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Personalizing Your Training Program Part 2

The multi size find chart and because I didn't do it very well. I feel like I have a low baseline. I would do the number five and, uh yeah, because for handball but it's but it's clear what I'm doing right? But my baseline teo as established today's fairly low. Okay, so does that make sense? That's perfect? Absolutely. Yeah. What about you? I think the distance vision goes, uh, good. I like the I really like the brock one, but I don't know how much of it you could take. Right? Um, I mean, that one I think really clicked, right? Yeah, that was the one that seemed impact to the most, like, wow, I can feel my eye. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Okay, so now that you have a couple picked out circle him because I don't want you to forget when you leave here, what you going to start using to test each day and remember, how long is it gonna take you to test near? Far and and I the way we just did it, it takes you a minute. Sure. Right. You can do some exercises, you can do some breathing. You could do ...

any of these I drills and you can go back and re test and go how did that respond? Are these the two that we use for daily assessment of the two for daily assessment everything else you want to fit in kind of a cross a calendar once a week or once every other week alright okay now that we've gone through our assessments let's talk about the actual exercises does everyone remember um I think at this point you hopefully remember all of these all right, so um we did we did our isometrics when we do those we have eight quadrants that we have to work in right or yeah a quadrant completely spots I'm confused about that so do we just go start and then gore like around the clock face or or gyu go opposite which way do we go? It doesn't matter okay it's just based on choice and just make sure you don't leave any spots out right? If any I think it be easier just just work around the clock face and then I know I'm hitting every point event so isometrics we start off with five seconds hopefully over time working up to being able to comfortably hold any position for thirty seconds without losing focus on the target remember that sometimes depending on the size of the nose the target may need to be further out that's always one of those things you have to pay attention to after we do our isometrics we have our full circles we do clockwise and counterclockwise circles if you have someone that you're working with or that's watching you're you're filming yourself when we do that circle remember we're looking for the smoothness of the motion and as the athlete who's doing this what you're trying to perceive is is there a small arc that's really uncomfortable most people that I work with they'll figure out is they're working through they'll be like oh there's a little spot that they want to jump past that spot that you want to jump past usually means that that's where there's a coordination deficit or a little bit of a strength deficit somehow within that motion so you probably need to spend a little bit of time rehabbing right in that zone within him or I spirals and these are even mohr fine motor control for the eyes so that you can track in multiple directions do you remember how we did prefer awareness yesterday? Okay so as a reminder we stood up the most important part was we picked a focal point in front of us so for me if I'm standing here I can use the crossbar on them window back there I could pick that point I breathe and then I go through my little search pattern I say ok how well can I see what's above me how much how wide how far back they did the same thing to my right and left without moving your without moving my eyes and how much can I see of the floor all right all right that's our base level peripheral awareness we then look it all of it together build that sphere and then you remember the last extra part of the exercise we said mentally try to expand right try to actually see a little bit more to the signs a little bit more above and below okay so I want to try that ok so go and stand up for me all right so you guys going to stay and you gotta pick something to look at in front of you you could do this glasses on or glasses off if you're comfortable glasses off all right pick something pick a focal point now as you stand there take a couple breaths in and out because remember peripheral awareness and anxiety do not go hand in hand all right there was a kind of counterproductive so shake out any tension you've got your focal point so start off see how much of the room above you you can notice right so whatever's there can you see cords can you see cables? Can you see if you're outside trees birds sky you would spend a few seconds paying attention to what's above you and then I'm gonna ask you to the kind of notice what's off to your right okay depending where you are the idea is how far back does my peripheral field extend nice. Keep his eyes still and then shift. Your eyes are stiff tear awareness to the left side of your body. Okay, so you're not moving your eyes just going. Ok. What's over here and then finally keep breathing. Pay attention to the floor. Okay. How much can you have the floor? Can you see? How much can you see what's in front of you? And how closely does that awareness come to your lower body? To your feet. Okay, now try to notice all four sections all at the same time. Beautiful. And once