Ocular memory shooting

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tobeat1

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Anybody ever heard of this besides me? A lot of spec op guys are using this technique from what I understand. It involves actually looking ahead of what target you are engaging. ie engaging BG#1 while looking at BG#2. Opinions? Comments?

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"peace, love, joy, and happiness..."
 
Uh - yeah - this is what Chow Yun Fat does...
It works VERY WELL when directed by John Woo.
In the Real World, this will get you sued, killed, or worse.

There is no such thing as Ocular Memory Shooting. Those who told you about this are either just WRONG or Totally full of BS! Either way, its fantasy with a fancy name. In a dynamic situation, you get stress related distorions in your perception that can make shooting even one target hard enough, let alone 2 at the same time.
You want to shoot Nancy Boy Fancy? Go ahead.
You want to shoot to live? Line up your target clearly in your sites as you smoothly squeeze your trigger.
At the best training schools for gunslingers, when engaging multiple targets you One at a time cleanly engage your targets that represent the greatest threat, then move to the next threat. After you have engaged the rest, then you come back to the first and determine if it needs more attention. What makes the difference between the Meat Eaters and the Swat Pups is that they don't need to engage there targets a second time - because they are as dead as Clinton's Credibility the first time round. Why? Concentration on the clean prosecution of the target. Simple.
Whats fast? Smooth is fast.

There - excuse my while I run 14 miles and do 100 pushups and then a HALO jump to the soda machine for my Mt Dew.

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"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." - Sigmund Freud
Hey, have I mentioned my new book? It is called:
MEN ARE FROM MARS and WOMEN JUST NEED TO DEAL WITH IT!




[This message has been edited by George Hill (edited November 20, 1999).]
 
With all due respect Mr Hill, I actually have seen this done on two occasions. It does work, however, the guys who used it stated that it was one of the hardest techniques to learn and one of the easiest to lose. They said you had to practice EVERY day or the skill would degrade. Personally I'll stick with the method you listed above, but I was just curious if anybody else had seen this.

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"peace, love, joy, and happiness..."
 
I have experimented with "ocular memory shooting" and while I think the theory has some merit under controlled conditions... I believe it will be the first skill to go in a panic situation. I agree with George... engage target #1 with all seriousness and dedication then proceed to target #2. If you concentrate your practice energies on "traditional" target engagement, I think you'll find that "memory" shooting offers no real speed advantage anyway.

I have found that a more useful exercise is to practice "keeping an eye on" target #2 while focusing your attention on target #1. Sort of the reverse of "memory" shooting but more applicable to real-life situations (at least for us non-spec op guys).
 
With respect:
Mr tobeat1 - I doubt these fellows who showed you this "technique" have been in a real fire fight. If they had been - and lived - then they didnt use this stuff.
There is enough going on about Junk Science.
Now we got Junk Techniques.

Gotta practice everyday or you lose it? What good is it if you cant put it into your muscle memory?

Between the two - I would pick the Chow Yun Fat method. At least it has a point of "Looking Cool."

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"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." - Sigmund Freud
Hey, have I mentioned my new book? It is called:
MEN ARE FROM MARS and WOMEN JUST NEED TO DEAL WITH IT!
 
It sounds like a fancy term that doesn't have much application for 99% of the shooters out there.

Along the same lines... however, it is important to know where your "targets" are
BEFORE you start shooting. In this way, you can double-tap target one; go straight to target two, double-tap; engage other targets; then check back on the status of previously engaged targets.

You don't want to just focus on: target one, is he down? OK, next target... you need to know where ALL of the targets are - or at least have a good idea of what you're facing...

A lot of people have been killed because they focused just on one target... forgetting that THEY could be a target for someone else...

Again... practice, practice, practice!

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Stand against evil, lest evil have its way...
 
Just something to think about...

Think back to the times when you've done rapid fire on a single target. Do you remember every sight picture? I'm not saying that you don't use it for every shot, I'm saying that at least for me, there can be perceptual distortions, and while all the shots go where you want them, you don't always remember seeing the sight picture crisp and clear. That's where muscle memory comes in. Don't forget, if you get into the realm of psychobabble, that your mind can only concentrate on one thing at a time, and it only has 7 "chunks" of short term memory space. Things can get left out, when you put together whatever it was you were doing.

Case in point:

I was in England with my wife on Guy Fawkes day. As we were walking down a London street, I heard a distinct double-tap. Before I knew what I was doing, I was halfway to the ground using a car for cover, and dragging my wife with me. On my way to a crouch, I looked up and saw the two flashes of light from the "double-tap". Before I fully proned out, I realized that I had heard a couple of firecrackers, and straightened up. Now that is the way I remembered and told the story for two years, when all of a sudden I realized that there was no way it could have happened the way I recalled it. Anyone with elementary school physics can tell you that light travels faster than sound, so there was no way that I could have heard the bangs and then seen the flashes. Ashamed I am that it took me two years to figure out that I was a victim of a perceptual distortion. (Now if we could just find a way to outlaw them.)

It wouldn't surprise me if some of the shooters are simply explaining what they perceived. I've known and been taught by some excellent shooters in the SpecOps community, and they've never mentioned anything like Ocular Memory Shooting; those guys are Master of the basics.

Chuck
 
Just something to think about...

