PDA

View Full Version : Eye Dominance: If your right eye offends thee...



Spartacus
03-09-2012, 03:00 PM
maybe it's not really your right eye but your left eye and you just can't tell.

I have tried finding my dominant eye using the triangular hand method. I pop my hands up in front of me eyes, quickly, like when an optometrist is flipping potential lenses during an eye exam (Which is better? Now...or now. Now...or now.) When I do this I end up with my triangle not lined up with either eye.

If I do it slowly I end up having time to line up the triangle with one or the other eyes. Sometimes right, sometimes left.

I want to start shooting using both eyes but this eye dominance thing is killing me.:mad:

Is it possible to not have a dominant eye?

JeffJ
03-09-2012, 03:01 PM
Very rare, but possible

JConn
03-09-2012, 06:12 PM
Are you saying you have a dominant eye and an other-dominant eye? :eek:

Leozinho
03-09-2012, 06:19 PM
maybe it's not really your right eye but your left eye and you just can't tell.

I have tried finding my dominant eye using the triangular hand method. I pop my hands up in front of me eyes, quickly, like when an optometrist is flipping potential lenses during an eye exam (Which is better? Now...or now. Now...or now.) When I do this I end up with my triangle not lined up with either eye.

If I do it slowly I end up having time to line up the triangle with one or the other eyes. Sometimes right, sometimes left.

I want to start shooting using both eyes but this eye dominance thing is killing me.:mad:

Is it possible to not have a dominant eye?

Doesn't sound like you are doing it right. A more fool-proof method: Make a triangle at arms length. Look through triangle to distant object. Bring triangle into face without ever losing sight of distant object. The eye your hand ends up in front of is your dominant eye. Try it again and deliberate bring triangle to other eye. You will likely lose sight of distant object for a split second.

But you can train an eye to be more dominant.

JeffJ
03-09-2012, 06:36 PM
Try pointing at something across the room, a lightswitch works well, with both eyes open. Then close your left eye - it looks like you're still pointing at the light switch, you are right eye dominant - if it "jumps" then you are left eye dominant. If you are truly both eye dominant you can probably train one eye to "take over" while shooting by using some sort of occlusion on the other eye for a while and then gradually making the occlusion smaller until you don't need it.

Spartacus
03-09-2012, 06:38 PM
Doesn't sound like you are doing it right. A more fool-proof method: Make a triangle at arms length. Look through triangle to distant object. Bring triangle into face without ever losing sight of distant object. The eye your hand ends up in front of is your dominant eye. Try it again and deliberate bring triangle to other eye. You will likely lose sight of distant object for a split second.

But you can train an eye to be more dominant.

Well, I'll be. That seemed to work. Appears I'm left eye dominant, right handed shooter.

You have no idea, how much I appreciate this. My next plan was to get in my car, try the triangle hands on a bridge abuttment, and if it didn't work...drive into the bridge abuttment. This has been frustrating me for at least a couple of years.

Seems I need to work on making my left eye more dominant though. Whips? Chains? Leather? I don't know, I'll Google it.

JeffJ
03-09-2012, 06:43 PM
Welcome to the cross dominant club! Of course I'm assuming you're right handed.

Now that you know you'll probably start to realize that it affects other things too - My pool game went from really, really bad to just pretty bad once I learned that I needed to close my left eye.

If you are having trouble adjusting to both eyes open it will instantly help that you now know which eye to hold the gun in front of - but the gradually shrinking occlusion trick works well for most people. I personally spent a lot of time shooting a .22 with all black sights with both eyes open until it became a habit.

Leozinho
03-09-2012, 06:46 PM
There's a method of putting transparent/Scotch tape on your shooting glasses over the non-dominant eye. It makes it just fuzzy enough out of the non-dominant eye that your dominant eye becomes more dominant (or that's the theory.) I did it when starting out, and use it again after long layoffs from shooting. I think my dominant eye isn't a whole lot more dominant than my non-dominant eye, and occasionally get double front sight pictures. The tape on shooting glasses seems to work for me. (Blinking my non-dominant eye right before the draw also seems to help for some reason.)

