Without an open-gun-type optical dot sight, you must center the front sight post within the rear blade at the same time centering the target exactly above them.   Practice is the only thing that improves your ability to do this. With the possible exception of targets closer than five feet, always use your sights.  

The trick is to maintain the proper sight picture while you press the trigger and until the bullet leaves the barrel.   You should not blink during this process, and you should try very hard to actually see the sights lift momentarily from the target as it fires.   Letting your brain take a visual "snapshot" of this final sight picture is the only way you can know and be confident of where your shot went, and is referred to as “calling your shots.”    Developing this confidence is an essential element in a shooter's development.

Top photo: Sight focus. Bottom: Target focus

Humans cannot keep precise focus on the rear sight blade, the front sight, and the target simultaneously.   Conventional wisdom stresses front sight focus.   If you keep your front sight correctly centered and level with the rear sight, you've achieved sight alignment, which is critical.   The target remains slightly blurry.   Virtually all Bullseye (precision accuracy) shooters use this technique, and few disagree that for distant shooting, it's best.   On the other hand, after you've developed your index, and are engaging closer targets, it's faster and often acceptably accurate to use target focus.   The sights are centered, but slightly blurry, and you're focused on the target.   If you can't decide which is best, think “front sight.”

If your grip and stance are correct, the sights should return after recoil very close to where you aimed your first shot, so you have only a bit of correction to do for your second.   The two-shot pair you typically shoot on a paper target is called your “splits.”   The technique used for this essential skill ranges from a controlled pair where each shot is carefully aimed, to a “hammer” with one sight picture followed by two quick shots.   Depending upon how refined your grip and index are, “hammers” are usually best reserved for very close targets only.   And yes the really good shooters are seeing their sights with quarter-second splits -   it can be done – but requires practice.   Work on your controlled pairs – hammers will too often result in a most unfortunate scoring dilemma referred to as a “mike”   - otherwise known as a miss.

Matt Burkett, Grandmaster and professional competitive shooter, may be the leader in practical shooting DVD instruction.

He provides these free tips.

Trigger technique

Of all the fundamental skills, effective trigger technique is arguably the hardest to learn.   Conceptually it's simple - pull the trigger, let the gun fire, while keeping the sights aligned with the target.   In practice, it can be difficult to pull the trigger without letting that finger movement worsen your sight alignment.   The ball of the index fingertip should contact the trigger - B in the illustration.

It's time to discuss flinch. Almost everybody has flinch when they're first learning to shoot a handgun. Yet very few new shooters will admit it to themselves - until its proven to them. Flinch is caused by mentally anticipating recoil – to the point where the sights come off the target automatically during the trigger pull. The effective technique to prove that it really is you and not the recoil moving the sights as you press the trigger is to include a dummy round in the magazine (or cylinder) and carefully watch the sights as you fire multiple rounds at the center of the target.   When you unexpectedly encounter the dummy round and the gun clicks without recoil, and you see that somehow the sights wandered off target,  you will then know you're flinching and can work to prevent it.

The best way to develop trigger technique (as well as many other skills) is to dryfire.   As boring as this sounds, the top shooters agree that it's very effective.    In a safe location against a safe backstop, make certain the gun is completely unloaded, make sure all of the magazines are completely unloaded, and make sure all live ammo is put away.    Practice maintaining sight alignment on a small target – maybe an inch diameter twenty feet away, while you pull the trigger through and let the hammer drop. Re-cock and repeat.   Do this until the hammer drop doesn't change the sight alignment.   When you've mastered that, do it faster.   Remember, learning it the right way means the sights remain on target before, during, and after the hammer drops. If you “program” your muscle memory this way – the correct way, you're very likely to do exactly the same thing when you're on the range with live ammo.   Will dryfiring hurt the gun? If it did, all the top shooters would have ruined their guns long ago.

IDPA or IPSC?

"The USPSA/IPSC sort of match is geared toward speed and accuracy. The IDPA style match is geared toward accuracy with speed being a lesser factor. It requires skills that may be more beneficial in gunfights.

All that said, there are many LE officers that regularly compete in USPSA/IPSC. They believe these matches really help their gun handling skills.

Generally, I've found that the folks who participate in USPSA/IPSC matches are more interested in becoming the best they can be with a pistol."