Performance Rewired

Episode 3: Enhancing Movement Through Vision - The Power of Eye Training in Dance and Gymnastics Performance

• Yuka Sugiura & Nikki Bybee

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0:00 | 41:49

Discover how your eyes influence movement, performance, and overall physical health. This episode explores the deep connection between vision and motor skills, providing practical insights into improving visual skills for athletes and movers alike.

Key topics

  • The critical role of vision in motor development and movement efficiency
  • How early eye tracking (smooth pursuit) influences locomotion
  • The connection between eye health, movement, and neck pain
  • Assessment tools for visual system deficiencies impacting performance
  • Practical drills to enhance visual skills such as smooth pursuit, saccades, and accommodation
  • The impact of visual training on athletic reflexes, balance, and confidence
  • Reweighting neural pathways through targeted eye exercises
  • Case studies: from dance to sports—how vision training improves outcomes
  • The relationship between visual input and reprogramming motor patterns
  • Simple daily eye exercises for immediate movement and performance benefits

Timestamps:

  • 00:00 - Introduction to the importance of vision in movement
  • 00:21 - Personal updates and new neuro performance mentorship program 
  • 02:18 - How visual skills impact athletic performance 
  • 04:20 - Visual system's role from infancy to adult movement 
  • 05:51 - How vision influences safety, balance, and coordination 
  • 06:02 - Developmental milestones: eye tracking and locomotion 
  • 07:36 - The significance of visual skills like focus, acuity, and pursuit 
  • 08:56 - Vision as a primary sensory input for spatial awareness 
  • 09:23 - Consequences of vision impairments on confidence and movement 
  • 11:18 - Visual skills assessment and neural pathways 
  • 12:34 - How eye motion reveals neurological and motor coordination issues 
  • 13:44 - Practical examples: improving sports performance with visual drills 
  • 16:56 - The impact of focus, accommodation, and eye muscle efficiency 
  • 20:23 - Visual training's effect on high-level performance and reflexes
  • 22:44 - Simple drills to train smooth pursuit, saccades, and near-far focus 
  • 35:51 - Incorporating eye exercises into daily routines for performance gains 
  • 39:20 - Final thoughts on vision training as a foundational tool for movement improvement

Resources & Links:

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YouTube: @performance-rewired

Speaker 1

Do it again.

Speaker 2

One more. Do it again.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Performance Rewired, a podcast for movement experts seeking to unlock the secrets behind optimal performance using a brain-based lens. I'm Nikki Biby.

Speaker

And I'm Yuka Sugiura. We're master neurotrainers and performance coaches for elite and professional athletes and dancers. And we'll be sharing insights, tools, and a little behind the scenes of what we do. And if you want alternatives to more and more reps, this podcast is for you. Welcome to Performance Rewired. It's Yuka here. And Nikki. And this episode, we are going to talk about one of the most powerful drivers of movement, and that is the eyes, and more specifically, your vision and visual skill. And this is not just talking about uh can you see clearly and read an eye chart. Um, we're gonna start a little bit with some uh life updates, kind of what we've been up to uh outside of talking about brains, although I feel like my life update is also about that. Um yeah. So I actually, so we're recording this a few weeks before it's actually coming out, but I actually just got back from Southern California, specifically Hermosa Beach, which is so like Southern California beaches are just the best. Like Northern California beaches are just okay. Um, but anyway, Hermosa Beach, where I was with, um, shout out to Shantae Colefield, who's the movement maestro, and then Lex Lancaster, who have been my business, like online business and operations coaches uh a couple years ago. And we just had kind of a little uh mini intensive there. Um and there's a little bit of a plug, or not a little bit, it is a plug. I am launching uh the doors will open on May 4th uh for enrollment. Enrollment is open for a week for a program that has a very similar name because it's so good. It's Rewiring Performance Mentorship. It's a small group program where I'm gonna be taking through a fairly small group of coaches, instructors, movement instructors, um, on like how do you go beyond just taking this drill and using it for this problem? Like, so like what we're talking about here, right? And like looking at this neuroperformance neurotraining more holistically to apply to a variety of situations. So I'll put um info on how to enroll in the show notes. But that's kind of my big update because I've been I did a group program like a year and a half ago, and I haven't been able to figure out what I really want to teach, and I and maybe this podcast has been part of it, but I finally figured it out, so I'm excited to get it going, but also a little bit stressed because now I'm like now I'm like I have five weeks to actually put this whole thing together. Anyway, um, that's my update. And then Nikki, what do you yeah, what have you been up to?