you kind of have an idea of what that's fear feels like try to make that sphere bigger. I love saying that word sphere. I don't know why it's one of my okay to push it wider little bit wider and keep breathing and then relax. Okay? All right. That one is actually a lot of mental work. Alright, but didn't feel okay. All right, that is a really as I mentioned yesterday. It's an essential exercise for a lot of you. Actually, four were pretty much everyone that I work with. And I want you to do it not just in the rooms that urine, but do it outside, do it while you're walking. A cz long as you can walk and not trip, it would be really good to actually pick a focal point of distance and try to expand your awareness as you're moving, this is again one of those key skills for me that is a perv is a prevented of exercise because as people age, what do we say that they typically do when they're walking? Because of greater fear of falling? They typically tilt forward. They look at the ground mohr, and when I look at the ground, what happens to my peripheral awareness? It tends to shrink. So just in terms of maintaining kind of movement, elegance going forward in my life, I want to keep my head up, and I want to use my peripheral awareness and maintain it as much as I can. So that's not exercise, we then have the pencil push up. Remember that one pencil pusher up? How did we do it? Take the pen or pencil put it out in front of us, we focus on it, and then we bring it in as close to our noses we can. And what were the instructions until it splits into two? Remember that now whenever we're coaching someone else, what are we actually watching for? Do we really care where it splits in to know what we're watching for? One of the you are the eyes moving together or is one going thing and the other ones off over here having a coffee so the whole idea is how coordinated can we make the eye movement andan over time can we actually bring that target all the way into our nose without it splitting into two because that's basically a convergence training drill um those people who have a hard time with this exercise doing convergence if let's say you can do it here and that's this high as you can go it could be that you're the pencil push up will be one of the big remedies for improving your ability to do this that kind of makes sense okay says the pencil push up got two more two more I switches remember how we did those there you go two thumbs up right and we focused on one thumb and then the other and we just switched back and forth and over time the goal is to go as quickly as we can while still remaining accurate and clear focusing on each you're focusing on each target as you do it we typically shoot for twenty switches or sweat so and then we change position right so we go here and then we went vertical and then we did our diagonals okay so that's going to be the eye switches and then finally if you got someone to play catch with where a local available wall you take a ball he put some letters on it spent a little time playing catch in the whole goal there is to actually watch the ball it's coming focusing on a point on the ball not the whole ball call the letter that you see coming in to your hand in the little thing that we did was we said catch it and stare at elsa before you look up all right believe it or not that little drill money maker working with professional athletes even I was working with a professional soccer player over in denmark a couple months ago and this guy's been playing at the top tier for like fifteen years he grew up in one of the best academies in the world and he's a right footed striker are defenders we were out and I said ok we're gonna hit some balls and I said use your good foot I went about thirty yards out I said hit me in the chest so it comes in it's good foot boom and he literally was like he hit here and then there was one here and there was one here and there's one here and I had him do the letter ball drill with the one second count on his kicking he hit about twenty shots in a row every single one of them right here like I didn't have to even lean or move at that level he should know that already that makes sense I mean one of those things that you think we would have developed at that high level of expertise but I'm saying that one next your second focusing on a point on the ball applies across the board and there's a new york I'm not in the soccer context I'm not getting a one second delay what? I don't know what you would think I would have him keep his eyes down on where the ball one after the foot yes attacked with the ball back so I hold it down there okay yeah and I do the same thing with golfers and tennis player from other stuff a lot that comes out of just that very simple letter ball catching draw all right, okay, now we're getting we're going get start getting close to running out of time here so we'll do a couple more things where you guys going teo do some exercises and retest all right? But I'll take your question first well and you may not want to get into this because it's my vestibular problem but the purple awareness if I'm walking and I'm not paying attention right in front of me I start losing my balance okay now you understand what I mean? Yeah absolutely so with an actual vestibular deficit the peripheral walking probably wouldn't be advised for you I would start off with pearl it peripheral standing what you just did right and then ultimately and have you hold onto something