People who aren’t ambidextrous tend to learn at a young age which of their hands is dominant. But the same isn’t true for eye dominance. While eye dominance doesn’t usually affect your daily activities, you should adjust how you train with your gun if you have strong cross-eye dominance.
Around one-third of all shooters are cross-eye dominant, meaning their dominant eye is opposite their dominant hand. Improve your shooting accuracy with these basic tips for cross-eye dominant shooting.
1. Shoot With Your Non-Dominant Hand
You can compensate for being cross-eye dominant by changing your shooting shoulder. For instance, left-eye dominant shooters that are right-handed should use their left hand for shooting.
Switching your shooting shoulder to whichever eye is dominant allows that eye to aim more accurately. This might be the best way to handle cross-dominance if you’re shooting a long gun.
Remember that you must train extensively with your non-dominant hand if you use this method. How much you’re willing to practice will determine if this is the right method for you. Regardless of whether you want to make this your usual way of shooting, practicing with your non-dominant hand improves your emergency preparedness and can help you achieve useful objectives like shooting a handgun one-handed.
2. Train Your Weak Eye
Another tip for cross-eye dominant shooting is to train your weak eye. Using similar techniques to those used to treat lazy eyes, training the off-eye typically involves using a patch to cover the dominant eye.
Covering the stronger eye forces your weaker eye to take over. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months to see improvement, and this training doesn’t result in a change for everyone. Many people find training to shoot with their non-dominant hand easier and more effective.
3. Use a Red Dot Sight
Finally, consider using an optic device to improve your shooting. Red dot sights overcome cross-eyed dominance because you shoot with both eyes open. Your dominant eye will help you aim at the target, while your subordinate eye will improve your field of vision.
Like training to shoot with your non-dominant hand, training with a red dot sight can benefit you in ways other than balancing your cross-eye dominance. Red dot sights can help you acquire your target faster, and you can also use this optic device in low-light environments.
Shooting with your non-dominant hand, training your weak eye, and using a red dot sight can help you overcome the limits of cross-eye dominance. Like everything else about shooting, you’ll have to experiment to find the right solution for you.
Cross-eye dominance can make it difficult to hit your mark, especially when firing a long gun. Overcome issues with these tips for cross-eye dominant shooting.
