What Are Focus Ratios?

“Focus ratios” are what we call the amount of focus a shooter puts on the target versus the amount of focus on the gun as a term of percentage. For many people, these things change. For example, you might have 98 percent on the bird and 2 percent on the gun, 95/5, or 75/25.

When you are equally aware of the target and the gun, you have a 50/50 ratio, meaning that your focal point is between the target and the gun. When you have a 75/25 ratio, that focal point shifts back from the midpoint back toward the target halfway. When you have a 90/10, it’s off the front of the target a little way, and when you have a 95/5, it is almost on the front of the target, indicating that as the focus ratio changes, the actual sharp vision that we have in our eye moves away from the target. There’s only one way for it to move and that’s toward the gun.

What we see in many shooters, even shooters that are in the A, AA, and master classes, is that these focus ratios change from shot to shot, as well as from pair to pair and station to station and day to day.

In reviewing a lot of our notes from our past advanced shooters and from talking to current shooters, we’ve found that they have found a focus ratio that they are not only comfortable with but that they can produce over and over again so it doesn’t change at all.

Advanced shooters do well because they have a very comfortable and thick focus ratio. In our opinion, a focus ratio of 95 percent or more on the target is optimum for top performances. Shooting well is about finding your focus ratio and learning to stick with it and trust it.

This is an excerpt from the March 2012 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with more than 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.