Cross-Dominance Follow Up

On April 13, 2011July 26, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Cross Dominance, Training

Thank you to all who responded to my post yesterday on teaching my son to deal with his cross dominance. In addition to the comments on this blog, the topic came up last night on Twitter, and I received many first hand accounts.

Fortunately my son was still up at the time, and we talked about the comments. Everyone who commented told me they had learned (or were learning) to shoot long guns to match their eye dominance – in other words, even though they were right handed, since they were left eye dominant they taught themselves to shoot left handed. Most admitted it took them some time, about a month it seemed, to get comfortable with it.

So, he agreed to do a lot of dry fire, with his airsoft AR. He also plans to start dry firing his airsoft Glock right handed, so he can get better with it, too. He told me his goal is to be an ambidextrous shooter, which would definitely pay him back in the future.

I’ll keep you posted.

Dealing with Cross Dominance

On April 12, 2011July 26, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Cross Dominance, Training2 Comments

Yesterday I posted a picture of my son Joey, shooting Bruce the Glock 17. Today, I present my daughter, doing the same.

When you look at pictures of my kids shooting, you may notice something. My daughter shoots right handed, but my son shoots left handed. Ah, that it were that simple.

My daughter was born left handed, and she does everything left handed, except she shoots handguns right handed, because that’s what she saw me doing. My son is right handed. He writes and throws right handed. The only thing he does left handed is shoot handguns. But the reason is different.

Now, almost all of us have one eye that we use more than the other, and being right eye dominant or left eye dominant is as normal as being right handed or left handed. For most people their dominant eye is the one on the side they write with. Being right handed but left eye dominant (or vice versa) is called cross dominance. It’s certainly no big thing for a pistol shooter, but for shooting a long gun it can be problematic.

When I started plinking aluminum cans in the back yard with my son, I could tell he shot with his head sort of canted way down over the stock. I tried to show him the way to get what I thought was the right cheek weld, but in a few shots, he was back to the over wrap.

After a while I figured out he was left eye dominant. But even before we started shooting together, he had figured it out, since he already shot his Nerf pistols left handed, using his left dominant eye.

Once I realized he was cross dominant, I did some research, and it turns out a lot of really good shooters are cross dominant, people like Brian Enos and Dave Sevigny. So I asked them how I should teach Joey, they told me the same thing – if he’s figured it out on his own, let him shoot pistols left handed But they advised that I switch Joey to shooting rifles left handed, since he won’t be able to use a telescopic sight effectively with his head so far down on the stock.

So, now I’m up against trying to convince him to learn to shoot his rifles left handed. As one writer pointed out, if he will just shoulder a rifle left handed a couple of thousand times, muscle memory will take over and he’ll be fine. I’ll report as I go.

As for my daughter, it turns out she’s not cross dominant, she shoots pistols right handed because she copied Daddy when she was learning. Fortunately she was also smart enough to figure out to shoot rifles left handed to get a good sight picture.

Range Report part 2

On April 12, 2011July 26, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Uncategorized

As promised, I offer at least one picture from Saturday’s Range Day. My son Joey shoots Bruce the Glock 17 at a zombie terrorist.

Joey also reminded me at dinner that the M60 on the end of the firing line did let it rock and roll a couple of times. I think I was preoccupied with the Mosin Nagant.

Range Report

On April 11, 2011July 26, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Uncategorized

Last week was spring break for the schools where I lived, so I took a day of vacation on Friday to take my son Joey to the range.

First, I need to apologize because nothing ruins a great range report like no pictures. But I took a real camera with me, instead of using my cell phone, and I didn’t get a chance to download them. Look for a follow up post this evening.

We drove up to the Chestnut Mountain Shooting Range at the John’s Mountain Wildlife Management Area, operated by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. It’s a nice little 100-yard outdoor range with covered shooting, located a few miles off I-75 near Resaca, Georgia. You could tell it was spring break, because a lot of parents and kids were there, quite a mix of folks. My son had a great time identifying the different guns people had, from a belt fed M-60 to M-1 Garands to M1903 Springfields, AR’s, 10/22’s, hunting rifles, 1911’s, and Glocks.

We brought the new Browning Buck Mark pistol, Bucky, along with Captain America the Ruger 10/22, Bruce the G17, and Vasiliy the Mosin Nagant.

Normally the range rules require paper targets only, so I brought some bullseye targets and a couple of zombie targets. But, people before us had ignored those rules and brought a bunch of plastic soda bottles, and various fruit. Since it was there, we felt compelled to shoot it.

As we do on just about every range trip or practice session, we went over the Firearm Safety Rules, and we had at it.

I knew Joey would love the Buck Mark, and I was right. After a couple of magazines he was able to easily put his shots in the zombie head from 10 yards, as well as make some soda bottles dance. He also did well with the 10/22, as expected.

What surprised me was that he hogged the 9mm Glock. Once he found out he could make the little tangelos dance, I think I got to shoot 4 rounds out of the 150 we brought. I’m not complaining, though, because I’ve been trying to get him to start competing, and success with the Glock will make it a little easier to talk him into shooting a GSSF match this summer.

Of course, he got to experience all the other fine points of a range day, mostly reloading magazines. But he also learned proper range etiquette, and how to paste targets.

Now, the one gun I couldn’t get him to try was the Mosin Nagant. In all honesty, I did spend the morning building up the recoil until he was expecting a small nuclear explosion when I lit it off. Oh, well. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad.

We were both very impressed by the M60. Yes, the family of 4 on the end had a belt fed M60. I have to assume it was semi-auto, or these people were a lot more disciplined than I would be, because they never lit it off full auto.

One interesting thing to report, and I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else has had this happen. I brought along some Russian surplus 7.62x54R ammo for the Mosin Nagant, a brand called Barnaul. I opened it and fed a few, and I happened to notice that one of the rounds had a brass case instead of the painted steel case the others had, but I had also noticed that before with 7.62×39. In any case, when the brass round came up in the magazine, I could not get it to feed at all. Eventually I had to open the bottom of the magazine and drop all the rounds out.

Well, it turned out that in the box of 50, there were four of these brass cased rounds, and they were not 7.62.54R. They were about the same overall length, but much narrower, so they would not feed. I don’t know what kind of ammo it is, but now I have 4 rounds to add to my Orphan Ammo Collection. (Pix to follow.)

After about 3 hours at the range, 150 rounds of 9mm, a couple hundred rounds of .22, and 15 rounds of 7.62x54R, we were ready to go. So, we cleaned up (always bring a black garbage bag!) and headed home, with plenty of good tales to tell. The conversation on the ride home told me we both have a lot to look forward to.