Leozinho
03-09-2012, 06:49 PM
Plenty of good pistol shooters are cross eye dominant. They use their dominant eye to focus, and just move the gun over accordingly. Dave Sevigny comes to mind.

It's a bit more problematic for rifle shooters. You'll have to make the decision to shoot left-handed, or close the dominant eye.

Spartacus
03-09-2012, 07:02 PM
Leozinho-

I'll have to try then Scotch tape. Thanks again.

DonovanM
03-09-2012, 09:29 PM
Just barely left eyed but very right handed here too. I tried the scotch tape thing for a while. I would attribute any warm and fuzzies I had about doing it to confirmation bias. I don't think it ever did much for me except cause me to crane my head up to look out the bottom of my shooting glasses when I was trying to read something. Really annoying. Just shot my first 100% USPSA classifier without any tape so I won't be going back. YMMV. Practice!

_JD_
03-10-2012, 10:04 PM
Paul Gomez has a good video on this topic.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLhhC3_oDWU



I'm cross-dominant and I find that high visibility front sights mixed with wide notch rear sights help a lot as well.

cupcake
03-11-2012, 01:13 AM
HA! Glad to know I'm not the only one that struggles with a cross eye dominance. I made the choice to learn rifle shooting left handed although I still do the pistol shooting with the right hand. I'm half tempted to try this scotch tape on the glasses nonsense and see how it works out.

Spartacus
03-11-2012, 02:15 AM
Thanks for the vid _JD_. I stumbled n that last night and watched it.

I think I'll try the tape while dry firing/drawing for a bit, and shoot without it. Maybe I can train my eye/myself to focus using my dominant eye. Hopefully it works.

Surf
03-11-2012, 03:06 AM
There are those who have no true dominant eye. They are about 3% of the population and it is called ambi-ocular or so I have been diagnosed. It can create havoc when attempting to shoot with both eyes open on say a dual plane sight set up like iron sights, however when say shooting a rifle when we cannot simply adjust the alignment of the sights in front of the eye as in a pistol, having two dominant eyes can be a plus with the rifle. Of course red dot type sights can fix the issue easily. In reality IMO there is far too much emphasis placed on shooting two eyes open. Most shooters who even may squint an eye at the brief moment of sight alignment / sight picture / trigger press are so much focused on the task at hand that there is no peripheral vision as we are focused on the threat and sights anyway. The split second in time that we are squinting for the most part means nothing for any practical purposes even in combat style shooting. But then again in up close CQB type of shooting we may not be closing an eye either way and might be using a flash front sight or slide indexing technique anyway.

Slavex
03-11-2012, 03:20 AM
For the win


Are you saying you have a dominant eye and an other-dominant eye? :eek:

jthhapkido
03-11-2012, 11:18 AM
HA! Glad to know I'm not the only one that struggles with a cross eye dominance. I made the choice to learn rifle shooting left handed although I still do the pistol shooting with the right hand. I'm half tempted to try this scotch tape on the glasses nonsense and see how it works out.

I'm also cross-dominant---left-handed but right eye. It is interesting reading the comments about rifle shooting, however---I still shoot my rifle left-handed. I know Bill Rogers tells people if he gets you early enough, that you can shoot handgun either way, but you should shoot rifle on the eye-dominant side...but I didn't know that until I had already been shooting for quite awhile.

With the advent of dot sights, though, I wonder if that is less important? When I'm shooting distant targets, particularly with magnificantion, I of course close my other eye. (Who doesn't?) But at close range using the dot on timed reactive targets, for example---I shot Rogers Close Quarters carbine course last year---I didn't have any problems at all shooting Advanced on both tests with both eyes open shooting left-handed and being right-eye dominant.

I'm thinking that probably would have been different using iron sights, but with the "put the dot on the target and it'll hit" mode of red dots, plus the fact that you are target-focused and the dot just floats there, I'm wondering it is as much of a problem anymore.

Thoughts? (Or maybe I just did decently, but could have been much better shooting right-handed. Dunno...)

