Dr. Rob's Sports Vision Blog

Branching Out in a Very Cool Direction

2009-06-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

During the time I've been working in Sports Vision, I have found that there is as much for me to learn from the athletes I work with as there is for me to teach them. Of course, this is the fun of doing what I do - learning, teaching, and sharing ideas with people of many different backgrounds, sports, and levels of experience.

Rick Alford is the owner of Defensive Edge Martial Arts Training in Wakefield, MA (less than a minute from my home) and we're having the greatest time learning from him. Rick has some fantastic ideas about how Gary and I can train martial artists more effectively, and we are really excited about working with him and some of the MMA fighters he trains.

Mixed martial arts has two components (striking and grappling) that are distinctly different from the standpoint of vision training. Striking (and defending against strikes) incorporate a greater visual component, while grappling is more highly tactile. We've been working with the Wayne Fixator and the smaller SVT board, and Rick's progress is astounding. Of course, his scores at the first visit were quite impressive, but yesterday he scored a 151 on the 9-14 routine on the WSF (counterclockwise spiral, accelerating.) I think it's the highest score we've seen yet on this routine, and he is narrowing the gap between his dominant and non-dominant hands.

To celebrate Rick's new record, Gary snapped this photo of Rick, gleefully pointing to his score.

If you get the chance, check out Rick's site (http://www.modernjujitsu.com.) It's hard not to be impressed with his credentials, as well as those of his fellow instructors. It's been my pleasure to meet and get to know Rick and some of the people that work with him, and I'm looking forward to adding more news on this blog as we go.

Plans for WSF stand

2009-03-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

I found the file that contains the plan for the WSF stand. Download it here. (Scroll down to where it says, "Dr. Rob's own design - Wayne Saccadic Fixator Stand."

I haven't given exact dimensions for all the holes, etc., but if you're skilled enough to build it, there should be no problem figuring it out, and if you end up with different hardware, things could end up in different places.

Enjoy!

Rack for Wayne Saccadic Fixator

2009-03-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

I have received messages and comments from other Sports Vision practitioners, and one thing I think might be helpful would be to post a photo of the stand I made for the Wayne Saccadic Fixator. It was made of 6/4" x 4" poplar, available at Home Depot, and I used knockdown fasteners so it can be set up and torn down quickly.

In the photo, we see my lovely assistant, my daughter Leila, peeking out from under the WSF board.

I have used this stand several times in remote locations, and it has proven to be a sturdy but easily transported design. If there is interest, I can post dimensions and detail photos showing the various fasteners I used to make it easy to assemble and disassemble.

2009-02-28T10:34:00.001-08:00

A Visitor From Down Under

On February 16, we were honored to receive Pierre Elmurr, Sports Vision Director of Primary Eye Care in the Sydney, Australia area, who is the inventor of the SVT Eye-Hand training board. The SVT has been used all over the world as a tool to improve eye-hand coordination and speed, and Pierre has done the research to prove its validity. (That's Pierre in the middle, with Dr. B. on the left and Gary on the right in the photo.)

Pierre brought our board with him on a trip which included a visit with family in the Boston area, a meeting with Dr. Dan Laby, ophthalmologist for the Red Sox, and a run down to Fort Myers to gather some data with the board at spring training. We can't begin to say just how much we enjoyed meeting Pierre, and how much he was able to teach us in just a short visit. We only hope we can take him up on his invitation to visit his facility in Sydney sometime.

This board differs from our other board, the Wayne Saccadic Fixator, in several ways; first, it is driven from software residing in a laptop, rather than firmware in the board itself, so it is very easy to update and upgrade the software. It also records data in real time, displays it in onscreen, and can save it in a spreadsheet for further analysis. It uses lights and pusbuttons, much like other boards, but you only need to press within the circle to create a response, and you use your whole hand, unlike other boards which require pressing of a small area with only one or two fingers; so it more closely mimics actual sports performance.

At this point, Gary and I are still learning the various routines the SVT offers, and how to use them. But we are sure that this new board, which is also readily transportable, will become and essential component of our program of sports vision training. And once again, the best part of all was that we had the chance to meet and talk with Pierre.

Larry Fitzgerald and Vision Training

2009-02-03T10:05:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me a link to an article on Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald, who credits his success in no small part to some vision training he had done as a child, under the direction of his grandfather, optometrist Dr. Robert Johnson.

The article is located here. It speaks for itself, and even quotes Joan Vickers, PhD, of the University of Calgary and leading researcher in the area of the Quiet Eye, explaining how Fitzgerald uses his eyes to capture data that his brain decodes to help him catch a pass.

He made some amazing plays in this past Sunday's Super Bowl, though the Cardinals fell to the Steelers in the final minutes.

