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Lesson Info

Eye Tracking Vision Drill

We've been doing a lot of stuff on dh what we want to do, I want to show you one more drill I mentioned this in the previous segment, so the last segment we spent some time talking about hey, can you turn this into some games? Can you play? Can you approach the idea of exploring your vision as opposed to trying to fix your vision? Because one of the things that I run into a lot is people tend to be kind of goal, focus, goal oriented, and while having that target is really important, whenever we can approach movement from, um or as I said playful aspect, I tend to find better adherence to program, so that was the big thing we talked about, we did some mobility work, we did some network, we did some jaw work, we did something drastic work or mid back work and like I said, if if that doesn't have an immediate impact on your vision that's okay, because it actually has an impact on your brain and ultimately anything that we're going to do that's gonna improve brain function has potential ac...

tually assistance also in seeing better now, the other thing I did want to bring up around that I showed you one to three for about six exercises of our base level movement program, which is one hundred and sixty okay, so there's a lot more joints, a lot more exercises to do in the body. Um, and in general, what I work him in for everyone believe it or not, trying to improve their vision if you also want to work at the same time on improving all of your movement patterns. It sounds kind of like while that would be a lot to do, it really takes about ten to twelve minutes a day it's not that hard to start incorporating just good basic movement practices, and that can have a big beneficial effect on your breathing, your brain and then ultimately high c um, so we'll talk a little bit more about that going forward. We then picked up two new vision exercises we did the pencil push up, which for a lot of people is actually one of the most fatiguing of all the exercises. You still feel it? Um, yeah, it can be really challenging for the muscles of the eyes and in the second we did was the ice, which is now what I want to go through really quickly if we're going to take one step back here because I didn't want to show you this last little drill, this is a drill that I use probably eighty percent of the time as a warm up for athletes, and I'm working with now it's a simple simple idea but we work on improving our ability to track an object because if you remember yesterday we said therefore basic sets of visual skills remember what they were this note's depth depths judgment judgment right where things are clarity visual clarity, clarity um I moved my movement right that's the switch we're just doing my movements in the circles in the last one peripheral awareness that social awareness okay, so uh you guys grew up playing ball sports yeah, yes, I know you do probably know right? Most of people that I work with have had any kind of significant visual disorder avoided ball sports like now these air scary at some point probably when you're five or six years old you go out and get hit in the head with one and you like this is a bad idea. So this again it sounds kind of strange, but one of my very favorite drills to teach is this little letter ball toss and what I found is that even people who have been scared of catching their entire lives when they begin to understand the visual aspect of catching for riel rather than being told something like keep your eye on the ball when they ask you understand what they're supposed to do? I've had more people in the sounds goofy but I've had more people break down crying in my classes from learning to catch a ball than anything else because you have people coming in that are thirty five forty fifty, fifty five I had a woman not too long ago she was sixty three in a class and for the first time she was like consistently able to catch a ball and she just lost it it was really interesting but I think a lot of times when people have a hard time with something that seems basic when I actually learned that they can do it it's very very cool for them all right? So here's kind of one of the big mysteries I mentioned yesterday I'm interested in extraordinary performers and when we look at and observe what really amazing athletes do with regards to ball sports they tend to not look at the whole bowl as it's coming to them they actually pick apart of the ball to see yeah and so what we do is we do a really simple exercise we take a tennis ball or something with children I'll start with a balloon and I won't put letters on it I'll put colors or faces or shapes just something that they can identify and the goal here is to learn to catch so we're gonna play a little catch and you learn to watch and look at the letter as opposed to looking at the ball and what do you think that does for your eyes in your brain what is it telling you to do well, teo teo to increase focus on get more specific it's a very specific focus uh and it makes you concentrate more because general, what I tell people is that if you've played ball sports before, what most people do when the ball's coming to them, they predict where it's going to wind up if you had a lot of experience, I can look away and be fairly confident that I'm gonna catch it, right? But it's actually, the difference between an amateur and elite is the elite have learned that you don't always catch it when you predict right? And so you started working on