Serenity
03-11-2012, 01:50 PM
I have been shooting with my weak eye (and it is definitely weak) closed, but 2 hours into the shooting class I took my right eye just quit focusing at all (fatigue, I guess). Fortunately we took a break right then and I rallied and did fine for the rest of the class, but for a few minutes there I couldn't even focus on my front sight. I would like to shoot with both eyes open, but when I focus on my front sight (tip of pointer finger) I see two targets (lamps) that are pretty far apart. I get an "almost double" of the sight too, due to astigmatism. Should I just aim for the target on the right and ignore the left one? If I point at the right target with both eyes open and close my weak eye, I am on target. I feel that I need to do this NOW, while I'm still under 1500 total round count. But UGH I already have post-training let down.

_JD_
03-11-2012, 02:16 PM
I would like to shoot with both eyes open, but when I focus on my front sight (tip of pointer finger) I see two targets (lamps) that are pretty far apart. I get an "almost double" of the sight too, due to astigmatism. Should I just aim for the target on the right and ignore the left one? If I point at the right target with both eyes open and close my weak eye, I am on target. I feel that I need to do this NOW, while I'm still under 1500 total round count. But UGH I already have post-training let down.

check out the video i posted above, while holding the pistol and sighting in an a wall oulet (gun empty of course) the the things described in the video regarding moving your hand left/right of center closer to you dominant eye until the sight picture clears up. turning your head to move the dominant eye more in line with your sight plane may also help but shifting your hands will be easier to replicate and repeat in a consistant manner which will aid in obtaining "muscle memory" on where to get the gun to obtain desired sight picture.



Sent via Tapatalk...and still using real words.

JBP55
03-11-2012, 03:54 PM
Doesn't sound like you are doing it right. A more fool-proof method: Make a triangle at arms length. Look through triangle to distant object. Bring triangle into face without ever losing sight of distant object. The eye your hand ends up in front of is your dominant eye.


I have never seen this method fail when done properly.

VAF
03-23-2012, 11:33 PM
There's a method of putting transparent/Scotch tape on your shooting glasses over the non-dominant eye. It makes it just fuzzy enough out of the non-dominant eye that your dominant eye becomes more dominant (or that's the theory.) . . . .??? Wha?

I'm cross dominate and I put the frosted tape over my dominate eye, so that my non-dominate eye can 'take over' unimpeded and my R eye & R arm are inline. This SHO bullseye.

Leozinho
03-24-2012, 10:50 AM
??? Wha?

I'm cross dominate and I put the frosted tape over my dominate eye, so that my non-dominate eye can 'take over' unimpeded and my R eye & R arm are inline. This SHO bullseye.

The confusion is that we have different goals.

This method (tape on non-dominate eye) isn't to allow the non-dominant eye to take over unimpeded, nor does it really have anything to do with being cross-eye dominant. Instead, it's intended to help the shooter to shoot both eyes open and get the same eye to consistently be the dominant eye. (Shooting with both eyes open is, to many, desirable in USPSA or self defense applications.) The idea is to strengthen the dominance of which ever eye is already dominant.

Even though I am clearly right eye dominant, my left eye sometimes gets uppity and thinks it's dominant, and does a little battle with my right eye over which one is going to be the one to focus on the front sight. The tape trick seems to help keep the left eye in its place and make the right eye more dominant. I just use it occasionally in practice or dry fire. I've shot a match with the tape once, but I bobbled a mag change due to lack of depth perception.

(I say it's not about cross-eye dominance, since a smart practical pistol shooter that is cross-eye dominant will keep his strong hand the strong hand and just move the pistol over in line with the dominant eye. Not the same for the bullseye shooters, I guess.)

Serenity
04-09-2012, 01:11 AM
Yay I did it! I shot with both eyes open today for the first time and it was nothing like I expected. I thought that I would have to choose which set of sights to aim with, but my eyes (brain) picked the correct one. I tried it shooting at a "sure" steel target (read up close) so if I missed I would know it was because I was using the wrong set of sights. I didn't do it the entire time because I was out at the range with the Boy on a holiday and wasn't focused (heh heh) on training. We had a great time.