Drills to help with paying attention to your iron sights

[RickyH]

What are some drills I can do that make you pay attention to your iron sight after shooting open for 6 years ?

[GrumpyOne]

Slow down?

I know it sounds absurd, but since points are at a premium in production, you gotta get them, even if it takes a little longer.

Edited November 13, 2013 by GrumpyOne

[Nimitz]

I assume that when shooting open you don't pull the trigger until you see the dot on the target? Well, for iron sights the principle is the same except you don't pull the trigger until the post is in the notch ... I would do drills at much longer range than you normally do to force yourself to wait for the sights to settle before pulling the trigger. At short distance you can get away with a much sloppier sight picture and still hit alphas, at distance you must be patient ....

Paying attention to your sights is not the issue, getting them to or waiting for them to be properly aligned is ....

[Greg in VA]

Hole in hole drill, Draw and shoot 1 round, holster, draw and try to shoot the next round in the same hole. We also will draw a line across a target and get the students to try to hit the line twice in the same place, then holster and move over a little on the line and try again.

Greg

[56hawk]

15 yard plate racks. Much closer than that and I find I can focus on the plate. At 15 yards you pretty much have to have a hard front sight focus. Also with plates you have instant feedback if you miss.

[mhoosier]

Have you tried Frank Garcia's Dot Drill?

[a matt]

Get back out that open gun Ricky. Lol

[gondo]

Have you tried Frank Garcia's Dot Drill?

How does that go?

[mhoosier]

You can find it online for sure if you do a search. You'll also find PDF files with dots you can print. BenStoeger.com has a description and dots under the drills section for free. Lots of other sites too.

Essentially you start with 6x2" circles at 7 yards. Set a 5 second par time. Draw and fire 6 shots into one of the circles. All shots must be in the circle and all within 5 seconds. Repeat for all 6 dots.

A good way to work up to it is to start closer, at whatever distance you can almost do, and work your way back to 7 yards over time. But keep the 5 second par time.

Edited November 13, 2013 by mhoosier

[Nimitz]

Another way to do this drill which will allow you to see where your problems are is to set the par time for 5 secs for all dots but start out shooting the first dot with no time limit and just figure out what sight picture you need to get in the circle, then start using the par timer and shoot 2 at the 2nd dot, 3 at the 3rd, 4 at the 4th, 5 at the 5th and 6 at the 6th dot within the 5 sec time limit

By working up to 6 in 5 secs you will find out where your issues are

[mhoosier]

Great version of the dot drill Nimitz!

[Tcon260]

+ 1 on Nimitz version

[Chris iliff]

Here is the Dot Drill I use........

http://pistol-training.com/drills/dot-torture

[mhoosier]

Dot Torture is a good drill too. I use it as a sort of skill gauge to test several different shooting skills and then tell me which need the most work.

[OrigamiAK]

Another way to do this drill which will allow you to see where your problems are is to set the par time for 5 secs for all dots but start out shooting the first dot with no time limit and just figure out what sight picture you need to get in the circle, then start using the par timer and shoot 2 at the 2nd dot, 3 at the 3rd, 4 at the 4th, 5 at the 5th and 6 at the 6th dot within the 5 sec time limit

By working up to 6 in 5 secs you will find out where your issues are

Very interesting variation, I will have to try that. Thank you for posting it.

------

You guys beat me to it, I was going to suggest the Frank Garcia Dot Drill too.

[RickyH]

Thanks i will try some of these drills

[Fireant]

Ricky, also try putting a different color fiber in the front sight. Take the red out and try something else. When I first put the open gun away, if I saw red on the target I was pulling the trigger.

[Jasonatlaw]

Some great tips; I'm taking a couple of these to the range this weekend. Thanks guys.

[RammerJammer]

If you want to use old targets for some dot torture, which I do because the edges are usually pretty clean, the orange lid to edge shaving cream is 2 inches, cut the closed in off for a stencil and color in with a sharpie and viola you have dots without taping.

[mhoosier]

If you want to use old targets for some dot torture, which I do because the edges are usually pretty clean, the orange lid to edge shaving cream is 2 inches, cut the closed in off for a stencil and color in with a sharpie and viola you have dots without taping.

That's a great idea too! Do you think that would work on a steel plate? I'm thinking we could paint the dot, shoot it, re-paint. Or would we not be able to see if the hits are all there?

[Nimitz]

No problem, Ben Stoeger showed me that ... It's amazing how quickly you can zero in on what your issues are to shooting accuractly at speed ....

[mhoosier]

One more thought...might want to consider blacking out the fiber rod on the top and on at the tip. When that thing is at full bright it can kind of overpower the actual sight. Darkening it a bit can help you to focus more on your sight picture and less on seeing a bright dot and going bang.

[Jshuberg]

What can you do to reinforce paying attention to your iron sights? Easy, loose the target, minimize visual clutter by shooting a blank background.

If you are paying absolutely no attention to where you want to put your rounds, you're left with only one thing to pay attention to - whats in your hands. By eliminating the target, you also eliminate sight picture, leaving you with only having to mentally track sight alignment. This reduces the complexity and effort of tracking your sights significantly. Focus on the front sight, track it through recoil back into the rear. Practice this until you are able to do it consistently at the speed you want. Then reintroduce the target.

When you first reintroduce the target, don't focus on returning to a proper sight picture right away, just shoot the same way you were without a target. Simply manually move the gun back into a proper picture before each shot. After doing this for a little while, then start to introduce returning to both a proper sight picture as well as sight alignment from recoil. Then increase speed.

Lots of things happen when shooting iron sights, and learning how to do everything all at once can be difficult. You can try shooting complex drills that force you to pay proper attention to the sights, or you can simplify the problem space you're working on, and then gradually add complexity once you feel what your'e doing has sunk in. I've found the latter works the best for me, YMMV.