it a little bit more specific way. So you wanna come up and do the sure do this little girl with me? Um, what we're gonna do is I'm gonna put you actually get this stuff out of the way because we are going to toss it a little bit there's nothing that people with expensive camera equipment like better than stuff being thrown around stand on that angle right there for me. I'm just gonna be right here, and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna toss the ball to you and your job is to watch it and you're going to call a letter, but I don't want to call the letter that you see here, I want you to call the letter that you see as the ball comes into your hand okay, that makes sense. Yeah, all right, so let's try that p good and you talk back to me I'll do it again. Okay? All right, now I want you guys can you see his eyes all right uh okay. So stand up because I want you guys to watch move up a little bit because the main thing we're trying to see here is at the last second is he doing this? Is he looking away the last second or is he actually focusing on the catch that make sense to you guys? Okay, yes, that was better. Hey, there we go right on and that's what we want to see so obviously he he's a handball player so you know, we could actually start picking up the speed a little bit a little bit harder a little bit faster goto way once again tracked it all the way in tea I think beautiful. So what I would normally do with someone is just learning this is I would actually ask them to catch and count to one thousand won before they looked away. Okay, that makes sense. You guys keep the eye glued to keep the eye glued to the target yes, there we go awesome. Now it's simple as this may seem, this is actually very often one of the most effective drills for improving visual capacity because there's more emotion going on the fact that you're having to track that you're focusing and if you guys remember when the balls away from you meaning it's far away, what my eyes have to do, they have to diverge to see it and then when the ball comes to my hand one of my eyes having to do they're having converge to follow it in so this is a lot like him bigger pencil push up or the convergence divergence chart, but now we're adding some movement to it and plus it's actually quite fun it sounds kind of goofy, but as I said, this is actually the initial warmup for probably eighty percent of the athletes that I work with including professional athletes because they come in and rather than doing something really hard in the gym, we go hey let's play catch and we start throwing the ball around, they're moving and they're calling the letters and it really is a great little warm up just to get you get you not only your body activated, but your eyes activated that makes sense you guys yeah, all right, cool. All right, so letter ball catching one of my very favorite drills on what we're gonna dio um is I'm gonna have brought one for all of you guys, so on a break we'll try it a little bit let us play with it and see what happens I'm not trying to make anyone cry though that's the important thing alright so does that bring up any questions for you uh currently about that drill or just a general idea of it makes sense, right? I have a question if I buy myself can I did you do this absolutely seiken cat play catchy out myself so just perfect. You know, the other thing that I sometimes will do depending on what's available is I just bounce it off the wall okay right now set off the wall and bounce it off the floor and when you bounce it spends a little bit more which makes it more challenging yeah, yeah there's lots of ways that you can play with uh you know, it just occurred to me I'm a juggler oh, no you and jugular yes. Is that a greater vision? I love juggling as an exercise. Okay, now one of things interesting about juggling is depending on how good and how consistent your throws are juggling tends to be almost more of a peripheral okay visual exercise rather than a focus exercise but I don't want to move your head that much um so it's not the same thing is this uh but yeah as faras just building coordination and good kind of overall visual skill particularly powerful awareness it's a fantastic uh they learn and do you do for balls five balls I can do for her I never mastered five maybe when we come back from lunch we're gonna happen to have a little demo little demo over here all right um good so any other quite did any questions coming about that little drill I need an answer first one person asked about tai chee so it was more of like a can you maybe talk to that a bit beautiful um having gets a practice taichi before no all right, so I have a huge background a martial arts martial arts since I was five uh tiki of all the martial arts actually has the most research basis behind it in looking at enhancing balance strength decreasing falls in the elderly um and a lot of the chinese martial arts have a they have systems of vision development eso as faras just a system to study something that actually delve into, uh the movement mechanics that come out of it and being able to do good body control and understand weight shifting I think there's a huge huge benefit practicing it once again it's like everything else if you love it there's gonna be a great benefit if it's something that you're doing because you feel like you have to not as much but candid enhance our brain absolutely and that's not just aa anecdotal this point there's a fairly significant research around that. So very cool. Great question.