Todd Louis Green and the modern approach to using your sights

[TCinVA]

A question though, with this method in mind, what’s the ideal (maybe that’s not the right word) shape/size for a front sight? Just something bright enough to catch your attention as being within or not within the window of the rear sight?

I ask because I’m finding the thick, painted front sight on my brig tac easier to pick up in general than a small fiber optic front sight, but I lose precision and a sense of where that sight is within the window, if that makes sense.

There isn't going to be a single ideal answer for everybody on an "ideal" front sight because we each see the world through bespoke hardware. I can't tell you what works best for you.

Generally sights like the Ameriglo HD's are fairly large and have bright attention grabbing colors on the front of them so you can pick them up "quickly"...which usually means still see them if you are target focused.

That big front sight isn't going to be ideal if you are chasing X ring hits at 25 because it's too wide and that big yellow ball that works great when you're target focused at 5 is going to be a distraction from seeing the very tip of the front sight.

Something like the JohnO front sight modification on a good set of sights like Heinies or Dawsons is a good compromise between the need for visibility and precision:

https://pistol-training.com/articles...y-front-sight/

[TCinVA]

What’s it mean when you look through the window, at you target, completely target focused and you don’t see any sights?

If your gun doesn't entirely disappear from view then your actual vision is fine and you have to stop completely ignoring your sights. You don't have to death stare them to see whether or not they are aligned well enough for most shots you are going to take.

If you can look at a light switch and put the tip of your thumb on that light switch without changing focus, you can see your sights.

If I focus back on the sights they are in perfect alignment but if I’m 100% target focused my mind blocks out the sights totally and doesn’t even give me a blur.

That's why you look at the target THROUGH the rear sight window. You don't just look at the target. I have to see what I want to hit through that window...which means I have to interrupt my eyeline with the sights.

And it's not important to have a hard focus on the target looking through your rear sight window, either. Getting into target focus, front sight focus, mid focus and all that esoteric stuff makes things complicated which is the exact opposite of what we're trying to accomplish here. This doesn't come up in live fire because the exercises that accompany the instruction give people actual trigger time working on the concepts and that resolves questions. I don't run a class so much as I run a labratory where clients conduct experiments. I know what the answers to the experiments are but that's not the point...it works better when you do the experiment. You see it, you do it, you learn it. I'm just pointing you in the general direction.

Take a page out of Dave Spaulding's book and get a colored self-adhesive 4x6" shipping label. Put it on some sort of backer with a contrasting color (preferably brown cardboard) at 5 yards. Look at the target through your rear sight and you're going to see it's full of whatever color you picked. If your front sight is somewhere in that window surrounded by a sea of that color, press the trigger. Guess what? You'll hit it. Then walk back a yard and repeat. Keep that up until your rear sight window is no longer completely filled with that color and you can see the backer surrounding the intended target through the rear window. Then you have to start paying more attention to your front sight. The further you walk back, the more focus you're going to need on your sights to make the hit.

We get really caught up in the visual aspect of shooting because we are visually directed creatures and it's the only part of shooting we can see. Because of that we want to make it a lot more complicated than it really is.

[Warped Mindless]

If your gun doesn't entirely disappear from view then your actual vision is fine and you have to stop completely ignoring your sights. You don't have to death stare them to see whether or not they are aligned well enough for most shots you are going to take.

If you can look at a light switch and put the tip of your thumb on that light switch without changing focus, you can see your sights.



That's why you look at the target THROUGH the rear sight window. You don't just look at the target. I have to see what I want to hit through that window...which means I have to interrupt my eyeline with the sights.

And it's not important to have a hard focus on the target looking through your rear sight window, either. Getting into target focus, front sight focus, mid focus and all that esoteric stuff makes things complicated which is the exact opposite of what we're trying to accomplish here. This doesn't come up in live fire because the exercises that accompany the instruction give people actual trigger time working on the concepts and that resolves questions. I don't run a class so much as I run a labratory where clients conduct experiments. I know what the answers to the experiments are but that's not the point...it works better when you do the experiment.

Take a page out of Dave Spaulding's book and get a colored self-adhesive 4x6" shipping label. Put it on some sort of backer with a contrasting color at 5 yards. Look at the target through your rear sight and you're going to see it's full of whatever color you picked. If your front sight is somewhere in that window surrounded by a sea of that color, press the trigger. Guess what? You'll hit it. Then walk back a yard and repeat. Keep that up until your rear sight window is no longer completely filled with that color and you can see the backer surrounding the intended target through the rear window. Then you have to start paying more attention to your front sight. The further you walk back, the more focus you're going to need on your sights to make the hit.

We get really caught up in the visual aspect of shooting because we are visually directed creatures and it's the only part of shooting we can see. Because of that we want to make it a lot more complicated than it really is.

That makes perfect sense. Thank you!

[JCN]

The elevated front sight presentation works, but it's not optimal. And it's contra-indicated if someone is using a dot as their primary aiming reference.