Think back to the times when you've done rapid fire on a single target. Do you remember every sight picture? I'm not saying that you don't use it for every shot, I'm saying that at least for me, there can be perceptual distortions, and while all the shots go where you want them, you don't always remember seeing the sight picture crisp and clear. That's where muscle memory comes in. Don't forget, if you get into the realm of psychobabble, that your mind can only concentrate on one thing at a time, and it only has 7 "chunks" of short term memory space. Things can get left out, when you put together whatever it was you were doing.

Case in point:

I was in England with my wife on Guy Fawkes day. As we were walking down a London street, I heard a distinct double-tap. Before I knew what I was doing, I was halfway to the ground using a car for cover, and dragging my wife with me. On my way to a crouch, I looked up and saw the two flashes of light from the "double-tap". Before I fully proned out, I realized that I had heard a couple of firecrackers, and straightened up. Now that is the way I remembered and told the story for two years, when all of a sudden I realized that there was no way it could have happened the way I recalled it. Anyone with elementary school physics can tell you that light travels faster than sound, so there was no way that I could have heard the bangs and then seen the flashes. Ashamed I am that it took me two years to figure out that I was a victim of a perceptual distortion. (Now if we could just find a way to outlaw them.)

It wouldn't surprise me if some of the shooters are simply explaining what they perceived. I've known and been taught by some excellent shooters in the SpecOps community, and they've never mentioned anything like Ocular Memory Shooting; those guys are Masters of the basics.

Chuck
 
Actually you don't have to beat yourself up quite so much. It's entirely possible that you heard two shots, then saw the two flashes.

The problems with using basic physics (light travels faster than sound) is that the assumptions are wrong in this case. You can't assume that the light flash from the explosion, especially from fireworks in which flash is usually more important than bang, lasts for only an instant in time. In addition, since it was a set of two firecrackers and not a firearm, it is *possible* that there were still flashes from both firecrackers visible when you looked up from hearing the sounds.

On the other hand, I hope it wasn't wet where you dragged your wife.
-Pat
 
Pat,

Thanks for screwing my point up.:-) Now I'm really confused!!! Actually, they were M-80 types, big bang, little flash, but by now it's impossible to tell. Anyone good with hypnosis skills out there?

Anyways guys, (gals?),

I did remember something about multiple target engagement. After engaging the first target you can either:

a. shift to the second target with they eyes/muzzle moving as a unit (3rd eye principle) or,

b. shift your eyes (which move faster) first and let your weapon follow them to the second target. This does not include shooting the first target while shifting your gaze to the second, though.

Could that be the basis for the Ocular Memory Shooting technique/myth/reality???

Chuck
 
Here is how I shoot when engaging multiple targets... this can apply to stationary & moving targets...

First you have to train your brain to "see"
a picture in your mind... I'm able to do this
after years of practice... I use my mind like a computer screen. I "read" my "computer screen" in addition to using my eyes & other senses.

When I get ready to engage the targets, I quickly take in the whole scene; if the targets are moving, I quickly determine the direction and speed of the target(s); then I engage the 1st target; my mind then tells me where the 2nd target is - or should be. So this way, I swing my eyes and weapon to the target at the same time. The mind is faster than the eye/hand, so the mind is already there. This way, I don't have to search for the 2nd target, I already have a very close idea of where it is.

For me, I can do this with up to 3 targets... more if the target is fixed.

How to practice? Well, at the range of course. You can also use cars passing by... NO, don't point your weapon at them! Just use your mind to track multiple cars. You can also go to a park and stand still and watch people pass by... try to pinpoint the location of 4 or 5 people at the same time.

Practice, practice, practice! I think that this is true "ocular memory shooting", if there is such a thing.

Tell me what you guys think... am I full of Sh**? Or do others use this?



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Stand against evil, lest evil have its way...
 
Tobeat1,

Could you give some details as to how this Ocular Memory Shooting was demonstrated to you? Like George Hill and the others I don't see a great deal of advantange to something like this but plenty of drawbacks.
 
Lots of things work like clockwork when the targets are not shooting at you. In a double tap, if it is truly a double tap and not two successive shots, your eyes are tightly closed on the second tap. I have caught this on film with people who swear they do not close their eyes. Imagination and reality are two different things. Furthermore, it is an impossibility to have a clear sight picture when your focus is on the target; the human eye does not have that much depth of field.
 
<best ghetto accent>

Whut?? You mean Chow Yun Fat isn't "For REAL"!!?? ;)

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Be mentally deliberate but muscularly fast. Aim for just above the belt buckle Wyatt Earp
45 ACP: Give 'em a new navel! BigG
 
OK, geeze you guys, I am only telling you what I saw. The way it was explained to me is this. "Upon entry into a hostile enviroment, all hostiles will be fixed into the subconcious, in a multiple threat enviroment, speed and violence of action are paramount to your survival. Since the mind can operate much faster than the body, you can use the mind and eys to constantly update the subconcious while using the slower(body) to eliminate the threats. ie. looking ahead of what your "body" is engaging. The gentleman demonstrated this ability on multiple targets that were set up by the students at random distances and locations. Keep in mind this was not something being taught, just a demonstration of the level of skill that could be obtained if you had LOTS of time on your hands to practice this skill. The instructor would turn around in a circle once to get a glance at the target placement and would then blindfold himself and turn and engage the targets purely from the image that he saw when he turned around. I agree this is sort of like a circus trick, but it was fun to watch and I was just curious if anyone had seen this done besides me.

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"peace, love, joy, and happiness..."
 
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