Shooting Vision-Michael Yardley

[Vikram]

This is an interesting article about the importance of understanding the role of vision in shooting sports. Written by Michael Yardley.This article is taken from his www.positiveshooting.com page. All copyrights belong to him.

When, 30 years ago, I trained as an experimental psychologist at the University of London, I was already involved in competitive clay and target shooting with pistols and rifles. It was not surprising, therefore, that I took a particular interest in the elements of my course work that related to vision. What I discovered, like many psychology and medical students, is that vision is not quite what I had thought previously. Your eyes are not just a camera, nor, is your brain just an internal TV screen or recording device. It is extremely complex, and not fully understood yet, but, we LEARN to see. As babies we may have eyes, but our vision is limited in range, in focus, pattern and colour recognition, and we have no sense of depth. We don't recognise many objects, scale and proportion and perspective don't mean much either. These are developed with the experience of interacting with the world. We have some excellent internal 'hardware' but, there is a lot of programming and experiential interaction that must occur to make use of it.

We gradually – especially in our earliest months and years – develop visual skills and strategies. We learn to INERPRET the potentially very confusing world around us. Our brain completes a picture for us when insufficient visual data is available (and sometime, it can make mistakes). This speeds up process of our perceptual processing. This all has colossal implications for all sportsmen and women, especially those involved in ball or target sports involving hand to eye co-ordination. There is also something else important to note, our mammalian heritage. As we mature, we use our binocular vision and brain hardware and training, not to mention some sort of primal memory possibly, as a survival mechanism.

Let's cut straight to the chase – literally. If you see a sudden movement within your visual field your eyes will move to it immediately (this is called a saccade or saccadic flick) to assess the potential threat. This is, as noted, a very rapid response (and it has a critical purpose, 10,000 years back – or today in combat – it means you don't get taken by surprise and eaten). Your eyes flick to the potential threat, focus upon it, send visual data to the brain, which is analysed and interpreted, and, assuming it is not threatening, a message is sent back to the optic muscles to RELAX. The eyes return to centre or go on to look at another object of attention if it arises.

Herein lies arguably the greatest secret of shooting success – shooting vision is a SKILL, it is partly facilitated by our primal predator and predated past. It not a natural ability. To shoot successfully, and fully utilise the extraordinary hand to eye potential that you have, though, you must SUSTAIN focus on the target object for an unnatural perhaps even uncomfortable length of time (the second or two or three that it typically takes to shoot a clay target). This requires training of the relevant optic muscles (which will be inclined to relax early), and it will take training and the cognitive awareness /understanding that you need to do it to achieve consistent success.

If you ask the average clay shooting “Do you watch the target?” 99% will say “of course I do, dummy!” 98% will not watch the target hard enough, however. They may think they do, but they have not yet had the revelation of the full importance of Visual Contact (passed to me a long, long time, ago by Joe Neville). They will not sustain 'locked on' focus through the swing with absolute consistency every time. They may become distracted for any one of a dozen reasons and let their focus come back to the gun (probably resulting in misses behind and above, as, when this happens, the head tends to rise and the weight come back too).

I don't want to get into the potential complexities, important though they are, of eye dominance this month. Let's just say that a vital part of using your shooting vision efficiently is understanding your dominance (based on proper diagnosis not just with a card with a hole in or similar, or even more sophisticated means of 'dry' testing, but definitively at pattern plates and targets with a professional watching any tendency you may have to be off line with both eyes open). It may be said here that is better to shoot with both eyes if you can, but that a significant number of men may not be able to do so, nor, the majority of women.

This month rather, I want to consider some of the more physical aspects, your visual acuity, your skull, your optic muscles. To use your eyes efficiently, you must not only know your eye dominance, you must also have eyes which can focus on the target without undue stress (which may require an optical correction and the services of an optician).To shoot efficiently with both eyes open, moreover (it is less important if you close an eye) your technique should promote and your gun fit and stock design allow that your head is relatively level on the comb of the butt. If you drew a line across the centre of your eye orbits it should, when you are in your normal shooting position with head comfortably on stock and cheek applying normal but not excessive pressure, the line should be parallel to the ground/horizon. In other words, your head should not be tilted sideways on the stock. Both eyes should be at similar height above the breech though one is out of line with it.

Every shooter needs a visual strategy too. Mine is part of my Positive Shooting System. I position my body to where I want to break the target, I wind the gun back to where I see the clay first as a solid object and I take by eyes, turning the head slightly, to where I first see it as a blur. I DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE TRAP. You can experiment with your own pick up and hold points and they will change, not just with different targets being presented at different speeds and distances, but in relation to technique too.

The method just spelt out, it intended for gun down shooting. If you shoot gun up, I advise, in a sporting or skeet context, winding back the gun, head and eyes together to that you begin where you first see the target as a blur as it exists the trap (some people to start with the head raised a little and then bring it down as they refine visual contact and rotate). But, in all cases, gun up or gun down, to succeed your visual action on calling for the clay will be the same. You must 'stare the target to pieces'. Perfect, sustained, locked-on, focus every time. We haven't mentioned forward allowance, because (within certain limits) this business of visual discipline naturally promotes it at a subconscious level. Watch the bird well and you will kill it well.