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How To Deal With Cross-Dominance

Talyn

Talyn

SAINT
Founding Member
Because your eyes are set in two different positions on your head, the information that each eye gathers is independent of the other. However, your brain cannot register information from both eyes simultaneously (you’d be seeing double all the time) and so your dominant eye takes control. If both eyes are open, the great majority of people register what their dominant eye sees.

That process becomes complicated when there’s a pistol with iron sights in front of your non-dominant eye. Your mind is forced to interpret data sent from your non-dominant eye after a lifetime of doing just the opposite. As you might imagine, this causes issues.

How To Deal With Cross-Dominance

Eye-Dominance-4-1200x500.jpg
 
I only had time to scan the piece. Didn't see much to argue with, except his statement that there's better than a one in three chance you're cross-dominant. In my experience, the statistic is more like one in four to one in five (20-25% chance of cross-dominance).
 
I am cross dominant and have tried every trick in the book. I’ve settled on both eyes open and moving the gun to line up with my left eye. my shots still land just left of center of point of aim regardless of finger placement on the trigger. I tried the head tilt which is fine for a little while then it gets tiresome. I’ve also tried using a weaver stance placing my cheek on my right bicep but that takes some maneuvering to get into the right position. Fine for target shooting but not ideal for defense.
Long guns were easy. I just learned how to shoot lefty. Problem solved.
 
I never really gave it much thought for many years. I am left handed left eye dominant and my dad taught me to shoot right handed dominant. I got rather good at it that way. It was not until I decided to shoot ambidextrous that I learned there was a problem.

Then I found out that I was tilting my head and lining up my left eye, this is something I still find natural to this day. I have had to work at keeping my head in the right position shooting left handed. But now it feel natural with either hand for the most part. It needs constant honing and I find the laser cartridge to be a big help here.
 
mikep said:
I’ve also tried using a weaver stance placing my cheek on my right bicep but that takes some maneuvering to get into the right position. Fine for target shooting but not ideal for defense.
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Back in the '80s, a fellow named Paris Theodore advocated what he called the Quell shooting system, which was basically exactly what you just described. It did not catch on.

The Quell target was kinda silly, too.
 
I recall that older post about this subject, as I’m RH with L eye dominant.

Probably the worst advice I got from a range master was to learn to shoot LH (AR) only because there were no LH side ejection port rifles on hand. At the time it was never suggested to just close the dom L eye or cock the head.…which now is second nature for me.
 
Old_Me said:
i have a left eye problem, that my blood pressure created when i was younger), that if i keep both eyes open, makes it impossible to focus. so for me, keeping that left eye closed works. this condition also affects the colors i see.
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Eye health is an important and often overlooked routine visit. Many folks don’t even realize the degree of astigmatism they might have especially as the eyes age.
For me with a touch of astigmatism, the dominant L eye, near sighted and developing cataract, I’m blessed with a darn good range of peripheral vision.
 
As I recall on the Quell System (hey, it's been almost 40 years!), the reasoning on it was that the LEFT eye was hard-wired to some part of the brain that was better at making dynamic decisions, or something like that. I don't recall eye dominance being mentioned in the article at all.

I'm gonna go try to find that story and see.
 
Area52 said:
Eye health is an important and often overlooked routine visit. Many folks don’t even realize the degree of astigmatism they might have especially as the eyes age.
For me with a touch of astigmatism, the dominant L eye, near sighted and developing cataract, I’m blessed with a darn good range of peripheral vision.
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This is one reason why I think "point shooting" is still an important skill to have. I have a whole book on the subject written in my head.
 
God must have wanted y'all to see this information today, because I was able to FIND it--a minor miracle! Thank You, God! ;)

My scanner is out, so I had to take a pic with my 20-YO digicam of the relevant passage. Improvise, Adapt, Overcome! It SHOULD be legible if you try. If not, I guess I'll have to retype the mess. Oh well, we'll see what happens.

Quell02.JPG
 
Point shooting is called instinctive shooting in archery and is a matter of rote brain hand eye co-ordination. After you practice enough it simply becomes second nature. I once heard a great analogy by G. Fred Asbell. He said that it is like throwing a football or baseball, you do not think about it, you simply do it because you have done it so many times in the past.

Even distances are just done as a matter of brain hand eye coordination. As long as they have been practiced enough.

I have shot archery instinctively for about 60 years and from 5 to about 40 yards is just a matter of looking , picking a spot, concentrating on the spot, drawing and releasing. I have found instinctive shooting firearm to be a similar process.
 
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