Acquiring the sights after draw

[fireman1776]

I hope this is the right spot for this. I shot my first competition last week and have been analyzing major areas I can improve. I'm really slow on the draw, specifically acquiring the sights. I see people that fire as soon as they're fully extended. I've been trying to focus on acquiring them quicker and I realize it's gonna take practice, lots of it. Does anyone have any tips as far as when the gun should be at eye level and how to pick up the sights while I'm extending and not after I extend. It takes me probably .5-1 second to acquire. Thanks for the help I'm just a amateur looking for help.

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[motosapiens]

My tip is to practice. Before long you will find that sights starts to magically appear where you are looking. That is helpful.

When I first started practicing, I was flinging the gun out as fast as possible to try to beat the par time. That is not conducive to picking up the sights early. Now I try to slow down that last part of the presentation so I can start seeing and verifying sight alignment so as to be able to shoot earlier.

[BC27]

I think it's two things.

1. When you draw, draw the pistol up and press out. This brings the pistol in a position for your eyes to acquire the front sight early and by the time you've fully pressed the pistol out, you should be ready to fire.

2. Muscle memory. Constant training so that you've developed the muscle memory for your pistol to be pointed at your target naturally.

I think the combination of these two are why the fast and accurate shooters are so fast and accurate.

[TonyG]

Buy Steve Andersons book refinement and repetition. Then do the dry fire drills as described. If you are serious about improving this is the place to start. Stop worrying about other people's cadence of fire. They are achieving it by practicing in dry fire or just whipping out The pistol and pulling the trigger. Did you even notice if they are shooting alphas?

[alexmg]

I realize it's gonna take practice, lots of it.

Not sure for how long you have been shooting or basically how embedded into your brain is this particular muscle memory. But I'd say, if you commit to 5 - 10 minutes of daily (every day, no exceptions, weekens and holidays) exercise of drawing pistol, acquiring sight picture before breaking dry shot, does not matter how fast, just do it right. In about 2 - 2.5 half month you will embed new technique into your brain and will be good to go just periodically practice that. Do not force it if you feel like you ready to speed it beyond your comfort, you will see at first there will be no visual improvement, then you will be observing little improvement every day-ish, but very little, keep doing that, and then in about 2 - 2.5 half month it should happen out of nowhere without warning, you will pick up a pistol and it will become a second nature, you will be surprised. But you need to do it every day to properly rewire your brain, e.i. do destroy old neuro-chain and build a new one.

ps: Additionally when you go to sleep, just for 1 visualize pulling pictol out of the holster, raising it up, seeing that sight before breaking the shot, 1 minute is enough.

pps: if you catch yourself rushing too much and breaking the shot without seeing that sight, stop, step it down a notch and repeat at slower speed but do not let you do that mistake again.

[fireman1776]

I think my mind hasn't caught up with everything happening. I started really training a few months ago and am increasing dry fire. I hope to get up to doing it every day. I just don't want to develop bad habits. I figure now is the time to learn to do it right.

I haven't yet developed the muscle memory to keep the slide where it needs to be. One time the front sight is too low then the next time it's too high. I know comparing myself to others is bad. I need to focus on making sure I'm better than I was a week ago. There's so much to work on but it's fun! Thanks everyone.

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[peterthefish]

I think it's two things.

1. When you draw, draw the pistol up and press out. This brings the pistol in a position for your eyes to acquire the front sight early and by the time you've fully pressed the pistol out, you should be ready to fire.

2. Muscle memory. Constant training so that you've developed the muscle memory for your pistol to be pointed at your target naturally.

I think the combination of these two are why the fast and accurate shooters are so fast and accurate.

Great advice here. You see all the fastest shooters doing a press-out on the draw.

[TonyG]

Sounds like you need some professional instruction. If you have been doing dry fire for a few months now and are still having issues with your draw you need another set of eyes on you. All the practice in the world won't help you if you are doing it wrong.

[Jake Di Vita]

What you need to do is develop your natural point of aim then by extension your index. (From my memory, there are good threads on this if you search)

Basically what that means is you need to be consistent enough and familiar enough with gun handling that you can close your eyes, draw, and have the sights aligned on target when you open your eyes. Once you develop enough trust in yourself to do that everytime, acquiring your sights during extension and firing at press out becomes easy.

You have many hours of dry fire ahead of you, but it is a skill well worth developing.

[MemphisMechanic]

There are excellent videos on YouTube from Max Michel, Mike Seeklander, Bob Vogel, and numerous other winning competitors - watch them.

Invest in a full-length mirror for your dryfire area. Cheap ones are available at walmart for less than $15 and I find them invaluable when doing things like this slowly, and turned to the side, to help you see what your arms are actually doing. I bet you'll find you're "rounding the corner" between the holster and final position more than you think - gun comes straight up while muzzle rotates from vertical toward horizontal, and your weak hand establishes it's grip.

Get the gun up high under your chin and press out. Get your eyes locked on the front sight a few inches before you reach full extension, and the rear will take care of itself.

Put this together with Jake's advice (as usual, his words should definitely be give weight) and you should be well on your way.

