Physical prowess, agility,
coordination, and strength have always been the main criteria in judging
athletic ability. Most, if not all athletic
training programs, have been designed with
those criteria in mind, even though our body will only respond to what it can see.
Despite
this fact, little attention has been paid to vision, which is now the
last frontier for those interested in improving their performance on
and off
the playing field. This last frontier, referred to as "Developmental Optometry", "Sports Vision Training" (SVT), "Vision Training" VT,
or Orthoptics, starts with a special eye examination which includes Dynamic Visual Acuity measurements. Regular, "static" eye-exams and
the use of corrective lenses are no substitute. By undertaking a simple visual training program, an
athlete can improve performance. That's because
the eye, like the
muscles in our bodies, can be strengthened to perform better with exercise.All visual skills are learned!
Just some of the skills that
can be enhanced with training are:
·Tracking--the ability to follow a moving object smoothly and accurately
with both eyes, such as a ball in flight or moving
vehicles in traffic
·Fixation--the ability to quickly and accurately locate and inspect,
with both eyes, a series of stationary objects, one after another,
such as
moving from word to word while reading
·Focus Change--the ability to quickly look from far to near and vise
versa without momentary blur, such as looking from the
dashboard to other cars
on the street, or from a book to the chalkboard.
·Depth Perception--the ability to judge relative distances of objects
and to see and move accurately in the three dimensional
space, such as when
hitting a ball or parking a car.
·Peripheral Vision--the ability to monitor and interpret what is
happening in your side vision while attending to a specific central
vision
task; the ability to use visual information perceived from over a large area.
·Binocularity--the ability to use both eyes together, smoothly, equally,
simultaneously and accurately
. Night Vision--of course the ability to see detail in dim light conditions.
Table of Contents ----------------------- 1) Dynamic Visual Acuity: Eye Biomechanics 2) Take Home Tennis: Rituals and Performance 3) The Biomechanics of Line Calls 4) Handling Line Calls for the Recreational Player 5) Letter to Andy Murray's Coach Miles
Maclagan 6) Sportwall Research
1) Dynamic Visual Acuity: Eye Biomechanics
Did you know that there is only one human activity which taxes dynamic vision
skills more than tennis?
The answer will amaze you and should play a role in your choice of eye protection/sunglass
products for tennis. Understandably, few sunglass manufacturers produce
product which has the necessary visual accuracy that tennis demands. The
task of watching a small ball go from optical infinity to reading distance
on such a continuous basis is enormously difficult for the visual/motor
system. Pictured below is the miraculously complex visual system with only a couple of its nearby muscles. Don't forget the brain needs training to interpret what this system sends it, then a call to action is initiated, then the muscle in the rest of the body try to comply!
As background, "static vision skills" are those tested by a typical Optometrist. They are used to read efficiently or see objects clearly at a variety of distances. For example, though this page does not move, your eyes have still learned to recognize the letters, comprehend their meaning, and move smoothly from line to line. A set of skills that can be improved if desired. The movement in these "static" movement skills are related to those required for tennis.
"Dynamic Visual Accuity" is a more complex set of occular muscle skills needed to track moving objects efficiently. Only a handful of eye care professionals are trained in evaluating these skills in the United States. Even fewer have the experience to impove these skills predictably.
A member of Sports Medicine & Ergonomics Associates is one of those research optometrists. The field of Visual Therapy or Sports Vision Therapy has only recently recieved full recognition by the Harvard Medical School, Mayo Clinic, and UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute. That team member has also been endorsed by these clinicians as one of the revered pioneers in this amazing new field which only began in the 1980's! He has worked with hundreds of athletes as well as children/adults to improve their sports or reading skills.
Amazingly, even the most skilled athletes can improve their visual skills with highly specialized and supervised computer exercises. Dr. Polan even guarantees improvement in batting percentage for baseball players! For more information on his incredible work, go to: http://www.DrGaryPolan.com
The key to understanding this new science is that: ALL VISUAL SKILLS ARE LEARNED, NOT INHERITED!
So, what is the most challenging human activity to the "Dynamic Visual Accuity" skills for the eyes? Jet Fighter Pilot. 2) Take Home Tennis (THT): Rituals and Performance [a condensed version of this column can also be found on YouTube under TennisDr] "Take Home Tennis" and
"THT" are copyrighted expressions of Jonathan (c) Bailin, Ph.D., USPTA
2007 and may not be used without his expressed written consent.
Some mannerisms of the pros you should take home, others NOT! What does a leading Ph.D. in tennis biomechanics think? How do they apply to my game?
"THT" will put the "TNT" into your game!
Eastern and western medicine now agree
that the body can effect the mind and the mind can effect the body. For
tennis players, learning to focus the mind and prepare the body for the
type of intense physical demands of a competitive point require
practice, even before the point begins!
