How to Determine Eye Dominance and Deal with Cross Dominance

What is eye dominance? In short, it’s the eye that your brain prefers. Your dominant eye has more neural connections to your visual cortex than your non-dominant eye and provides more accurate visual information to your brain. 

Your eyes are about 3 inches apart, which means they have a slightly different perception of the world around you. Your brain stitches together these slightly different views and gives you a lot of visual information about the location of objects and depth perception. The degree to which one eye is more dominant than the other varies with each person -- and a small percentage of people have no dominant eye.

Why is Eye Dominance Important?

When you’re shooting, your dominant eye is telling your brain where your target is – so it’s really important to know which eye is dominant.

You always want your dominant eye over the bore and aligned with your target. If you have your non-dominant eye over the bore, your brain is getting slightly incorrect information about the location of your target – meaning you will not shoot as accurately.

How to Determine Your Eye Dominance

There are a few different methods for finding which eye is dominant.

Method 1

1. With your palms facing out, make a small triangle window between your thumbs and forefingers (about 2-3 inches across) and hold your arms straight in front of you.
2. Focus on a spot a short distance away like a light switch or door knob through the window in your hands with both eyes open.
3. Close your left eye. Did your target move out of view? Or can you still see if? If you can still see your target with your right eye open, you’re right eye dominant.
4. Close your right eye. Did your target move out of view? Or can you still see it? If you can still see your target with your left eye open, you’re left eye dominant.

There are variations of this test on how you can make the window with your hands, but the procedure is the same.

Method 2

1. With your palms facing out, make a small triangle window between your thumbs and forefingers (about 2-3 inches across) and hold your arms straight in front of you.
2. Focus on a spot a short distance away like a light switch or door knob through the window in your hands with both eyes open.
3. Without breaking eye contact with your target through your window, slowly bring your hands to your face.
4. Once your hands are to your face, which eye did you bring your hands towards? Right or left? Your brain will naturally guide your hands to the eye that is dominant. If you brought your hands to your right eye, you’re right eye dominant. If you brought your hands to your left eye, you’re left eye dominant.

If you try to cheat on this method, your view of the target will be blocked briefly by your hands as you bring them towards your non-dominant eye.

How to Deal with Cross Dominance

You’ve probably known your dominant hand since before you started school, and now you know your dominant eye – how does this information impact your shooting?

If your dominant hand and eye are on the same side, you don’t need to think much about your eye dominance. If you’re right-hand right-eye dominant, shoot a right-handed firearm from your right shoulder. If you’re left-hand left-eye dominant, shoot a left-handed firearm from your left shoulder.

But what happens if your dominant hand and eye are on opposite sides? This is called cross dominance. This is a challenge that cross dominant shooters must address in order to shoot accurately. There are a few methods on how to shoot with cross dominance and it depends on what type of firearm you're shooting. 

Handgun

• Shift your Hands: Hold your handgun in your dominant hand and as you bring your handgun into shooting position, shift your hands to align your handgun with your dominant eye -- this means your dominant hand will travel across the midline of your body. 
• Shift your Head: Hold your handgun in your dominant hand and as you bring your handgun into shooting position, shift your head to align your dominant eye with your handgun. For example if you are right-hand left-eye dominant, you will turn your head slightly to the right. 

Rifles and Shotguns

Long guns are a bit more complicated than handguns because it is more difficult to use your dominant hand and your dominant eye at the same time -- so you need to choose to use your dominant hand OR your dominant eye. 

• Shoot with the Dominant Hand: Place a small piece of scotch tape over the lens of your dominant eye on your shooting glasses. This obstructs the vision of your dominant eye just enough to force your brain to use your non-dominant eye (which is aligned over the bore). Some shooters also choose to close their dominant eye. 
• Shoot with the Dominant Eye: Shoulder the firearm on the side with your dominant eye. This requires you to use your non-dominant hand, but your eyes know what they need to see in order to break good shots. Using your non-dominant hand may feel unnatural at first, but you'll be a better shooter if you practice, practice, practice. 

Champion shooter, Patrick Kelley is cross dominant – left-hand, right-eye – and offers his advice on cross dominant shooting. 

There isn’t one right answer to dealing with cross dominance – it just takes time and effort training to learn what method works best for you. “Practice! You’ll get good at it!” says Kelley.