Cross Eye Dominant

[26120]

What are some training drills for a cross eye dominant shooter to use.

[P.E. Kelley]

I am one (left handed and right eyed. No specific training required. Trigger control and sight alignment gets the hits

[Jshuberg]

<Training Drill>

Use your dominant hand and dominant eye when shooting a pistol.

</Training Drill>

That's it for training for cross dominance.

If you want to learn to master other aspects of how your mind processes binocular vision, read and consider the following:

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=200702&p=2227071

Edited August 26, 2014 by Jshuberg

[EatsEverything]

I feel like using dominant eye/hand forces me to angle the gun more and skewing the direction of the recoil off my forearm. Is that effect negligible or would it beneficial to train shooting with weak eye/dominant hand and/or dominant eye/weak hand?

[Jshuberg]

Becoming ambidextrous with either hands or eyes is always a worthy pursuit, as it gives you greater control of your body, and your capabilities when interacting with the world.

However, cross dominant shooters don't need to "fix" anything. Unlike shooting one handed where the pistol is in line with the bones of the forearm, when shooting two handed the firearm is basically pointing straight out in front of you, with your arms forming an A-frame behind it for support. This would be perfect if we were Cyclopes with a single eye in the center of our foreheads, but we have two eyes equally offset from the center. The consequence of this is that the gun will be canted slightly toward one eye or the other. Which eye doesn't matter, because whatever the cant is when using one eye, it will be exactly the same (only in the other direction) when using the opposite eye. The deviation from a perfectly symmetrical a-frame behind the direction of recoil is small, and which eye doesn't matter at all.

I have noticed an interesting trend though, students who are cross dominant seem to suffer trigger squeeze related errors to a lesser extent than those who are same side dominant. Not a scientific study by any means, but an observation I've made. I believe the reason is that before a person masters trigger squeeze, those who "lead" the gun more naturally with their support hand incur fewer trigger errors. Because a cross dominant shooter holds the weapon so that it is more aligned with the forearm of their support hand, and that the wrist of their support hand is straighter, that the mind is more likely to naturally let that hand be the lead hand for controlling the pistol.

I would say shoot cross dominant. Many outstanding shooters shoot this way, and there may actually be a psychological benefit in doing so that reduces the occurrence of inadvertent trigger error due to milking, pushing, or sympathetic muscle motion of the weapon hand.

[bountyhunter]

At one point I saw much better with my left (non dominant) eye and tried to cross train into sighting with it.... gave up. My eye just kept twitching and I could not get it to work. I think some people are more dominant than others, anyway my right eye doesn't want to delegate control....

[Jshuberg]

Try the exercises I linked to above. The problem with dominance training is that you need to both break your natural dominance during the exercise, and get instantaneous feedback so you can see the result of what's happening in your head. This takes care of both of those.

For the vast majority of people, eye dominance is psychological rather than physical, so the answer for dominance training is in the mind, not in the eyes. If your eye was twitching due to fatigue, you were trying to solve the problem with your eyes, which explains why it didn't work.

[bountyhunter]

My eyes never twitched due to fatigue. But for a number of years, my non dom eye could still focus on the sights while my dom eye required "correction". That's when I tried to sight with the non dom eye and it never worked for me. That's when the eye would "twitch" and not give stable focus. Had nothing to do with fatigue, just couldn't do it for more than maybe ten seconds. Doesn't matter now since both eyes are equally crappy at this point.

Edited August 29, 2014 by bountyhunter

[Vandalin]

My whole life I was right eye dominant, but after a detached retina in my right eye that resulted in me having a schleral buckle surgery and 20/200 vision. I gradually shifted to being left eye dominant (and right handed). I wear a contact in my right eye but it is still not as strong as my left so I decided to just switch to shooting lefty. I had never shot a pistol before so learning it left handed has been no big deal but it did take a while for me to feel comfortable shooting long guns lefty. Once you get it down though you have a big advantage because going back to right handed is still strong. I didn't necessarily do any drills I just went lefty cold turkey. Struggled through some local matches, but I feel it has payed off and I am now shooting better than I had been right handed.

[Moltke]

Right handed, left eye dominant here.

Embrace your cross dominance, don't fight it.

Zeroing your pistol for 10, 20, 30 yards (however far you can competently do it)

Practice freestyle marksmanship

And start doing some high speed dry fire

Over time you'll work it out

The biggest thing is a natural unconscious decision about when to close one eye or keep both open

Good luck!

[open17]

I shoot right handed, left eye dominant. Oddly--I shoot a bow or swing a golf club left handed! Anyhoo---I just don't

really notice it. Shift the gun to the left a bit, incline my head maybe a touch right. Line up the sights, press

trigger, repeat. Rob Leatham and also I believe the host of this fine forum are cross dominant, and they seem

to do OK.