Low Ready vs. Holster & Sighted vs. Unsighted Shooting

We’ve got a shooting study group that meets once a month to force us to get out of our comfort zone.  It’s all guys who are serious about shooting and can be trusted to move and shoot safely on a hot range in poor conditions.

A lot of times, we end up shooting when it’s cold, wet, and after dark.  Guns fail.  Gear fails.  Fingers and joints stop cooperating and old injuries remind us of past choices and events.  Technique gets refined, stripped down, and technique that fails is mercilessly kicked into the ditch.

We ran a couple of insightful tests/drills awhile back that I want to share with you so that you can try them yourself.

The first one was inspired by a couple of comments that I’d heard…the latest from Col. Dave Grossman…claiming that your times for reacting and getting your first shot on target will be almost identical if your gun is in the low-ready position vs. in your holster with your hand on the grip and retention released.

So we tested it.

Our group of 8 ranged from about .25 seconds faster from low ready to .25 seconds faster from the holster.  We didn’t count the time to the first shot.  We counted time to the first hit on a reduced silhouette steel target at about 7 yards in the dark with flares on the ground providing light.

There was no definitive conclusion about which way was faster, but there were some takeaways.

1. In almost all cases, a holstered gun will expose you to less liability than an unholstered gun.
2. You’re less likely to get shot by responding officers with a holstered gun than with an unholstered gun.
3. In most locals, unholstering a pistol is considered brandishing. In many locals, gripping your pistol is not brandishing.  These definitions change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so you need to know your local laws.
4. Negligent discharges from sympathetic reactions, inter-limb reflexes, etc. are less likely if the pistol is holstered vs. unholstered.
5. Drawing from the holster requires more movement and coordination than if you start from low ready, but the guys who frequently dry fire practice their drawstroke and not engaging from low ready tended to be faster from the holster than from low ready.It’s always fascinating to me when a shooter or athlete can perform a complex movement that they’ve created neural pathways for faster and more precisely than a much simpler movement.

The 2^nd drill we did was inspired by the drill from Dry Fire Training Cards called “Eyes Wide Shut.”

We did a live fire version where we shot reduced sized steel silhouettes from 7 yards.

Here’s how the drill progressed:

1. 1. Pick a spot on your target, shut your eyes, grip, draw, and extend your pistol. Open your eyes to verify sight alignment.  Make adjustments as necessary until your sights are consistently on target.

2. Pick a spot on your target, shut your eyes, grip, draw, extend your pistol, open your eyes to verify/adjust sight alignment and press the trigger. Make adjustments to your stance, grip, and drawstroke as necessary until your able to hit the steel without making adjustments after opening your eyes.

3. Pick a spot on your target, shut your eyes, grip, draw, extend your pistol, and press the trigger with your eyes still closed. If you’re hitting, keep doing #3.  If you’re missing, go back to #2.

This drill accomplishes a few goals.

Shooting steel is generally considered “fun”.  One of the reasons is that when you get feedback that you’ve performed a skill successfully, your brain releases dopamine.  The amount of dopamine released is maximized when the sensory feedback happens between .1 and .2 seconds of when you perform the skill.  The ring of the steel accomplishes that.  So with this drill, you’re using other-than-visual senses to aim and you’re getting positive non-visual feedback at exactly the right time to maximize the release of dopamine when you succeed.

When you release neurotransmitters, like dopamine, you build neural pathways (muscle memory) faster.

Any time you close your eyes while performing a skill that you normally do with your eyes open, it recruits additional parts of the brain to the process and creates a deeper, more stable and resilient neural pathway.

Next, this drill helps to blend sighted and unsighted shooting.  Sometimes unsighted shooting is called “point” shooting or “instinctive” shooting, but there’s nothing “instinctive” about shooting a pistol any more than there is about shooting a 3-pointer.  It’s a skill that you learn and that you have to practice if you want to be good at it at speed or under stress.