right? You do the purple drill while you're marching, but you have something to help with your balance marching in place. Okay, so that would be a typical progression I would put you through. That would make a probably a really big difference. Okay. All right. Get ready to do some exercises. All right? So, here's, what you're gonna do, you're gonna pick, too. All right? I'm going to pick two of the exercises. I want you to do the first one, and then I want you to. After you've done your first exercise, I want you to do the to test their two assessments that you said you would do that you circled on your paper. That makes sense. And then you do your second exercise, and you revisit your assessments because this is what you're gonna be doing day in and day out. I'm gonna do an exercise, you know, reassess. See how you responded to it. They're one clear on this. So do one exercise. Reassess the second exercise for reassess. Yes. So I'm gonna give you guys a total of about five minutes to do that on dh. Then we'll start taking some final questions, all right, so if you want to work together, you can um if you need to use the charts, you can and as you're setting up, I'm going to kind of watch you, and I'm going to be answering questions at the same time. All right? Okay. So what? Before we go, what exercises we're gonna do? I think that I circles circles and then pencil push up pencil pushups. Awesome. Which two are you thinking? They're both catching in the eye. Isometrics little catching in isometrics I switches and isometrics switches. Isometrics alright, I've got my menu. I know what you got going, teo. So feel free to work kind of up in this area and if you're going through, if you guys have specific questions about anything that comes up, go ahead and ask me and I'll be taking a few questions from the viewers. I'm ready. Okay. Are you ready? I'm ready, sir. Great. So this is the last question from four eyes. They promise that was pretty funny. Seriously, keep him coming there they've been fantastic. So can people with medium too bad my o pia get rid of their glasses? Clearly it depends on the person they understand, but in general, is it possible to reverse that level of myo pia, uh, my honest answer is yes. But it made for some people it is a lot of work now I have had some people that with my o pia that have severe my o pia that the on ly result they were ever really able to achieve was a reduction in the amount of linds correction that they needed but this is also something that's a very significant interest around the opto kind of the I care world there's actually several journal articles that just came out last month on vision training for people in my o pia on dh so there's a there's a growing interest across the world like it seems that we can train them even people that air moderate to severe so that's kind of exciting for me it's a really good question ok thanks so here's one from me and this is one that I ask pretty much every instructor yes sir because I'm a realist if I only do one doctor cop you what's your desert island exercise great question um my well this is that one day that history is a tough one I know I actually had to choose one one exercise that actually kind of encompasses a lot of what we're interested in doing yes, I would probably do I spirals okay because the ability to focus and follow has a lot of different characteristics in it so that's probably the one that I would personally choose oh come but you got to take that with a grain of salt because that could be completely wrong for someone that can't do this yet okay so that's why if I was going to go to the desert island I would make sure I did some assessments first on if you had your go to assessment yeah I go to assessment again that's what ends on your interest okay for me because I love to read much size fun yeah that's my ghostly chart okay simple, simple and easy for me on dso that's the one that I would probably focus on and I actually know your your third desert island peace from this class uh huh the ten commandments exactly put that right make sure that you remember that you can change your brain with some intentional practice yeah because I was pretty huge for me though these last couple days good. Great. Okay um all right this is from b g with the near far chart what if I'm really near sighted and can't separate the charts much should I use my glasses um do a few weeks with glasses on and then as your brain's getting used to the idea you begin transitioning now I will say just so uh it's very understandable I'm going to steal the chart here so this is the near chart and this is the far chart here I have a lot of clients that actually do the exercise like this okay okay so there's not a lot of separation here but it doesn't matter that's what I was saying earlier you don't have to do it exactly as outlined in the ideal instructions and he really comes down to doing whatever you can with your current visual skill and part of that is about the movement correct yeah it's moving your eyes looking move looking at move looking move correct the challenge here is look close look far whatever close and far is for you okay yeah almost like going to the shooting range at the at the old timey fair right targets in front and targets and back and I'm trying to look between the two correct so that would probably pretty good as well right I like to shoot so yeah okay oh boy so drafts four eyes has one more question okay for dr cobb soccer ball