Todd Louis Green and the modern approach to using your sights

[TCinVA]

This is a valuable point. I see a lot of range theatrics involving the press out: "slow is smooth, smooth is... SLOW". Like really slow. Or a glacial press out with firing started in compression, with a shitty grip and recoil control.

Learning the press-out you might start slow...but it doesn't stay that way.

As it might be useful, here's some screen shots from one of Todd's video where you can see his presentation:

The front sight will stay elevated as the gun moves towards the target, the rear sight will be rotated up. Note Todd's finger position. Right about there his front sight is touching the paper of the target, but the gun isn't level so his finger isn't on the trigger yet.

I see a lot of incompetent imitation on this. Incompetent because people are finger-on-trigger with the muzzle elevated...which is nonsense. If someone is actually teaching starting to work the trigger BEFORE the sights are actually on target, they're violating key safety rules. I don't care what they say their background is or how many classes they sell. You aren't on trigger until the sights give you permission unless you're shooting from entanglement...at which point your index on the body is your permission slip to be on the trigger.

Now Todd is seeing his front sight on the target and the rear sight is below his front sight similar to a "Stressfire" sight picture as taught by Mas. He's shooting Close Speed, so he's got enough sights now to ensure he's on target even though his front sight is elevated above the rear notch and he's starting to get to the trigger. But you can see how the rear sight is being rotated up to essentially "catch" the front sight.

Now he's got the front sight caught somewhere in the rear notch, finger is fully on trigger and the trigger press has started. You can see the video here:



If you watched Todd shoot in person, you'd notice he presented the gun with an elevated muzzle, all in the effort of finding that front sight and driving it on target. This works with irons because you can see the relationship between the front and rear sights on the gun. It wouldn't work well with a dot because you just don't see a dot until the last possible second.

If you present the gun by driving the rear sight instead of the front sight, you see the dot sooner and you can drive the dot to your intended target.

Of course, if your draw is built right, there's no "driving" to be done, really. The dot will just be there...because the shit on top of the gun is not what drives the gun. How it appears (or doesn't) is a consequence of what is happening below the sights. And that's what Ashton and I focus on getting across in Performance Pistol.

[BehindBlueI's]

Learning the press-out you might start slow...but it doesn't stay that way.

As it might be useful, here's some screen shots from one of Todd's video where you can see his presentation:

So that's how I've done it for a long time with irons. The tilted presentation lets me find the front sight so much quicker than a flat plane press out. But it seems to suck ass for red dots. Thoughts?

Spraying is harder to do with a double action revolver.

Literally. The longer, heavier trigger pull limits how fast most people can press the trigger.

It's been a theory of mine for quite a while that number of shots per engagement has gone up as a function of cyclical rate approaching a sewing machine but OODA loops not speeding up. A *lot* of these high round count events caught on camera are throwing lead at retreating or already downed suspects as the shooter catches up to the new reality.

[SouthNarc]

Full circle. Todd and I had fairly collegial debate on an elevated versus level slide in the horizontal line of presentation, probably 15 years ago before dots were common. They may very well still be here somewhere.

[TCinVA]

So that's how I've done it for a long time with irons. The tilted presentation lets me find the front sight so much quicker than a flat plane press out. But it seems to suck ass for red dots. Thoughts?

Don't do that.

Ultimately we want to see what we need to hit through the rear sight window, yes?

So make that happen as soon as possible.

If your rear sight window is full of asshole's vital organs and your front sight is in that window somewhere, what are you going to hit? If what you're trying to hit is bigger than your rear sight window, it's not a precise shot is it?

Now "see what you need to see" isn't a riddle anymore. And we're not changing mental focus by looking for a front sight then a rear sight. We're seeing the vitals of dude, catching the vitals of dude in our rear sight notch and just checking to make sure our front sight is in there. Straight line from eye to target. The mental process is cleaner, thus faster.

If you present the gun to see what you want to hit through your rear sight window as soon as practicable, your gun will be oriented in a manner that will let you find your dot.

I only focus on my front sight when I need to shoot a precise target. At typical fighting distances (inside 10 yards) if you just drive the top of your rear sight to dude's armpits your rear window is full of his aortic arch. If your front sight is in that window too, you're hitting aortic arch. That'll work.

Todd's technique was based on the traditional dogma of front sight focus...which isn't necessary except on precise shots. You don't need a front sight focus. 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.

[TCinVA]

Full circle. Todd and I had fairly collegial debate on an elevated versus level slide in the horizontal line of presentation, probably 15 years ago before dots were common. They may very well still be here somewhere.

Indeed.

Working with a dot would have driven that evolution cancer cut short.

I could not care less about competition. But in training with Tim Herron he dropped a little tidbit about how he used sights and Ashton, Brett Harnish and I stopped the class right there and engaged him in drawing out his reasoning. We all understood right there and then the potential. The class was worth going to for that tidbit alone. It's why I continue to train with people as often as my schedule allows, because I never know what will cause me to rethink what I'm doing and evolve a little bit.

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.

[LOKNLOD]

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

Indeed. Glad I wandered back into the thread to find it had somehow evolved into press-out theory discussion. Them's the good ol' days.

[WDR]

Indeed. Glad I wandered back into the thread to find it had somehow evolved into press-out theory discussion. Them's the good ol' days.

And some TCinVA wordsmithery.

There is still a high signal to noise ratio here. I hope it continues to be that way.

