Brownie0486
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"Field work for the research was conducted a year ago in the United Kingdom with the help of 24 police volunteers. Eleven were highly experienced, male veterans of an Emergency Response Team (ERT), seasoned in fighting terrorists among other assignments, with a median age of nearly 39. The rest were younger rookies (median age just over 30), 7 of them female, who had completed their pre-service firearms and simulation training and were considered “ready for the street.” Both groups predominately were right-eye shooters"
“This is a very time-consuming process and one that was not successful in this study,” Vickers says.
"Somewhere across their training, practice, and experience, the successful ERT officers had learned what essentially is a reverse process: Their immediate and predominate focus is on the weapon carried by their attacker. With their gaze concentrated there, they bring their gun up to their line of sight and catch their sights only in their peripheral vision, a subtle “sight glimpse,” as Lewinski terms it. “They have an unconscious kinesthetic sense to know that their gun is up and positioned properly,” he says. “This is a focus strategy that Olympic shooters use,” says Vickers, “and it is simpler, faster, and more effective.”
Now that the study has documented important ways in which expert shooters behave, how can trainers best convey these elite skills to other officers?
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One importance to note for average inexperienced defender shooters is the fact that elite response team members bring their gun up to line of sight, and only catch their sights in their peripheral vision, described as a "sight glimpse" IOW, they're not looking at the sights directly but in peripheral vision which means they are threat focused.
Imagine that, elite response team members were shooting threat focused and weren't seeing their sights in direct vision when they fired. Seems threat focused skills have a place in DGU's. Seems training threat focused is a viable way of shooting defensively even as elite response team members were taught to directly see their sights before touching off a round.
Amazing what clinical research brings to the discussion relative threat focused vs sights focused training.
https://www.forcescience.com/2009/1...eyes-can-cast-your-fate-in-a-gunfight-part-1/
Gaze patterns:
- The rookie’s final saccade, especially among those who missed when they fired, “occurred at the same time they tried to fixate the target and aim,” the study reveals. At that critical moment in the last 500 ms, the rookies in a staggering 82% of their tests took their eyes off the assailant and attempted to look at their own gun, trying to find or confirm sight alignment as they aimed. “This pulled them out of the gunfight for what turned out to be a significant period of time,” Lewinski says. Vickers adds: “On a high percentage of their shots, the rookies did not see the assailant as they fired,” contributing to inaccurate shooting and the misjudgment of the cell phone as a threat.
- About 30% of the ERT also looked at their gun, but their timing was different. Most of those gaze-shifts occurred before the officers aimed, “followed by the onset of their aim and fixation on the target and firing.”
“This is a very time-consuming process and one that was not successful in this study,” Vickers says.
"Somewhere across their training, practice, and experience, the successful ERT officers had learned what essentially is a reverse process: Their immediate and predominate focus is on the weapon carried by their attacker. With their gaze concentrated there, they bring their gun up to their line of sight and catch their sights only in their peripheral vision, a subtle “sight glimpse,” as Lewinski terms it. “They have an unconscious kinesthetic sense to know that their gun is up and positioned properly,” he says. “This is a focus strategy that Olympic shooters use,” says Vickers, “and it is simpler, faster, and more effective.”
Now that the study has documented important ways in which expert shooters behave, how can trainers best convey these elite skills to other officers?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
One importance to note for average inexperienced defender shooters is the fact that elite response team members bring their gun up to line of sight, and only catch their sights in their peripheral vision, described as a "sight glimpse" IOW, they're not looking at the sights directly but in peripheral vision which means they are threat focused.
Imagine that, elite response team members were shooting threat focused and weren't seeing their sights in direct vision when they fired. Seems threat focused skills have a place in DGU's. Seems training threat focused is a viable way of shooting defensively even as elite response team members were taught to directly see their sights before touching off a round.
Amazing what clinical research brings to the discussion relative threat focused vs sights focused training.
https://www.forcescience.com/2009/1...eyes-can-cast-your-fate-in-a-gunfight-part-1/
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