Phil Strader - Sight Management

I’m going to show you the things you need to see in order to call good accurate shots on target. That’s proper sight management and follow through.  Sight management is the simple combination of proper sight alignment, sight picture, and sight focus. Sight alignment is pretty simple, kind of like putting a square peg in a square hole. Instead of using the set of dots on the sights, I usually like to align the four corners, top corners of the rear sight with the top corners of the front sight.    Now clearly, I can’t maintain this perfect sight alignment when shooting at speed. So, I’m here at seven yards to show you what an acceptable sight picture should be for an IDPA target. I’m going to initially miss-align the sights for four shots, so you can see what that acceptable sight picture will look like. I’m going to miss-align the sights all the way to the left. All the way to the right.  All the way up. And all the way down.  Even with improper sight alignment, I was still able to score four good hits on an IDPA target. Although we’re always trying to achieve good sight alignment, it’s not always necessary at certain distances. So we’ve established our acceptable sight alignment, but remember to maintain that all the way through the trigger pull.    Next, I want to talk about sight picture and focus. Sight picture is pretty easy. It’s just your sight alignment with a target in front of it, but what about focus? You’ve always been told to keep the front sight focused and your targets going to be a little blurry.  Well, I’ve brought Mike in here to demonstrate this might not always be true, especially inside seven yards. Of course we always want to keep our front sight focused, but I’m going to head down range and show you something pretty interesting.    All right, I’ve got Mike up range at seven yards with a blue training gun. I’m down here next to the target, and I’m going to have him focus on his front sight right around here, upper chest level. I’m going to put a number up on the head and see if he can read it. If we can, then we know he can still see the target pretty well. Ready, Mike? Mike: Ready. Eight, two, four. So that goes to show you, you can maintain a good sight focus on the front sight, and still see an acceptable focus on the target at certain distances.    Now, I want to talk about follow through. This is how the pros call their shots. It’s not what they see on the target, but what they see on the sights.  What we are looking for is to see the front sight rise out of the rear notch and recover back on target quickly. I’m going to fire six shots on this IDPA target in less than six seconds, and you’re going to see follow through from the cameras perspective.    Now that you’ve seen things from my perspective, I’m going to show you a drill that you can do at home that you can see follow through better and eliminate blinking. I’ve got Mike here to help me, and Mike, the first thing here you’ll notice about our target is there is no target. Mike: Yeah. What do we have going on, Phil? Well, I want to make sure you don’t have any distractions going on down here, and 100 percent of your focus is going to be on those sights. Mike and I are going to go back a couple yards, and he’s going to shoot a continuous string of fire, and you’re going to see his blinking stop. If Mike’s not blinking, then he’s got to see something, and it’s got to be the sights.   Mike: Phil that is incredible. I’ve never been able to see those things. When I was in about the middle of that, about shot three or four, I could see the post going up and down, I could see the muzzle flip, and that’s the first time I’ve ever seen those things. Yeah. And oddly enough that’s about when you stopped blinking, about the third or fourth shot. I’m glad you saw that. I’m glad I could help. I remember the first time I did this drill, it was like an epiphany moment for me, too. And to this day, I still do it at the end of each practice session. In the meantime, manage your sights properly, and use good follow through, and you’ll shoot straighter with Strader. CLICK HERE FOR PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION