Athletes at every level are constantly searching for an edge—whether in the gym, on the field, or through cutting-edge technology. Strength training builds power. Film study sharpens decision-making. Speed work increases explosiveness. The best athletes in the world do all of this. But at the highest level, the difference isn’t who lifts the most or who studies the hardest—it’s who processes the game the fastest. Read on to see how virtual reality and Vizual Edge are different and how they work together.
No matter the sport, most serious athlete checks the same boxes:
These are all valuable—but what separates the best from everyone else isn’t just physical ability or reps. It’s speed of processing and decision-making:
Split-second decisions separate elite athletes from the rest. But how do you train that? Strength, conditioning, mobility, and even virtual reality all play a role in preparation. However, they don’t address one of the most fundamental aspects of performance: your underlying vision and cognitive processing skills. The eyes are the gateway to the brain. With over 80% of sensory information being visual, training your eyes is often the missing piece in helping you take that next step as an elite athlete, no matter your sport. If your eyes and brain can’t keep up with the speed of the game, every other aspect of your training is limited. This is where vision and cognition training come in.
If you’ve heard about Vizual Edge, there’s a good chance you’ve thought: “Isn’t this just like VR?”. That’s exactly why we’re having this conversation. With so much new technology available, it’s easy to lump everything into the same category—especially when it involves screens, cognitive training, and reaction-based drills. Virtual Reality (VR) has made its way into sports training. It simulates game-like scenarios to help athletes get more reps without being on the field, ice, or court. While VR absolutely has its place, it’s not what we do. The reality? VR simulates the game. Vizual Edge builds the underlying skills that dictate how well you play it. We allow you to apply those foundational skills in a virtual environment, before live gameplay.
Vizual Edge isn't just another training tool; it's a fundamental regimen using 3D technology that's crafted specifically for your eyes. Vizual Edge is designed to boost crucial visual skills like alignment, depth perception, convergence, divergence, recognition, and tracking, among others. These skills are vital. They influence an athlete's timing, accuracy, and overall ability to perform at their best. Think of it as the gym where you work out your visual muscles, making them stronger and more responsive.
For example, depth perception is key for athletes to judge the speed and trajectory of moving objects like a ball/puck or opponents. Tracking skills help them react swiftly and accurately during games. Regular training with Vizual Edge sharpens these abilities. It enhanes an athlete's capacity to focus, track fast-moving objects, and process complex scenes quickly and accurately. It's not just about seeing better. It's about reacting faster and making smarter decisions in the heat of the moment.
Focusing on your underlying vision and cognitive skills with Vizual Edge allows you to perform at your best in both a virtual and real environment. If you skip this step of training your visual skills, it can hold you back from reaching your true potential. Visual skills are the gateway to the athlete’s brain, which controls what you do and how you react on the field, court or ice!
Virtual reality training has become one of the newest training opportunities for athletes at every level. Although it requires additional hardware such as a Meta headset and is often more expensive to the average consumer, VR training allows athletes to be fully immersed in their sports environment. However, VR is only a simulation. Sport-specific training such as swinging a bat or shooting a hockey puck in VR allows athletes to train at home in ways that might not be feasible in real life.
Many athletes find that when they went straight to VR training and skipped over foundational training like Vizual Edge, they did not get the results they expected in this simulated environment. This is because their underlying skills are not being trained in the virtual world. That’s why Vizual Edge always views VR tools as a compliment rather than competition. At the end of the day, both play a significant role in different ways to help you become the best version of yourself. Some VR critics do believe the pixilation and resolution are not perfected yet. But, it is safe to say that VR is here to stay and can continue to be a game-changing compliment to vision and cognitive training solutions like Vizual Edge.
Performance training solutions that don’t require you to be on the field or ice—such as Vizual Edge and VR tools—are essential to elite athletes’ training regimens. You’re using both Vizual Edge and VR solutions, but now what? It’s time to take that off-field training and apply it in real competition.
The work you’ve done with Vizual Edge to train your eyes and brain will enhance your ability to track the ball or puck. Meanwhile, VR training helps you recognize tendencies and simulate gameplay. Together, this makes you an unstoppable force as an athlete. Visual and cognitive training go hand in hand with simulating reps in a VR setting.
Training with Vizual Edge strengthens your ability to quickly and accurately recognize a pitch while improving your eye muscles’ ability to converge on the ball. In VR, you can apply those foundational skills in real-time scenarios, reinforcing what can only be trained through specialized visual and cognitive exercises. This translates directly to your batting reps in VR or on the field.
Your body, your conditioning, and your reps only take you so far. Your ability to track, process, and react faster than your opponent is what separates elite athletes. There’s a reason top athletes use both Vizual Edge and VR technologies to take their game to the next level. They are the one-two punch of performance training tools that help you reach your true potential as an athlete. Choosing one technology over the other likely means you are missing important skills that need to be trained for a high level of performance to be achieved. As technologies like Vizual Edge become more widespread, it's setting new standards in athlete training. It transforms skilled athletes into exceptional ones, ready to face the challenges of modern sports. One thing is for sure, focusing on the first step of development with essential visual skills through Vizual Edge, athletes can ensure they are not just fit, but visually sharp and strategically ahead of the competition.