Speaker 1

Well, mine is very, very similar. I recently bought a washing machine, which is not similar at all to Yuca's, but this is a really great one.

Speaker

It's important though. No, it's similar in the magnitude of how important. Actually, yours is probably more important than mine.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I've been winging it with the laundry for a couple months now, um, partially because I went in to buy one one day and the transaction transaction didn't go through well. And so I was like, you know what, this is fine. It was taking too long at the counter. And I decided I'll just go to the laundromat. It's across the street. And so I have been living college life for a couple months. And this last past weekend, things didn't go well at the laundromat. They wasted my time and my money. And I was like, I can't do the laundromat anymore. So I went and bought a washer, and I am the proud owner of a speed queen. I'm we have one too.

Speaker

We just got one too.

Speaker 1

Oh, you did? It's wonderful.

Speaker

What did you get? I have no idea my husband got it, but but that's so funny because I remember my washing machine broke down at about the same time, but yeah, so you've been going this whole time without that's so hard.

Speaker 1

I know, I know. I kept thinking, I'll go get one, and then I'm working like six and seven days a week right now, and so I just decided I don't really want to go in and shop it again because I spent time shopping, and so I knew which one I was going to check out with. But when I went back, of course they didn't have that one available, so I ended up getting the nicer one, which I'm okay with. That's great. I'm excited about it because it's good.

Speaker

Yep, yeah. Clean cloth, clean clothes, super important, super important. Yes. All right, so I'm so excited for I'm so happy for you.

Speaker 1

That's like thank you. I'm so happy for you. You're thank you. Really exciting too.

Speaker

Thank you. All right, so back to why we're here for this episode. Um, if you follow us on Instagram, you see both of us talk about the eyes and vision quite a bit. Um, and and it's like it's it's and I honestly I think this is part of what makes neuro training and neuroperformance training so intriguing, is because people are like, what are they doing? And why are they doing that? Right. But the fact of the matter is that our vision is a, it's our most important sense, right? And if your student, if you, if your athlete's movement is like inconsistent, is painful, is not coordinated, if you're it's hard to balance, um, hard to generate speed, um, overthinking of technique, which is leads to, which is basically what we call a basically an inappropriate weighting or reweighting of information that's coming into your brain, um, that which then is going to drive how you move. We'll talk about that in a little more detail, but that's another uh, let's just call it characteristic of or a reason that you or indicator that you may have a vision issue or you may benefit from from vision training. So super, super important part of literally is actually part of your brain because it's attached to your brain, your eyes. Um, but critical for movement. So, so Nikki's gonna take us into um, yeah, like how how how are our eyes and how is vision related to movement?

Speaker 1

Yeah, so you know, in early development, we all get excited. I shouldn't say we all, but lots of people get excited when their babies start to track their finger because this skill, it's called a smooth pursuit, is a very necessary component to developing motor skills. And when I used to teach um in the university, we talked about how motor skills are how the eyes tracking would lead into the next thing. So for an example, like having the eyes move sideways eventually takes the head to turn the direction the eyes are going. Or if you have an infant that's trying to crawl before they actually start crawling, you'll see their hands start to to um. Well, there's a couple steps here, but one of the steps is that you'll see their hands reaching and they are tracking those reaches. And that tracking of the eyes is helping them build the skill for locomotion. So if you're wondering, you know, how are my eyes connected to my movement? They are very connected to your movement, very connected since you were born and living on this earth. Your eyes have been very connected to your movement and helping you determine where it's safe to go in space and how to get there.

Speaker

Yeah, that's so interesting. I yeah, like I I didn't realize that when I love that like the infant development stuff, but like with that, they're actually watching their hand go somewhere. Yeah, that's so interesting.

Speaker 1

It's so interesting, you know. I I think it's fascinating. Yeah, but yeah, your body is not the leader, your brain and your eyes are guiding the way, and so it's super, super important. So, Yuka, do you want to talk a little bit about why training matters for performance? Yes, yeah.

Speaker

So, um, one of the things, so one your eye, so as Nikki was talking about, like from infancy, as soon as that we're able to actually start focusing on something, um, which I don't know if I ever could because I maybe I was born with bad eyesight. But as soon as we're able to start focusing on something, right, and seeing our environment, like our eyes are the things that are orienting us to where we are, what's around us, how fast it's right, it's a sense that's gonna tell us how quickly we're moving, in what direction we're moving. Is there something in my periphery or in front of my in front of me that is moving in a way that makes me feel like I'm gonna have to move and get out of the way, right? Safety, survival. Our eyes are the first thing and the most powerful sense we have for orienting ourselves to our environment. They're anchoring us in space. Uh, and yeah, if we can't correctly, efficiently, and like really accurately and with precision see and capture and make sense of the things that are around us, our nervous system, our brain is like, uh, I'm a little nervous. Um, something's not right. Like this sense that is so critical to me is not performing the way that it's supposed to. And so I am not gonna move through the world with confidence, speed, and ease.

unknown

Yeah.

