Todd Louis Green and the modern approach to using your sights

[Mr_White]

Thanks for weighing in.

Jives perfectly with what I have been saying.

You just saved me from making a video tonight doing blindfolded runs with a laser gun to demonstrate.

Lol - you're welcome! Sounds like it would have been a chore.

[JCN]

Regarding Tim Herron:

There’s an autocross equivalent to “see what you need to see” and it’s “look ahead.”

But it’s meaningless if you don’t know what you’re looking for or looking at.



Regarding “see what you need to see,” Max Michel in his training program uses that line all the time but he fleshes out what that means in depth.

My best summary of his explanation of “see what you need to see” is…

Train to have mechanical stability so that what you’re seeing prior to ignition is reasonably faithful to what’s going to happen at ignition.

Prior to ignition, get the stability of sight picture that keeps the muzzle within your tested and practiced wobble zone of error.



It’s a little bit of a enigma because what someone with a sloppy press needs to see is different from what someone with a clean press needs to see.


So it’s really “See what YOU need to see to hit what you’re trying to hit.”

The better the mechanics, the less you need to see.

And ultimately at @Mr_White levels on the dark pin dark sight drills… not much vision is needed at all.

[Mr_White]

Yeah that's true that for a lot of stand and shoot stuff, we in the shooting world get really really used to the index that emanates off of those tasks.

[Clusterfrack]

I'm about to Sticky this thread... don't fuck it up.

[Paul Blackburn]

See what you need to see is more of a personal technique than a universal principle.

[revchuck38]

Get what you want to hit in the rear window, passively see that the front sight is in the window and go.

Well, shit. Silly me went to the range today and tried this.

I'll be 71 on Thursday. I started shooting bullseye in my 20s, shot both UIT and bullseye through my 30s and 40s, and got pretty heavy into IDPA in my 50s. I haven't shot much competition since, just self-defense classes and defensive practice. But I've lived by the front sight for about 45 years.

I used my M&P40 1.0, stock except for the Ameriglo Hackathorn sights. I did this at baby-step level, first at five yards, then at seven, shooting at a B-8. I started at low ready, raised the gun, saw black in the rear sight notch and noticed the front sight somewhere in there, bang. Most of two magazines went into a 2"x3" hole starting at the X and going down. A few other shots were in the black and I jerked a couple out due to hurrying. My shots were much quicker than usual because I wasn't waiting for that perfect, steady sight picture. I didn't use the timer because it was just an experiment. But yeah, it worked. I need to work with it some more.

[GJM]

Last I heard, Stoeger is shooting target focused out to 25 yards. Bunch of other excellent iron sight shooters doing the same.

How does this technique work in that context?

[45dotACP]

Last I heard, Stoeger is shooting target focused out to 25 yards. Bunch of other excellent iron sight shooters doing the same.

How does this technique work in that context?

I think our very own @Les Pepperoni had an IG post about this technique a good while back. He's allegedly a decent iron sight shooter with "a major award" in ESP.

He referred to it as "framing the target" if I'm not mistaken. He posted about it a good while before cleaning house in his division at IDPA Nationals.

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[Noah]

Last I heard, Stoeger is shooting target focused out to 25 yards. Bunch of other excellent iron sight shooters doing the same.

How does this technique work in that context?

As someone who shot a dot for 3 years and has been shooting irons again since June, largely inspired by Stoeger's (and others) ideas on target focused shooting with irons, I think they're one and the same. At least online, Stoeger is brief and concise. If he wants to talk about target focus shooting with irons, he's brief. He might mention "seeing a flash of red" at 10 yards and in or needing a little more of the outline of your sights at 25y, but it's still a soft sight focus.

I could easily be wrong, but I see what has been laid out here as a much more fleshed out manual of what target focus shooting/soft sight focus with irons can look like. You're focused on the target, through the rear sight window, if you see the front sight over or right under (depending on your POA/POI) your target, fire. It's a soft sight focus 95% of the time.

Just the 2 cents from a nobody who has been working on this this year. This thread has been the best and most fleshed out explanation of what I've been learning to do but couldn't explain as precisely. Blew my mind.

[MickAK]

Last I heard, Stoeger is shooting target focused out to 25 yards. Bunch of other excellent iron sight shooters doing the same.

How does this technique work in that context?

I think the big focus for me is when.

There are shots I can't make target focused at those ranges and being able to know when I need to transition is important. Sometimes it's movement, sometimes fatigue, sometimes how I'm shooting that day. Light conditions are a big factor.

I think that's going to vary person to person.