Two Contact Lenses You Might Not Know About

2008-09-05T19:54:00.000-07:00

This is a post directed to non-eye-care-practitioners, but all are welcome anyway. There are two lenses I've worked with (one for years, another I'm just beginning to work with) that most people have probably not heard about, and I'd like to introduce them.

First, the one I've been using a while: it's called the SynergEyes, and it's a true "hybrid" between a soft and hard lens. It's a soft lens with a hard center, or a hard lens with a soft flange (or "skirt"), depending on how you look at it. It's the size (diameter) of a soft lens, which is why it feels comfortable. A large lens will have less interaction with the inside of the lid, which is what causes smaller, hard lenses to be less comfortable.

Now when I say "hard center," let me be a little more precise. I'm really talking about a "rigid, oxygen-permeable" center, and these things transmit a whole lot of oxygen. A bit of history here: the SynergEyes is the third hybrid lens ever produced, and the first two (the Saturn and the Soft Perm, both of which I fitted in their day) were problematic mainly because they reduced the oxygen getting to the cornea, and because they tended to break at the junction between the soft and rigid parts. SynergEyes has solved both of these problems (bless their hearts!)

I use these lenses when soft toric ("astigmatic") lenses fail, which happens occasionally, and usually because the vision isn't good enough. Soft toric lenses will blur the vision if they rotate on the eye, and this can be quite a problem if you're trying to hit a 90 mph fastball or stop a puck traveling even faster than that.

Main point: I fit these because they provide sharper, crisper vision than we can sometimes get with soft lenses on patients with astigmatism, and it is for this reason that I'm mentioning them on a Sports Vision blog. (They also make even more specialized lenses for other situations.)

You can find out more at their own website, www.synergeyes.com.

The next lens I'd like to mention has drawn some strange looks from people when I start to explain it. It's a lens that re-shapes the front surface of the eye while you sleep, and it's called Paragon CRT (Corneal Refractive Therapy.) I promise, I'm not making this up!

The idea of reshaping the front of the cornea with a contact lens is nothing new. Long before I went into practice, it was known that hard lenses caused changes to occur whether we wanted them to or not. So there was a search to make these changes happen in a controlled and predictable way, in hopes of eliminating the need for a correction altogether. This process is called orthokeratology, and a diehard "ortho-K doc" would probably give a much longer (and better) definition than I just did; but mine works fine here.

These are rigid, oxygen-permeable lenses with very high oxygen transmission. We actually use the term RGP for Rigid Gas Permeable, because we not only want oxygen to get through the lens, we also want carbon dioxide to come out from behind it - and these lenses allow both gases to pass right through.

They are fairly large as RGP's go, so they remain centered on the eye during sleep (yeah, you really do wear these things to bed.) The center of the lens is fitted a bit flatter than the front of the eye, so the effect is to flatten the cornea, as is done with a laser when performing LASIK on a nearsighted person - except without surgery! The more correction we need, the more we flatten the front of the cornea, up to the limits within which these things work.

Their effect is not permanent, so if you stop wearing them, the eyes will return to their original shape. And there is even some work going on to determine if they help prevent further changes in the eyes of kids whose eyes are rapidly becoming more nearsighted with each passing year.

Why mention them in a SV blog? OK, here we go: they provide an alternative to laser vision correction for athletes who are either too young for laser (under 19 or so) or just don't want to have laser correction. They permit clear vision while wearing no lenses at all, so there is no worry about lenses falling out (and we all know that even soft lenses can fall out now and then - just ask Jacoby Ellsbury, or see my post of 8/24/08. BTW, a few soft lens wearers have echoed my reaction to that incident: "They should've let him put them in himself from the start.")

They are also good for athletes who have tried regular soft lenses but whose eyes are just too dry, and those who have trouble wearing lenses due to allergies.

For more information, you can check their site at www.paragoncrt.com.

P.S. I have a new site for my regular optometric practice: www.prattvilleeye.com.

I guess soft lenses do pop out after all...

2008-08-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

During today's Red Sox game, Jacoby Ellsbury made a sensational catch - then slammed full-speed, face first, into a section of chain-link fence up at the Rogers Centre up in Toronto. He was down on the ground for a while, surrounded by teammates and trainers, one of whom retrieved a soft contact lens from the dirt of the warning track.

The trainer cleaned the lens with a rinsing solution, then tried three times to get the lens back in Jacoby's right eye. Three times it folded up, and goodness knows I've had that happen when trying to insert a contact lens in a patient's eye.

By this time, the fans in attendance were starting to express their impatience, as it had been several minutes (the total time of the delay was nine minutes.) Finally, Jacoby put it in his eye on the first attempt (no surprises here), and he was able to continue playing the game. He also had quite a bruise and a small cut above the eye from the sunglasses he was wearing when he hit the fence.

