Weird stance correction

[zatchmo]

Ok, I'm going to try and describe this without a picture, because quite honestly, I don't have any. I am a cross-eye dominant, right handed shooter. I adopted the modified weaver stance putting my left foot slightly forward to kind of force me to use my left eye. While this works well for me, it creates a right-arm locked, left arm elbow-out grip. This works fine normally, but when I have to do weak-hand only I suffer. Also after switching to open, I find myself hunting for the dot far too often, and I believe this may be all related.

That being said, I think I may be better off trying to get both arms locked? Any opinions on this, and ideas on how to "train" myself to do this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[old506]

One way to look at it is that nothing else matters except for seeing your sight and watching it lift. Everything else comes at least second. You could contort yourself like a monkey and as long as you do this you will still get your hits. Now, as far as speeding things up and having your sights track up and back down, that is where your stance and index are going to come into play.

I too am left eye dominate and right handed. I don't know how much more or less my left eye is dominate than yours but I do bat and golf left handed. It took me a good month to switch to a much more comfortable modified isosceles stance, I also use my right eye for everything while keeping my left eye open. I guess I kind of trained my right eye to accept the sight pic, I am not sure but that is what happened. I don't wear any tape over my left eye. This worked for me, it sounds like you are newer to the sport? You are going to have to take a different path and find out what works for you. I would suggest just playing around with different stances, index your gun on a target with both eyes open, right eye shut, left eye shut, just play around and see/feel what kind of works and what doesn't. There is wealth of threads and info on this site on this very subject but they are solutions for other people, maybe for you, maybe not.

[Classic_jon]

One of our faster shooters is cross dominant. He taught himself to shoot pistols Right handed, but does everything else, including shooting rifle and shotgun, Left handed.

It worked for him, but it may not work for you depending on how dominant handed you are. I also know several people that have "taught" their off eye to be dominant when shooting. I have been told that shooting with both eyes open helps in this quite a bit.

[Tyshoots]

If you are shooting open shoot with both eyes open and dont lock either elbow. With my limited gun I have to keep my left eye closed or I see 2 front sights. With a dot you look at the target not the dot which lets me shoot with both eyes open. Give it a try it might help.

[zatchmo]

I've been doing this for about a year, so I kind of know what's going on. I'm finally at the point where I feel like I can actually start to see what I'm doing wrong, and where I can make improvements. The first few months are chaos.

As far as switching back to right eye, I have tried both. I was forcing myself to use my right eye for a while using tape, and it worked okay. My eye dominance isn't very strong, but it seemed left eye was better for me, so that's where I've stuck. My draw is fairly quick, but it's dot tracking and transitioning I'm having trouble with. Maybe there is no real reason to try and "fix" something that may not be broken. I just noticed it last week, and thought I'd throw up the question. Maybe the tracking and transitions are just something I need to practice more.

[pjb45]

Ha! I am right handed and left eye dominant with mono vision. I use my right eye for close work and my left eye for distance. Usually I just close my left eye when I am actually pulling the trigger.

I did the left eye thing, with replacing the contact in the left eye with a weaker one. I shot this way for close to two years. The bottom line is my scores are about the same, either way.

It is a lot less hassle using my right eye than changing a contact, for iron sight!

I have notice that when I started shooting open, I just shot with my left eye-target focus rather than front sight focus.

I too, drop my right leg back which reorients my shoulders and head a little for shooting open guns.

I can shoot skeet or 5 stand either left or right handed, depends on how far away the birds are flying.

In 3 Gun, it pretty much does not make any difference to me if I shoot my scoped rifle or shotgun with either hand.

[zatchmo]

Ha! I am right handed and left eye dominant with mono vision. I use my right eye for close work and my left eye for distance. Usually I just close my left eye when I am actually pulling the trigger.

I did the left eye thing, with replacing the contact in the left eye with a weaker one. I shot this way for close to two years. The bottom line is my scores are about the same, either way.

It is a lot less hassle using my right eye than changing a contact, for iron sight!

I have notice that when I started shooting open, I just shot with my left eye-target focus rather than front sight focus.

I too, drop my right leg back which reorients my shoulders and head a little for shooting open guns.

I can shoot skeet or 5 stand either left or right handed, depends on how far away the birds are flying.

In 3 Gun, it pretty much does not make any difference to me if I shoot my scoped rifle or shotgun with either hand.

This is interesting to me. When I originally started shooting, I would try to switch eye dominance based on where the targets were. Meaning, I'd tend to use my left eye for targets left of center-line and right eye for targets to the right. Obviously that doesn't work very well when you try to go fast. I had got a lot of 2 alpha hits right in the center of no-shoots learning that lesson. Everybody I talked to thought I was crazy. Nice to see that others don't have the same dominant eye for everything.