- Oct 14, 2008
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We still have masking tape on our cieling fan blades with circles, triangles, stars, and the number 4 ithink lol..........we decided to leave it there to remind us how fast the past 5 years have flown
Tim
How do you teach tracking the ball?
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We still have masking tape on our cieling fan blades with circles, triangles, stars, and the number 4 ithink lol..........we decided to leave it there to remind us how fast the past 5 years have flown
Tim
- Oct 19, 2009
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I did some searching on the net and discovered a web sight where they have some sports vision training exercises. There is a version for baseball, but not softball.
Go to the drill section and you can test some of the exercises.
http://sportseyesite.com/?affiliateID=13786
Has anyone tried these and how did they work?
Does anyone know of other computer eye training software?
Go to the drill section and you can test some of the exercises.
http://sportseyesite.com/?affiliateID=13786
Has anyone tried these and how did they work?
Does anyone know of other computer eye training software?
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Kind of on this topic. Working the clinic with Howard and CB this weekend. Many of the girls we noticed had helments that moved all over the place. If the mask in front is moving around in front of the eys, how do you expect her eyes to track the ball! Grap the front of the mask. If you can move it up and down and side to side, you need to replace it with a helment that fits! We will buy her a $300 bat and ignore the helment..
I took a vision training course from Bill and it was very good and contained a lot of common sense "stuff". He is the one I got gluing the white rag inside the tee to keep the head down during contact. We explained how we teach tracking doing tee work and soft toss and how we move the head and he was surprised that we used what he considered advanced techniques.
Flash Focus for the Nintendo DS is useful, a lot of players from previous Team USA used it.
Google Burton Worrel and many of our kids use his drills. The kids also claim it helps them with their reading skills and they pay more attention to what is put on a white board during class.
Thanks Howard
- Oct 19, 2009
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Sorry is this was off topic, but I was thinking that improving vision and tracking the ball were all in the
same area. I will try and do better.
Please do not be sorry for anything as Dan was pointing out that helmets that do not fit can be distracting to the hitters vision while hitting and running the bases! How many times do you see the base runner running with one hand on the helmet to steady it. Dan was just trying to point out it is another thing to help improve vision. We want the hitter to work out in their helmets as that is what will be used in a game so get use to seeing with the helmet on is our opinion.
You had great information from Dr. Bill in my opinion.
Thanks Howard
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More information on the eye and tracking the ball....
Sports Illustrated, March 25, 2002 had a great article on hitting titled, Hitters Rule, by Tom Verducci. He covers what is called the contact hitter (Ichiro), the blended hitter (Giambi) and the power hitter (Thome). Remember I said I wouldn’t talk styles of hitting.
On page 69, “Says Delgado, “At times when I’m going good, I can see the bottom half of the ball on it’s way to the plate. That’s were I want to hit it.” And “Jeter is another hitter with extraordinary vision. He’s often able to see in the blur of the pitcher’s arm moving forward whether what’s coming at him is the bottom of the pitcher’s wrist (indicating a fastball) or the side of the wrist (indicating a breaking ball). “I’ve tried, but I can’t see it, “Yankees catcher Jorge Posada says. “I don’t know how he does it.” Rodriquez trains his eyes to focus quickly. While in the on deck-deck circle, he holds his bat a few inches from his face, the trademark facing him. He focuses on the trademark, and then quickly shifts his focus to the face of the center fielder.”
Page 70, Martinez. “He performs eye exercises twice a day, for 45 minutes in the morning and then for five to 10 minutes about 30 minutes before game time. Martinez keeps a worn card, slightly larger than an index card that has a green circle to the left and a red circle to the right. Inside the perimeter of both circles are the words THESE LETTERS, though the R is missing from the green circle and the first T in LETTERS is missing from the red. When he stares at a spot between the two circles, because of a process optics experts call binocular fusion, a brown circle appears with all the letters of THESE LETTERS.” (Note you must stare at the center between the circles and yes it works!) The difficult letter for me is the (T) in the brown circle. I wear tri-focal glasses. “This exercise strengthens his eye muscles.” And “Attempting to improve his depth perception, Martinez will shift his focus from one of those letters to a spot on a distant wall with the same grid of letters, only larger, and then back again. Martinez also bunts against those high velocity tennis balls. (Other times, after slowing their speed, he tries to read the number on them as they whiz by.) “After tracking a smaller ball going 150 miles per hour,” Martinez says, “a baseball going 90 doesn’t seem so fast.”
HAP page 464; “Proprioceptors respond to stimuli in such deep body structures as joints, tendons, muscles, and the vestibular apparatus of the ear. They are involved with sensing where parts of the body are in relation to each other and the position of the body in space.”
When you turn your head quickly you see a blur and then the image catches up and you refocus again. In my opinion this is where we start having trouble tracking the ball and then everyone has an opinion on how to do it. Is the hitter using just their eyes, just their head or are they using both? I am not a doctor or an engineer but after trying to teach 1,000 plus kids to hit, I know what works well and what doesn’t as supported by their stats. In my opinion that is data.
The style of hitting or the technique of linear, weight shift, no stride or rotation is not in question or is being discussed.
When it comes to measuring off from the plate and is the head turned far enough to see a curve ball from a right-handed pitcher as a right-handed batter or a lefty that is the issue. Specifically, can you see the ball well enough to hit it with how you measure off from the plate? For fast-pitch the head does not need to be turned as far because her arm is at her side. However, the head and eyes must be turned far enough towards the pitcher to see the ball equally with both eyes. This is sometimes termed getting a good two-eyed look.
This is not about hitting styles!
HAP page 474; “Hearing and equilibrium are considered in the same section (inner ear) because both sensations are received in the inner ear. The auditory apparatus, concerned with hearing, and the vestibular apparatus, concerned with posture and balance.”
HAP page 481; “The vestibular apparatus and equilibrium. The inner ear helps the body cope with changes in position and acceleration and deceleration. This vestibular apparatus signals changes in the motion of the head (dynamic equilibrium) and in the position of the head with respect to gravity (static equilibrium). The equilibrium system also receives input from the eyes and from some proprioceptors in the body, especially the joints. (Try standing on your toes with your eyes closed. Without your eyes to guide your body, you invariably begin to fall forward.)”
You can also demonstrate this by having them take one step forward and stop with their eyes open, then move the foot back and close their eyes. With the eyes closed, have them take one step forward and stop. You will see the toes inside the shoes fighting for balance and the ankle move. When you can’t see the horizon it’s difficult to stay balanced.
HAP page 496; “A set of six muscles moves the eyeball in its socket. The muscles are the four-rectus muscles and the superior and inferior oblique muscles. They are called extrinsic or extra ocular muscles because they are outside the eyeball. One end of each muscle is attached to a skull bone, and the other end is attached to the sclera of the eyeball. The extra ocular muscles are coordinated and synchronized so that both eyes move together in order to center on a single image. These movements are called the conjugate movements of the eye.” The pencil drills helps this also.
Physiology of Vision
1. Refraction of light rays entering the eye.
2. Focusing of images on the retina by accommodation of the lens and convergence of the images.
3. Conversion of light waves by photochemical activity into neural impulses.
4. Processing of neural activity in the retina and transmission of coded impulses through the optic nerve.
5. Processing in the brain, culminating in perception-the object being seen.”
HAP page 488; “We live in a visual world, and sight is our dominant sense. The specialized exteroceptors in our eyes constitute about 70 percent of the receptors of the entire body, and the optic nerves contain about one-third of all the afferent nerve fibers carrying information to the central nervous system.”
“We “see” only objects that emit or are illuminated by light waves in our receptive range; representing only 1/70 of the entire electromagnetic spectrum…Light reaches our light-sensitive “film,” or retina, through a transparent window, the cornea. In addition to the basic and accessory structures of the eye, vision involves the brain and the optic nerve.”
“The human eyeball can be compared to a simple old fashioned box camera. Instead of being a box, the eyeball is a sphere about 2.5 cm (1 in.) in diameter. In both cases, light passes through a lens.”
KYEOTB page 186; “To see the effects of this suppression look at the image of your right eye in a mirror. Now look at the image of your left eye. Did you see your eyes move? Probably not, because we have a process that turns off the visual system during saccadic eye movement. This is a comforting thing to do, because otherwise every time we made a saccadic eye movement, we would think that the world was flying around us. To prevent such confusion we suppress vision during saccade.”
“When you want to focus your eyes on an object close to you (nearsighted vision), you involuntarily contract the ciliary muscles in your eye, which pull the ciliary body slightly forward and inward, reducing the tension on the suspensory ligaments attached to the lens capsule. When the tension is reduced, the elastic lens becomes thicker (rounds up). The rounder lens is able to focus on a close object.”
“When distant objects are viewed, the ciliary muscles relax. As they relax, the tension on the suspensory ligaments becomes greater, so that the lens becomes thinner (flattened). Looking at a distant building or tree is restful to your eyes when you are doing long term close work because during far-sighted vision your ciliary muscles are relaxed.”
Thanks Howard
Sports Illustrated, March 25, 2002 had a great article on hitting titled, Hitters Rule, by Tom Verducci. He covers what is called the contact hitter (Ichiro), the blended hitter (Giambi) and the power hitter (Thome). Remember I said I wouldn’t talk styles of hitting.
On page 69, “Says Delgado, “At times when I’m going good, I can see the bottom half of the ball on it’s way to the plate. That’s were I want to hit it.” And “Jeter is another hitter with extraordinary vision. He’s often able to see in the blur of the pitcher’s arm moving forward whether what’s coming at him is the bottom of the pitcher’s wrist (indicating a fastball) or the side of the wrist (indicating a breaking ball). “I’ve tried, but I can’t see it, “Yankees catcher Jorge Posada says. “I don’t know how he does it.” Rodriquez trains his eyes to focus quickly. While in the on deck-deck circle, he holds his bat a few inches from his face, the trademark facing him. He focuses on the trademark, and then quickly shifts his focus to the face of the center fielder.”
Page 70, Martinez. “He performs eye exercises twice a day, for 45 minutes in the morning and then for five to 10 minutes about 30 minutes before game time. Martinez keeps a worn card, slightly larger than an index card that has a green circle to the left and a red circle to the right. Inside the perimeter of both circles are the words THESE LETTERS, though the R is missing from the green circle and the first T in LETTERS is missing from the red. When he stares at a spot between the two circles, because of a process optics experts call binocular fusion, a brown circle appears with all the letters of THESE LETTERS.” (Note you must stare at the center between the circles and yes it works!) The difficult letter for me is the (T) in the brown circle. I wear tri-focal glasses. “This exercise strengthens his eye muscles.” And “Attempting to improve his depth perception, Martinez will shift his focus from one of those letters to a spot on a distant wall with the same grid of letters, only larger, and then back again. Martinez also bunts against those high velocity tennis balls. (Other times, after slowing their speed, he tries to read the number on them as they whiz by.) “After tracking a smaller ball going 150 miles per hour,” Martinez says, “a baseball going 90 doesn’t seem so fast.”
HAP page 464; “Proprioceptors respond to stimuli in such deep body structures as joints, tendons, muscles, and the vestibular apparatus of the ear. They are involved with sensing where parts of the body are in relation to each other and the position of the body in space.”
When you turn your head quickly you see a blur and then the image catches up and you refocus again. In my opinion this is where we start having trouble tracking the ball and then everyone has an opinion on how to do it. Is the hitter using just their eyes, just their head or are they using both? I am not a doctor or an engineer but after trying to teach 1,000 plus kids to hit, I know what works well and what doesn’t as supported by their stats. In my opinion that is data.
The style of hitting or the technique of linear, weight shift, no stride or rotation is not in question or is being discussed.
When it comes to measuring off from the plate and is the head turned far enough to see a curve ball from a right-handed pitcher as a right-handed batter or a lefty that is the issue. Specifically, can you see the ball well enough to hit it with how you measure off from the plate? For fast-pitch the head does not need to be turned as far because her arm is at her side. However, the head and eyes must be turned far enough towards the pitcher to see the ball equally with both eyes. This is sometimes termed getting a good two-eyed look.
This is not about hitting styles!
HAP page 474; “Hearing and equilibrium are considered in the same section (inner ear) because both sensations are received in the inner ear. The auditory apparatus, concerned with hearing, and the vestibular apparatus, concerned with posture and balance.”
HAP page 481; “The vestibular apparatus and equilibrium. The inner ear helps the body cope with changes in position and acceleration and deceleration. This vestibular apparatus signals changes in the motion of the head (dynamic equilibrium) and in the position of the head with respect to gravity (static equilibrium). The equilibrium system also receives input from the eyes and from some proprioceptors in the body, especially the joints. (Try standing on your toes with your eyes closed. Without your eyes to guide your body, you invariably begin to fall forward.)”
You can also demonstrate this by having them take one step forward and stop with their eyes open, then move the foot back and close their eyes. With the eyes closed, have them take one step forward and stop. You will see the toes inside the shoes fighting for balance and the ankle move. When you can’t see the horizon it’s difficult to stay balanced.
HAP page 496; “A set of six muscles moves the eyeball in its socket. The muscles are the four-rectus muscles and the superior and inferior oblique muscles. They are called extrinsic or extra ocular muscles because they are outside the eyeball. One end of each muscle is attached to a skull bone, and the other end is attached to the sclera of the eyeball. The extra ocular muscles are coordinated and synchronized so that both eyes move together in order to center on a single image. These movements are called the conjugate movements of the eye.” The pencil drills helps this also.
Physiology of Vision
1. Refraction of light rays entering the eye.
2. Focusing of images on the retina by accommodation of the lens and convergence of the images.
3. Conversion of light waves by photochemical activity into neural impulses.
4. Processing of neural activity in the retina and transmission of coded impulses through the optic nerve.
5. Processing in the brain, culminating in perception-the object being seen.”
HAP page 488; “We live in a visual world, and sight is our dominant sense. The specialized exteroceptors in our eyes constitute about 70 percent of the receptors of the entire body, and the optic nerves contain about one-third of all the afferent nerve fibers carrying information to the central nervous system.”
“We “see” only objects that emit or are illuminated by light waves in our receptive range; representing only 1/70 of the entire electromagnetic spectrum…Light reaches our light-sensitive “film,” or retina, through a transparent window, the cornea. In addition to the basic and accessory structures of the eye, vision involves the brain and the optic nerve.”
“The human eyeball can be compared to a simple old fashioned box camera. Instead of being a box, the eyeball is a sphere about 2.5 cm (1 in.) in diameter. In both cases, light passes through a lens.”
KYEOTB page 186; “To see the effects of this suppression look at the image of your right eye in a mirror. Now look at the image of your left eye. Did you see your eyes move? Probably not, because we have a process that turns off the visual system during saccadic eye movement. This is a comforting thing to do, because otherwise every time we made a saccadic eye movement, we would think that the world was flying around us. To prevent such confusion we suppress vision during saccade.”
“When you want to focus your eyes on an object close to you (nearsighted vision), you involuntarily contract the ciliary muscles in your eye, which pull the ciliary body slightly forward and inward, reducing the tension on the suspensory ligaments attached to the lens capsule. When the tension is reduced, the elastic lens becomes thicker (rounds up). The rounder lens is able to focus on a close object.”
“When distant objects are viewed, the ciliary muscles relax. As they relax, the tension on the suspensory ligaments becomes greater, so that the lens becomes thinner (flattened). Looking at a distant building or tree is restful to your eyes when you are doing long term close work because during far-sighted vision your ciliary muscles are relaxed.”
Thanks Howard
Peppers: That comment was to my post about helments being kind of off topic on this post. Sorry you read it as about your post.
- Oct 19, 2009
- 1,821
- 0
That's OK! I'm new and trying to have the proper manners and be a positive part of the informative discussion.
The thing about the helmets was great I've been thinking on that all afternoon, we're looking for helments for our team so it was just in time.
Buying team helmets are tough to get everyone to have a helmet that fits. I think you need to try them on at the store. We bought a helment that you can actually tighten to fit your head. If girls wore the hair the same way each time, it would make it easier. My dd, has to adjust her helment depending on the sytle for the hair. I won't mention brands, but many are worthless, when it comes to fitting . Howard likes one brand, because you must order the helment or buy it in different sizes. Stay away from one size fits all, they don't!
