Cool Quick Vision Drill for Irons and Red Dots

I’ve got a couple of fun drills for you today…

They’re based on the idea that if you can hold a steady gaze, you’ll be much more accurate and precise with your shooting…ESPECIALLY if you shift your gaze to where it needs to be early.

Two examples of this:

If you know where movement is going to occur and you shift focus to that location, your vision can settle and you can react sooner than if your focus is flicking around.
If you pre-shift your focus to the point in space where your front sight will end up, your vision can settle and you’ll be able to verify sight alignment much quicker than if you wait until your gun is in it’s final shooting position to shift focus.

So, what’s it like to have your vision “settle?”

Here’s an example from the 1800s called the Troxler Effect. If you’re on a phone, make this image as big as possible.

You may have seen Matt Seibert from Insight or Chris Sajnog talk about this effect in regards to front sight focus…it’s really cool.

When you focus intently on the front sight…or the little dot above the front sight, if your eyes are still, all of the groovy colors around the outside will disappear over the course of 5-30 seconds.

There are a few areas of the brain that make this happen…

The midline of the cerebellum, which is also involved in balance and CO2 sensitivity.

The midbrain and the reticular formation between the pons and the medulla, which control eye movement, residual muscular tension, CO2 sensitivity, and cross-body balance.

The posterior parietal lobe, which helps us control thoughts, attention, and our response to pain.

There have been studies done where they’ve shown that doing this drill with the goal of increasing the time that you fix your focus improves all of those…it helps with pain response, attention (think ADD, ADHD, and even spectrum), and our ability to manage and control our thoughts (think worry, fretting, regret, anxiety, etc.)

Super cool, huh?

What if you have trouble doing it?

Try making the picture bigger…postcard size is easier than business card size.
Try doing it 1 eye at a time.
Reply back and I can suggest some different versions of the Troxler Effect.

What about red dots?

With red dots, it’s easier to keep our eyes diverged to the target rather than having both point at the dot.

This Troxler *kind of* approximates this:

What you want to do is look past the image…like you’re focused on a target with the image above at arm’s length.

When you do, you should see 4 silhouettes…2 of the one with the green triangle and 2 of the one with the red dot.

(If you don’t see this, be patient, but keep in mind that if your brain is completely supressing the image from one eye, you will only see 2 targets and not 4.)

Try to move your eyes so that the two middle targets overlap, giving you 3 targets. The middle one will have both a triangle AND a dot.

When you do this, you’ll notice that it appears to float and all of the color behind it disappears.

And, when it does?

Just the act of doing this drill will increase blood flow to the parts of the brain I mentioned above…and this increased flow of oxygen and glucose can immediately improve the other brain functions controlled from those regions.

If this drill was rough or challenging, that’s ok. Keep at it…just don’t overdue it. If it’s rough, it’s fine to stop after 30-60 seconds. Keep in mind that the more challenging this drill is, the more you stand to gain from doing it.

For me, when I got my eyes to where they were able to fixate correctly, my shooting and reading speed (and enjoyment) shot through the roof.

This is an example of why vision training is one of the biggest secret weapons of elite athletes and tacletes around the globe.

Vision training opens up the world and allows you to see more, see quicker, and see more accurately than you may think is possible.

Check out more vision training for tactical applications at VisionTraining.com

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