• SSTF@lemmy.worldOP
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    3 months ago

    Both eyes open is great for the real world. Olympic target shooting is a very different animal. Don’t think of it like normal shooting. Situational awareness is not a factor. Unlike practical shooting, tunnel vision is desired. Most shooters wear blinders to obscure the off side eye. On the aiming eye they often wear special glasses. They are focusing on absolutely lining up the physical sights, there are no optics in Olympic pistol shooting.

    For comparison, this is what a more conventional Olympic headgear setup looks like.

    Yes the hand in pocket is pretty common in Olympic shooting. Unfortunate that it was part of the list as it undercuts the rest of the valid observations unusualness of the setup and success.

    This shooter was much more casual than most. Most shooters will line up with special highly stable, but strange looking stances.

    • Badabinski@kbin.earth
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      3 months ago

      Your eye is still open under that flap though, no? I dabbled in Olympic pistol shooting back when I was doing across-the-course service rifle, and I was told to always keep both eyes open by the dude teaching me. Same for service rifle (and later palma). I always found that closing one of your eyes fucks up your focusing. If you don’t have the little flappy dealy, you just do your best to defocus/deprioritize the view out of your non-dominant eye. I actually went for quite a while without any sort of cover because it helped me avoid cross firing (which is probably more of an issue with across-the-course than with Olympic pistol).

      You’re absolutely right about the lack of spectacles though. This guy is one hell of a marksman.

      • SSTF@lemmy.worldOP
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        3 months ago

        The unusual factor at the Olympic level is that he both chose not to wear a blinder and not to close his eye. This means he was getting visual input from both eyes, that as you noted he had to block out mentally.

        When shooting is down to the millimeter, all of this is important. This is the exact opposite of practical shooting, where you want a large field of view, or potentially an occluded eye effect to aim in some cases. (Cover the front of a red dot and then aim with both eyes open for a test of occluded aiming. Your brain will overlay the dot from the shooting eye and the target from the weak side eye and you will be able to aim. It will not be down to the millimeter accurate however, which matters within the abstract environment of target shooting.)

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Can’t argue with Olympic-level results, but I’ve been training myself to shoot with both eyes open and get better steel on target.

    • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, every time someone mentions the hand-in-pocket thing it’s “ah, you don’t know what this event is”. Same with that one about holding the gun with both hands.

      • SSTF@lemmy.worldOP
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        3 months ago

        I post the screenshots that 4chan provides. Unfortunately they are not always 100% on the ball.