鉄砲道 — teppoudo

There is a lot of discussion on where to focus while shooting. The classical instructional model stresses focus on the front sight only. Brian Enos covers 5 types of focus in his book Practical Shooting – Beyond Fundamentals.

Included below is a posting by Ron Avery on the Brian Enos forum that goes beyond treating focus points as discrete entities.

Where to focus is a constant source of learning and enlightenment as we try to focus speed and precision. Brian Enos talks about 5 levels of focus in his excellent book. I have done experiments over the years with different types of focus and what I came to learn was that there is an infinite number of focal points that one can go to between the target and the front sight. I call this the “focal continuum” To say that we only focus on the target or on the front sight is a misnomer. The reality is that, when we are shooting well, we see the relationship between target and sight well enough to make certain of the hits.

Where the visual focus needs to be depends on four things:

• Target size
• Range to target
• Visual ability of the shooter
• Kinesthetic ability of the shooter

Target size and range:
Big targets up to 10 yards can be shot using a soft focus. Put in a head shot and the vision must move back towards the front sight to ensure correct alignment. This takes care of items one and two.

Visual ability and training:
Younger eyes can accommodate a wider depth of field than older eyes. You will be able to see the sights and the target with reasonable clarity of each as you play with the peripheral vision field and acceptable sight picture. Older shooters will have to trade off with a compromise. I use different types of lenses to give me a picture that is acceptable for most shooting that I will be doing.

Remember, under stress, attention shifts and the brain may not be registering the same picture that the lens is producing when you are relaxed and things are going well.
Specific conditioning is needed here to ensure quality control of the imagery.

When in doubt, go with front sight focus to save your day. Sometimes it only feels slow when you focus on the front sight. The reality is that it can happen extremely fast if you train it correctly.

Kinesthetic ability:
Here I am speaking of the ability to hold the sight alignment without specifically looking at it. This is how you must do it if you do not look at a hard front sight focus. Training here is what allows you to shoot using soft focus at extended distances. I did some demonstrations of this at 50 yards on one of the tapes just to illustrate it. I am not saying I would do it at that distance in a national or world match with winning on the line. Again, stress and its effects can change coordination and make the easy, difficult.

In the best of all worlds, kinesthetic works with visual to allow superior performance than either alone.

A final thought:
It is not what you see that is important so much as what registers on your brain at the moment the shot is fired. The eyes are the lens but the brain is the film.

It all comes down to having sufficient information to accurately place and call the shot.