Of late, eye-tracking technology has been gaining some traction due to the number of devices that can support it. New hardware interfaces enables such software to subsist within this ecosystem, allowing users and tech specialists to view and retrieve data (among other use cases) that wouldn’t be discernable with just the naked eye. There’s greater applications for eye-tracking tech as virtual reality, indeed, becomes reality.
In football, VR presents an added dimension that opens an entire realm of possibilities. EON Sports is one startup that’s tackling these experiences, which can now be displayed via Google Cardboard or any smartphone mounted in front of the player’s eyes. The advancements desired stem from better understanding vision, with sight arguably being the most important among a person’s senses. The ability to harness the untapped potential pertinent to vision offers a glimpse into a player’s real vantage point while playing the sport.
Optimal vision, thus, is imperative for athletes to excel in their respective craft, with vision training becoming a trend.
Although vision training has been available for quite some time, new studies and willingness to adopt it as part of practice regimens have spurred its acceptance. There’s been more attention given to this area by neurologists, psychophysicists, optometrists, and sports scientists specializing on vision as a whole.
Vision training, though, doesn’t really delve into improving eyesight. The principles surrounding it, an aspect of perceptual learning, are aimed towards assisting the ability to process what’s empirically witnessed.
Therefore, when visual sensory neurons are frequently activated, they heighten its ability to send electrical signals from one cell to another via connecting synapses.
“With sensory neurons, just like muscles, it’s use or lose it. This applies to both athletes and the partially blind,” stated Dr. Bernhard Sabel, a neuroscientist at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany; where if the neurons are not used, these transmissions get depleted in due time.
Conversely, New York Giants’ wide receiver Victor Cruz is one example at the crux of dealing with his personal visual acuity and its effects on vision training.
He’s been wearing prescription contacts while growing up, like anyone else who needs them in order to see. Contacts have continually been an instrumental part of his daily routine, equally important for health reasons and performance on the field. Incidentally, though, the day in which he realized that a career in the NFL would be possible, it was the same day that proved to be the most bothersome as a user of contacts.
Cruz tells SportTechie that the game where he went to have over 200 yards catching while at the University of Massachusetts, almost from the outset of the game, he happened to have lost one of his contacts. Without an immediate way to replace them, he was left with no choice other than to play out the game with just a singular contact on. Increased blinking, agitation, and overcompensating all took place throughout this game, where he simply focused on making sure he can catch the football in angle that was directly in front of him. In spite of these physical impairments experienced, he still can’t believe he managed to have the best game of his collegiate career while only wearing one contact.
And even though it was difficult early on adjusting to having contacts, Cruz had to go through an assortment of contacts before he really felt comfortable, eventually becoming second nature. Prior to playing a down on NFL gamedays, he now checks his surroundings with his contacts on, judging the lighting, and the trajectory of passes that can be thrown to him.
During this offseason, though, Cruz had the chance to try out his new pair contacts, Alcon’s DAILIES TOTAL1, while undergoing a series of vision training tests conducted by a range of sports vision doctors held at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.
Alcon, a world leader in eye care that’s widely known by consumers for their contact lens solution, has placed these innovative contacts out in the market two years ago. They directly address common aspects of soft contact lenses, both material composition and water capacity. The former involves having high oxygen transmissibility coupled with mechanical properties. The latter prescribes to the lens surface needing to be significantly wettable and lubricious. DAILIES TOTAL1 comprises of highly breathable silicone hydrogel core, Alcon’s proprietary LightStream lens technology, and a delefilcon A water gradient material to combat discomfort, dryness, and friction between lens and the eyelid.
These contact’s water gradient stands as the notable feature set, where a spike in water content from 33 percent to over 80 percent from core to its surface, closing in on 100 percent around the outer surface.
Accordingly, Cruz experienced the following vision training tests for the very first time, not offered in the NFL: M and S technological exam to measure acuity level in contrast sensitivity while using a tachistoscope device; NeuroTracker; The Quick Board system that checks raw foot speed, eyesight-to-foot coordination, and its sequencing; the King-Devick test for saccade assessment; Nike’s strobe glasses and its window shades for concentration and compensation purposes; and a test called V.E.R.G.E.L. to look at eye alignment and convergence insofar as concussion symptoms.
Such vision training allows Cruz to enhance his ability to inwardly turn his eyes to maintain binocular vision as well as to concentrate near and far. Some of this testing incorporates virtually a first-person, video game-esque vantage point, where the points of emphasis morph exceedingly more difficult to decipher.
Still, the role vision plays with regards to concussions hovers over as an area that needs further exploration.
“It’s a big deal,” says Cruz.
Having experienced one concussion in his NFL career, Cruz acknowledges that a player’s eyesight is impacted during these instances. He had blurry vision instantly and disoriented of his surroundings. The protocols done on the field cover baseline level testing.
Cruz points to this facet that the league could improve upon: better determining the severity of concussions, before the play and after, and what type of brain effects take place based on each player case.
Dr. Don Tieg, one the leading sports vision professionals that was on hand for Cruz’s vision training, mentions to SportTechie that vision motor–the interplay between eyes and hands to perform tasks–is impacted when concussed, affecting a player’s balance; the purpose for his group of doctors to have Cruz participate is to compile as much data as possible in order to help define better parameters for such modules.
Much like physical training, vision training to be maximized, arguably, has to be personalized for each athlete, which would improve their respective performance and potentially preventative for the scope of visual competencies.
What’s clear, though, is that Cruz supports vision training as a way to aid him track the football in the air and the cornerback chasing him on a route simultaneously, with daily, disposable contacts making it healthier and reduce infections to his eyes during the process.