Purely anecdotal, but astounding nonetheless

Not being a researcher, I cannot make any claim that what you are about to read is something other than observational and anecdotal. I was nonetheless amazed at something I saw yesterday.

I had the opportunity to do a Sports Vision screening at Cressey Performance, the superb training facility run by Eric Cressey (www.cresseyperformance.com). Not only did I have the pleasure of meeting Eric and his staff and many of the athletes he trains, but after the screening I went over some of the data with Eric; and he and optometry student Anna Sleeper and I were surprised at the correlation we found between results and behavior on the Speed Trac and actual batting performance of the baseball players we tested.

Without going into the actual numbers (which are at my office, and I do this from home) it was very apparent that players who were consistently early in reaction timing tended to be dead pull hitters, and players whose numbers included both early and late reaction times tended to be more able to use the whole field.

Well, Duh!! Of course, that's what we'd expect intuitively, but in a relatively small sample of only five trials per player (after a few practice runs), these patterns emerged with astounding clarity. One player in particular had extremely consistent reaction times averaging about 110 msec early, and Eric told me he didn't remember ever seeing him hit anything that even approached "up the middle." As we went through the results for each athlete, the correlation was amazing.

The other pattern that emerged was that some players definitely preferred the faster "pitches" on the Speed Trac (using a setting at 9-29 on the Saccadic Fixator, for speeds of 10 to 25 mph), while some handled the slower ones better. Again, there's a bit of a "Duh," but I had expected that those who could handle the fastest target movement would be equally at home with the slower ones - yet this was not the case!

Of course, the questions become this: can we (indirectly, since we're not really training "hitting" but rather the visual skills involved in hitting) train or perhaps more appropriately, help a hitter to be able to use the opposite field? Should we? Should we, or could we, differentiate between a group of hitters that would benefit from a type of training that will expand the flexibility, if you will, of reaction timing, or is it better to leave them alone and not try to change things? (Duh, not during the season!)

All very interesting questions to ponder, and part of why I'm starting this blog in the first place (i.e. hoping to hear from people with more brains and experience than I have.) But it would be interesting to see what would happen if we could take away an opponent's ability to put on a shift for a REALLY strong left-handed hitter (hmmm, if only we could only think of anyone like that...)

One of the other things I observed was that the absolute best average reaction time on the Speed Trac (10 msec!!) was posted by a linebacker, who doesn't even play baseball!! Now, reaction time is obviously important to a linebacker, to get a jump on the play, but it seems that it would be a different type of reaction timing from the Speed Trac (which simulates a small object moving at a constant speed.) However, it all became quite easy to grasp when the player told me that it was "all those years of playing video games!!"

Also, I had the chance to meet an athlete whose sport is the skeleton (going face first on a flat "sled" down a bobsled run) and he told me that one of the best competitors he'd seen was legally blind, and doesn't even wear his optical correction when he competes. He also told me that things happen so fast that you can't even react in time to things you see on the track. Also, the view is limited with the athlete's face so close to the surface of the track. I can only guess that peripheral cues, and maybe visualization and mental rehearsal, were big keys to this event. I did ask him how he got involved in the skeleton, and he told me (being a bit smaller and lighter), "I have the body for it." I told him I have a body for radio.