“How are you able to see that fast?”
That’s what a friend of mine asked when I explained how I can see and process the magazine going into the gun on a reload I did.
I often tell this story about the 2021 USPSA Nationals, where we had a “stand and shoot” stage. The reload looked like it was just thrown into the gun, but I was able to see it as if I were just holding it in place. The intent here is to show students just what is possible when you’re looking for it, and to challenge yourself to “See more and see faster.”
Vision is a critical aspect of practical shooting—probably one of the most important aspects of it. I’ve played around with developing different aspects of it, and the purpose of this article is to share them with you and give you some exercises to help develop it—both on and off the range.
In my experience, there are three elements of vision that are highly important to success in our game. Two of them are physical, while another links the mind and visual system together. There are many other components aside from these, but if you can master these three, you will be well on your way to developing faster vision which, combined with proper training for our game, will yield better results, more awareness both in matches and training, and all-around global adaptation to do things faster while not even feeling like you are working hard to do it.
The first element of great vision skills in our game is visual speed. Commonly, newer shooters and ones who haven’t yet developed their skills are very connected to the gun. It’s as if their eyes break from the optic window or iron sights that they will never see it again. A challenge here physically is that they haven’t put in enough repetition to get the gun going to where they look, but that’s the physical issue that needs to be addressed through proper training.
The visual speed challenge is learning to disconnect your eyes from the gun, and have it move maximum speed from target to target. Our head and eyes can move much faster than the gun without penalty, and we need to be taking advantage of that fact. In all of our shooting, our vision getting to the next task or spot that we need to be on each target allows us more time to process what we’re doing (more on processing later). If we can be there that much sooner, we have the opportunity to guide our body to the place we ultimately want to be, while feeling like we have more time to accomplish this. This is a win-win situation and should be taken advantage of as much as possible.
The next element of great vision is visual precision. Having great visual speed is excellent, but not having the precision to match it just creates a lot of “shooting at brown” versus actually seeing the letter A or a paster on the target we intend to shoot, in the location we would like to shoot it. It’s very common to see shooters shoot an excellent pair, only to have it be in the wrong spot on target, especially with partials. I’ve given feedback to students that if their aiming point was a little bit safer (away from the partial line), they would have had two great shots, instead of one good shot and a penalty an inch or two away from it. If this is you (and it has been me as well), this is a sign that your visual precision is off.
It’s also highly common for shooters to not look closely enough when they’re pushing their pace. They will see the entirety of the target instead of the paster-sized spot they want to shoot. This will often create a pattern where the hits are more spaced out, with the first shot falling somewhere on the side in the direction of travel. This means if you’re transitioning to the right, the left side C or D will get hit first, and then the A zone, or closer to center will get the second hit as you continue to travel toward the A zone. Having awareness of this in training is as simple as asking yourself what you saw and try to recall if you were very specific with your visual aiming point. If you weren’t, you can address that by staring intently at the spot you’d like to hit (or using the “ghost dot” concept to identify what success looks like).
This visual precision requires two things to happen that are important—the eyes must converge on the same spot on the target, and they must have the right focal depth for each eye to stay focused on the target. These are both trainable things and we do them daily. The key is helping them to be done quicker. This is done by working out the eye muscles so that they respond faster.
Lastly, an important component of vision is linking it to the supercomputer that is your brain. Vision is nothing without the ability to process what is happening in real time, so Information processing is the final principle here. Your brain needs to be able to recognize you’ve picked the right spot on target, notice that the gun/dot/optic/sights are there, and then respond to what it’s seen with the appropriate action (press trigger, adjust, fire makeup).
I’ve had situations where student’s claim that they’re “over-confirming” their dot or sights, when in reality they really haven’t processed that they’re even there. For reference, over-confirmation is when everything is there, you’ve seen it, and you just take extra time to “make sure”, which is a commitment issue. You want to double and triple check (Engineer Ed is my persona label for this type of person) to be sure—which just delays you from shooting or “letting go” (cue music from “Frozen”).
