Theory: That the black sights against a white
back ground enhances to ability to see the sights. This gives the athlete the
ability to establish attention and “focus” on nothing but sight alignment as
there is no “target” (black area) to distract the vision whilst sighting.
As the eye is a “self-centering” unit, it immediately endeavours to
align the sights in the centre of the target from left to right. As there is no
“object” above the sights, in our case the black, it cannot distinguish vertical
placement (up and down). The objective here is to sight the pistol and “allow”
the sights to “find” its own centre.
Whilst striving for that perfect sight alignment with focus on front
sight, the trigger is pressed to the rear in a smooth and uninterrupted
motion. Follow through is enhanced as there is no other distractions (the
target black) to take the eye away from the focus of the sights.
The ideal shot pattern would be a narrow, vertical group with no shots
out left or right.
These shots outside the vertical group indicate a lack of trigger
control and/or follow through.
Trigger control exercises will need to be done in addition to the
blank card training, should these shots appear regularly.
Having done the blank card training, we then run a new target out the
correct way around (scoring rings facing) and we adopt the same “attitude” of
placing the sights in the white area under the black in the athlete’s normal
holding area and simulate the blank card effect.
“That
is, allowing the sights to “find” its own area and attention to sight alignment
and clarity of
front sight”.
During this stage, the trigger finger is moving to feel trigger shoe
and press begins. This is a constant un-interrupted movement whilst the sights
are being aligned. The reason that it is a “combined” effort, is to stop
trigger snatch and “point” shooting (where one places the sights exactly at a
spot on the target, and then presses NOW).
With the black scoring area appearing, the eye now has “something” to
judge vertical height with. When firing shots on the a proper target, the
athlete still requires do all the same technical points as they did with the
blank card, but now the group should become more “rounded” and central in the
black of the target.
