Ayoob Stress Fire Point Index

[Loves2Shoot]

For me, there is no consious thought or thinking about the sight picture. It is more of an instant recognition (at an almost subconsious level) of what is right in front of me.

I was watching a show on the Discovery Channel about vision. They showed a guy who lost his vision and they were recently able to rewire his eyes so he could see again. After the operation the "turn the lights on" and he can't recognize anything, he can see, but since it had been 40 years since his last sight, he couldn't tell what anything was. He had no visual memory.

Most of what we "see" is not what we actually see, but what our brain tells us it should be. To make a long story short, a lot of our vision is influenced by our memory of what something "should" look like, so in an instant we recognize it, and there is no need to get but a glimpse to recognize an object if we have seen it enough times. They showed some example and it made sense.

I think this is why season shooters have an advantage, they've seen the sight picture enough to make a decision quicker.

So in summary, the more you practice "seeing" your sights, the quicker you will see them, because sight is linked to memory. I think that also has something to do why good shooters can make amazing shots and not remember seeing anything, it happens so fast that the brain took over and called the shot on "autopilot" because it was programmed in training to make good shots.

Just something that made me think about training by making good shots and being visually aware of that.

[benos]

Experienced shooters just know how much of a sight picture they need, that is why they are faster. Getting a "perfect sight picture" is what takes more time.

Exactly.

With experience, you'll learn how to see as little as possible - but still know right were the shot went from what you saw.

Or another way to think of it - learn to see just enough of what you need to see so you can shoot as soon as the sights are in the A box. As opposed to the "waiting to confirm a stopped, sight alignment in the center of each A box" technique.

be

[OlliesRevenge]

DogmaDog et al.

...you could consider enlarging the rear sight notch and or narrowing the front post in order to allow you to see more through the sights.

Going to the Dawson fiber optic sights from a set of thick Trijicons was a great move for me for that very reason. I went with the .100" x .300" front blade, and I feel this went a long way toward diminishing the advantage 'shooting out of the notch' has for me. I've only had them on about 10 days now, and I've done a huge amount of dryfire since my original post. They are much easier to see quickly with a regular sight picture, for me at least.

I would think that needing to see something as specific as "two thirds of the front sight above the rear notch, with the front sight tip in the lower third of the A zone" would take just as long as seeing the "front sight centered in the rear notch, in the center of the A zone".

I burned about 550 rounds of live fire yesterday, and I discovered something about this. Basically, the only real advantage I saw for 'shooting out of the notch' is that it helps my transitions time wise. It still feel like it is faster for me to see a single blade rather than an entire classic sight picture after moving the gun to meet my visual focus. My PocketPal 2 timer showed faster transition times as well, though not by much. I originally thought it also helped my accuracy and time during multiple shots on a single target, but I found that not to be the case yesterday. To be fair, this was my first live fire after installing a Buffer Tech recoil buffer insert and packing SlideGlide #1 into my Glock 17, and I think those two changes greatly helped my accuracy during rapid fire. I did about 20 Bill Drills at a split cadence of .22 to .28 sec and I was able to clearly see my front sight bobbing up and down out of the rear notch when using a regular sight picture. I don't recall ever before seeing things with that much clarity when shooting that fast.

I found out that my par time for a live fire Bill drill (7 yards, 6 shots, no reloads, that's a Bill drill right?) is about 2.60 to 2.75. I did one at 2.36 but was unable to repeat. I was using printable 1/3 size IPSC targets, so my initial goal was to simply keep all shots on paper.

I didn't measure groups or anything, but with a regular sight picture I only had a single run where a round wound up not hitting paper. In fact, I had two runs where all shots wound up in the C zone or better of the 1/3 size target. Using the shooting out of the notch technique my speed was the same, but accuracy was noticeably worse. Not "rounds over the berm" kind of worse, but it was very clear.

So there it is, using the sights correctly results in improved accuracy. Boy do I feel like a genious for figuring this out.

During my previous lurking I've seen you guys talk about the "trick of the day". Maybe thats all this was for me, on one day, as a beginning shooter, and I just didn't know enough to know to let it go.

I would be interested to hear more about why Todd Jarrett felt compelled to "rediscover" this thing that Ayoob wrote about in the early 80's, and why he feels it's useful.

[DogmaDog]

So there it is, using the sights correctly results in improved accuracy. Boy do I feel like a genious for figuring this out.

LFisher,

Well done! Going to the range and really just becoming AWARE of what you are actually seeing and doing, and not confounding that with what you think you WANT or SHOULD be seeing or doing is a great big step toward improving your shooting. I think most of us here, if we're honest with ourselves would say we re-learn something about the most basic and fundamental aspects of shooting every time we pick up a gun. Realizing what's actually happening is the first step toward altering what happens to achieve a better result (an A hit, sooner).

It's one of the mesmerizing things about shooting that it can be intellectually understood so simply ("align the sights on the target and pull the trigger without disturbing the alignment of the sights"), yet still require our full mental and physical capacity, and lifelong study and practice to do it well. As Brian said, "you can never learn how to shoot...you can just learn about shooting", or something to that effect.

DD

[Duane Thomas]

(7 yards, 6 shots, no reloads, that's a Bill drill right?)

Almost. The one thing you left out is that the measure of a Bill Drill is not how fast you can fire six shots, it's how fast you can fire six As.