Shooting with non-dominant eye

[TTS]

First off, the term "dominant" eye isn't correct unless you actually have a seeing impairment in one of your eyes. A person who is right handed is right hand dominant because they use that hand more often, resulting in more synapses developed in the motor cortex of the brain for controlling that hand. A persons "weak" hand doesn't have the same dexterity or fine control as their dominant hand because fewer synapses are dedicated to controlling it.

However, you can feel sensory input from both hands equally. Your dominant hand is not more sensitive to touch than your weak hand. The same is true of your eyes. The brain prefers to favor one eye, and then stitch the image from the other eye with it to provide depth of vision. Just how both hands are able to feel the same level of touch (again, presuming no other impairments), your brain is perfectly capable of favoring either eye. One is not "dominant" in the same way as when using your hand to perform something that requires dexterity. Don't confuse sensory input from motor control.

This is evidenced when using the Bindon Aiming Concept, where a person can switch between magnification and no magnification when using an ACOG by switching between which eye the brain is favoring. It takes a little time to master but it's a very cool and powerful technique. If you are right handed, right eye far sighted, and left eye near sighted, this is actually a very cool thing for you, and you should leverage it in your shooting.

The ideal sight picture for greatest accuracy is when you are shooting with both eyes open, the point of binocular convergence is on the target, and the point of optical focus is on the front sight. If I understand you, when looking at something close, your left eye can focus on it properly, but it is still fuzzy with your right eye. This indicates that the point of optical focus for each eye is different. One is one the sight, the other somewhere forward of the front sight, closer to the target. This should result in the target being in sharper focus than when both eyes are focused on the front sight. You're going to want to develop one or more drills to train yourself to leverage this condition Try the following and see if it helps:

Run a plain white target with a 1/2" green dot on it out to 5 yards or so. Using a .22 pistol, adjust the sights so that point of impact is directly behind the center of the front sight. Use a rest if necessary. What you want to do is with both eyes open, use your left eye to focus on the sight. Use your right eye to see the target. Your brain will stitch the images together so that what you perceive will be a partially transparent front sight, with the 1/2" green dot directly behind it. Because the green dot is completely obscured by your front sight, you must use both eyes correctly in order to get a sight picture and hit the dot. You should see one target slightly out of focus, and two transparent front sights. The one in focus should be the one that is properly aligned with the rear, and the other one should be off to the side and can be ignored.

Play with this sight picture. You will discover that you can eventually shift between eyes, from seeing a solid sight that completely obscures the dot, to fading away to where you see the dot perfectly, and the sight all but disappears. With the different focal points of your eyes, you should be able to see the dot with greater clarity than most of us, which is a definite advantage. This will be especially true the further away the target is from the front sight. Many competitive shooters have glasses made with two different natural focal points for just this reason, so nature has given you an advantage that other people have to lean on specialized equipment to achieve.

Anyways, I hope this makes sense, and helps you out. If you want to hit the range some time and try out some different sight picture training techniques, hit me up.

I don't know if this is entirely correct...

A basic high school science project is to determine if a person can hold their left or right hand in ice water longer. This is a basic test to show that the nerve sensitivity is higher in your dominant hand. Here is a slightly more scientific version of the test from a college student: http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2002/Projects/J0309.pdf

It is also well known in sports science that eye dominance has an impact on how fast one can process information.
http://www.allaboutvision.com/sportsvision/skills.htm

When shooting for absolute accuracy having both eyes open is kind of the best, but only when blocking the non-dominant eye. Like in the pic below. Many precision shooters cover their non-dominant eye.


The issue boils down to how well your brain process information. The increased synaptic connections that you mention allow your brain to process information better through your dominant hand, eye and ear.

All that said for defensive shooting, having both eyes open is best because it increases your overall awareness. One can train to shoot very well with their non-dominant hand and eye, however it requires a significant amount of training time.

[jshuberg]

I have to disagree. The article you referenced was an interesting read, but provided no sources or references. It also stated that having cross-dominance is a detriment to target shooting. This is absolute and complete BS. There are plenty of world class shooters that "suffer" this impairment just fine. If I recall correctly Ron Avery mentioned he was cross dominant in a recent class I attended. I am also cross dominant (left eye right handed), and can state with all certainty that it has no effect on my shooting at all.

The idea that the dominant hand is more sensitive is interesting though. Without the entire article though, we don't know the details of what the researchers found. Was it 20% more sensitive, or 2%? I would imagine that the difference while measurable, is a *very* small amount. Much smaller than the difference in dexterity between the control over the hands.

The truth is, a person can train themself to prefer their other eye with very little effort compared to learning to use the other hand. Often times it only takes a couple hours with dominance exercises to learn to "switch eyes" on demand. Again, I refer to the Bindon Aiming Concept that relies on a persons ability to switch eyes at will. I shoot pistol with my left eye, but shoot rifle with my right. When taking a carbine class and switching to my secondary weapon, initially I have to remind myself to switch eyes and focal points when transitioning to a pistol. Within an hour or so, it happens automatically. I could not do the same with my hands, it's a matter of sensory input vs. motor control.

I think there is simply a lot of incorrect information being repeated over and over, despite evidence to the contrary. Like being cross dominant is detrimental to pistol shooting. That's simply a theory someone cooked up at some point that bears no truth when measured against reality. If a person can retrain themself to favor their "weak" eye in just a few hours of training, there's simply no way that that eye dominance is anything like hand dominance.

