all the stuff that's bothering you. Like you get out there, it frees your mind. Yeah. If you don't free your mind, then you're going to go open loop. So you're practicing clearing the slate every time, right? Every time that you knock another arrow, it's a whole not other thing, right? You've got to make the same decisions. You've got to do the same concentration, all that stuff. It's a fascinating thing, isn't it?

Yeah. I love it. It's such a fascinating thing where you take difficult tasks and use them as a vehicle for developing your concentration, your potential at other things. I mean, it's the same thing we do with cold plunging, right? I mean, but you don't have to make, you know, when you do your cold plunge, get out of that and shoot an arrow. Yeah.

Right? Like instantly. And then that's when, I mean, you're constantly bringing your mind back. You're shooting on one foot. You're shooting on balance balls. So you get practice in bringing your mind back. You're shooting on one foot. You're shooting on balance balls. So you get practice in bringing your mind back where it needs to be. And that's – a lot of people don't do that. They just shoot and shoot and shoot. And one of the things that bothers me is, you know, there's celebrities out there that will take instruction from somebody,

and I watch them shoot, and they punch the trigger their first time they're doing it. I'm like, oh God. So when someone's teaching someone how to shoot a bow, yeah, they always punch the trigger. And they hit the balloon or whatever. I'm like, ah, that was awesome that you did that and that you got into archery and you're understanding some of these things, but man, you're on a bad path, You're on a bad path, man. But the thing is, it's like it's very difficult for those people, you know, if you have like an elite bow hunter. Sure. To explain that to this beginner they're giving a bow to.

They just want them to feel good about hitting the target. And that's all good. That's all good stuff. It's just I analyze everybody's shots. I'm like, oh, God. Right. I know. stuff it's just i i analyze everybody's shots i'm like oh god right i know well it's it's just this thing where you know that this is going to lead down a very particular path that you've been and i've been and so many other people have been like you don't know what you're getting into here

you know i know guys that that are you know sort of uh aspiring bow, and I see them practice, and I watched them on Instagram, and I watched them practice. They're practicing their own failure. Fucking hammering it, buddy. And you're shooting 20 yards away, so you're getting into a reasonable range of success. I'm like, look at my group. I'm like, good job.

Good job, but we've got to talk. I don't want to dissuade people from that. Right. But we got to talk. Do you think that someone can be a trigger puncher, meaning command that trigger, but do so along with these principles where you're like drawing back and aiming, setting it in and just pull, pull, pull, pull, pull with your finger and have it go off. Yeah, but you wouldn't be punching it, right? You wouldn't be punching it. So if you can work an archery release, index finger trigger,

like you would a fine rifle trigger, then more power to you, right? It takes massive mental fortitude to do that. So we usually start people with the pulling where you hook in and then you pull your hand through the strap. And then once they gain control of that and they blueprint it, then we move them on to what we call the power squeeze, which is you link a couple of motor programs. So you actually, you're increasing expansion and you're moving your finger and it, it, one gives the other guidance and you're guiding them both through words or sounds and that's more accurate because the main thing with release aids that people need to realize is

no matter what the movement is it's got to be closed loop and it can't move the head of the release like if you are like let's say you're shooting your hinge and you're pulling on it but you're not actually rotating it you may be pulling but not rotating so you're shooting your hinge and you're pulling on it, but you're not actually rotating it. You may be pulling but not rotating, so you're just increasing pressure in the bow. That arrow is not going in the X. Right. So you have to be able to link those things up and know what the movement actually is that you need to do.

Lee Lukoski, he has a Carter Target 4, and he loops his hand around the trigger, and he makes a fist. That's how he does it. So instead of pulling the trigger or punching the trigger, he just squeezes his fist, and he knows it's going to go off eventually. That's an easy movement to evaluate, right? Like I said, I don't care what the movement is as long as it's closed loop and it doesn't move the head of the release. That's why we don't pull on hinges usually Usually we roll it with our fingers. That seems to be more accurate. With thumb buttons, there's all kinds of different movements you can do on a thumb button. As long as it's closed loop, then pick the one you can evaluate the best. Do you find that

you get a lot of resistance to this? Do you find that people are upset at some of the things you teach, like people that are very successful? Have you found any of that? Not so much because when I explain it to them, they're like, because I'm talking about exactly what they do and I know what's going through their head. And if they are, I know where their success is. Is it very high level? Like there's no question that you're going to do it? Or is there still some mystery in your shot? And it's easy for me to explain because of where I've come from. I've been in the trenches, right? I was not good at this stuff. I didn't, you know, I don't think there are any natural born shooters. I think there are natural born decision makers, right? And that's

where you get these determined people that make decisions and they can be successful in their, whatever their field is, especially, you know, if it's shooting or whatever. But if you don't have enough determination, and that's where young people fall off because they don't, I mean, they haven't seen the adversity, right? They don't have the perspective. They don't have the determination to actually override their own central nervous system. So you see lots of little kids that start out punching the trigger and their parents don't know what to do with them. And the kids just get frustrated and then they leave. And archery just lost another one.

