The 20/20 Workout: Improve Peripheral Vision Skills

Written for SportsVision Magazine January-March 2007 Issue
by Chris Ecklund, MA, CSCS

Working with athletes to improve visual and perception skills is not something new to the sports arena. However, the addition of utilizing planned integration of these skills and techniques into the strength and conditioning or coaching fields is a relatively new trend. In a recent article published by the National Strength and Conditioning Association it was noted that as Strength Coaches progress athletes to maximal strength/power/conditioning, it may be necessary to focus on other areas in order to help athletes continue to improve and achieve maximum performance.

While the Strength and Conditioning coach is by no means a visual expert, there is available information in which S&C coaches (and coaches in general) can educate themselves in order to integrate this type of training into the workout session. One evidence of this vision focus and available information is on the Nike SPARQ Website (www.sparqtraining.com).

The American Optometric Association identifies 9 important visual skills helpful for sports performance. They are: Dynamic Visual Acuity, Visual Concentration, Eye Tracking, Eye-Hand-Body Coordination, Visual Memory, Visual Reaction Time, Visualization, Peripheral Vision and Depth Perception.

The purpose of this article is to focus on the improvement of Peripheral Vision, that is, the vision of what occurs beyond the boundaries of one’s center of focus. It should be quite apparent that an athlete’s ability to identify, process and respond to activity that occurs in his/her peripheral vision is, in most sports, not peripheral at all. In fact, often times cues and information that is vital to a play or sequence occurs in the periphery of the athlete’s vision. And though it is not possible to improve the physical range or field of peripheral vision one can see, it is possible to improve one’s awareness of information, perception of that information and ability to process and respond to it.

As a Strength and Conditioning profession one of the primary facets of training I deal with is improving athletic performance through more appropriate, refined, balanced, stable, powerful movement. In doing so I have found it overwhelmingly true that there are stages of both physical and anatomical adaptation (hypertrophy, strength, etc.) but also neurological adaptation. What I mean by that is this; it isn’t appropriate to make an athlete stronger just by adding weight. There may be inappropriate movement habits or compensations at work that must be dealt with in stages in order to gain maximal performance gains safely and effectively. As Loren Seagrave (an internationally renowned S&C coach) put it, athletes go through 4 stages of learning: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence and finally unconscious competence. Ultimately it is a process of moving through not knowing you are doing it incorrectly to performing it correctly without having to think about it. It is important to remember that as a Sport Coach or S&C Coach we cannot overload an athlete with too many stimuli to focus on at any one time. If an athlete were in a stage of Conscious Incompetence for a sport skill, it would not be appropriate to add another stimuli to improve peripheral vision as the athlete would most likely not improve at either skill. Keep this concept in mind as you implement the following plan.

With that in mind, here is a progression moving through 7 weeks of 20 workout sessions to not only improve peripheral vision but to implement it into the playing field:

Four Drills/ 5 Minutes Each = 20 minutes to 20/20 SportsVision
1. See and Describe (SD)
This drill will need either 1 “coach.” Athlete is seated or standing. The coach must watch the eyes of the athlete to make sure they are focused on an object specified by the coach directly ahead of the athlete. The coach then places various objects into the athlete’s peripheral field of vision and asks the athlete to describe the object in as much detail as possible. As the photoreceptors in the eye that sense peripheral vision are not color sensitive (rods) it should be noted that the coach should not place a great emphasis on color as opposed to simply lightness or darkness of the object.

2. See and Respond (SR)
This drill will need either 2 “coaches”. Athlete is seated or standing. One coach must watch the eyes of the athlete to make sure they are focused on an object specified by the coach directly ahead of the athlete. The 2nd coach stands behind the athlete. At approximately 12-24 inches from the athlete’s head, the coach brings into peripheral view stimuli he/she wants the athlete to respond to (pick a sport appropriate stimuli such as tennis ball, football, picture of another athlete, etc.). The athlete must respond with a verbal cue when the object comes into his/her field of vision. Pick cues that are sport related, such as “ball,” “defense,” “hit,” etc.

3. See, Look, Respond (SLR)
This drill will need 2 “coaches”. Athlete is seated or standing. One coach must watch the eyes of the athlete to make sure they are focused on an object specified by the coach directly ahead of the athlete. The 2nd coach stands behind the athlete. At approximately 12-24 inches from the athlete’s head, the coach brings into peripheral view stimuli he/she wants the athlete to respond to (pick a sport appropriate stimuli such as tennis ball, football, picture of another athlete, etc.). The athlete must turn his/her head and look at the object when it comes into vision and then respond with a verbal cue. Again, pick cues that are sport related, such as “ball,” “defense,” “hit,” or reach out to grab the object, knock it down, etc.

4. See, Look, Prioritize, Respond (SLPR)
This drill will need 2 “coaches”. Athlete is seated or standing. One coach must watch the eyes of the athlete to make sure they are focused on an object specified by the coach directly ahead of the athlete. The 2nd coach stands behind the athlete. At approximately 12-24 inches from the athlete’s head, the coach brings into peripheral view 2 stimuli he/she wants the athlete to respond to (pick a sport appropriate stimuli such as tennis ball, football, picture of another athlete, etc.). The athlete must turn his/her head and look at the objects when they come into vision and then respond with a verbal or physical cue. Again, pick cues that are sport related, such as “ball,” “defense,” “hit,” or reach out to grab the object, knock it down, etc.

These drills can be implemented at the appropriate times of your sessions based on what your objectives are. For example, after the drills are learned they can be utilized as a great option for dynamic warm ups as they will need to be completed at relatively slow speeds early on.

The ultimate goal of the Sport Coach or S&C Coach should be to improve an athlete’s ability to perform relatively complex motor skills without thinking about having to be aware of peripheral vision. You want the athlete to be able to be “unconsciously competent” at moving about the playing field while perceiving what is happening in the peripheral fields of vision.

Hope you enjoy implementing these techniques into your workout or practice sessions!