Sports Vision Performance Training

Vizual Edge is a product based on intensive scientific research into the visual system and its role in sports performance. In 1989, Ophthalmolgist Dr. Barry L. Seiller founded the Visual Fitness Institute® and started conducting ground-breaking research into testing, training, and improving athletes' visual skills through carefully designed visual exercises. Dr. Seiller and his team then created Vizual Edge and the Vizual Edge Performance Trainer to make these advances available to athletes all over the world. For more than 15 years, the Visual Fitness Institute® has designed and implemented visual performance programs for universities, Olympic and professional teams as well as elite, individual athletes. The Vizual Edge Performance Trainer is the culmination of Dr. Seiller’s extensive work in the field and brings world class vision training to athletes of all ages and abilities.

Sports Vision Performance Testimonials

Recomendamos fuertemente el uso de VEPT no sólo en los atletas de alto rendimiento

Doctora Sandra Rossi
Directora Médica de ácumen

Soy la Doctora Sandra Rossi, médica especialista en Medicina del Deporte, tengo a cargo el Laboratorio de Entrenamiento Visual y Sensoriomotor del Cenard, ( Centro Nacional de Alto Rendimiento Deportivo, en Buenos Aires, Argentina ), soy Directora Médica de ácumen, Primer centro de entrenamiento Visual Físico y Mental del país.

Hace aproximadamente un año, comenzamos a utilizar Vizual Edge en todos nuestros atletas, nuestra mayor cantidad de atletas son pilotos de automovilismo de todas las categorías de nuestro país y de otros países. También entrenamos jugadores de rugby, hockey, tenis, voleyball, trabajamos con muchos seleccionados nacionales y en todos los casos los resultados son extremadamente buenos, no sólo los observados por nosotros ya que un entrenamiento lo hacen en ácumen acompañados por un entrenador, sino que también los que realizan en sus casas, siendo muy fácil el monitoreo de sus progresos.

Los deportistas nos refieren que tienen mejores cálculos de distancia; mejor discernimiento de la profundidad, se sienten más rápidos visualmente y pueden mantener su foco atencional más tiempo, por lo cual recomendamos fuertemente el uso de VEPT no sólo en los atletas de alto rendimiento sino en todas las personas que decidan mejorar su performance.

Es bien sabido que entrenar los ojos es entrenar el cerebro. Cualquier información visual requiere de aproximadamente del 70% del cerebro para poder procesarse, es por esto que al entrenar habilidades visuales, estamos entrenando el potencial del cerebro humano.

Las vía de información visual requieren de centros cerebrales como la atención y la memoria, con lo cual, no se entrena visión periférica, cambios rápidos de foco o discernimiento de profundidad sino que también estamos entrenando la atención y la concentración y la memoria.

Es por esto que recomendamos el uso de VEPT en todas aquellas personas que quieran mejorar su día a día.

Doctora Sandra Rossi
Directora Médica de ácumen

Sports Vision Articles

Los atletas con habilidades visuales superiores se desempeñan mejor en el campo de juego.

Potencie su práctica con la incorporación de servicios para el rendimiento

by: Dr. Barry L. Seiller, MBA
Ocular Surgery News (1/21/2013)

Varias instalaciones en América Latina están incorporando la visión deportiva para ayudar a los atletas a mejorar el componente visual en su práctica.

Instalações na América Latina estão incorporando a visão desportiva para ajudar os atletas a melhora

melhore sua prática incorporando serviços para desempenho da visão

by: Dr. Barry L. Seiller, MBA
Ocular Surgery News (1/21/2013)

Instalações na América Latina estão incorporando a visão desportiva para ajudar os atletas a melhorar o componente visual dos seus jogos.

NCAA Division I student-athletes possess superior visual skills when compared to non student-athlete

An Evaluation of Visual Skills of Athletes and Non-Athletes

by: Renae Hudak
Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi (8/27/2012)

In recent years there has been an increased interest in examining visual skills and athletics participation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the visual skills of student athletes vs. non student-athletes. The research was conducted on NCAA Division I student-athletes consisting of baseball, softball and, volleyball players (n=72), and non student-athletes (n=30), all ranging from the ages of 18-25. Visual skills were assessed by the Visual Edge Performance Trainer (VEPT) software program and included tests for visual alignment, depth perception, visual flexibility, visual recognition, and visual tracking, which resulted in a composite VEPT score. A t-test for independent samples was utilized to analyze the mean VEPT scores of the two samples with an alpha level of .05. The results indicated a significant difference in the two examined groups with a P value at 0.0393. Statistical analysis indicated that that NCAA Division I student-athletes possess superior visual skills when compared to non student-athletes.