Whereas if you get them in control, then archery becomes this really cool thing that you can do and you can be really good at, right? Maybe you're not good at other sports, but you can damn sure be good at archery if you know how to control your mind. Yeah. It doesn't require a lot of athleticism. No. It just requires very specific movements that almost anybody can get their body to do. Right. I think it's such a valuable tool for life. I really do. Yeah. I think archery in general, but concentrating on a specific thing that's difficult to do is so valuable for life.

Right. Because if you can do that, it makes other things that seemed to be difficult before you encounter the extreme difficulty of archery, makes them seem easier. Right. I think that's the key to life is to do difficult before you encounter the extreme difficulty of archery makes them seem easier. Right. I think that's the key to life is to do difficult things. Because if you do really difficult things, it makes other things less difficult. Yeah. And there's now, I mean, you see it on the internet everywhere, right? It's becoming an industry. Motivation is becoming an industry.

Yeah. It's a problem because a lot of these people are motivating people who haven't done jack shit. Yeah. That drives me nuts. When I see these people that are, I'm like, what have you done? Right. I want to see you under pressure. Let me show me what you've done when your fucking back is against the wall. Don't just tell people what they can do. I want to know what have you, if I hear motivation from David Goggins, I'm like, okay, I'm listening. Yeah. He's done it. I hear motivation from Cam Haynes. That's a guy who's talking from experience. That's what I want to hear. The problem with motivation is that there's a desire to be motivated.

So there's people that want to meet that desire, and some of them are just unqualified. It's like bad martial arts instruction. There's a lot of it out there because people want to learn how to fight. And someone's like, oh, I know what I'll do. I'll teach people how to do martial arts. but they don't even know what the fuck they're doing so you see fake martial arts techniques you have to research your instructors yes i mean if they haven't been there and done that and they if they haven't blueprinted it then it's a problem yeah how long did it take you to blueprint the Shot IQ system? Because it's a very comprehensive system. For people that don't know, if you go to Joel's website, shotiq.com, there's a whole series of things that you have to go through and steps. And I'm going to be honest, I didn't go through most of them and I kind of got the gist of it. But then talking to you when you made me do the handwriting thing, I'm like, okay, now I understand what he's saying. Like you have to be

very specific about each individual fine motor skill that's involved in this. And I'm like, okay, I get it. Yeah. I mean, it took me a lifetime. On December 14th, 2014 is when I realized the decisions that were made to make those two shots successful and conscious. And that's right after that I'm like, okay, how do I blueprint this? What decisions do I need to make? When do I need to make them? And how do I carry them out? How did you go about mapping it out and writing this program?

Because your program is so comprehensive. It seems like there was a lot of refining involved in this. about mapping it out and writing this program? Because your program is so comprehensive. It seems like there was a lot of refining involved in this. It basically, I mean, I shot those, it all comes back to those two shots because I'm like, okay, I said this at this moment. I said this at this moment. And I said this at this moment. And that was the mapping of the decisions. And then once you do that, then you just, how do you put this, you know, where do you need to put the concentration? You need to put it in shot activation movement. How do you put it there?

By talking, right? Or making a sound. Could you stop it? That's the test, right? You're not truly in closed loop if you couldn't stop it in the middle of it. And then what decision did I make? And that, those four questions basically encompass the blueprint. If you can answer those four questions, you know exactly how you did it. Then and only then can you repeat it.

So, and like, I put it in this analogy of the shot control house. So if you, if you are about to shoot a shot and you know what this moment feels like, you're like, oh, my God, this is going to happen, right? That bull's coming in and it just turns broadside or you're standing on the line of baggage like, okay, this is it. You are now on the porch of the shot control house, but you don't get inside because the door is closed. Your shot process lives inside the house. And so there you are on the porch. How do I get the door open? You got to decide, right? Decisions open doors in the shot control house. So I say to myself, I'm shooting this shot with control no matter what. Because it used to be, I'm going

to shoot this shot perfectly or not at all. But that was a bailout. Remember the letdown thing, right? That was a bailout. That gave me that option of letting down. I don't say that anymore. Now it's, I'm shooting this shot with control no matter what, because no matter what is a determined statement that we use in everyday speech. Yeah? So I'm shooting the shot with control no matter what. Door opens, right? And then you drawing your bow back as you stepping through the door.