Click on the YouTube link below to watch the following sequence which protrays the rituals used by Maria Sharapova before her serve.
Psychologists might call them ritualized behaviors and tennis coaches know that they can make a huge difference in how an athlete responds moments later under competitive stress. Of all the top players, Maria Sharapova's rituals are probably the most pronounced and predictable.
Each of her ritualized mannerisms can be associated with a useful subtext. Her body "tells" her mind to apply itself to the task and stress of tennis in a sequence of ways. After some repetition, her body and mind learn to respond to these behavioral messages to optimally prepare for a point.
The "serve and rituals" video portrays the following messages her body sends to her mind: “Forget about the last point, keep your mind here, get your feet ready to react, secure your hair, get in tempo for the serve”. She set the standard. Look for them with Hantuchova and many other players and find the parts of their rituals that are right for you.
Take these home!
3) The Biomechanics of Line Calls
One day all elite athletes will have their Dynamic Visual Acuity checked and improved. Until that day, all I can do is present evidence of how important it is and how limited the human eye is in the hyper fast world of tennis.
Here is an article that helps describe how difficult a task tennis presents for the human eye. Incredibly, this is just for the poor linesman who are sitting still trying to focus on one bounce of the ball in one spot. Enjoy!
Jonathan -----------
The Ins and Outs of Borderline Tennis Calls By ALAN SCHWARZ Published: June 23, 2009, NewYorkTimes.com
When a line judge at Wimbledon rules on a hair-splittingly close call and says the ball is out, the inevitably disgruntled player should not only consider challenging the call for review by digital replay system. He should consult a recent issue of Current Biology.
A vast majority of near-the-line shots called incorrectly by Wimbledon line judges have come on balls ruled out that were actually in, according to a study published in October by researchers at the University of California-Davis. To the vision scientist, the finding added to the growing knowledge of how the human eye and brain misperceive high-speed objects. To the tennis player, it strongly suggests which calls are worth challenging and which are best left alone.
The researchers identified 83 missed calls during the 2007 Wimbledon tournament. (Some were challenged by players and overruled, and others were later identified as unquestionably wrong through frame-by-frame video.) Seventy of those 83 calls, or 84 percent, were on balls ruled out — essentially, shots that line judges believed had traveled farther than they actually did.
Called perceptual mislocalization by vision scientists, this subconscious bias is known less formally to Wimbledon fans as “You cannot be serious!” — John McEnroe’s infamous dissent when, yes, a 1981 shot was ruled out. Now that players can resort to a more evolved appeal procedure, the researchers’ discovery suggests that players should generally use their limited number of challenges on questionable out calls rather those that are called in, because such out calls have a far better chance of being discovered as mistaken on review, then overturned.
“What we’re really interested in is how visual information is processed, and how it can be used to a player’s advantage,” said David Whitney, an associate professor at U.C.-Davis’s Center for Mind and Brain and the paper’s lead author. “There is a delay of roughly 80 to 150 milliseconds from the first moment of perception to our processing it, and that’s a long time. That’s one reason why it’s so hard to catch a fly — the fly’s ability to dance around is faster than our ability to determine where it is.”
This is the third Wimbledon in which players can challenge questionable calls for review by the Hawk-Eye system, which uses high-speed video cameras to record balls’ flight. (About 25 percent of all challenges result in overturned calls.) There is no cost to the player when a call is proved correct, but after three such episodes in a set a player may not challenge again. Whether through strategy or residual tennis etiquette, most players leave many challenges unused.
Theoretically, line judges should be equally prone to call an out ball in as they are an in ball out. But when objects travel faster than humans’ eyes and brains can precisely track them — for example, Andy Roddick’s 150-mile-per-hour serves — they are left having to fill in the gaps in their perception. In doing so they tend to overshoot the object’s actual location and think it traveled slightly farther than it truly did.
Both successful challenge calls as well as the overlooked mistakes that the researchers later identified were several times more likely to come on “long” calls than “in” calls. (The same pattern existed at Wimbledon last year, Whitney said, although the paper did not present that data.) So players are better off using as many challenges as possible on balls called out, because those are the calls most likely to be wrong; if a player thinks an “in” call was wrong, chances are his own eyes were as fooled as line judges’ sometimes are.
Without knowing it, tennis officials are already told to try to compensate for this mislocalization effect. Published instructions for United States Tennis Association line judges tell them to “focus your eyes on the portion of the line where the ball will land,” rather than attempt to track the ball in flight. “Get to the spot well before the ball arrives,” they are advised.
Rich Kaufman, the association’s director of officials and a linesman and chair umpire from 1976 to 1997, said that of all things “one of the hardest things to teach new linesmen is to take their eye off the ball.”
