suggestions for focus on front sight

[Clusterfrack]

Good thread, and great advice. Try dry firing without pressing the trigger. Just look at exactly where you want to aim, and put your sights there. Try multiple targets. Now try it while moving. Each time you aim, pay close attention to how acceptable your sight alignment is. If you can’t confirm alignment with the scoring zone, that’s a fail.

With a lot of practice, you can figure out how clear a front (and rear) sight focus you need for a given target.

The next step is taking this to the range with bullets.

[spyderco monkey]

All of this is why I think red dots are the way of the future.

I mean, WHY do we have to fool ourselves into staring at the gun when we really want to be looking at the target?

Staring at the gun to improve visual feedback and accuracy serves no functional purpose other than a throwback of visual limitation and focal plane.

It’d be like saying you have to learn to drive staring at your dashboard gauges and watch the road with your fuzzy vision rather than using a heads up display projected on the windshield. If the technology exists (that’s the question), then why not use it (barring cost limitations).

If you train with a dot, your iron shooting will improve too.

It's really a legacy of notch and post pistol sights being originally designed for bullseye style, one eye closed target shooting. They were never really intended for firing with both eyes open - hence the difficulty and constant practice needed to focus on the front sight.

Modern 'hi viz' combat sights are still not that visible at all; a 'large' .140" front sight is still smaller then a typical match head. So you've got to pear through this tiny notch in the much larger rear sight to focus on this sub match head sized front sight - and do so at speed. We've all learned how to do this, but its a very un-natural system, and not a surprise that many end up not seeing their sights during force on force or real gunfights.

I've designed and 3D printed a set of sights that solves this, allowing me to just look through the sights and focus on the target. But by the time I've got the money to bring them to market, I imagine the MRDS will be ubiquitous - at which point they would be a 'faster horse in the automobile age'.

[MattyD380]

Do you play tennis? Baseball?

Strange as it may sound, I found the eye discipline of focusing on an incoming ball similar to focusing on the front sight while shooting. “Watch the ball.” Sounds simple enough. But really zeroing your eyes on a small object—especially if it’s moving—isn’t something I came by naturally. It takes a lot of conscious effort. For me, anyway. And, just like shooting, if my eyes flit to where want to put the ball (I.e., my target) before I’ve made contact... I usually spray the thing off the court.

Recently, when I wasn’t shooting great, I noticed myself taking my eyes off the front sight as the shot broke. When I made an effort to maintain my focus through the shot... and into the next... it made a big difference. I suppose it’s like watching the ball actually make contact with the strings/bat.

I dunno, maybe none of this is helpful. But the “watch the ball” parallel sort of helped me put “focusing on the front sight” in a perspective I could relate to.

[BehindBlueI's]

OP's threads on same topic merged.

[Florey55]

Easily fixed by retraining your eye to focus on the front sight.

How? Dry-firing practice against a blank white wall, or blank A4 sheet of white paper.

Your eye/s will have nothing else to focus on apart from the front sight...