Golfers are willing to try just about any kind of putter to gain an edge, but it's frequently their

Line between success and failure on greens gets blurry with age

by: Diane Pucin
Los Angeles Times (1/25/2012)

David Kirschen, an optometrist with an expertise in sports and a member of the faculty at UCLA, said that what many golfers don't understand is how important vision is to putting well. And vision tends to worsen with age. Kirschen listed acuity — how sharply one sees detail at a distance — as the first component in helping a putter. He also said depth perception and focus matter.

Vision training can combine traditional and technological methodologies to train the athletes' eyes

High-Performance Vision Training Improves Batting Statistics for University

by: Joseph F. Clark
PLoS ONE 7(1): e29109. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029109 (1/19/2012)

Vision training can combine traditional and technological methodologies to train the athletes' eyes and improve batting. Vision training as part of conditioning or injury prevention can be applied and may improve batting performance in college baseball players. High performance vision training can be instituted in the pre-season and maintained throughout the season to improve batting parameters.

You mean that sports requires activity above the neck? What a shock!

Sports Vision

by: Todd Hargrove
Better Movement A BRAIN-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE ON PERFORMANCE AND PAIN (5/5/2011)

Sporting ability is to a huge extent dependent on quickly and accurately interpreting visual information. The key word here is interpreting – sports vision is not just accurately seeing what is there to be seen, it is using that visual information to make accurate predictions about what will happen in the next few seconds. In effect, this isn’t really a visual task at all, it is a task of the imagination that uses visual information as the primary data.

Just like any other muscle in the body, extraocular muscles in the eye get stronger with training.

Eyes On The Prize

by: Dr. Michael Zupan & Al Wile
Training and Conditioning (3/21/2011)

How much can sports vision training improve an athlete's performance? This is by far the most common question we receive here in the Human Performance Laboratory at the United States Air Force Academy. Unfortunately, we cannot quantify exactly how much sports vision training will increase a baseball player's batting average, a basketball player's shooting percentage, or a goalie's save percentage.

Study indicates a significant positive relationship between visual skills and tennis performance

The Relationship Between Visual Skills and Tennis Performance of NCAA Divis

by: Frank Spaniol
(1/15/2011)

The results of Sport Science Research Laboratory study indicates that the highest ranked tennis players possessed the best VEPT scores, highest VEPT rank, most correct visual tracking percent, and fastest visual recognition response time.

Study indicates that superior visual skills were highly related to superior volleyball performance

The Relationship Between Visual Skills and Volleyball Performance of NCAA D

by: Frank Spaniol
(1/15/2011)

The results of Sport Science Research Laboratory study indicates that superior visual skills were highly related to superior volleyball performance statistics in several areas. Since visual skills appear to play a crucial role in volleyball performance, coaches may consider using programs such as VEPT to assess volleyball players.

Swiss researchers have concluded that expert tennis players, like their own Roger Federer, have an a

Top Tennis Players Simply See Better

by: Dan Peterson, LiveScience's Sports Columnist
LiveScience (9/10/2009)

Dan Peterson, LiveScience's Sports Columnist summarizes recent research which indicates that athletes who develop their visual performance skills enjoy a competitive advantage.

South African research shows that Rugby Football performance increases with sport vision exercise.

Exercise performance and sports-vision testing under more realistic testin

by: Fowler, K.F., Du Toit, P.J.
University of Pretoria Health Sciences Faculty Day (8/1/2009)

Sports vision aims to enhance performance through a variety of procedures and training techniques. An improvement in performance was observed by players exposed to the exercises. Visual abilities can affect both motor skill and performance. This study proves that correct training programs and hand-eye co-ordination tests can vastly improve sporting performance. Athletes are advised to complete at least 15 minutes of sport-specific visual training during each day of practice.

Des clubs de baseball utilisent des logiciels pour améliorer la vision de leurs athlètes.

L'entrainement visuel, l'avenir du sport?

by: Seth Stevenson
Slate France (6/10/2009)

Barry Seiller (l'ophtalmologiste qui a conçu le logiciel Vizual Edge en 2002) a réalisé des analyses et des tests d'acuité visuelle pour différentes équipes (les Houston Astros, les San Diego Padres, les Cincinnati Reds et autres Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, Milwaukee Brewers ainsi que les hockeyeurs des Chicago Blackhawks); il a fait de même pour quelques programmes de sport universitaires et pour plusieurs sportifs participant aux Jeux olympiques. (Les équipes de bobsleigh développent leur capacité de convergence afin de mieux évaluer les angles d'entrée et de sortie dans les courbes de vitesse des pistes.) «Les athlètes de haut niveau jouissent d'une acuité visuelle développée», si l'on en croit Seiller. Selon lui, rien qu'en analysant les résultats obtenus par des joueurs de la Minor League sur le Vizual Edge, il a souvent pu deviner lesquels auraient les meilleurs moyennes à la batte.