example do you suggest the player look at the ball foot content a moment for a second while playing only white doing drills that's a great I love that question no actually same where federer during play as well okay what we typically see with higher level performing athletes is especially a soccer player he's coming in he's getting ready to take a shot he's doing multiple switches per second he's looking at the target he's looking at the ball he's looking the target but the main thing is to really improve that last second contact we really would like to see eyes down on the ball so yeah so it's not just in drills it's actually in play as well great thank you alright we're getting through so having you guys get through both exercises or one I just did one assessing this one exercise and now your assess okay and what did you say which did you do for if you did I circles ah yeah I did I circles and then I did the brock okay strain great um it's makes a difference little bit directly after okay good I did the letter ball catching up and then I did the the font chart and I'm still a three and ten itself your three and ten three with glasses in ten ok so tens actually better than where you yeah yeah yeah it's just it's a little bit better so that the letter ball catching was apparently good for you yeah yeah it seemed to be yeah okay yeah so so that that's all I did I didn't get to the second alright so that's fine all right and what about over here? Eighteen okay eighteen on them the ballpark all right and what was your first girl? Um the drill was the clapping and I cornered okay let's do one more set of drills one final assessment and we'll start wrapping up all right and that's great because I have a couple more questions are coming in so are you familiar with the bates method? Yes, and so nicki would like to know how does that compare to your technique? Are you able to talk to that? Uh dr bates probably is the best known vision training, huh? Person in uh at least in western society it's an older method um and the one thing that I will say is a lot of the exercises in the bates method in my opinion we're slightly less specific than what we're doing right now, but we all owe a huge debt to someone that said, hey, you can actually train your eyes now if you I want to you can actually find a lot of bass method books very inexpensively I'd encourage you to read them because there's always some good information in them the one thing that we do talk a little bit about now as we're understanding against a little bit more than neuroscience a vision improvement dr bates really did aton of emphasis on relaxation of the eyes and that was one of the components I was trying to help you guys understand is that while relaxation could be very important, we also want to sometimes encourage dealing with blur and causing the eyes to work a little bit harder because if we're going to create a real significant change long term we have to challenge the brain enough and sometimes just more focused on relaxation is insufficient isn't quite challenging enough so, like I said, I have several different versions of dr bass book. I have what's called quackenbush method, which was based off doctor bates. Eso is a great starting point for a lot of us, and I would definitely encourage you to check some of the the workout. Fantastic. Another question from stefania again. Great questions during the workshop. Thank you, what's your opinion of the emotional cause of eyesight. And how do you treat that aspect in order to heal vision issues completely? Oh, wow. That's a deep question. Yeah. So whenever we start talking about neurology and the one thing I try and be very clear on this would actually be much better if I was teaching a pain class here, because whenever we start looking at the function of the human brain, everything has a cognitive and emotional in a physical component to it. Now, in terms of how I address that, envision training, particularly this level that's probably, uh, form too deep for me to get into. The main thing that I would bring up right now is just to realise that when you do vision work, there can be an emotional component to it. You guys missed it on the last break, but the fact of mackenzie actually saw a little bit of a flicker on the brock string. Culture to tear up a little bit we started talking about it that's really normal because a lot of people, because the visual system is so powerful and so important to all of us, it is incredibly likely that you can have some emotional responses to some of the vision drills. Um, there are several other methods out there that speak a lot to come, that mohr emotional component to vision. And so if she has a real specific interest in that, I just encourage her to email the office and I can maybe porter in some different directions. So here's one from laurel as asking about the benefits of these exercises, somebody with ambient visual disorder and visual disorder? Um, I'm going to make a kind of a broad kind of broad spectrum answer because I have no idea, but in looking at the chat room, there's been hundreds of questions about specific visual, uh, visual disorder, so I'm gonna make a little analogy, all right? And here's, how I'm gonna answer this idea a lot with pain mentioned that already in our current culture, because our technology is so advanced, we often find things that don't really matter and here's what I mean by that, how many guys know someone that's been diagnosed, they have low