Elite Athletes See a Different World - A Visual & "Quiet" Analysis

[Music] it's 1987 at the University of Calgary calary Dr Joan Vickers is on the verge of one of the greatest sports science discoveries of Our Generation look me in the eye [Music] look at me I knew I was seeing something that no one had ever seen before felt like Columbus or the Vikings this is my eye it was taken with a camera lens which is another eye and you are watching this with your eyes it's a lot of eyes the eye our most powerful tool the window to the soul Gathering light and sending signals within

just a few milliseconds we can take Aim with what's most important we can identify targets targets like a cylinder a spinning ball the back of the end zone or a net each of these targets are different yet similar they all fundamentally require vision and what's considered perfect vision 2020 something I do not have until now e f p t o z yeah that's me but this is deceiving and not just because of these corrective lenses the fact that I maybe memorized a few of those letters back there this is deceiving because even though I have

2020 eyesight with these corrective lenses is I couldn't read a pitch I couldn't read a serve in tennis or a slap shot if I was a goalie I might as well be blind in those Arenas so yes I have 2020 eyesight but it's misleading it's actually quietly misleading vision is far more complex than a chart and sports provide a window into this complexity consider how athletic expertise has traditionally been defined by physical prowess the bigger stronger and faster F you are the better yet we have many examples of great athletes who are far from being

the biggest strongest or fastest when compared to their teammates or opponents Lionel Messi Wayne Gretzky but we don't even have to look to the Elites for this we all know people that do more with less and for me it was an Alaskan teammate he had spent his summer chasing oil up on the North slope I was refining in a different way shooting about 200 to 300 threes per day yet when we returned to Anchorage in late August it was as if our summers had been reversed he was still knocking down 24 Footers with little to

no airspace I was still an average shooter clearly athleticism physical traits are important but there are athletes who seemingly overachieve well beyond their physical means what separates them most of the time we are led to believe that this difference is just hard work it's the survivorship bias well Kevin Durant Juan stto Ronaldo these guys are better because they're both talented and they worked harder than the rest but clearly there is more to this equation some athletes do to hit one far over the double team just aim [Applause] better oh in fact it can be argued

that a large part of skill is aiming judge reading the spin Mahomes poaching a cheetah Curry Caston to tell what someone is thinking start by looking at their eyes so let's go back to Calgary where Dr Joan Vickers a former college basketball player is curious about just this no one had reliably measured gays Behavior within Sports so so Dr Vickers had to rig much of her own gear and also figure out a way to measure and visualize the data flow now it's important to understand the consensus belief at the time and that is Elite athletes

directly perceive and observe their environment quicker than the rest of us than athletes with lower skill level and because of that the duration of their Gaye should be shorter that was actually called gibsonian direct perception and I actually was in that school of at the time events are perceived but time is not what was the simplest way to begin measuring this well Dr Vickers started with a closed skill one where there would be less competitive external pressures at least seemingly less external pressures putting [Music] in the study gaze control of putting Dr Vickers divided golfers

into two groups the first group more Elite 0 to8 handicap the second group still solid but less Elite 10 to 16 handicap she then had the golfers perform a simple Putt and tracked their eye Behavior and the results were significant low handicap golfers fixated on the ball for longer 1,442 milliseconds versus 926 milliseconds for the less skilled golfers Dr Vickers would go on to call this the quiet eye the quiet eye is the final fixation or tracking gaze that occurs prior to and through the final critical phase of the movement our eyes obviously can't fixate

on the entire field of vision we have to choose where to aim our precious High Acuity as our f wheel vision is relatively small it's only about 2° which is roughly the width of your thumb if you hold it out in front of your face importantly the skilled golfers would keep this quiet eye through the duration of the putt whereas the tendency of the less skilled golfers was to move their eyes immediately after making contact with the ball fixations on the ball were observed in 88% of all putts by the low handicap group but only

