Strobe Glasses Improve Athletes’ Performance
‘Dance club’ lighting shown to help hockey players anticipate the timing of moving objects
This time of year at our house, most evenings are spent watching hockey on a larger-than-life screen, cheering the Chicago Blackhawks deep into the Stanley Cup Playoffs (we hope!). As well as being a fan, I coached my kids’ youth hockey teams for three years. At any level of the sport, a hockey player’s vision and hand-eye coordination are critical. At the pro level, the players’ ability to track movement at such high speeds is almost unbelievable. Wayne Gretzky used his peripheral vision and split-second glances to achieve his unsurpassed on-ice awareness and competitive advantage. Whereas most players rely on their central or focused vision to pass and score, Gretzky said the goalie was “just a blur” to him and he saw nothing but net. By contrast, low scorers could “tell you the brand name on the pad of every goalie in the league,” he claimed.
The takeaway according to SportsVision Magazine is that “The most highly skilled athletes are better at using visual information” and react to a signal as soon as it appears in their peripheral vision.
Flashback
Were Gretzky still playing today, he may be able to improve his already near-superhuman vision with a fairly new and underused technology, proven effective by Duke University and featured in an academic journal and prominent mainstream science magazine two years ago. It involves the use of stroboscopic eyeglasses during training sessions. Strobe glasses emit temporary blinding flashes of light towards the athlete’s eyes. What this does is make the brain take “snapshots” of its surroundings. In turn, moving objects look like a series of still images and fool the brain into thinking that moving objects are moving slower through space. The brain then fills these gaps in with imagined movement, and by doing so, learns to “see” a puck or a ball, for example, a split second before it arrives.
I have used Nike strobe glasses with baseball players in my sports vision therapy clinic; mine are now on loan to a local coach. Across the board, when training has been consistent, athletes have shown significant improvement in hand-eye coordination and reaction time. Unfortunately, I can no longer find a supplier and have begun using ordinary strobe lights and training athletes in the dark. That’s because my strobe glasses used flashes to produce dark intervals, whereas my strobe lights use flashes to produce intervals of light. Same effect, but perhaps not the same efficacy overall since it’s impractical to train in the dark.
Blazing Kane
Stroboscopic technology has yet to become mainstream in the professional sports world, although trial runs have shown its potential. The Duke University research referenced earlier looked specifically at the benefits of training with strobe glasses with professional hockey players. The SportsVision article referenced earlier concludes that “peripheral instinct” can be acquired through practice.
Stroboscopic training or not, hockey is a sport where things can change in the blink of an eye. Among the Blackhawks, Patrick Kane is perhaps the most Gretzky-like. In 2010, when he scored the game-winning goal to win the Stanley Cup, he appeared to be the only person in the arena who knew it. Apparently, like Gretzky, he saw nothing but net — and then victory.
Dr. Jeff Pinkerton
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