[jshuberg]

A little off topic, but I recently considered switching to my non-dominant eye when pistol shooting. The reason is that I have a large bundle of cells floating around in my dominant eye, which I can occasionally see as a slight distortion in that eye. My concern was that my vision in that eye may actually be more reduced than I realized, and that my brain was filling in the lost details when the cluster of cells floats into the center of my vision. The same way it fills in the blind spot directly behind the optic nerve.

So I tried this a few times. It took a little effort at the beginning, but I can shoot just as well when using my right eye as my left. It does take a conscious effort to do as my brain still "favors" my left eye, so I've decided to stick with my left eye unless I find myself able to shoot better with my right. I plan on switching it every once in awhile to check it.

I don't have any special magical ability to switch eyes on demand. Everyone can do it with a little training. It's *significantly* easier than learning to do something like writing with your weak hand.

[TTS]

I largely agree with your points. Being cross dominant myself, I know that it can be overcome. When shooting rifle I can shoot left handed or slightly squint my left eye to force my right eye to focus.

I think when the articles mention shooting, they are talking specifically about precision rifle and archery. I haven't seen anything that said cross dominance hurts pistol shooting.

Here is an interesting read related to archery.
http://www.texasarchery.org/Documents/articleeyedominance.pdf

Rob Pincus also has a great video on the topic that supports the idea that eye dominance doesn't matter, just in a little different way.

[jshuberg]

Thanks, I'll give that a read tomorrow. I do find this conversation interesting.

One last personal observation, I believe that being right handed and left eyed may actually be a benefit to pistol shooting. At least at the beginning when trying to develop your technique. The reason is that the pistol is canted ever so slightly to the right when using your left eye, as opposed to being canted slightly left when using the right eye. It's a small amount, but is necessary for the eye, rear sight, front sight, and target to fall into a straight line.

This means that the left eyed shooter will have less of a sideways angle of their left wrist. The back of the left hand and outside left forearm are more straight than the back of the right hand and the outside if the right forearm. This orientation tends to result in the left hand driving, or primarily being responsible for the holding and positioning of the pistol. The reason is the brain tends to favor the hand more squarely on the object for support. Even when a person is right handed, if the left hand has a better grip, is straighter or less awkward than the right hand, the brain will naturally tend to transfer control to the left more easily.

This helps the shooter because the support hand is the hand primarily responsible for driving, holding, and controlling the position and orientation of the gun. The strong hand is primarily responsible for only one thing - trigger control.

A right handed left eyed individual is likely to learn the skill of driving the gun with their left hand, and the isolation of the movement of the trigger finger from their grip easier because the slight orientation of the pistol to the left eye allows the brain to give control of the pistol to the left hand more readily.

Anyways, that's an observation I made a couple years ago. I don't know of any research that's been done on this, but it makes sense to me that the left eyed shooter may have a slight advantage over the right eyed shooter. YMMV.

[redaudi]

I'm left handed and right eye dominant.

I shoot lefty, and don't have any issues with it.

I can also shoot right handed, but I prefer left as it's more comfortable.

I'd say shoot the way that works best for you.

[ninjedi]

I too am cross-dominant -- right handed and left-eye dominant. I can see perfectly fine out of both eyes, but I found that my left eye is dominant. When I first started shooting (handgun), I would hold right-handed and tilt my head so that I was looking down the sights with my left eye. After a while I decided that was not the most effective or proficient way, so I started closing my left eye and looking down the sights with my right eye. I have no problem doing this, it is far more comfortable, and I would say my accuracy has actually improved as a result. I have done this enough that when I bring my gun up fast (i.e., quick draw or something), my left eye automatically shuts so I can use my right eye to sight.

Had I learned to shoot earlier in life I definitely would have considered learning to shoot lefty, but it's my belief that once you get to a certain age it is simply more feasible to learn to shoot with your other eye than your other hand.

[jshuberg]

Why would you turn your head to look at your sights? Why would you not simply cant the gun around 5 degrees to the right, and let everything line up properly? Bring your gun to your eye, not your eye to the gun. People seem to think that cross dominance is somehow troublesome or tricky. It isn't. Just line up the sights with your dominant eye. It's that simple.

Closing one eye when shooting is a very bad habit. It may be necessary when you are first learning to shoot, but what a person does with their eyes is just as important as what they do with their hands when shooting. The only exception is when making an accurate shot at distance - like shooting a 2" target at 25 yards. Even then, partially closing the eye to acquire your desired sight picture is preferred to closing it completely.

When a person closes one eye, they lose more than 50% of their visual input and depth perception. The brain uses the peripheral vision in the opposite eye to fill in the blind spot behind the optic nerve. With one eye closed the brain tries to fill in the hole with patterns and memories of what it believes is there. However, if something happens in your blind spot when you have one eye closed, you simply won't see it. The blind spot is about as large as a baseball a foot away from your face, around 25-30 degrees to the outside of your center of vision.

Learning to shoot both eyes open, without blinking, understanding the focal continuum, and tracking your front sight through recoil is just as important as trigger control.

[bensdad]

I hesitated to post on this, as I feel "out of school" on the subject. I'm r-hand:l-eye. Trained the eyes to switch back and forth a long time ago. I put little pieces of scotch tape on my shooting glasses, just above and to the outside (very slightly) of line-of-sight for my left eye. Shot trap this way forever. Still shoot pistol this way sometimes. Don't really need the tape anymore. When I'm shooting something now, my right eye decides WHERE it is. Left eye decides how far away and whatever else it thinks my brain needs to know.