Sports Vision Training and Vision Coaching
What is Sports Vision Training?
The field of Sports Vision has been receiving considerable media attention in recent years. Athletes, constantly in search of extra advantage over their opponents, are beginning to appreciate the benefits of Vision Coaching to their overall performance, in terms of both efficiency and consistency. As it is vision that informs and guides even our smallest body movements, it makes sense that people dedicated to being the best in their field, are looking to build their visual stamina and prowess, striving for visual consistency to complement their physical and mental endurance.
When an athlete fails to achieve his full potential, fatigues prematurely during play, or appears overly susceptible to the impact of emotional tension upon performance, many of the telling indicators are, in fact, the result of stress impacting upon a fallible visual system. The poorly timed catch, the over long throw, dropping the ball, late tackle, misjudged footing, unstable balance, excessive force, poor awareness opponent position, failing to see open spaces, inconsistent line-out throw, poor anticipation of player or ball position, are all examples, and the list goes on. Eighty five to ninety percent of all our information about the physical world reaches us through our eyes, and the speed and quality of ensuant body action is dependent, not only upon the accuracy of that information, but also how much of it we can be aware of at one time, and how quickly we can process it. Sports Vision is about maximising visual efficiency and stamina, so that an athlete can take in more, from a wider volume of field, process it more quickly, and respond appropriately, either proactively or reactively, with the speed and dexterity necessary to perform to his fullest potential, right to the end of play.
Vision versus sight in sport?
SIGHT, or the ability to see small detail well, is obviously very important in sport, and the relative importance of excellent sight might vary from one sport to another. Any sport involving small targets at greater distances, such as archery and shooting, would be more difficult if sight is impaired. However, discriminating and resolving small similarities and differences, generally necessary in order to identify an object, is only a small part of what the visual system does. VISION describes a more dynamic and interactive process, essentially a whole INFORMATION PROCESSING SYSTEM developed through life experience, which allows us to understand what we see and to move efficiently and PURPOSEFULLY, interacting effectively with any objects, through the space we perceive. Vision is a learned process from which emerges an understanding of what is seen, where it is and how to react to it both accurately and efficiently, with a minimum expenditure of effort and energy.
Why is vision so important in sport?
Much of sport is all about movement, movement of the athlete, of opponents, of a ball, a bat, a clay pigeon, a boat, and an arrow. It is vision that directs and co-ordinates our own movement through space and allows us to be aware of, to interpret, to anticipate, and to respond to the movement of other participants and objects. The more visual cues we can be aware, so that we can more accurately judge and anticipate our own movement and the movement of others, the better our overall performance. If we can expend minimal energy in achieving this, we have more remaining to support other body functions necessary to the game. The more automated the visual responses, then the better we can absorb, process and retain visual information, augmenting availability to higher functions, such as visualisation and direction of intended body movement and game strategy.
How does Sports Vision Training benefit the athlete?
A Sports Vision Assessment will provide an in-depth analysis of an athlete’s visual system, and this information can be used to predict potential deficits in visual performance, particularly under conditions of physical and mental fatigue, or in specific areas of space. Vision coaching will initially be tailored to address these, more immediate, areas of need, but then move on to enhance general visual strength and stamina. Some athletes may build gradually into their game, taking time to “warm up” their visual skills and integrate all that is necessary to optimal hand or foot to eye co-ordination, maximum peripheral awareness of field with expansive three-dimensional perception of space around themselves and surrounding players, allowing timely anticipation of emerging open spaces and breaks in defence. Others may begin play at their best, but appear to gradually deteriorate in skill, as they fatigue physically. Sports Vision Training aims to hone visual skills to higher performance levels, to be consistent and effective from the beginning to the end of play.
What sports are involved?
