Stoeger's Doubles Drill and Target Focus.

[JohnO]

Let me start out by saying I'm not a competition shooter, never shot a match. I'm not a competition will get you kilt in the streets guy. Just a busy guy who isn't going to chase remote from me matches since I live in commie land.

I've been watching a bunch of videos from Ben Stoeger, Joel Park & Mr. Kim. I like many of the concepts they teach. The Doubles Drill peaked my interest enough that I wanted to give it a try. This past Sunday I was able to make it to the range after working with an hour of sunlight left.

I figured I would go all in and try Target Focus while doing the drill. I put a piece of black tape on the target to focus on. FYI. I shoot Irons. I've never owned a pistol red dot. Some may consider me lucky, I'm over 60 and I can see my irons perfectly and tested 20/15 at a recent eye exam.

I set my target at 7 yards. I started dry working from the holster dry. I deliberately focused on the black tape on the target. Frequently when I presented the pistol (a Gen 5 G17 with Ameriglow Agent sights with the front sight Orange ring around the tritium insert) my dominate eye really wanted to do what it normally does and pick up the sights. It was difficult to try and stay focused on the tape without a focal shift to the sights. I kept after the dry practice until I felt I had a chance going live and staying target focused.

I shot the drill live 2 round pair, pause 2 round pair ... for 8 rounds. On presentation I would detect a flash of orange out of focus (color conformation in the vicinity of the tape and work the trigger. I fought to keep target focus. Where I had the most difficulty was picking up my front sight in recoil. The moving orange sucked me in to the sight. I interspersed dry fire between live fire trying to stay more target focused and I think it helped.

I noticed that if my front sight occluded the tape I shifted to the sight. Hard to focus on something you can't see? I shot a little low due to this trying to see both albeit fuzzy orange.

In the end what did I think? Well the jury is still out on that one. I want to learn from this exercise. I know for a fact I can stay on my sights and shoot much more accurately! At what cost? A couple tenths perhaps. Yes I can see how this can result good enough hits faster than more deliberate aiming. In my mind that is something that is only applicable to a game.

Here is my target. I shot somewhere around 60 - 70 rounds. I had 2 loaded mags and a mostly full box of 50 that I used. I figured that was enough for my 1st whack at this. When I got home I drew a USPSA A-Zone onto my target to outline where my shots conformed scoring wise. I probably could have placed my stencil higher, oh well. The two highest impacts, 2nd shots, I saw those happen the gun hadn't fully returned before I fired #2.

[Noah]

Let me start out by saying I'm not a competition shooter, never shot a match. I'm not a competition will get you kilt in the streets guy. Just a busy guy who isn't going to chase remote from me matches since I live in commie land.

I've been watching a bunch of videos from Ben Stoeger, Joel Park & Mr. Kim. I like many of the concepts they teach. The Doubles Drill peaked my interest enough that I wanted to give it a try. This past Sunday I was able to make it to the range after working with an hour of sunlight left.

I figured I would go all in and try Target Focus while doing the drill. I put a piece of black tape on the target to focus on. FYI. I shoot Irons. I've never owned a pistol red dot. Some may consider me lucky, I'm over 60 and I can see my irons perfectly and tested 20/15 at a recent eye exam.

I set my target at 7 yards. I started dry working from the holster dry. I deliberately focused on the black tape on the target. Frequently when I presented the pistol (a Gen 5 G17 with Ameriglow Agent sights with the front sight Orange ring around the tritium insert) my dominate eye really wanted to do what it normally does and pick up the sights. It was difficult to try and stay focused on the tape without a focal shift to the sights. I kept after the dry practice until I felt I had a chance going live and staying target focused.

I shot the drill live 2 round pair, pause 2 round pair ... for 8 rounds. On presentation I would detect a flash of orange out of focus (color conformation in the vicinity of the tape and work the trigger. I fought to keep target focus. Where I had the most difficulty was picking up my front sight in recoil. The moving orange sucked me in to the sight. I interspersed dry fire between live fire trying to stay more target focused and I think it helped.

I noticed that if my front sight occluded the tape I shifted to the sight. Hard to focus on something you can't see? I shot a little low due to this trying to see both albeit fuzzy orange.

In the end what did I think? Well the jury is still out on that one. I want to learn from this exercise. I know for a fact I can stay on my sights and shoot much more accurately! At what cost? A couple tenths perhaps. Yes I can see how this can result good enough hits faster than more deliberate aiming. In my mind that is something that is only applicable to a game.

Here is my target. I shot somewhere around 60 - 70 rounds. I had 2 loaded mags and a mostly full box of 50 that I used. I figured that was enough for my 1st whack at this. When I got home I drew a USPSA A-Zone onto my target to outline where my shots conformed scoring wise. I probably could have placed my stencil higher, oh well. The two highest impacts, 2nd shots, I saw those happen the gun hadn't fully returned before I fired #2.