I guess the moral of the story (and my reason for including it here) is that soft lenses can and do come out of the eye, but generally only under pretty extreme conditions, and to mention that I actually had to fit a larger, tighter lens to a soccer player many years ago because he reported that his lenses tended to go flying when he headed the ball.

Of course, it also reminds me to mention that I have just begun to fit lenses that re-shape the eye to correct vision, and which are worn only while sleeping. They're called Paragon CRT (Corneal Refractive Therapy), and their website is www.paragoncrt.com. (More to follow on these.)

MLL Championships, etc.

2008-08-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Sunday, August 24) is the day of the Major League Lacrosse championship game (1 PM, ESPN2), and if you've never watched a Major League Lacrosse game, you have been missing something special. I've gotten hooked on watching lacrosse, and if you get the chance, catch the game.

A quick explanation about why I'd include the Wright Brothers in a Sports Vision blog, for those who are still wondering: 1) their approach was inspiring in the way it was so methodical, and took the best of what had been done before, and 2) they were following a dream (well, it was mostly Wilbur's dream at first.) It's very much like how I hope to approach my sports vision practice.

I've been reading Perception, Cognition, and Decision Training: the Quiet Eye in Action by Joan Vickers, PhD, of the University of Calgary, and it's astounding how much research has been done over the years in the area of gaze and eye movement analysis within sports. So much of this has been studied and thought through, mostly by people within the field of kinesiology, and yet it was not until recently that I'd even heard of this research. I'll have to go into that deeper in a future post, since it's time I retire for the night.

Sad but true / Wright Brothers

2008-08-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

While taking the Sports Vision course at Dr. Don Teig's Institute for Sports Vision in Ridgefield, CT, I was introduced to Sports Vision Magazine (http://www.sportsvisionmagazine.com). I was thrilled to see that there was such a magazine in the first place, and the content was excellent. As soon as I got back home, I subscribed, and began receiving the issues.

However, I am sorry to report that the publishers have not been able to continue producing the magazine due to lack of support in advertising and distribution. This is a tragedy, as it was an excellent magazine, and it was great to be able to show a coach or athlete an entire magazine dedicated entirely to sports vision. (I also loved the links to computer-based eye exercises.)

My sincerest hope is that the magazine will re-emerge in some form or another before much longer, and I'm indebted to Brian Stammer, its editor, for assisting me in making some connections within the field that I'd not have been able to make without his help.

---

On to another subject. I've been reading Dawn Over Kitty Hawk, by Col. Walter Boyne, USAF, Ret. (my favorite aviation history author.) Now what does this have to do with Sports Vision, you might ask.

From my reading, I've learned that there were several individuals and groups trying to be the first to fly a powered aircraft at the time the Wrights were doing their work. Many of them had elaborate engineering backgrounds, while the Wrights were essentially bicycle builders and mechanics with superb intuition and powers of observation.

Their approach to flight was a slow, deliberate one, in which they first devised a way of controlling a glider before thinking of adding an engine. Not until they were able to point the thing in the direction they wanted did they consider powered flight. Meanwhile, other aviation pioneers were ignoring the idea of controlling the aircraft, and focusing on making engines of sufficient power. The prime example of this is Samuel Langley, whose "Great Aerodrome" had a marvelously engineered motor, but little means of control, and insufficient structural integrity to handle powered flight. It never flew, and nearly cost the life of its first pilot.

Why am I writing about this? Good question!!

The Wrights, and Wilbur in particular, have something to offer, which I hope to incorporate into my endeavor into the world of Sports Vision. First is the idea of following a dream. Though a very serious person, Wilbur Wright was a bit of a dreamer; he had to be, trying to be the first to fly a powered aircraft while competing with people who had much larger budgets and university-level training.

The other thing I'm trying to learn from the Wrights' experience is to take things slowly and gradually; to think things through with organized and critical thinking; and to evaluate what others have done and build upon what seems to be the most productive.

It's an approach I hope to keep in mind as I work on building my Sports Vision practice, and indeed a good way to approach anything in life.

Purely anecdotal, but astounding nonetheless

2008-08-09T11:01:00.001-07:00

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.

And so it begins...

2008-08-08T02:02:00.000-07:00

Greetings!

It's about 5 AM Eastern time, and I've been awake for a while now, thinking about launching a Sports Vision blog. So I came downstairs, grabbed an ice pack to relieve the sciatica that woke me up in the first place, and now I'm sitting here typing.

It is my hope to use this blog to provide information and insights about Sports Vision, as well as a forum for the sharing of ideas and experiences by both athletes and other practitioners of Sports Vision Training.