back pain. Maybe they have some sai attica and they go to their physician they okay sounds like you've got a disk herniation let's go ahead and put you in a memory in c and so they had the m r I and then their diagnosis with herniated disc and they do physical therapy or something I know people that have gone through that right so here's where things were getting really confusing because for most of us we go hey, if there's a herniated disk then of course that's the problem well what we're actually finding us we take about a thousand people with no back pain and no cy attica and we do an m r I on them we find herniated disc in the low back in about eighty percent of them. Wow. So eight hundred out of a thousand actually have this problem and yet they're not having a problem. I've heard the same thing about scoliosis scoliosis and I could go through I mean, there was a recent study that was looking at torren meniscus in the knee because everyone gets worried you know, have this torn meniscus and that's what's called him any pain once again out of a thousand people about six hundred fifty have a torn meniscus with no pain all asymptomatic so like I said right now one of the challenges for us in our world is our technology is giving us so much information we the challenges does that information actually matter like is that the actual cause and so sometimes the same thing happens in the visual world when I am dealing with someone with pain like they've got a low back issue I want to know that information but at the end of the day my question isn't so much about the mechanics I want to say if we do a little experiment and the experiment is done safely and it's not caused you any discomfort let's see if we can make an improvement so a lot of the different conditions that we've been hearing about in the chat room that's basically what I would say if you talk to your doctor he says you know what? I don't know what is actually going to do for you but give him a shot I think they're safe for you then try them because the thing that I've learned in dealing with the brain over the course of years is it virtually every time I say something can't be helped someone prove me wrong they go and do the drills and do exercises and I'm blown away I'm like wow I had no idea so the human brain is capable of so much that I hesitate to put any limiters on it I just want to make sure that we do it safely so hopefully that's a good answer for that just that those all that category of questioning that's coming in that's a that's a fantastic answer and I just want to let you know I did get a clarification that apparently a p p p s spells aps when it's all in caps so that was kind of my fault like I know because I was like what because I came from one of your colleagues that z health so that's funny that was kind of funny so yeah we have and we have talked about the way we have it yeah so fantastic dr cobb thank you so much for joining us in the classroom today it's been absolutely wonderful any any final thoughts that you'd like to give our creative live audience you know the number one thing I would like to say is number one thank you guys for being here it's I've done a lot of work in front of cameras this has been way easier like actually having people interact with and talked with and s o thank you guys for being here has been amazing host and some aspirin great ous faras anyone listening in you guys the main thing I would like you to take away from all of this um I would go back to day one when I said really our system is what I call the science of hope I would love for everyone that's listen that's leaving this to realize that you have more potential uh to improve and change probably than you've ever giving yourself credit for. Um, and while that could be overwhelming from a responsibility perspective is you sit with it and you breathe with it hopefully becomes one of the most empowering things that you ever hear. The emerging science of how the brain can be shaped intentionally, I believe, has the potential to literally alter the course of someone's life not in a small way, but in an enormous way. I'm under no illusions that most people, you know, from being able to read twenty, forty two, twenty, twenty that's going to be some huge, life changing event, but it can be for some, but it also serves as really a launching point for understanding what you're capable of. So one of the reasons I love teaching movement I love teaching exercise I love teaching sports is that some of the most sublime moments of life come when we're doing something physical when we're performing at a really high level and all of a sudden we're like, man, I want to feel that again when we encourage our physical growth and encourage our brain growth, I think it gives him up gives us an opportunity to keep experiencing that over and over, and I believe that we're kind of in a situation now where we're going to see an upward swing if we do the right things in what people are performing around the world, so that would be kind of my final encouragement or hope that you would take away from this. Is that wherever you're at visually, wherever you're at, physically, if you're willing to do some work and you're willing to do it an intelligent, purposeful way, you really can make enormous growth happen over the course of not just a few weeks in a few months, but literally over the course of a lifetime. So, uh, that would be really my final kind of parting, parting concept to share