It doesn’t matter if you’re doing sighted or unsighted shooting, the fact remains that the bullet isn’t necessarily going to go where some finger is pointing or where your instinct tells it to…the bullet is going to go where the muzzle is pointed and the sights are aligned the moment the primer ignites, regardless of whether or not your eye is part of the process.

This drill trains your arm/hand to bring the sights up into alignment between your dominant eye and the target…automatically…and eventually all your eye has to do is verify sight alignment.

If you’ve got a big target, your eye can verify sight alignment, even if the sights aren’t in focus.

If you’ve got a small target, you’ll only have to make micro adjustments to your sight alignment, if any.

This drill is a great gut check for anyone who thinks that you can’t miss at self defense ranges.  If your grip is off and you don’t realize it because you’re in a hurry, it’s EASY to miss a man sized target at 21, or even 11 feet.  If you’re in a hurry and so overwhelmed that you can’t get your eyes to come off of your threat, it’s EASY to mis-align the gun or mash or jerk the trigger and completely miss big targets at close ranges.

This drill is also a good gut check for people who don’t think they’ll use their sights in a real gunfight.

If you think that, then use this drill to get an idea of the best that you could possibly perform.  If you’re hitting steel 100% of the time with your eyes closed from the distances that are important to you, then add a little stress & speed, and try it again.  If you’re still happy with your results, keep pushing until you find your limits.

But most shooters are going to quickly realize that their point shooting isn’t as effective as they thought and they’re going to want to step back and do more sighted shooting until they train their body to automatically bring the sights up into alignment with their intended target.

So what’s the best way to do this drill at home with dry fire?

Use a webcam or selfie camera on your phone and an inert training platform (like the http://dryfirepistol.com) or an unloaded pistol with all ammo removed from the training area.

Stare at the center of the lens of your camera from about 6 feet away, shut your eyes, draw and extend your pistol with the intent of aiming at the center of the lens of your camera, and open your eyes.  The proof will be in the video.

Ideally, the camera will show that the front sight is centered in the rear sight notch and both will be lined up with a single pupil.

Slightly less ideal, but more likely and still good is if the sights are aligned with the camera, but not with an eye.

Worst case, but most common is if the sights are nowhere close to being pointed at the camera.

Do the drill a few times.  If you’re consistently aiming at the exact same spot to the right or left of the camera, you can either adjust your footing OR there’s a neuro-vestibular approach.

The neuro-vestibular approach is to tap the bone that’s between your ear hole and your eye in the direction you want to move your point of impact.  So, if you’re consistently aiming to the left of the camera, tap on the bone on the right side of your face a couple of times and try it again.  You can also snap your fingers once or twice by your right ear.  If neither of those work for you, just change your footing.

If you’re still nowhere close to being pointed at the camera when you open your eyes, do the following:

1. With your eyes open, arms extended, and sights lined up on your target, bring the pistol towards your chest 6-12”, shut your eyes, extend your arms, and open your eyes. If your sights aren’t aligned with your target, adjust them and repeat.  Eventually, your brain will figure out how to communicate so that your arms deliver the performance you want.
2. With your eyes open, arms extended, and sights lined up on your target, bring the pistol back to where your strong hand meets your support hand (or other strong hand), shut your eyes, extend your arms, and open your eyes. Use the same corrective process as above.
3. Keep moving further and further backwards in your technique until your pistol is holstered with your hands at your side.

This drill is very powerful for synthesizing your sighted and unsighted technique that will quickly make a measurable difference in how you shoot, regardless of whether it’s for fun, competition, or a life and death situation…and it’s just part of a single lesson from the 21 Day Alpha Shooter Program.

The 21 Day Alpha Shooter Program uses more than a dozen accelerated learning techniques to help you develop neural pathways (muscle memory) faster than what’s humanly possible if you only do live fire training, but it costs less than a single trip to the range.  To see how it will work for you, check it out now by clicking >>> 21 Day Alpha Shooter <<<

Questions?  Comments? Let me know by commenting below.

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