Baseball and softball athletes understand how important hand-eye coordination, concentration, and visual acuity are in their sport. In the short amount of time between the ball leaving the pitcher’s hand and the ball reaching the plate (approximately 0.4 seconds), the batter must concentrate on the ball, assess its rotation and direction, as well as determine when to start swinging.
With baseball and softball training limited due to government restrictions, it may be difficult for athletes to practice and improve their batting skills.
What if we told you that our Sport Vision Training program could help you to improve your batting average and gain an edge over your competition? In this post we will discuss just how this is possible.
What is Sport Vision Training and How Can it Help?
Just as how athletes train their muscles to be stronger, it’s important that we train our eyes to enhance the quality and efficiency of our vision.
Visuomotor training works to improve the degree to which vision and movement work together. Here at Human Integrated Performance, we have developed our Sport Vision Training program designed to improve the visual abilities of athletes to help them to perform their best. Our program involves a series of individually tailored exercises targeted at learning and training dynamic visual skills that directly relate to your sport. Here are some of the visuomotor skills baseball and softball athletes use:
Depth Perception
- Depth perception enables you to make spatial judgements, including how far away an object is. This is essential for baseball and softball athletes as they need to be able to judge the location of the ball relative to their body. The better an athlete’s depth perception, the more accurate they will be in catching the ball, judging when to swing, and effectively passing the ball.
Concentration
- Athletes need to be able to maintain a high level of focus on their task, all while managing distractions and being aware of the actions of other players. It’s natural for athletes to lose concentration to various distractors; however, it’s important that after an athlete experiences a distractor, or makes a mistake, they are able to refocus.
Hand-Eye Coordination
- Hand-eye coordination is the ability to use our eyes to direct the movements of our hands and body. To hit the ball perfectly, the batter must have great hand-eye coordination; they must determine the exact moment to swing bat to make a good connection with the ball.
Peripheral Awareness
- Peripheral awareness involves perceiving what is happening around you without turning your head. Baseball and softball athletes need to be able to detect the location and movement of other players while remaining focused on their task. For example, the catcher needs to be aware of where each base runner is to determine whether or not to throw the ball.
Processing Speed and Visual Reaction Time
- Baseball and softball plays are fast paced and are different each time. Athletes need to be able to process all of the incoming information and visual stimuli, ignore task-irrelevant information, and make a quick decision on how to react.
By strengthening the dynamic visual skill of baseball and softball athletes, they will more accurately be able to hit, catch, and throw the ball.
Our Sport Vision Training Program - What a Session Entails
Human Integrated Performance utilizes the Dynavision D2 Visuomotor Training System as the central feature to our Sport Vision Training program. The board itself is a 4-foot x 4-foot screen with 64 lights spaced around a small LED screen. There are a number of different exercises programmed into the board that target various dynamic visual skills.
Process:
- Intake: During your first session, we will learn about your medical history and your goals to improve your performance. This will help us to create a safe and individualized program specific to your needs.
- Session (30 minutes, 1-2 times a week)
- Warm-up: At the beginning of your session, our sport vision trainers run you through warm up exercises to get your hands and eyes working together.
- Reaction time: Once you are warmed up, we will focus on improving reaction time. By adjusting the speed at which the lights flash on the board, we are able to train your ability to perceive a stimulus and quickly hit their target.
- Decision making and choice reaction: Building off reaction time-based exercises, we will work with you to make correct decisions while under pressure (similar to when on the field). For example, one exercise challenges you to only hit red lights with your right hand and green lights with your left hand.
- Information Processing: Bringing everything together, we will challenge you to process large amounts of information in a short period of time. For a baseball or softball athlete, this style of exercise will assist in pitch recognition, recognizing spin on the ball, and anticipating a play before It happens.
What should a client expect when they come in for a sport vision session?
Our Sport Vision Training is designed to supplement the current workout and training regimen of the athlete. We recommend that our athletes attend Sport Vision Training sessions one to two times per week for 30 minutes.
What do we see as the results of our sport vision training?
Outcomes of Sport Vision Training can vary depending on the time and attention that the athlete puts towards their training. Results will not come right away, but with dedication and practice, the athlete will feel a significant increase in confidence and dynamic visual skills.
A study from the University of Cincinnati used Dynavison technology, the same that we have here at Human Integrated Performance, to improve the dynamic visual skills of their varsity baseball athletes. Over the course of the program, athletes observed a 0.034-point improvement in their batting average, as well as an improvement in slugging percentage.
A Simple Exercise for Your Eyes: Near and Far Focus
Try this exercise at home!
- In a seated position, start by holding your thumb about 10 inches away from your face. Focus your attention onto your thumb for about 15 seconds.
- Find an object in the room about 10-15 feet away. Shift your focus from your thumb to that object for 15 seconds.
- Return your focus to your thumb and repeat three to five times.
If you are interested in Sport Vision Training at Human Integrated Performance, or looking to learn more, please call us at (780) 862-3111 or email us at info@yeghip.com.
FAQ
- Who can benefit fromSport Vision Training?
Sport Vision Training is a great tool for any athlete who wants to improve their performance and visual skills. This includes youth to adult athletes, recreational to high performance. - What sports can Sport Vision Training help with?
Here at Human Integrated Performance, we are able to help athletes from a variety of sports. Some of the athletes we have helped have backgrounds in football, hockey, golf, lacrosse, tennis, lacrosse, basketball, baseball/softball, wrestling/MMA/boxing, and soccer. - How can Sport Vision Training be customized for me?
Our sport vision trainers will sit down with you during your first session trainers to determine your goals and specific elements of your sport that can be targeted by Sport Vision Training. As your visual skills improve throughout the program, we will be able to adjust the level of difficulty to keep challenging your ability.