EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,123 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- JRJoe Rogan
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- JTJoel Turner
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) And we're on. What's up, Joel? How are you?
- JTJoel Turner
How are you?
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you, brother.
- JTJoel Turner
I'm good. Thanks for having me, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm very happy to talk to you, because, uh, you know, I think that w- what you teach applies to not just archery, but it applies to life, it 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-
- JTJoel Turner
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and it's the anxiety of the shot.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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, "Wh- wh- what? You're gonna just talk about archery shots?"
- JTJoel Turner
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I think this applies to life.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What you've done with your- your shot IQ system, and, so let me j- explain to people that don't understand this. Um, bow hunting and archery, especially competitive archery, it's- 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-
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- JTJoel Turner
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because they're like, "Oh!"
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they can't keep their shit together.
- JTJoel Turner
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- JTJoel Turner
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... at this moment of anticipation.
- JTJoel Turner
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I think the success speaks for itself. Your son, who's an incredible archer-
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... who's been taught by you, using your methods, is now, what is he? Number one in the world?
- JTJoel Turner
Well, I-
- 15:00 – 30:00
Yeah. …
- JTJoel Turner
that was on a sniper crew for a neighboring agency, he was their ER doc, 'cause 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, "Whew, standby, doc. That's a big word," right? "I gotta 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?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JTJoel Turner
Get yourself out of the gutter type stuff. But what I took it as is, it was the route to concentration. 'Cause what you say is what you think, and I needed people to think and to concentrate on a specific movement.
- JRJoe Rogan
Thank you. (laughs)
- JTJoel Turner
And when you, the- what I'm, what I'm asking people to do is just shy of impossible. Like, you're- 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're all, they tell me, "Well, you have to focus. You have to block things out. You have to do this, do that." But-
- JRJoe Rogan
How? Right.
- JTJoel Turner
... they never tell me how to do it. I'm like, "Yes, that, that is concentration for you, but how do you do it? Especially, how do you do it when somebody's 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: An Instructor's Guide, and it had kind of the sequence of, 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, he was a kinesthesiologist or almost. He was a big martial arts guy, knew movements, knew how to train movements, and, 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, I need to know what's right then." So he goes, "You gotta take my class." I'm like, "Okay. Sign me up." (laughs) 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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Let's explain open and c- and closed-
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... loop systems.
- JTJoel Turner
So open and closed loop, so open loop is where, that's any- it's a, 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 d- they do the same thing with shooting, but in shooting, the only thing you're getting more efficient at is bracing you for recoil.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JTJoel Turner
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's one of the onl- shooting is one of the only things the more you do it, the worse you get. Especially in archery.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you're doing it wrong.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah. It, the, if you just follow the natural path of the human mind in learning, you're gonna get worse, because you're gonna 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, "Uh, I didn't control that one." And then it's like, "Well, I controlled about 50% of them." Right? And then it just gets worse and worse. So your mind open loop means your brain ... Now, Huberman's gonna kill me for this, because this is so simplistic, right? (laughs) And he, 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 muscle gr- or the, the motor program's usually too fast for you to gain feedback in it. Like shooting a basketball, swinging a golf club, right? Those are all movements that, 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 'cause 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 gonna 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 gotta know, how do you concentrate, right? Well, you gotta talk yourself through it. And you gotta know what decisions you need to make at what moments in the shot, because there are moments in the shot when autopilot is gonna try to take it, right? And that's what happened to me for 13 years in my bowhunting career. From 14 to 27, I was going completely automatic, right? I was so engulfed in trying to, 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, 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, 'cause 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 gonna happen." He's like, "I don't think so." I'm like, "Well, let's go to the range." Right? So we go to the range and he d- the same thing that everybody else did. He couldn't get himself to go closed loop, 'cause he just kept trying to do it.
- JRJoe Rogan
And he understood this.
- JTJoel Turner
He understood it, but he didn't understand the mental portion of it. So 'cause everything that he'd ever taught was basically closed loop to start with, 'cause it was always martial arts movements.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JTJoel Turner
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, that's why we use shooting for such concentration practice, 'cause there's nothing like it. There's really nothing like it.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, I'm glad you brought up martial arts, 'cause martial arts is closed loop when you're learning it.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah, absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then open loop in application.
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you learn all these movements and then in the fight, things just happen.
- JTJoel Turner
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
You just throw the kick and you don't even know what's happening-
- JTJoel Turner
Right. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and it's happening, and you're, you're s- you're st- staying in this sort of, like, empty zen mind space-
- JTJoel Turner
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... where you're just trying to, like, utilize the techniques and know you know what to do.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Anxiety. …
- JTJoel Turner
way. My buddy gives me numbers, he says, "41." I'm like, "At 41, I know I gotta put my point 18 inches over that bull's back."And so I remember, I'm on my knees, I'm like, (sighs) "I'm shooting this shot perfectly or I ain't gonna 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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Anxiety.
- JTJoel Turner
I'm like, "Nah. I'm gonna do this right." And I got the full draw, I put that point 18 inches over his back. Here I go. Keep pulling, keep pulling, keep pulling. Click. Poom. 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 that, that ... an- sitting in that tree stand in, in December of 2014, that's when I said, "I gotta 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 a whatever it was." You know, I'm still a cop at that point and I'm like, "I'm gonna do it right, no matter what. No matter what."
