Very cold day at Northampton with the great Todd Bender.

[WelshKen]

 

[WelshKen]

Gone from a small photo to a very large one..  :nyam:

 

[Docterduck]

Cheers!!

 

[WelshKen]

Don't tell me your the 'real' Todd Bender, Docterduck!!!!  :nyam:

 

[Skeetfreak]

Ken,

So how did you get on with your day?

Impressions of the coaching, things you learnt, How did you cope with the increase to NSSA speed?

 

[WelshKen]

Just standard National skeet speeds I'm afraid skeetfreak (or I just couldn't see the difference)..

The weather was terrible with sleety snow all day which didn't help with the enthusiasm or confidence.

The high bird was diving to the ground and the low resembled something between a teal and a looper..

But Todd was brilliant, and did his very best to help us cope with the conditions, whilst still teaching us a great deal..

He could have gone on all day without stopping, but the cold really affected us which meant frequent breaks to warm up (he wouldn't stop unless we insisted on it)..  

What did I learn? That virtually everything I did before was wrong.. .

He has an amusing way of getting his point across at times, and several times offered us a kick up the backside when we weren't listening.. :nyam:

Would I do it again, yes if I could afford to do so, and yes if I could be promised nice weather (highly unlikely in March I know)..

 

[Skeetfreak]

Ken,

Have to admit think our group got lucky with the weather and picked the right day with the Saturday – overcast but still and not too cold. Still required the thermals though!

So how did it go.....

It was an early rise at 6:30am to be on the ground for 8:15am and meet up with Todd. Now this was my third / fourth clinic with him so i kind of knew the drill but none the less he still took the time to talk to me a little about what i wanted from the day and take a look at the basic fit of my new gun since we last worked together. Just about 9am we were on the range and doing the usual format of a round to warm up and break the ice / get moving.

Our group consisted of me, my best mate who has shot quite a bit and had previous clinics also. Then my best mate’s son who has just started shooting skeet and a guy who has been shooting around 10months but is skeet focussed so quite a nice balance of shooters. I had chosen to shoot the 20 gauge tubes in my gun to add weight and reduce recoil over the day as i knew it was going to be a long one. The other three had all opted for 12 gauge but with 24gram loads.

It started great – although no-one straight the opening round. My best mate’s son shot a new PB (23) which he was really pleased with. It quickly became apparent that most of us had the basics down and we would be wasting time going through the drills for “lower body shooting” so we pretty much moved onto the “middle stations” and it quickly became a doubles clinic but working through stations 2 – 6.

We were also shooting the targets at NSSA speed (range 3 @ Northampton) so the challenge of doubles was that little bit harder than usual. This however gave really nice target flights and great consistency and credit has to go to Northampton SG – they kept the traps filled and we had hardly any “No Birds” all day which was great.

Todd tried his usual tricks of “No Pulls” and such like to make sure you were paying attention and not doing anything without looking at the target good and proper. The latter part of the day was turned over to us... what did we want to shoot? This is when we began to focus on bits that we felt needed further work.... some station 8 was one request, target specific type stuff.

I will not bore you with the details but suffice to say i have a little list of three or four things i need to either work on or be aware of in my practice and competition shooting. Came away with minor tweaks and changes that will get my scores back to where they were and see my averages climb over the season.  His ability to see and diagnose what is going on in a situation is really good and then getting you to go backwards through your mistake and learn to self analyse why a target didn’t break giving you a tool to use yourself.

Ended up around 4pm where i just couldn’t do anymore and decided to call it a day due to fatigue after 13 rounds actually shot, plus COUNTLESS listening, watching others targets etc had left me spent. I’m not ashamed to admit i was the first to pack up – but i will apologise to those i saw in the clubhouse after, when i was having an “unwind beer” and a chat with the people on my clinic, for being so rude and hardly talking to them but i was not capable – just too damn tired and my brain was in information overload.

But most of all – i had a great day and got to spend all day shooting with my best mate and his son, made a new friend in the fourth person on our day, under the guidance of one of the top skeet shooters in the world. I would not hesitate in taking another clinic simply due to this, never mind the benefits of what you can learn on the day. Still comes highly recommended from me!

You are right though i much prefer the idea of doing it in the warm..... to me the ideal image of NSSA Skeet is sun on your back, shorts & T Shirt, ear plugs, glasses, shell pouch and away you go..... not quite the reality of UK shooting!!

 

[WelshKen]

That pretty much sums up our day as well, and I shot exactly the same amount of shells as you..

We were there on Saturday as well, and watched you for a while before shooting a couple of rounds on layout one.

Couldn't travel on the day, as it's a 4 1/2 hour trip for me, so stayed at the Holiday Inn in Northampton on Saturday night.

We also shot layout 3 on Sunday, and I honestly couldn't see any difference in target speed, but mind you, it was very windy so that might have masked their proper speed.

 

[sibaldib]

Great write up Skeetfreak

 

[Docterduck]

Don't tell me your the 'real' Todd Bender, Docterduck!!!!  :nyam:

Nope...just buds from his lessons...although known to share some stories over a couple or three.