How Important is Sports Vision to Athletic Performance?

There is more to sports vision than meets the eye. We know that sports performance relies on interconnected systems of sensory input, processing information, and motor skills. We also know that the central nervous system relies heavily on visual information. However, when it comes to performance on the court, field, or ice, how important is vision in sports?

I Wasn’t a Slugger

I loved playing little league baseball! My days on those scaled-down diamonds were filled with joys and disappointments, highlights and letdowns.

While I was a decent player, picked up by a few All-Star teams, I wasn’t great. One reason is that I had a hard time seeing the ball at the plate. On defense, no problem. But I struggled in the batter’s box. My coaches tried everything to help me out – and I appreciated their coaching.

A couple of years later I realized I had some minor vision issues. I got glasses, moved where I sat in class, and made adjustments.

Ultimately, my battle to make solid contact at the plate had more to do with my eyes than it did my mechanics or mindset.

Vision in Sports

When it comes to vision in sports, there is a lot we know. Some we covered in our series on Athlete Cognition.

Here are a few stats:

70% of the body’s sensory receptors are in the eyes.
80% of the information athletes use to make decisions is visual.
90% of the brain is involved in vision-related tasks.
Athletes have better visual abilities than non-athletes.
Some performance vision skills are easier to train than others.

Do Elite Athletes Have Better Vision?

Yes – well, sort of. Some performance vision skills matter more than others. These findings are surprising!

Do elite athletes have better than 20/20 vision?

Not necessarily. First of all, the measure for 20/20 vision is based on static visual acuity (static meaning non-moving). Sports involve movement – and often fast movements of players and objects. Therefore, a non-moving test is a poor judge of the visual skills athletes require.

Secondly, there is a difference between visual hardware (the biomechanics of seeing) and visual software (the tracking, processing, and interpretation of visual information). For example, researchers found that 15% of NFL players, 20% of NBA players and 13% of Olympic athletes had worse than 20/20 (static) visual acuity.

While elite athlete do not necessarily have better “vision” as defined by the misleading 20/20 standard, elite athletes do have superior visual skills (i.e., visual software).

Eye Movement

Research across multiple sports has demonstrated that eye movements separate top athletes from the rest.

Joan Vickers and colleagues repeatedly found that elite athletes have a longer “Quiet Eye” period just before initiating a reaction or movement. This means they have a longer gaze fixation (e.g., looking at the basket before shooting a jump shot) than lesser skilled athletes.

Investigations in baseball revealed that better eye tracking skills (following a moving object) were linked to plate discipline, on-base percentages, and the highest level attained by players.

Visual Search

We also know that elite athletes have a more refined visual search strategy. This means that better athletes tend to use fewer gaze fixations while lesser skilled athletes tend to use more fixations in an attempt to determine which information is most important. Better athletes also tend to follow a consistent pattern (or routine) to identify the most relevant information in their sport.

An example would be a hitter using more precision to look at a pitcher’s shoulder rotation, arm angle, and release point, whereas lesser skilled hitters focus on general areas and don’t follow a predictable visual search pattern.

Cue Recognition and Utilization

Lastly, top athletes are better at using advance cues to anticipate and make decisions in sports. Advance cues simply refers to any aspect of opponent’s behavior or movement that can be used to anticipate their actions. An example in tennis would be using the server’s shoulder turn, toss location, and racquet swing to anticipate where the serve will go before it is hit.

Research from Bruce Abernethy and colleagues has documented that lower level athletes tend to use information that is only available later, such as judging the spin or trajectory of a ball to determine where it is headed, which causes them to be slower to make decisions and react.

Top athletes have better visual skills than lesser skilled athletes – and these skills are trainable!

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