52 2% from the high handicap group indicating that low handicap golfers allocated more resources to the ball across all trials also the low handicap group fixated on the ball for much longer averaging 1,442 milliseconds per fixation in comparison to the 926 from the high handicap group in summary the lower handicap group locked in on the target more frequently and longer a few years later the same was found with another sport report another Target basketball Dr Vickers took 16 College women's basketball players eight not so great free throw shooters and eight above average free throw shooters

which she classified as Elite all of these women played basketball extensively many played for the national Olympic team but like all teams not everyone was great from the stripe the near experts shot 56% from the line suggesting the term near expert was used Loosely the experts had a mean of 78% with this new itracking device that she created she tracked their gaze Behavior so what stood out visually well the eight above average expert free throw shooters they had nearly three times the quiet eyye duration this means that the above average free throw shooters were fixating

on their target for nearly a second before starting their emotion Additionally the nonexperts the not so great free throw shooters they had a lot more head movement and their eyes were kind of all over the place Dr Vickers thought it might be worth trying to train this quiet eye so she worked with the Canadian coach this was a different team in a new study a few years later and that team improved not just slightly they improved by 22 1.2% shooting better than the average NBA team that's season now for both of these studies putting and

free throw shooting this was occurring subconsciously that is the experts and the non-experts they did not know what their quiet eyye duration was and additionally these were closed skills what about open skills where there's live competition in our reactions are needed goes [Music] to Dr Vickers took eight High highly skilled goalies with college level experience about 15 years of experience on average Dr Vickers and Derek panchuk rigged eye tracking software this time to a hockey helmet and the goalies then face shots from the top scores on their teams taken from 5 and 10 m out

the results for eight out of eight goenda duration just take a look at this every every single goalie had a longer quiet eye average on saves in comparison to Misses and this didn't just end on the ice either over the coming years a landslide of evidence across a number of different sports would find similar results parallel studies on players such as Ronaldo in football where they shut the lights off before the ball was kicked and he still scored in the last few decades much has been made about the importance of vision incog nition in sports

so is the answer just to keep your eye on the ball or Puck no in some sports you literally can't perhaps you have heard that the average baseball player has better eyesight than the average person one of those original studies was done by Dr Daniel Labby who was an opthalmologist with the LA Dodgers at the time normal vision is 2020 some people think that's that's the best Vision possible that's actually just the average Vision uh and we found the baseball players had 20 over 12 as an average Vision while baseball players might have above average

eyesight it's not wildly different than mine at least with corrective lenses I think you want to move away from thinking about Vision as purely resolving a Target and think about Vision in a more General sense of what the eyes are doing for the brain to be able to make a decision followed by a motor action this is why baseball players serve as a wonderful example of the complex visual structure we possess the barrier between the MLB and the couch is not corrective lenses at least solely but the barrier between making millions in the couch is

the coordination of several actions in a small unique sliver of time it takes about 400 milliseconds for the ball to get from the pitcher to home plate it takes about 150 milliseconds to swing the bat that leaves just a quarter of a second to observe the ball and decide to swing for reference this is how long it takes to Blink I've been working out for further reference this is how long it takes to subscribe thanks if you're successful in this window 20% of the time but the greatest Defender at your position you probably won't beong

for the MLB if you make it at all all if you're successful in this window 30% of the time and a poor Defender you will still make millions today a perfect example existed several years back when Dr lavy was working with the Red Sox Manny Ramirez was struggling to identify pitches at the time so Dr lbby went through several visual exercises all of which Manny found very easy eventually he modified a far more difficult Challenge and Tool the Ratner ring results and he drives and he went on to win the World Series MVP that year

consequently he became a full-fledged believer in visual training he would do the drill before every game for the remainder of his career but was his success due to the quiet eye and can this quiet eye be taught there is strong evidence that you can coach somebody to adopt a quiet eye that's a little bit more like the quiet eye that an expert show in the given skill that that they're learning and there's plenty of evidence that that that intervention whatever it's doing leads to an improvement in either the learning of the skill or the subsequent