Eyesight shown to improve with the very act of action video game playing

Enhancing the contrast sensitivity function through action video game train

by: Renjie Li, Uri Polat, Walter Makous & Daphne Bavelier
Nature Neuroscience 12, 549 - 551 (3/29/2009)

The contrast sensitivity function (CSF) is routinely assessed in clinical evaluation of vision and is the primary limiting factor in how well one sees. CSF improvements are typically brought about by correction of the optics of the eye with eyeglasses, contact lenses or surgery. We found that the very act of action video game playing also enhanced contrast sensitivity, providing a complementary route to eyesight improvement.

Playing action-based video games has been shown to improve attentional processing.

Carrot sticks or joysticks: video games improve vision

by: Gideon P Caplovitz & Sabine Kastner
Nature Neuroscience 12, 527 - 528 (3/29/2009)

Playing action-based video games has been shown to improve attentional processing. A study now finds that it also induces long-lasting improvements in contrast sensitivity, a basic visual function that commonly deteriorates with age. These improvements do not happen for an equivalent group who played a non-action video game.

Athletes who use vision performance training hit the ball harder

EFFECT OF VISUAL SKILLS TRAINING ON THE BATTING PERFORMANCE OF NCAA DIVISI

by: Frank Spaniol, Randy Bonnette, Liette Ocker, Don Melrose, Jeff Paluseo, and David Szymanski
Poster publication NSCA Meeting 2008 (7/14/2008)

The results of this study indicate that NCAA DI baseball players that received visual skills training produced significantly higher batted- ball velocities than NCAA DI baseball players that did not receive visual skills training.

Reasearch Study Shows Academic Improvement as a Result of Vision Performance Training

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VISUAL SKILLS AND READING ACHIEVEMENT OF COLLEGE ATHLETES

by: Frank Spaniol, Liette Ocker, Randy Bonnette, Martin Ward, and Jeff Paluseo
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX. Human Performance Lab (8/1/2007)

Vision performance training for athletics had its geneses from students with reading disorders. Scientific study confirms findings of student athletes and their coaches that academics also improves with visual skills training.

Vision training for athletes evolved from reading therapies developed decades ago to help children

A Little Flabby Around the Eyeballs

by: GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
New York Times (2/5/2006)

Vision training for athletes evolved from reading therapies developed decades ago to help children with learning disabilities and people with amblyopia ("lazy eye") concentrate and follow lines of text. Unlike exercises designed to strengthen eye muscles, reading therapy works to improve the eye-brain connection. Sports vision therapy takes it one step further. "It's about eye-hand-foot-body-brain coordination," says Dr. Barry Seiller, an ophthalmologist who is Brett Basanez's vision specialist and the director of the Visual Fitness Institute in Vernon Hills, Ill. "Maybe you foul off the ball a lot, or you have all the technical skills but somehow just can't put it together. You go into slumps. You fail in the clutch. All of that, to us, screams 'visual problems."'

Optometrist Bill Harrison shows Nationals trainer Tim Abraham an eye muscle test he gives to players

Optometrist helps hitters keep eye on ball

by: Scott Brown
Florida Today (3/16/2005)

What does this have to do with hitting a baseball, perhaps the hardest thing to do in all of sports? Everything, if you ask Washington Nationals interim general manager Jim Bowden.

"A baseball's coming in at 95 miles an hour and changing planes. Sometimes it's coming in at 76 miles as a curveball. Sometimes it's an 84-mile-per-hour slider," Bowden said. "All the different speeds, all the different locations, all the different rotations means your eyes have to be phenomenal so you can identify what the pitch is, where the pitch is going to be and whether to swing or not to swing."

Eyesight is one of the most complex actions of the human body. It is one of our most important surv

Out of Sight

by: Tyler Hass
Girevik Magazine (10/22/2002)

Eyesight is one of the most complex actions of the human body. It is one of our most important survival characteristics and crucial for performance in any sport. While the eye is an incredible organ in its own right, the real act of seeing occurs in the brain. This is where visual data becomes the world that we know and interact with. The world's most powerful computers cannot do what our brains do instantaneosly, every moment of the day. The eye is merely the starting point for our amazing visual system.

Training the eyes is not a new idea; improve-it-yourself vision books have been around for years.

On fitness: The Eyes Have It

by: Molly Martin
Pacific Northwest magazine (7/28/2002)

I found myself more encouraged - inspired, even - by the tale of Greg Vaughn. San Diego Union sports columnist Tom Cushman called it "the most astonishing turnaround I've witnessed in 30-plus years of covering major-league baseball."

Vaughn has cited two common factors, hard work and more playing time, for helping find his groove this year. But he also credits something that many other athletes - recreational and competitive - might not know about for improving sports performance: vision therapy.

Sports Vision Training Links

Department of Kinesiology Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi

The Science of the Vizual Edge Performance Trainer