Vision, Splits and Transitions

There are two often repeated ideas within practical shooting training discussions that I keep noticing and don't entirely agree with:

1. Vision Focus
2. Transitions are more important than Splits

These things aren’t entirely incorrect, but in my opinion, the way we implement them often lacks depth and shouldn’t be the same for all levels of shooters.

Don’t get me wrong: the ability to pick a precise spot on a target and stay on it, continuously tracking the dot movement around that spot (Vision Focus), is exactly how you should shoot. But it’s not an advanced idea by any means. It’s just an integration of your Fundamentals (Grip, Trigger, Aim) and mainly deals with a single target. It’s a critical component of your shooting but has little to do with speed, movement, or a stage plan. Other than that, it is much harder to execute when you start adding these variables.

My main gripe with Vision Focus is when people use it for other things like stage driven by vision or focusing on pushing vision because “you can only shoot as fast as you can see.” But first, let’s talk about “Transitions vs. Splits.” It’s closely related to “Vision Focus” and can be used for further discussion on speed and vision.

Transitions vs. Splits

Transitions indeed contribute to your overall time on a stage more than splits. Additionally, if you have a fast trigger finger and a good competition gun, you might be able to produce splits that are too fast for most targets on a stage (e.g., .16 for non-hoser stages). So there’s not much need to work on them. Again, it depends on your grip, recoil control, division, etc.

But if your average split is around .25 or more — everything changes. Because splits actually do matter — they drive the transition times. The “Transitions are more important” idea is only valid until you can’t do a Blake Drill (2 shots each on a 3-target array) that sounds like a Bill Drill (6 shots on a single target). But after that — the splits and transitions become the same thing. They aren’t always the same, but once they get close enough — the trigger manipulation becomes continuous and affects everything.

For higher speeds and predictive shooting, when there’s little time for reactive or conscious execution — the trigger becomes your synchronization signal, essentially tying everything up to your split times, which ideally should stay constant through the whole string of fire. And this is where things like Metronome Dry Fire and high Target Hit Factors come in — it’s all about making that timing signal faster while executing the same exact sequence. So how does this all impact vision?

Vision Focus

Vision is only part of the equation. It starts things up and is tightly coupled with proprioception into Index, but it’s not the whole thing. First, if we’re talking just about Fundamentals: Grip, Trigger, Aim — vision is only part of the Aim, which also has Proprioception. The better you become — the more you rely on Index and Proprioception. Almost to the point where all you need from vision is an initial correction on the draw and then just picking places to put your Index on. You might say that this “picking places” is exactly why Vision Focus is so important on a stage, but if you were only to use vision to drive your shooting — it would be almost 100% Reactive, which we know is much slower than Predictive Shooting.

The whole thing also includes your stage plan, knowledge about where targets are, and how you’re moving from one to another without even seeing it at first. That is the Whole Thing. I call it the Mental Representation of a stage and your sequence of actions on it. The more detailed and developed this Mental Representation is — the fewer conscious interruptions you will experience and the better overall time and flow you will get.

But here’s a thing: this Mental Representation doesn’t include speed. Because you can run it in your mind or in Live Fire at any speed: you can do slow-mo, or you can “send it” — timing is an external component to this. In fact, it’s easier to develop the sequence properly (with fewer random variables and more streamlined) in super slow motion at first and then make it “flow” through multiple repetitions of the plan in your head.

But even a perfect Mental Representation of the stage and the sequence of your actions doesn’t mean you can run at any speed. There are multiple Speed Limits, which will interfere with your timing. Some of which are only observable in Live Fire. Let’s say you’re going .20 for everything, but your sights won’t recover on one of the targets in time because it’s further back, and you don’t have enough recoil control.

You can react to that and introduce an exception in the sequence, but that is slow. A better way to do it is to identify hard targets at first and program them into sequence with slower and more deliberate “Programming” — this is what happens when in your simulation/realistic walkthrough, you spend more time on harder targets and maybe even imagine the recoil of the gun, the pressure on your trigger finger and the behavior of your sights.

That part of the sequence is something that you might call having “Conditionals” and “Go and No-Go signals.” Ultimately, you want to streamline these things and get to the point where you don’t need visuals-driver no-go signals to make you “wait” on a harder shot. To condition for that, you do doubles and Bill drills and work different distances with perfect draw/grip and constant splits.

That’s how you get more into predictive shooting or “flow, “ which Bill=Blake is about. This way, you can start predicting the behavior of your Shooting Platform (your upper body + gun) and expect bullets to connect. It gets much harder once you introduce movement and multiple target arrays — effectively, you add more variables by doing that, and your predictions start to fail.

But that Prediction Error (as long as it’s observable) is actually the source of the Teaching Signal in the brain, and that’s why things like GM26 or pushing speed work — you optimize for more errors, which means more learning.

Summary

1. Integration of Fundamentals: Grip, Trigger, Aim on a Single Target
2. Vision is only part of the Aim, which also includes Proprioception, and together they integrate into Index
3. Splits drive Transitions
4. Bill = Blake is the first Speed Basic idea
5. More Proprioception-Driven (feeling rather than seeing) & Predictive Shooting is a more Advanced Speed idea
6. Less Vision and better Mental Representation is how you get from Reactive to Predictive shooting
7. Predictive-vs-Reactive is a spectrum, which is defined by the ratio of Go vs. No-Go signals
8. GM26/ConeOfAccuracy/PushingSpeed is complete inhibition of No-Go signals, resulting in maximum speed, but minimal accuracy
9. Prediction Error is what provides Teaching Signal in the Brain