[CarloMNL]

Don't do that.

Ultimately we want to see what we need to hit through the rear sight window, yes?

So make that happen as soon as possible.

If your rear sight window is full of asshole's vital organs and your front sight is in that window somewhere, what are you going to hit? If what you're trying to hit is bigger than your rear sight window, it's not a precise shot is it?

Now "see what you need to see" isn't a riddle anymore. And we're not changing mental focus by looking for a front sight then a rear sight. We're seeing the vitals of dude, catching the vitals of dude in our rear sight notch and just checking to make sure our front sight is in there. Straight line from eye to target. The mental process is cleaner, thus faster.

If you present the gun to see what you want to hit through your rear sight window as soon as practicable, your gun will be oriented in a manner that will let you find your dot.

I only focus on my front sight when I need to shoot a precise target. At typical fighting distances (inside 10 yards) if you just drive the top of your rear sight to dude's armpits your rear window is full of his aortic arch. If your front sight is in that window too, you're hitting aortic arch. That'll work.

Todd's technique was based on the traditional dogma of front sight focus...which isn't necessary except on precise shots. You don't need a front sight focus. 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.

Thanks for this TC. All I've known is front sight focus so this is a life changing revelation for me.

Would it be fair to say that any target smaller than the window of your rear sight falls under precise shots, or at least tells the shooter that more precision is now required?

[TCinVA]

Thanks for this TC. All I've known is front sight focus so this is a life changing revelation for me.

Would it be fair to say that any target smaller than the window of your rear sight falls under precise shots, or at least tells the shooter that more precision is now required?

You have correctly inferred the next part of the explanation. In class I teach it like this:

• If it's bigger than your rear sight window and your front sight is somewhere in the window, you should have shot already.
• If it's smaller than your rear sight window, then put your front sight on it and work your trigger carefully.
• If it's smaller than your front sight, put the very center of the tip of your front sight on it and work your trigger precisely.

Note that with that theory of operations, your focus on the front sight gets harder as the shot gets tighter. I've watched people struggle with how to use iron sights for more than 20 years now. And I've seen all kinds of attempts at explaining use of the sights. I cannot tell you how many times I heard "see what you need to see" as a student, and every time I heard that I wanted to kick a puppy because it was spoken like some sort of riddle that if you just snatch the pebble out of the master's hand you might be able to understand what the fuck that means.

Nobody ever explained it in the three simple sentences above in my hearing. In class I explain it like that with visual aid and people pick it up in literally 5 minutes. What's more, for the rest of the period of instruction (day to day and a half depending on the program) they can tell me exactly what their sights were saying about the shot they just took. People literally go from being unsure about sight pictures to actively calling their shots just because they finally have a simple model that works and they're not sitting there fucking around with "equal height, equal light" and other useless nonsense when they need to be shooting.

We, meaning the whole of firearms trainers, overcomplicate shit to a level that is maddening. We are supposedly trying to teach people how to use a piece of life-saving equipment under stress. We, meaning western civilization, have figured out how to do this at a very, very high level. We teach people how to respond to emergencies with nuclear reactors, aircraft, fire, bleeding arteries and stopped hearts on a regular basis. In every single other thing where life and death is in play, we try to guide responders to a useful set of actions that are as simple and clear as possible so that they can be remembered in the moment.

I'm trying to make using a handgun in self defense as simple as applying a tourniquet.

That method for using and teaching sights helps move the whole process significantly in that direction. The sights themselves don't change because they have never given a damn what anyone thinks of them. They're a passive reference sitting on top of a slide. But the way we think about using them can make a huge difference in how quickly they can be read and how much information you can pull from them.

One of the thing driving red dots in police use the hardest is this notion that candidates in the academies understand red dots better than iron sights. In other words, it's thought to be easier to teach.

Firstly, that's bullshit because ensuring that someone actually sees a dot when they draw requires a very carefully constructed draw that lots of people ain't got the chops to teach. Secondly, the primary reason that academy candidates struggle with understanding sights is because of how badly the concept is taught.

In this thread we've discussed the concept of evolution in practice and teaching. Unfortunately most institutional instructors do not evolve. They teach what they were taught because that is literally all they know. I have a friend and client going through a police academy right now who was told on day one of firearms training to forget any of that "military or competition shit" because it doesn't work. This man has more combat experience in just one deployment during GWOT than any of his academy instructors will ever see in their combined lifetimes, but none of that is relevant because we say so. The institutions are largely autocracies, not meritocracies unfortunately. And the institutions have massive influence over the private sector.

Sights are no harder to teach than dots because fundamentally they are both just references that tell you what the barrel is pointed at. They don't do anything else for the shot with a pistol but give you a go/no go signal.

But if you've never pushed yourself or your understanding of what you're attempting to do, you end up yelling complete nonsense at people like "FOCUS ON THE FRONT SIGHT!!" when that isn't even close to what their problem is because you don't have enough skill yourself as a shooter, instructor, or coach to actually see what they are doing. If you are ever taking any driver training and things aren't going well, the instructor in the passenger seat won't be yelling "LOOK THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD HARDER!!!", and if you did find another driving instructor.

[awp_101]

Indeed. Glad I wandered back into the thread to find it had somehow evolved into press-out theory discussion. Them's the good ol' days.

And some TCinVA wordsmithery.

There is still a high signal to noise ratio here. I hope it continues to be that way.