Edit - This thread gives me old school Pistol-Forum.com vibes and I'm loving every minute of it.

I'm member number 4. Craig is member number 10. Fuckin' OG.

Oh thank god you clarified that you weren’t advocated that kind of draw. I almost had an aneurysm rupture watching the wobbly muzzle flag up and down!

[JCN]

I went to a class with Tim Herron as well and fully agree that his class was worth that tidbit about what I kinda came to understand as "rear sight focus"

I took an autocross class with Tim probably 15 years ago before he started pistols in earnest. He has always been good at finding the efficiency in mechanics.

[TCinVA]

Speaking of targets, a good target to work on this with is a target JDC designed specifically to go along with this block of instruction:

https://www.nationaltarget.com/product/jdc-modulation/

I use that to teach these concepts as a part of "Changing Gears". I start folks at 3 or 5 yards depending on what their skills look like. At 5 yards the C target is bigger than almost everybody's front sight window. The B target is just big enough that it takes up almost all of the rear sight window, but you can probably still see some tan. And the A target is small enough so that you should see it surrounded by the background color. (It's a hair over an inch in size)

The goal of the training is that what you are seeing through your rear window calls the shot for you. If it's bigger than your rear sight window and your front sight is in there, you should already be shooting. If it's kind of on the border line then you just make sure your front sight isn't just barely in the window and go. If it's so small it fits inside the rear window with margin visible around the border then put your front sight on it and work your trigger carefully/precisely. Our grip doesn't change, but the refinement we need in sights and trigger does as the targets get smaller in our rear sight window.

The goal is to give folks experience working with each target size individually, and then in varying sequences so they have to "change gears" on the fly. Ultimately my goal is that they can shoot two in each from the ready in 5 seconds or less with a varied cadence evident on each different target.

[JCN]

Get what you want to hit in the rear window, passively see that the front sight is in the window and go. Had he not lost his ability to train and experiment due to cancer, Todd would have ended up teaching that exact methodology because once you noodle on it you realize it's really the only way that works the way we want it to regardless of what's on top of the gun.

The way I evolved to it was: instead of thinking of the back plate or front sight or whatever…

I want the muzzle pointed at the bad guy or target as soon as possible and I don’t want that muzzle to leave the target.


The sights are there to help me confirm it.

But my mechanics are all built around getting muzzle on target with as little wobble as possible once it gets to the sight confirmation.

Think if it this way.

Even if I closed my eyes, I should STILL be able to get on target as soon as possible. Which means muzzle on target as soon as possible. Which obviates waving the muzzle all over the place.

I don’t have to track the front sight or slide or dot or whatever.

It’s my index that brings the gun / muzzle to target and vision confirms with sight.

[JCN]

@TCinVA

A couple of drills for muzzle / index training include full length mirrors or in the absence of that, a boresight laser.

Get muzzle up on target early and refine vision.

[BehindBlueI's]

If your gun doesn't entirely disappear from view then your actual vision is fine and you have to stop completely ignoring your sights. You don't have to death stare them to see whether or not they are aligned well enough for most shots you are going to take.

If you can look at a light switch and put the tip of your thumb on that light switch without changing focus, you can see your sights.



That's why you look at the target THROUGH the rear sight window. You don't just look at the target. I have to see what I want to hit through that window...which means I have to interrupt my eyeline with the sights.

So I've went to the flat presentation quite a bit ago when I started working with dots, but I have to disagree with your light switch analogy for the subset of people with colorblindness. Depending on the color of the target, the rear sight, and the front sight there are times when one sight or the other is completely invisible to me because I can't see the contrast of the edges. Imagine a black circle hovering in front of a larger black circle. At an angle, you'd see both, but straight on you can only see one big black circle. Similarly, if a yellow and a red shape overlap you can see where one ends and the other begins, which is on top, etc. Two black shapes and it's just one big black shape. I think it's tough to explain to someone with normal vision, it's not like I see in black and white or anything, but I can't process where the edges are.

So, like this test circle. I can look at any individual given dot of color and tell you what color it is, but I can't see the number inside. I know there *is* a number, because that's how the test works. If I spent the time to graph it out and put an "X" on one color at a time I could eventually draw the number, but I can't just look at it and see it.



The nose up presentation helped me because my eye could see the movement and the change, just like the analogy of shifting the two black circles' angle above. That whole Jurassic Park "they only see movement" thing? Depending on the lighting and the colors, that's me.

Hence my preference for really high viz front sights in non-nature occurring colors.

(For anyone else who suspects they may have similar issues, it's not really uncommon for males to have some level of colorblindness, but it tends to be minor. https://colormax.org/color-blind-test/ is where I got that image from. I can see #3 in the first row, none of the second row, and the final 3 in the bottom row)

[WDR]

Lots to unpack in this thread... I'm glad I helped get the thread drift started that brought us here. I'm gonna have to chew on this a bit, but I wanted to thank @TCinVA again for humoring all of us.