A processing issue is when you cannot recognize that the dot/sights are where you want them to be quickly enough to get the response you desire. It’s that you haven’t trained your brain to respond quickly enough to the thing you want to happen! While there are limits on how fast we can respond to things (and I thought those limits were fixed in the past), I believe and have seen in myself the growth of my abilities to see and process information much faster as I’ve trained with the intention of making this change, and believing it’s possible.
Combining these three components together to a higher level will give you the potential to be able to make significant changes to your shooting ability and results. It will also provide you the awareness and ability to recognize when things are going well and why, and when they aren’t so that you can choose a response. It will also begin to make it feel like you’re not really moving that fast, while having the benefit that you will be faster.
A common challenge for shooters is removing the desire to consciously control time—when you enhance your visual abilities, knowing that you will be fast enough can really calm the desire to want to make things happen. It is comforting knowing that you will be plenty fast while not having to feel like you are. It allows you to relax and let go of your abilities, trusting what you’ve trained your eyes, body and skills to do.
Now that we know what these important components are, the question is “how do we train them?” Now, I’ll give you some exercises that you can do on and off the range, so that no matter where you are, you can work on these skills and enhance your game.
VISUAL SPEED AND PRECISION
ON THE RANGE
Before doing a repetition of your shooting, separate the head and eye component from the gun (a previous article had this as the head/eyes/arms/gun drill—this was the first part). Prioritize maximum head and eye movement speed, with a focus on being fast from the spot on one target to the spot on the other. When you get to the end of the array, dart your vision back to the beginning and do it again. Do this several times before involving the gun. When you bring the gun into it, even though the gun might lag behind some, maintain this visual component to it’s maximum capacity.
For focal depth adjustments, you can put a closer target paired with a further one and work drills that involve shooting from far to near and near to far. This is a highly relevant skill in our game, since often targets aren’t at the same distance away from us, and being able to seamlessly blend them together is critical to success. Think of setting up a target at five yards and a target (or steel) at 15 yards as a simple example of this.
OFF THE RANGE
I got these exercises from Brandon Powers, and he was super helpful in my shooting journey for both this and movement. He sent me some eye charts that had random letters mixed in rows and columns. I would stand about 10 feet away, with two charts about 10 feet apart at eye level on the wall. The intention was that I could not move my head, only my eyes for this. The procedure is that you start on the top left of one sheet and then go to the top left of the other sheet with only eye movement. When you see the letter, you must call out the letter audibly. This creates an action associated with processing it as well. I would set a timer for 60 seconds and work top to bottom, trying to get through as many letters as possible. You can do this for three sets several times a week.
For working focal depth adjustment (think near to far targets), Brandon also gave me a small chart that was similar to the others with smaller font. I would stand at the same distance from the wall, with the small chart in front of my dominant eye. Using the same 60 seconds and three sets, I would work on calling out the letters from near to far and back.
Lastly, I would utilize a Brock string to work focal depth as well. This is a string that has multiple beads on it of different colors at different distances. You tie the string to a door handle (or something else) and put the string up to your nose. Then you can pick an order to go through, and cycle through focusing on each bead as quickly as you can. When you focus correctly, the bead comes fully into focus and the string looks like an X. Do the same three sets of 60 seconds with this. After doing all of these my eyes would feel quite tired, but as time went on I found I was able to pick up things faster and progress through these quite well.
These three exercises are simple and can make a noticeable change over time; it does not replace proper training with your actual gun, but it is a great supplement to that training you currently are doing and is much easier to do in areas where you can’t bring your guns to train. I used to do these on my lunch breaks at my day job with good success.
While keeping the gun on the last target, ask yourself:
- Was I aware of my dot/sights for every shot I fired?
- Was I focused on the target or sights/dot?
- If I was target focused, where on the target was I specifically looking?
These “after action” questions are highly effective and are able to be utilized in all aspects of training, not just this one, so be sure to take this along with you as well.
Another thing that has really helped me cut down on shooting time is what I call the “ghost dot” concept. The theory behind this is that I am predefining what success will look like in order to cut down the response time needed. If you can pick up a target and imagine that your red dot is on it without needing the gun, you will find this useful. If you cannot do this yet, learning to visualize this will become very helpful. The ghost dot idea came to me as I was playing around with the iron sight to optic transition.