Speaker

There may be, right? There's might be hesitation. Uh, like we were saying, um hesitation and movement, overthinking your movement, lack of speed and coordination. Again, because if I'm not quickly processing my environment, I'm gonna slow down. Yeah. It's kind of like if you're uh what's an example? Yeah, like driving in traffic where you can't actually see very far ahead of you because there's a big truck in front of you. It's not maybe not the best analogy, but right, you can't get a good sense of your environment. So you're going to be more hesitant, you're gonna put the brakes on your movement.

Speaker 1

Um and even with that example, oh, sorry.

Speaker

No, no, no, no, go, go ahead.

Speaker 1

Uh, even with that example, I was thinking about this the other day, you know, there's a fog line on the road for a reason. And when you are in conditions that, you know, that fog line provides a sense of safety, you tend to go the direction your eyes are looking. So if your eye is really dedicated to that fog line, that sense of safety, you know, as far as guidance down the road is really we've experienced that if we're experienced drivers, but we know that that is such an important thing because it's telling us it that we're not too close to the other lane. And so, yeah, it we kind of veer towards the thing that we're focused on.

Speaker

Right. Yeah, and you've people have probably heard like where the eyes go, the body follows. Like that's it. So going back to Nikki, your example of like watching the hand move, right? Where the it's kind of like where the eye goes and where the body goes, the eyes are also following in that case. But that's where that that pattern of my eyes are connected to movement is starting, right? Yes. Um, and so and then the other piece of this is vision is a skill normally. I mean, until I started learning about this, I was like, vision, no, it's like 2020, right? Can you see clearly or not? Um, is way further beyond this in terms of movement and visual skill. So, yes, can you see clearly? Number one, that's super important. Um, dancers and gymnasts that do, or any athlete that does what they do without their contacts or their glasses. I I have no idea how that happens. I don't get it. Um, but yeah, dancers, I've seen dancers who are like, oh yeah, I don't want to wear my glasses when I'm dancing for whatever reason. And I'm like, how are you spotting? Right. So focus and acute, yeah, focus and acuity is critical. Um, psychotic movement, where you're popping your eyes, which we talked about about the frontal lobe, you're popping your eyes one side to the other. Also critical. That's a visual skill. You can get better and faster at that. Convergence, where your eyes have to come together and maintain focus on something that's quickly moving towards your face. Um, that's also accommodation where the lens is changing shape to go from something near to something far. Yes. Um, yeah, these are smooth pursuits. They are all skills that we need, and athletes and movers need to have and be able to do well.

unknown

Yeah.

Speaker

So I'm sure Nikki, I don't know if you want to talk about like what you do as assessments, because it A, they could be, well, I'll let you talk. Uh just kind of like what you look for and what gives you clues about whether or not someone needs some help.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I don't think I've ever not found something in the visual system that could be enhanced. Have you? I feel like most people, there's always people do.

Speaker

There's always something something, yeah, or vestibulary, right? Because those are super mostly.