ALSO! Move nothing but your arms. Airgun your target and drop into your natural shooting stance... and stay in this position as you put hands at sides, then draw. Your chin should not drop when the gun comes out - you don't want your sights to be trying to find a moving target because your eyes are also coming downward. The less you move, the more efficient you will be.

Edited February 27, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[my00wrx1]

I posted this on another thread recently:

Brian's book has some great exercises on pages 170-171 to help with this

[arkadi]

Adding to what Jake and my00wrx1 wrote:

1. Brian's book have extensive information on what NPA and index are, also http://brianenos.com/pages/words.html

Those exercises require no prep, the only thing required is a gun. I keep mine on table through the day.

2. With quite an amount of dry fire, index developed in all directions from different body positions is possible. Slam the hands into target - on draw, after movement - the sights are there. It feels wonderful.

Use dummy rounds in the mag so that balance of the gun is real.

Edited February 27, 2016 by arkadi

[Vlad]

I don't like the notion of muscle memory, your muscles don't have any. You build actual memory and increase your input processing, that is it.

Like so much of our game there is a lot of visual input processing going on here. Sure, your NPA helps a LOT here and after enough drifire you can probably draw to a A blindfolded at a know distance, but almost everything we do is vision driven. I don't like to wait for the sights to appear I like to LOOK for them as the gun comes up on the target. I look for them hard nowadays.

[perttime]

I don't like the notion of muscle memory, your muscles don't have any. You build actual memory and increase your input processing, that is it.

Like so much of our game there is a lot of visual input processing going on here. Sure, your NPA helps a LOT here and after enough drifire you can probably draw to a A blindfolded at a know distance, but almost everything we do is vision driven. I don't like to wait for the sights to appear I like to LOOK for them as the gun comes up on the target. I look for them hard nowadays.

Of course the muscles don't remember anything. But your mind can remember the position and feel of your limbs when the sights are aligned.

Dry firing should help. See where your sights tend to appear when you draw. If there's some consistency there, move your feet to get them aligned on the target and see what happens when you draw again. If you can get a sight picture while keeping your eyes closed during the draw, move your feet to get that alignment on target. Then your eyes have less work to refine the alignment.

[bradsteimel]

My tip is to practice. Before long you will find that sights starts to magically appear where you are looking. That is helpful.

When I first started practicing, I was flinging the gun out as fast as possible to try to beat the par time. That is not conducive to picking up the sights early. Now I try to slow down that last part of the presentation so I can start seeing and verifying sight alignment so as to be able to shoot earlier.

^ agree. Practice can be at home! Dry fire with a timer and a small target that requires focus will teach you how to bring the gun up to where you're looking. Try it for 10-20 minutes per day and in a couple of months you'll be surprised how the sites just appear on the target when you want to pull the trigger.

I know what you're thinking, "In a couple of months?!? Are you kidding? I want a quick fix. Just tell me something I can do to fix the problem NOW."

LOL. Sorry, no such remedy. Dry fire and practice, it'll come.

[johnbu]

Sadly, the "couple months" is optimistic. My old eyes don't change focus very fast anymore and I'm just starting to realize the sight search phase is impacted by having to wait for the peepers to come into focus.

It's been 6 months and progress is happening....slowly.

Edited May 16, 2016 by johnbu

[bradsteimel]

Sadly, the "couple months" is optimistic. My old eyes don't change focus very fast anymore and I'm just starting to realize the sight search phase is impacted by having to wait for the peepers to come into focus.

It's been 6 months and progress is happening....slowly.

True. Same with my intro-weight-lifting friends... when i tell them to try it for a few months to see if they notice results, they look at me skeptically (when in reality, i mean, "try it for a year and let me know if you see results").

There's no such thing as a quick fix in shooting or weight training/fitness.

[motosapiens]

Sadly, the "couple months" is optimistic. My old eyes don't change focus very fast anymore and I'm just starting to realize the sight search phase is impacted by having to wait for the peepers to come into focus.

anticipate. start focusing them before the sights come into view. It may help to try to stay focused on where the sights were in the last rep as you holster the gun and draw again.

[johnbu]

Sadly, the "couple months" is optimistic. My old eyes don't change focus very fast anymore and I'm just starting to realize the sight search phase is impacted by having to wait for the peepers to come into focus.

anticipate. start focusing them before the sights come into view. It may help to try to stay focused on where the sights were in the last rep as you holster the gun and draw again.

Easier said than done! I did a hundred fifty rounds today getting a new gun and old one sighted then prepping for a bowling pin shoot this weekend. I realized I could hit six bowling pin targets in six shots or miss three / four based on the eyes focusing either on the targets or the sights. And it wasn't a conscious decision! I'm still allowing the eye focus to drift to the point of interest (target). Grrrr. It's tough to concentrate for 5 whole seconds!!

[superluckycat]

Can you shoot well with a target focus? Can you learn to? I know this isn't going to work 25 yards but for bowling pin distance it should be fine.

[perttime]

Of course you can get good hits with target focus. The difficult question is: which targets.

[johnbu]

Can you shoot well with a target focus? Can you learn to? I know this isn't going to work 25 yards but for bowling pin distance it should be fine.

We shot at 15yd. The sweet spot to clear the pin is about 1"x2". (Using a 9mm) miss that, but hit the pin and they just fall on the table and are even harder to clear!