performance of the skill that's Dr Samuel Vine who has worked in research the effects of The Quiet ey extensively Dr Vine has worked with a wide range of people Olympic athletes kids and sports professionals from many different domains I'm certainly convinced in my uh role as a researcher in my role as a a sports fan and amateur athlete um in my role as a parent trying to teach young kids how to learn skills that there are positives in in these interventions we just we just don't really know why this is where the true debate begins

so we know that it works importantly we also know that it can be trained we don't know why it works here's what we know across dozens of studies a quiet eye that begins earlier and lasts longer leads to better performance but is this quiet eye causation or more of a correlation a byproduct of some other neural activity this is primarily where all of the research is focused a few schools of thought have emerged pre-programming is one the qu ey allows the performer to prepare the movement optimally longer the quiet eye the more time you allow

for your brain to plan this online control is another meaning that the quiet ey allows one to make Corrections while moving and putting for example let's say my hands already started moving and for some reason there are small inaccuracies in my movement perhaps the backstroke is too fast or the club head rotated in a way I didn't plan for in such a case the quiet eye will help me correct it the longer the quiet eye the longer the window for this correction to occur depending on what you believe one can train pre-programming or online control

something I took away after speaking with these six different researchers we don't exactly know why visual training works personally I have long wondered about this when thinking about Elite shooters for example JJ reck and myself this is a comparison that I have thought of before we're about the same size I was probably more athletic in college we probably practiced the same number of Threes yet he became a highlevel NBA 3point God who made millions of dollars and I did not make millions of dollars what's separates us what separates JJ from all of us his ability

to hit this target does he just have a longer quiet eye duration and because of that he's Gathering more effective better data or does he just have a better super computer and once he gets that data he's able to figure out what motor action should fire what minor changes he should make on the Fly better than the rest of us what's going on at the very least the awareness can be a step in the right direction for example if an athlete were able to see where their gaze was directed and notice that they were far

more variable than desired that could be a helpful bit of information convincing the athlete that there is a is an an attentional problem it's not just a lack of skill or a lack of proficiency it's a lack concentration that's redeemable and and repairable Dr Robert gray Who currently works with the Red Sox as a skill acquisition specialist and also wrote book how we learn to move had the following to say regarding training the lowest hanging food I always say is you know adding variability doing rebound Duty for Dan Lao is pretty easy my high school

teammate happened to do something Sensational world he broke the record for threes in a minute threes in an hour and threes in 24 hours 10,381 Danny took 13,711 shots in total and shot 75.6 7% NBA range however Danny struggled in games knee injuries didn't help but he wasn't the same shooter when we played today he is an extremely successful physician but he'd be the first to tell you that like many including myself he overthought High School sports I think there's a dance to all this to robotic and you risk rigidity predictability to free flowing your

skill might suffer because you've never intentionally trained repetition without repetition repeating the outcome of getting the ball in the hoop without repeating the exact same movement one of the major questions is why is consistency so difficult Mark Churchland a neuroscientist from the University of Columbia who is woven Sports examples into some of his work provides the following case Larry Bird had the longest free throw streak ever 71 a remarkable feat but why wasn't it 72 arguably the greatest shooter ever who is taken this shot thousands of times yet he still has this error so what's

Church's conclusion we're built to be really good at making motor plans on the Fly for situations we've never encountered before you've never stood on that exact Rock throwing a spear of that exact weight at that particular Mammoth running in that exact Direction yet you can come up with a pretty good plan for doing it but we can't hit that mammoth in the exact same way every single time and we can't make free throws every single time even Larry Bird misses we sacrifice reliability for flexibility now that variability might help somebody find a new way to

shoot putt or kick but once you find that optimal method you can try to play the role of tyrant and shoot the ball the same way every single time eventually you will Rebel you will have a breakdown because we just aren't hardwired to be robotic even though being an athlete kind of calls us to we are aiming creatures but we struggle to aim at the same Target over and over in the grand scale of time it's a relatively new phenomenon to be called upon to do the same job the same task the same skill with

so much consistency but what we do know the long longer the quiet ey duration the better the performance so maybe this all just gets back to practicing with more intent more visual intent as we attempt to be less human in sports hope you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe if you haven't and take care [Music]