Speaker 1

And they're tied together. So yeah. So whenever I assess people's eyes, like part of me wants to spend a lot of time, a lot more time on assessing eyes. I usually give three eye assessments before I move into other assessments. But just as uh Yuca was saying, there's the quality of movement of the eyes matters. So if I'm doing, say, following something across the horizon, like my finger or my pencil, and there is some areas of movement in my eye that's maybe jittery, that is letting me know that there's something that could be enhanced there. And that enhancement, even though it seems like why does a jittery eye play into motion into my movement? Well, because now the brain is seeing that jitter and it's not quite sure where things are as far as maybe where center is on the floor in front of you, or you know, the depth perception may be off a little bit, and that alone can create tension in your body. Um, for myself, like so that's one assessment. I'll stay with assessments, and then another assessment that I ran, as you can mention it, is saccades. You said popping the eyes back and forth, and I was like, oh, this sounds either dangerous or fun, but um, but they're like little mini spots, not popping them out. So I was thinking or up and down, side to side, or up yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're what we would see in dance is like a spotting action. So it's a quick change of the eyes and finding a specific specific target. And if you even look at saccades, which are those darting movements, you can tell what parts of the brain may need a boost. Like we can tell by looking at your eye motion, is this a problem with the coordination center known as the cerebellum? Is this a problem with your frontal lobe, which is the decision maker about movement? Is this a problem with uh what's another thing? I just ran out of brain ideas, but we can tell based on eye motion, like where where we need to go by looking at your eyes, which is just so fascinating to me still, even though I've been doing this a couple of years, like I'm like, it's so fascinating that I can see that I have something I need to work through your motor cortex based on what's going on in your eyes. And that it relates somehow to maybe your foot or your ankle that you may not recognize that there is a connection, but there is definitely a connection there. Um, in my own experience, so after I started learning neuroscience, I decided, you know what would be fun, Nikki? You haven't danced in a couple of years. Why don't you take an adult ballet class? So I did. And I walked in and I realized oftentimes my body wasn't ready to turn. Now, this could definitely be because, you know, as a 47-year-old who hasn't taken dance since the pandemic, you know, it might be that I'm a little rusty, but it was that I noticed my visual um skills were not where they needed to be. And I was one of those dancers who often got nagged for tension in the neck, which is definitely related to my eyes, and also um looking to see. That was a correction that I often gotten, often received. But when I was looking to see, I realized my lens was not letting me see. I couldn't adjust my lens fast enough. And I was doing potabouray enternac, so that's a turning step. And it wasn't fast, it wasn't like a pirouette or anything. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can't get my lens around to set up for my pirouette. I can't get my lens to set up for the pirouette. So I delayed my pirouette until I was able to stabilize my eye because I recognized what was going on. And that changed, you know, of course, like my idea of what I could be doing for my clients better because I realized they are not gonna understand this or even recognize it because it's something that's occurring so rapidly.

Speaker

Um so this was accommodation, like actually the change. Yeah, so fixing. So yeah, so there's actually a muscle, or it's called the ciliary body, it's also muscle, that that's what changes your. If you think of like if you're I don't know if people go to the movies, but anymore, but like with if back in the day, sometimes the movie would be out of focus and they'd have to fix the lens so that it's in focus. So basically there's a muscle in your eye that helps reshape your lens so you can focus on something that's far away and then quickly shift to something that's near. Like if you're driving, you look at your odometer or you look at the street sign.

Speaker 1

Yes. So that correction, looking to see. Well, I can see that still may be something a teacher may choose to use with me. My seeing was delayed. I had to delay to see. And that is something that neurotraining can help with. So if you're deficient in that area, we can work on your ciliary muscles and get your lens to change faster so that you can continue in performance. If I just went for the turn, which is what I often did, I'm sure, as I was performing, because I can't say that that I didn't completely feel like it was more like I recognized the problem, but I would say subconsciously, I was aware that this had been a problem during my time performing. And I would say, um, you know, if I had recognized that and been able to shift that, those corrections of look to see would have shifted because when you say look to see, and it takes me, you know, another two seconds to see what someone else saw right away, then it's like, okay, you know, that's creating tension because I would just usually just blast through it to stay on the music. And then it's like the neck tension. And this also explains. Um, if I'm talking too much, just hop in here. But it also explains to me the inconsistencies that I saw in my own performance because I sometimes felt like very calm and very confident about moving. And there were other times that I wouldn't. And going to the stage where I was spotting something close in the studio, and then I had to go out into the stage space where the lighting was different and the spot was way out there, and maybe I wasn't even in line with that red dot that they put in the theater, that changed things for my ability to really use my eyes the way I had been using them in the studio. And so it's like, oh, we we could reconsider some of how we set people up to perform better in these situations.

Speaker

Yeah. Yeah, they could do some near-far drills before they before they perform, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker

So notes, yeah, that's so, and it's so because you it's funny, like, especially high-level performers, athletes can sense when something is off. But again, it's like how when would you think, oh, it's my my eyes' ability to quickly focus on something or switch focus? Yeah. And in gymnastics, like that's even faster. Yeah, I don't have time to do a Pas de Borrion tournament to like change my focus. Like, I'm flipping through the air, and then all of a sudden there's the floor. And if you haven't been trained, so again, it's a quick accommodation, right? I'm looking at like the world spinning around, which doesn't even sometimes register because it's happening so quickly. And then all of a sudden, I have to spot the floor. So if your ability to quickly like change, right, your lens to change shape and then even be able to recognize the floor, if that's in any way flawed or slow or whatever, your land. Are gonna be off. Yeah. Right. So like if someone always has short landings, and I'm like, I'm gonna look at their depth judgment. Right? It could be a whole host of things. Yeah. But since as we've talked about how crucial the eyes are to movement and sensing where we are in space, like why wouldn't you, like, not why wouldn't you? Because you don't know to test it, but I would always test that. Um, and that's something like when I'm able in a gym to actually check, like, are you actually using both eyes? Can you do like, can you correctly judge where something is? Can you quickly switch back and forth from near to far at the angle that I'm gonna be coming in towards the floor?

unknown

Right.