There is not a sport that does not involve the visual system, in terms of excellent sight and steady gaze, stable static or dynamic balance, optimum hand or foot to eye co-ordination, rapid proactive and reactive response to movement, visualisation of body or ball action and game strategy, precise timing of tackle or jump, force required to propel self or ball, rapid calculation of speed and distance of travel, visual anticipation of where a player or ball may end up, or maximum awareness of movement and change over large areas of space. There is not a sport that cannot benefit from Sports Vision Training.
What is the difference between a screening and an assessment?
Screenings are usually on a larger scale, with multiple athletes, and involve a limited number of tests, primarily to identify areas weakness in visual skill, and sometimes to collect comparative data. The purpose is usually to determine who might benefit from a more in-depth assessment.
Assessments are usually individual, tailored to need, and explore the visual system in much greater depth. The purpose is to form a baseline for Vision Coaching, from which to build skills. It will also highlight areas of more immediate need, such as inferior skills in one particular area of space, which can then be addressed first, before more general enhancement of visual skills and stamina.
How does Vision Coaching work?
Activities are employed that arrange conditions for visual learning. This means that all activities used give feedback to the athlete about the quality of visual perceptions used to inform body movement. An example might be a target that has to be touched, batted, stepped on, lit up, verbalised, or responded to in a specific way, in order to achieve a task that is dependent upon accuracy, automaticity or speed of a particular visual skill, or awareness and processing of multiple visual cues, for successful completion. Body actions involved may be gross whole body, fine discriminatory hand or foot movement, barely visible within the visual system, such as changes in focus or eye alignment, or even mental, such as visualisation. They may be slow and controlled, reflective, fast, explosive, reactive or proactive, timed or random, or visualised. An athlete may be required to use his visual system in harmony with other senses or in direct conflict, where it may be necessary to adapt at increasing speed to mismatching, new, or changing relationships, between the senses, allowing them to explore incoming sensory data for accuracy and relevance to a particular situation, preparing them to respond intuitively, at speed and with “presence of mind”, to sudden sensory changes, as occur with impact, disorientation, fatigue or injury. Several examples may be seen in this video link.
VIDEO
Here a challenging balance requirement is combined with accurate focus, instructional interpretation and eye movements (to follow the distance chart) and the demand for maximal awareness and rapid visual processing of more peripheral visual cues to constantly changing distance and speed of balls, which must be assimilated and recalculated at speed, informing force and direction of baton, in order to simultaneously achieve body stability, accurate response and ball control. This is level one of a typical Sports Vision Training activity.
The visual system learns through doing but, unfortunately, in life the feedback necessary to inform of errors and guide adjustments in the visual system is frequently not available within a task. Critical visual decisions, for example, about speed of ball, size of space, force of bat, distance of player, position of post, or timing of jump, can be made on the basis of inaccurate, and sometimes variable, visual input. In life we cannot always be aware of what we did not notice, or take account of, that might have beneficially influenced our play. Vision Coaching can allow an athlete to explore the available visual information and the impact it may have upon his performance. He can then learn how to take account of more useful information, more of the time, under increasing pressure of physical and mental fatigue, to the benefit of his play.
What does Optometry have to offer the elite athlete?
The operational model of the visual system employed in Behavioural Optometry is the only one that involves the whole body in assessment, analysis and treatment procedures. At the heart of the Behavioural Optometric model is this process of VISION and every test used contributes to a holistic representation of how an athlete uses their visual system in their chosen sport, and how any visual limitations may be impacting upon full potential.
How can you be the best that you can be, more of the time?
Every time we open our eyes we are bombarded with a massive array of visual cues to distance, direction, speed, time and space. The accuracy of what we perceive is as much about what we did not notice and take account of, as it is about what we did “see”. The visual information used to inform and guide our body movement, and the quality of our visual decisions, is heavily dependent upon the quantity of visual cues that we can process, the energy required and the speed at which we process them. Enhancing visual skills, in terms of quality and stamina, can give you that advantage, and allow you to realise the full benefit of your conditioning and skills training, throughout the duration of your sport.
For more information or to book an assessment please phone the practice on 02920 228144 or email childopt@aol.com