- JRJoe Rogan
And so, what was the process of figuring out a repeatable blueprint?
- JTJoel Turner
Okay. The blueprint was ... So I started thinking about this so that I could actually blueprint these things and 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?" 'Cause all the stuff up to here I go is pretty much the set-up 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 gonna cause this explosion? Where do I need to put my concentration? It's gotta 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, or a 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've 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've 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. Right? So what am I thinking after here I go? What am I saying 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? 'Cause it all only lasts for one shot, and then your mind completely resets it. It's like, "I didn't like that. You surprised me with an explosion. (laughs) 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, this is why I think this is important and this applies to so many things in life, 'cause so many movements and things and actions in life are ... they're, they're sort of powered by anxiety.
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're powered by, like, "Yuh."
- JTJoel Turner
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, you just, like, you spaz out because you're not in the moment. You're just r- r- reacting.
- JTJoel Turner
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, relax the shoulder, draw, pull, pull, pull, release. And when it releases, I'm in control of the whole thing.
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
From top ... And there's just all these l- like ... these anxiety-driven thoughts that just, "Get it out!"
- JTJoel Turner
Right. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"Go! Just do this. He's gonna get away."
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Something's gonna happen. You're gonna miss."
- JTJoel Turner
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
But if you stay in your own thought process-
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and talk to yourself, so like, when I'm at full draw on an animal, I'm like, "Pull, pull, pull, pop," all I'm thinking of is these mechanics of making that shot release.
- JTJoel Turner
Yup.
- JRJoe Rogan
Instead of all that other shit, by forcing myself to say, "Pull, pull, pull," at the final things as ... I eliminate-
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm. Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... any possibility of shit going wrong, because all I'm thinking of is those words.
- JTJoel Turner
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
All I'm thinking of is that movement and those words, and it's magic.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JTJoel Turner
a little bit, a little bit, and their mind's just making them a little bit more efficient, more efficient. And it's, they're practicing this efficiency. They're f- 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 (snaps fingers) 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, 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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JTJoel Turner
Because what am I? I'm just a, 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, and then they meet Bodie in the shoot off and Bodie's gonna shoot his process no matter what, right? So it's, it's really cool to see that and to know like if you put Bodie on a critter, it is done for 'cause Bodie is a, he's stone cold, man. It's pretty cool.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the fact that you've trained him since he was a young boy at this-
- JTJoel Turner
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and this has been the way he's learned archery-
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... like his, with his age, at your understanding of it, it all came about really at the perfect time.
- JTJoel Turner
It was the per- it was the perfect storm. And I, you know, Bodie started shooting a bow at ten-and-a-half-months-old.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JTJoel Turner
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 ten-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 he... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- JTJoel Turner
At three years old, that's what his, that's all his mind knows-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JTJoel Turner
... is to brace for impact, right? So at three, I bought him a tension-activated release. And what that did... Just like me in the academy, I fixed a mental problem with mechanical means. So at that age, you know, what does a three-year-old have for determination decision-making skills? Nothing, right? So even up into e- 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 Bodie 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 this speech in so many times that I didn't sit Bodie 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." (laughs) To the point where he would go to the range, little tiny kid, right? And he'd look up at somebody, "Ooh, you punched that one." (laughs) Like, "Boy, that guy's way bigger than your old man, so let's just-"
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JTJoel Turner
"... hear, hear on that," right?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JTJoel Turner
So, (laughs) 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. When 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. S- People, m- 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, on the, you know, 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 gonna be in focus, but they are so infatuated with it. That's why they weight their bow up so much.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JTJoel Turner
They can't step away from it. And certain personalities have a difficult time stepping away from the aim. They wanna 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you know where you wanna hit-
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and just concentrate on that spot.
- JTJoel Turner
Just watch it. Don't concentrate on it. If you put mental concentration into it, like if you're thinking about it, like, "Oh, gotta, gotta get it right now," it's never gonna happen because you're gonna 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
The weird thing about it is it's so counterintuitive to not worry about your pin moving around-
- JTJoel Turner
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause your pin is going to move.
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's impossible to be perfectly still-
- 1:00:00 – 1:13:52
Nothing. …
- JTJoel Turner
You know, we just use archery 'cause, like you said, there's nothing like it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nothing.
- JTJoel Turner
It is such a crazy thing to be able to control a movement that causes an explosion.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's fascinating to me is it's made my rifle shooting so much better.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, I'm so confident with a rifle.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
When I w-... will zoom in on something with a rifle, and I'm looking down that scope-
- JTJoel Turner
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and I've got that, 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.
- JTJoel Turner
Oh, sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, if I'm prone and I'm, like, laying it-
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the rifle over my backpack.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And y- y- you know, you have-
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... all these points of contact.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so much easier.
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so, it's so different in that th- the difficulty of archery, it, it, it, it adv-... enhances and educates-... all these different aspects of your life when it comes to dealing with stressful, high-pressure situations.
- JTJoel Turner
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
It makes you stay in the moment, 'cause you have to stay in the moment in standup comedy too.
- JTJoel Turner
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
When you're, when you're doing standup comedy, you can't think like-
- JTJoel Turner
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... "Oh, I hope they laugh at this next one. Oh, I hope I don't fuck this joke up."
- JTJoel Turner
(laughs) Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Oh, I might be losing the crowd."
Episode duration: 2:28:09
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