I'm sure it will take work to train your eyes for a new habit! For me, target focus with irons finally cured me of some of the potential problems with sight focus that Stoeger talks about- impacts drifting up in recoil as you're looking at the sight instead of returning the gun to a point on the target, and impacts drifting off in the direction you're moving if you shoot while moving while looking at the sight.

For me personally, I immediately experienced what he www talking about, and those had been things I'd specifically struggled with shooting sight focused irons birth-2020 and a dot with poor target focus 2020-2022. Like any honest person, I still struggle with my eyes returning to the sight at times. Ben made some videos about this recently that were very good.

With my vision, I can still have a reasonably clear awareness of the sights while focusing on the target, and I can easily adjust what Gabe White calls "accomodation" what distance or focal depth I an focusing on.

[Clusterfrack]

...I shot the drill live 2 round pair, pause 2 round pair ... for 8 rounds. On presentation I would detect a flash of orange out of focus (color conformation in the vicinity of the tape and work the trigger. I fought to keep target focus. Where I had the most difficulty was picking up my front sight in recoil. The moving orange sucked me in to the sight. I interspersed dry fire between live fire trying to stay more target focused and I think it helped.

I noticed that if my front sight occluded the tape I shifted to the sight. Hard to focus on something you can't see? I shot a little low due to this trying to see both albeit fuzzy orange.

Have you tried the Practical Accuracy drill? Practical Accuracy is vision driven, so I like it better than Doubles for this sort of thing (target focus, tracking the dot, etc). For me Doubles is about grip, index, and returning the gun 'automatically'.

[Le Français]

I think target focused shooting (while still seeing and using the sights) is especially helpful when transitioning from target to target. It saves your eyes having to rapidly make large changes in focal length, from very short to much further, over and over again. I am personally most accurate focusing on the top of the front sight, but there’s a speed cost.

[Noah]

https://benstoegerproshop.com/blog/p...-by-joel-park/

Info on Practical Accuracy and doubles.

[JohnO]

The target I posted bothers me. I shoot on demand high 90's on a 25 yard NRA B-8. Using my sights as I have trained forever I can easily shoot one small hole at 7 yards. Give me a few tenths more for better sight conformation and I'm golden! I just can't wrap my head around shooting in a real world defensive situation without better conformation and therefore accuracy.

My son recorded me in a class we did together. I was watching my sights here and giving the target all my 1911 has to offer. Trying to look beyond my sights when I can see my sights and the target too, well?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xHwd04SdtWQ

[Noah]

The target I posted bothers me. I shoot on demand high 90's on a 25 yard NRA B-8. Using my sights as I have trained forever I can easily shoot one small hole at 7 yards. Give me a few tenths more for better sight conformation and I'm golden! I just can't wrap my head around shooting in a real world defensive situation without better conformation and therefore accuracy.

My son recorded me in a class we did together. I was watching my sights here and giving the target all my 1911 has to offer. Trying to look beyond my sights when I can see my sights and the target too, well?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xHwd04SdtWQ

Try it shooting while moving or with a moving target- that's where target focus is very critical for me to get decent results.

I shoot tighter groups with irons using target focus than when I focus on the sights. Shot a 48/50 all in the black on a B8 at 25y in 6.7s. Even if target focus makes your sights a little blurry, I really question if imperfect positioning of the post in the notch will do that much at 5-10y, if all other fundamentals are good. See the other threads from TCinVA and Todd Green on sight use for more info on that.


What do you think is causing your perception of imprecision when shooting target focused?

ETA: that's a pretty good target for shooting predictive doubles. Like Clusterfrack said, double drill might not be the best way to test target focused shooting since it is far more about grip development.

[Clusterfrack]

The target I posted bothers me. I shoot on demand high 90's on a 25 yard NRA B-8. Using my sights as I have trained forever I can easily shoot one small hole at 7 yards. Give me a few tenths more for better sight conformation and I'm golden! I just can't wrap my head around shooting in a real world defensive situation without better conformation and therefore accuracy.

My son recorded me in a class we did together. I was watching my sights here and giving the target all my 1911 has to offer. Trying to look beyond my sights when I can see my sights and the target too, well?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xHwd04SdtWQ

Doubles is just a drill that helps build a better grip and ability to return the gun precisely. It doesn’t have much to do with anything else.

[AMC]

Have you tried the Practical Accuracy drill? Practical Accuracy is vision driven, so I like it better than Doubles for this sort of thing (target focus, tracking the dot, etc). For me Doubles is about grip, index, and returning the gun 'automatically'.

This. 100%. People often make the mistake thinking doubles is a vision based drill. It is about grip, and analyzing and fixing your grip.

[JCS]

What were your splits? The accuracy on doubles needs context from splits.

Are you splitting the gun as fast as you possibly can and getting those groups? Or are your splits .30s or .40s? Because the answer to that says a lot about your grip.