For irons, I’d find that pre-defining success by imagining what the sights should look like on every target was valuable in my walkthroughs and make ready routines. By having that defined image, I didn’t have to guess what was good and what wasn’t. As I started to run optics, the ability to move much faster visually made this an opportunity to learn how to apply it here. In my walkthrough, I would imagine the dot exactly where I wanted it on every target.
By defining success and actually being able to visualize it, it helped me feel like I was already successful. Then during the actual run, I’m just monitoring what I had already rehearsed. It would create faster responses when things were right by shooting sooner, and getting quicker responses to when things were not right by sending quicker makeups or adjusting quicker. From a mental management standpoint, it also creates success in your mind earlier with each rep, reinforcing the fact that you can put the dot or sights on every target in the match! This has really been a great game-changer for me personally. Give it a try for yourself in your dry fire and live fire to see how it works for you.
OFF THE RANGE
My students know this, but two of my favorite things I talk about when it comes to information processing are Ace Virtual Shooting and Concentration Grids. I detailed Ace Virtual Shooting in a previous article, so I will make this short—it enhances your information processing because you’re seeing the exact things you would see in live fire in a less predictable way, due to the nature of the sensors in the Meta controller. That is a huge advantage in pushing higher speeds with accountability, and the payoff can be huge.
Concentration grids are something I was introduced to a few years ago by a student who played college baseball. He did an online lesson with me and after my summary was sent to him he replied back with this idea (as we were talking about vision quite a bit in his lesson). I started playing the grids, and I got hooked. It was an easy way to play a “game” that was relevant to developing my shooting ability. I’ve been playing them a few minutes a day, almost every day, for the last few years.
It was a few months in that I really noticed an uptick in the awareness of my shooting as well. (To get an idea of what these look like, you can go to tryconcentrationgrid.com—I’ve done the 5x5, 6x6, 8x8 and 10x10 largely, as they are the most relevant to the time we would spend on a stage.)
The idea is simple—select the numbers in order from 1-XX as quickly as you can. It is always random, which is very stage-like. It requires you to see the number, bring your finger over to it and touch it (an action associated with processing, similar to shooting) in order. It is also timed, which gives you a metric for progress.
You’ll see as you progress through them that you’ll gain potential “bandwidth” that, when applied to shooting, will help you develop your potential awareness. You’ll learn what the ideal level of concentration and focus is. Too much and you miss easy pieces of information like a number right next to the one you just selected; too little and you’re just slower than you need to be. You’ll also be able to stay more present and recognize when you’re drifting off or not attentive. This is a great thing to mess with for a few minutes a day when you’re on a break or standing in a line.
My 5x5 grids generally take between six and seven seconds, so it’s a quick and easy way to train without the gun. You can also add modifiers to enhance potential distraction, so that you learn to stay present and focused on the task at hand, despite the environment
The last thing that I used in my development was using other shooters’ first-person camera footage to train my vision to look at the spots on target with the proper timing. Take a shooter’s first person video (plenty to choose from) and see if you can pick out the spots on the next targets in between their shooting and transitions. If you can, great. Speed up the video footage, and do the same thing. YouTube can do two to three times the the speed of normal footage, so you just get an opportunity to do this faster and faster. This is relevant to getting your vision speed used to seeing things at a higher rate, without needing the gun to do it. It makes lunch breaks productive to your shooting growth in places where you can’t train like you normally would. Give it a try, and you’ll find your eyes are working hard to keep up.
Now, you are equipped to start to challenge your vision as a practical shooter. The best part about this is that these changes are also global—they enhance other things that require hand-eye coordination and information processing. It’s not uncommon to notice that you are more aware when doing normal everyday tasks like driving. If you have any questions, you’re welcome to reach out to me at robepifania.net or email me at [email protected]. Let’s get to work training those eyeballs, so that our shooting can progress to new heights.
Article from the May/June 2025 issue of USPSA’s magazine.
Most Popular