The first room that you walk into is the aiming room. And everybody wants to stay in there. That's where all your buddies are, right? Like, Hey Joe, what's up? Stay in here with us, right? There's all kinds of crate, there's disco balls and all kinds of things going on in there. And you're like, man, this is pretty cool. I think I'll just have a seat on the couch. And that's what most people do is they sit on the couch in there and they never get out of the aiming room. So what I want people to do is get your aim done quickly. Don't be bringing your pin up from the bottom or down from the top. You shouldn't be able to tell me what position or what direction your pin comes from. Just stick

the damn thing on the target and then watch it to keep it. So don't linger in the aiming room, right? Don't look at the pictures on the wall. Don't sit on the couch. Don't talk to anybody in there. Just put on the blinders and walk through the room. Why watch it to keep it? Because that's how visual proprioception works, right? You watch the system and it will automatically center itself. So you just watch the picture and it will stay in the middle. Yes, it's going to move around, but whichever way it moves, its next movement is always back to the center, right? So you don't need to talk to anybody in the aiming room. That's going to happen, right? Just walk through it. So you, on a hinge release, you rolling to the click, right? That is you closing the door. In fact, that click that it makes is not the click on the release. That's the click of you closing the door on the aiming room, right? So now you're out

of that room. You don't have control of what happens in that room, but man, it sounded so fun in there, right? So your mind wants to go back in there and check on it. So you don't let it go back in there. You lock that door with here I go, right? But you're still looking at where you want to hit. Sure. Oh yeah. You keep watching the picture. It's like you're looking in the aiming room, but you're not in the room anymore. You're looking through the window, right? You're keeping an eye on things in there, but you don't really have control of what goes on in that room anymore. So you lock the door with here I go. Here I go also opens the door on the concentration room, right? But here's the problem. The concentration room is on fire. How much determination would it take for you to walk into a room that's on fire,

knowing that you're going to get burnt? For most people, it takes a loved one in that room, right? The task is no different. Walking into the room is no different. The task itself is the same, but your determination level is different, right? You have a loved one in that room. Now, your determination to get in there and save that person is through the roof, right? That's the determination that has to be manufactured for you to walk into the concentration room, right? And when you walk in there, here's the other bad part about it. You're getting burnt constantly. When's this thing going to go off? Oh my God, it's a seven by seven. I'm going to be a hero. Cam Haynes is watching me,

thing going to go off? Oh my God, it's a seven by seven. I'm going to be a hero. Cam Haynes is watching me, right? You've got all these thoughts that are coming in and you can only walk through that room slow enough you could stop your step anywhere within it all the time you're getting burnt, right? So that's why you have to be the loudest one in the room because to do that, to walk through a room slowly while you're getting burnt, you would have to concentrate on your movement, right? And that's, you would have to concentrate on your movement, right? And that's where you got to talk yourself through your walking. That's you rolling through that hinge, right? Pull, pull, or roll, or whatever you say to yourself to direct your concentration. So there you are, and you're working through that, getting burnt the whole time, but you're the loudest one in the room, and pop, it breaks, that's you jumping out the back door of the house, right? When you knock another arrow, you got to walk around to the front yard

and you got to step up on the porch again, right? All the doors close in the house. So you got to make the same decision to get through the door. But what I want for people is I want them to kick everybody out of the aiming room, right? Because the more you do it, the more that you just put your pin on it, done with it. The more you do that, the more you walk through that aiming room, the less and less people there are, right? And then all the pictures come off the wall, all the furniture's gone, right? It becomes a blank room. You still have to walk through it, but there's no distractions in there anymore, right? And then ultimately what I want you to do is I want you to blow the door off, the front door. I want you to put an explosive charge on that sucker and turn it into splinters.

Because when I shoot in front of you, I don't have to go, okay, I'm going to shoot this shot with control no matter what. Because that's a principle by which I live, right? I don't have a front door on my shot control house. I step right up on the porch and I walk right in. That's where I want people to be. There is no mystery to this house anymore. And it's important to do this every time you practice. Yeah. It's not just something you do in the moment. Like, oh, I got to remember what the steps are.

No. You have to do this when you're practicing. You practice making decisions. You practice your concentration, right? And you practice the true skills of precision shooting. You don't just practice your shooting. You're practicing your concentration through shooting. Well, I want to thank you for being here. And I want to tell you that what you've done has been very, it's been very helpful to me and many, many other people. And I really do believe that it translates to

other things in life. It's so important to understand what's going on in your mind and how your mind is trying to fuck you over. Yeah. Just years of evolution and just anxiety. It's all trying to fuck you over, but you can avert that and you can bypass it. Yep, for sure. Thank you very much, brother. I really appreciate it.

ShotIQ.com is your website. And what is your, what's your Instagram again? It's JoelTurner underscore ShotIQ. All right. Yeah, thanks, brother. Appreciate you, man. Bye, everybody.