Can you actually improve your reaction time? Will it get quicker? Honestly?No. Sorry, but it’s true.
As I was prepping for this article I recently had the question posed to me by an aspiring college mind. “How do you go about decreasing reaction time for athletes?” she asked. “Can you do things in the strength and conditioning sessions, do you just train the athlete to get quicker, or is it a combination of factors?” An interesting question, to be sure. My first response to her was to ask if she had studied Motor Learning or Motor Control in her undergraduate work as of yet. I was curious to find out what the latest theory was that is being taught. Her response was a hesitant ‘yes.’ So that led me back to the literature on the topic of Reaction Time.
What is it? How do we define it? What are the limiting factors? Can it be improved (leading to quicker or shorter time to react)? If not, are there at least certain components of the process that can be individually addressed in order to minimize the process as much as possible?
A simple definition of Reaction Time tells us that, “simple reaction time is the time it takes to react to stimuli.” Research tells us that elite level performers (such as track and field athletes) have some of the quickest reaction times in existence, boasting about a 150 millisecond (1 millisecond is one one-thousandth of a second) response time to the starting gun until exploding out of the starting blocks. Quick, huh? However, this is not a complex task. If complexity is added to a situation or decision which requires a quick reaction time, it could easily take that time up to 400-500 milliseconds (around a half of a second).
Ultimately, we could spend all of our time talking about terms and definitions, but in the end not much would be gained on the practical application for you, the coach or athlete. So here is the deal, for our purposes we will think of Reaction Time as the actual neural (nerve) traveling time of information within the body. Guess what…you can’t really do anything about that. So let’s leave it alone for now. However, you CAN do something about your Reactive Ability. Without getting into semantics, what I’m referring to is the time it takes from the awareness of the stimuli until the athlete actually engages in the correct action in response to it. If we look at that full picture there are several more limiting factors we can deal with and work with that will have an impact on how well and how quickly athletes respond (and respond appropriately) to situations on the field.
Like what?
As mentioned, we know we can’t do much (or anything at all) about how quickly the message travels to and fro in the neural network. But we can do something about how quickly an athlete sees the stimuli, if he/she sees the correct stimuli and how quickly he/she can process those stimuli. Then again, after the correct response has been sent to the appropriate muscles to react we can also effect that movement response time by making sure the athlete is in the correct body position to respond, that the muscles can fire as quickly and powerfully as possible and that they apply the correct force application to maximize the response obtained.
To make a quick application to the last article I wrote, recall the stages of learning. In short, there are 4 stages which will ultimately be revealed in the athlete producing the correct movement unconsciously (this is a good thing). Research also tells us that being able to function at the elite or master level requires up to 10,000 hours of training to allow this high level of unconscious functioning to be maximized. Yeah, 10,000 (can somebody turn off the TV and PS 3 please?!) I know…you’re fired up about that. But before you get started, here are a couple more thoughts. Why 10,000? One of the primary reasons for this I have seen is that it allows anticipation and what is often referred to as “clumping” or “clustering” of information to occur more readily. Translation: the more an athlete has seen it or done it, the easier it is to assimilate information and faster they can anticipate what is to come.
Application time. What do you do with this? First I would encourage you to know your players. In my profession I spend a great deal of time evaluating and re-evaluating. You can’t learn everything about an athlete the first session or practice. As you continue to do this you’ll more clearly find where your athletes’ weaknesses are. In finding this information you can more effectively discover their individual limiting factors and then put together a plan to help them maximize their Reactive Ability. For example:
-Is it a physical limitation (weakness, lack of power, poor stabilizers, weak core, etc.)?
-Is it a visual weakness (lack of peripheral awareness, poor eyesight, convergence/divergence issues, depth perception difficulty, etc.)?
-Is it a processing weakness (don’t know the offense well enough, don’t know how to respond to certain defenses, haven’t seen enough situational information, etc.)?
We are focused on visual information here, so let’s assume an athlete has already established a base level of physical performance and has some level of sport processing ability. If you have something to work with there, here a couple great drills you can add into your repertoire to help deal with the vision limitation of Reactive Ability.
Ball/Implement Recognition
Coaches: None or 1
Equipment: Sport implements and/or video
Time: 5 minutes
Description: Goal is for athlete to recognize what the ball or implement used in the sport is doing at critical moments of play (i.e. what pitch is being thrown, what spin a tennis serve has, where the basketball will come off the rim). Athlete must call out desired response as soon as recognition occurs (i.e. “Curve Ball,” “Slice Wide,” “Long/Weak side”)
Player to Player Recognition
Coaches: None or 1
Equipment: Sport implements and/or video, other players to set up situation.
Time: 5 minutes
Description: Goal is for the athlete to recognize what the weaknesses a defensive player has either in position or ability. Coaches can set up situations and players to practice different situations they desire offensive players to exploit (i.e. poor closeouts in basketball, playing to close to the sideline on a tennis serve, playing too far off of a receiver at the line of scrimmage, the cross-court angle is open, detecting a slower player, etc.).
Offense Recognition
Coaches: None or 1
Equipment: Sport implements and/or video, other players to set up situation.
Time: 5 minutes
Description: Goal is for athlete to recognize various offenses other teams utilize in order to understand what they are attempting to exploit. Athlete can call out desired responses or perform desired activity based on offense. For example, and athlete might call out a “pick and roll” or “screen play.”
Defense Recognition
Coaches: None or 1
Equipment: Sport implements and/or video
Time: 5 minutes
Description: Goal is for athlete to recognize various defenses other teams utilize in order to understand what they are attempting to exploit. Athlete can call out desired responses or perform desired activity based on offense. For example, and athlete might call out a “man to man” or “trap.”
It should be mentioned here that many of these types of drills could be performed during either warm up drills or conditioning drills (i.e. balance and stability drills, core strength drills, agility drills, etc.) where athletes are in relatively contained areas when coaches can utilize pictures or video. This way athletes can engage in beneficial movement activities and work on cognition/perception drills simultaneously. It will both save time and allow the athletes to move into an unconscious movement stage while improving visual perception.
Allowing athletes to engage in visual recognition activities that will reinforce things you find are important will give athletes an opportunity to get more practice clumping information and decreasing the time it takes to assimilate appropriate information allowing for quicker Reactive Ability.
Written for SportsVision Magazine v.1 no.2 2007 (visit site here)
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