“I once asked an eye doctor, then what am I seeing on a bounce?” Kaufman said. “The doctor said that’s your brain working — you think you see the initial point of impact but it’s the blur of the entry and exit of the ball.”
A player using his knowledge of this effect in challenging calls could see a benefit of about one or two overturned points per match, Whitney said, plus any psychological boost from feeling vindicated rather than robbed. But Whitney added that understanding how the brain misperceives visual stimuli can help in more real-life matters, like the design and placement of high-speed safety equipment, automobile brake lights and warning signs of all types.
As for Wimbledon, it appears as if the new information can only help players, not the judges who vex them. Kaufman said: “You have to call what you see. Or what you think you see.” ------------
4) Handling Line Calls for the Recreational Player by Jonathan Bailin, Ph.D.
Over the years, I have addressed this issue verbally with recreational players from time to time. It is so important to them however, that it should be placed here for future reference....
Strong successful personalities often treat recreational tennis as just another litmus test of their personal success. That their competitive nature in business should be reflected in all arenas of their lives. Why not tennis?
Because by definition, it is "recreation". An important word to keep in mind on court.
I hope you have had a chance to look at the above article on eye skills and line calling I reproduced from the NY Times. VERY RARELY are bad line calls on purpose in amateur tournament tennis, and practically never in social tennis.
That said, they are an artifact of imperfect eye sight for all players and officials. PERIOD!
It's clear that some players become hypersensitive to line calls in general, but a more "recreational" and relaxed approach to this situation is in order. Here is the philosophy:
No one wants our favorite sport to have any adverse effect on our friendships. Recreational players are important cogs in each others social wheel. My goal is that you all have many years of amicable social tennis ahead with all players available at your skill level.
To that end, I propose you use a new line call policy on court-- "If an opponent even looks at you funny, give the point away". This can be confusing at first, but it is an important issue for all tennis players.
Social tennis should test our skills, not our reputations, because tennis is not important enough in our lives. Your business, your family, your contributions to the people and planet, and your health are that important. Not tennis.
In my professional opinion, repeating the point is not a strong enough gesture of capitulation to an opponent who has just taken a risk by questioning a call verbally or by body language. Keep in mind that they already feel awkward. Your choice is to help them relax by showing an expert understanding of the situation, or heightening their fears that they will face ridicule.
ALL PLAYERS SHOULD RESPOND TO THAT SITUATION BY-- asking for their help in making the call "if you saw it more clearly than I did" and graciously, with genuine intent, offer them the point. Let THEM offer to play the point over. Do not offer that option yourself.
This does two things. It demonstrates that you understand the challenges for the human eye and you have your priorities straight in terms of life and the future fun to be had with these same friends, in the next point, and in the next match. Also, that the continuity and spirit of the contest is more important to you than any particular point. Even match point! :-0
The pros know that one point matters as often as.... ummm.... Halley's Comet! In that case, the line judge's job is to take the grief anyway. For recreational players, one point matters even less often.
Relax and enjoy your friends! ====== 5) Letter to Andy Murray's Coach Miles Maclagan
July 2, 2010 (Nadal/Murray Wimbledon Semifinals)
To: Miles Maclagan, Head Coach Andy Murray C/O Lawn Tennis Association National Tennis Centre 100 Priory Lane Roehampton, London SW15 5JQ
Dear Mr. Maclagan & Other Coaches:
Andy Murray is one of the only elite players I've ever seen who throws the tossing arm away and back during the follow through of his serve and I can prove, in mechanical terms, that it is a significant disadvantage.
In the vast majority of sports movements leading to asymmetric impact or acceleration of one body part, the concept of "breaking" is universally employed. What is "breaking"?
Breaking is easy to notice. In place kicking the non kicking foot plants abruptly so it can pass its momentum to the kicking leg. In loose or wet turf, that is why kicks cannot go as far.
In throwing, the kinetic chain passes momentum all the way up the body starting from the ground. For a one armed throwing motion and tennis serve, the kinetic chain transfers momentum from the ground, through the legs, to the torso, then into the arm, hand, and racket. Each passing its momentum, like a whip, in a snapping acceleration toward the hand. To pass its full momentum onward, each segment stops, like a billiard ball hitting a row of others which are touching.
In most serves, and right handed throws, the left arm comes across the torso to help counter or stop the trunk rotation, thereby sending more momentum into the arm.
Murray's left arm does not. It goes away and behind without helping to stop the trunk rotation. It does not supply any "breaking", or opposing motion, to the torso. Mechanically, less momentum passes into the arm.
Anydy Murray's serve is certainly a great one. But at this level of expertise in any sport, one percent improvement can make a huge difference!
Good luck with all your players.
Sincerely, Jonathan
Jonathan Bailin, Ph.D., USPTA Exercise Physiology~Biomechanics~Ergonomics Sports Medicine & Ergonomics Associates Los Angeles, California
