Athletes at every level know the importance of warming up before practice, competitions, and even workouts. Warm-ups are designed to increase heart rate, activate muscles, and prepare athletes for the demands of competition. However, given the importance of visual processing in many competitive sports, it is surprising that warming up the visual-motor system isn’t part of every pre-competition warm-up.
Why Athletes Should Warm Up Their Eyes
Eighty percent of the sensory information athletes use to make decisions and respond in competition is visual. If we break down these visual skills and the processes involved, it becomes clear that activating these systems prior to competition simply makes sense – just like warming up the body.
Here are a few sports vision skills:
- Eye Teaming: The ability of the eyes to work together to shift from one focal point to another, adjust to depth, and track objects in motion. This refers specifically to ocular-motor coordination – using muscles that move the eyes.
- Dynamic Visual Acuity: The visual system’s ability to pursue and track moving objects such as teammates, opponents, and objects (e.g., ball, puck).
- Anticipatory Timing: The neurocognitive process of judging where a moving object will be (i.e., predicting) in space at a certain point in time. This refers to being able to cut off a defender, make ball contact, or catch a pass.
Emerging evidence demonstrates that using strobe glasses to warm up the visual-motor system before competition may give athletes a competitive edge. Strobe eyewear is one of my favorite tools for warming up the visual system because they are extremely versatile, easy to use, and effective.
- Smith and Mitroff (2012) demonstrated that brief Strobe training (5-7 minutes) improved anticipatory timing (a key skill in hitting, catching, and intercepting skills) after training.
- Hülsdünker et al. (2020) found that faster visuomotor reactions after strobe training were accompanied by accelerated visual perception and processing.
A Visual Warm-Up Should Target These Skills
Here are a few visual skills athletes should include in their pre-competition warm-up. We’ll dive deeper in a future post.
Saccades (shifting your gaze from one point to another)
- To loosen and prime the six ocular-muscles that are involved in eye movement and eye teaming.
Near-Far Shift (shifting your visual focus from a near target to a far target and back)
- To quicken the eyes’ ability to shift an athlete’s gaze to different distances.
Dynamic Visual Acuity (tracking moving objects or while you are moving)
- To activate eye teaming to help the eyes smoothly track moving objects.
Eye-Hand or Eye-Foot Coordination
- To transition the above skills into a more performance-focused exercise of tracking objects, anticipatory timing (judging the future location for hitting, kicking, catching, intercepting), and visual-motor coordination.
Using stobe eyewear during your pre-competition warm-up is another great way to activate the visual system. You can wear them during plyometrics, agility drills, or even on-field drills.
For help designing a pre-competition visual warm-up, contact us for a free consultation.
Integrate a Visual Warm-up for a Competitive Edge
Whether on-field or in the locker room, athletes should include their visual system in their pre-competition warm-ups. Warming up the eyes and visual-motor system prepares the athlete’s integrated visual and cognitive processes for the demands of sport performance. This primes the most important sensory system athletes rely on to be their best on the field, court, or ice, so they can see, decide, and react faster than the competition.
Question: What are other reasons a visual warm-up is important for athletes?I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter.
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