Speaker

And kind of the height. Yeah. So one one magic drill. So I'll just share like a fix that was. I mean, I wasn't, yeah, it's it was one of these things where it was just like this kid has had this problem for a long time. So he was doing a his dismount off of high bar, which is a double back, and then he would always just keep and and granted to be safe, you over-rotate, so you end up landing on your butt, right? But obviously, because like the more hard landings, it's just a lot. But when you're competing, you can't do that because that's a fall and you get a lot of points off. But so I was like, okay, well, so what does he look? He doesn't have anything to look at. Like his eye, it helps to have something to fix at your eyes to figure out how far away the floor is. And granted, you can't in a meet, go, excuse me, I'm gonna just put some tape down on the floor so I can spot the floor. But we did this in practice. We took some tape, made an X, and his next turn, he was like, boom, landed it. And he looked at me and was like, what just happened? And I'm like, Yeah, we give your eyes something to look at and to help you judge where the floor is. And so now with practice, he's gonna his eyes will write, just like any other skill. Your brain is gonna kind of create a pathway for it. His eyes will help her remember and judge where the floor is. So just an ex like a practical example and something that if you have that issue with your athletes, you can use. Yeah, like it's not enough to say, and you can talk about it like just spot, like you have to give something to look at, yeah. Um, and to focus on, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

When when I look at spotting, you know, I there's lots of things I consider. What's the range of motion of the eyes? Do both eyes have good range of motion or is there a limited range of motion? Um, do we have good accommodation? Do we have good eye stabilization? Are we able to actually move in a saccadic saccade? Oh, it sounds like saccad. I guess not psychotic. Yeah, not psychotic. But can you do a saccade and actually get your target, or are you missing your target when you do a saccade? Because if if you're being told to spot and you're missing any of those, if you have a depth perception issue, if you have a saccade issue, if you have a smooth pursuit range of motion issue, those are all gonna affect your spot because either you're gonna leave your spot early because your head will replace the motion that your eye is deficit in. So your body is gonna be smart and do what it needs to to do the skill, but you might have someone spotting early and it has way more to do with maybe the range of motion in their eyes than it has to do with them not understanding the cue spot or the cue keep your head longer. It could be a deficit in the range that the eyes are moving. Right.

Speaker

That's classic fixing a neural problem with the biomechanical correction that doesn't actually address the neural problem that's creating the problem.

Speaker 1

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker

Yeah, and that's actually whether you're a dancer or not, like one of the signs that you may have a that maybe that your visual system needs some work, needs some training is neck pain, right? Stiff neck. Um, just because again, like you're it's the it's there's a lot of connections between your eyes and your visual system and then the muscles in your neck. Um, and because it's so precisely finely tuned to like where your eyes are going, your neck is going. Uh so yeah, so often doing visual drews can relieve neck pain, back pain, um, dizziness or disorientation while they're moving, turning, flipping, like Nikki was talking about, losing uh trouble focusing quickly, losing balance or having trouble finding landings or just holding positions under speed, um, feeling off in space. And then, yeah, so this actually mental blocks is another one, right? Because again, your vision. Um, I've actually found so one kind of example or one thing that you can try is if they can't hold their eyes up, or they're like, this is really tiring. And most of us don't. Most of us are training the opposite muscles, so like eyes are down and in because we're looking at screens or phones or whatever, reading, I don't know. Um, but if they can't just look up and hold that for let's even just say 10 five seconds, 10 seconds, and their eyes get really fatigued, right? That could be a sign, or usually someone that has really has real deficits, like after three seconds to be like, no, I don't want to do this. This doesn't feel good, right? That could be a reason they have a mental block because that's where your eyes have to go when you are flipping backwards. And the nervous system is like, don't do this because it doesn't feel safe and I don't feel like I have control. And so what does it do? It free it might freeze you, right? Fight, fight, flight, or freeze. Yeah. Um, so mental blocks could be a sign. Um, and then this needing to overfocus to perform. Um, I can talk about that, or you want to talk about that? I go for it. Okay. So I mentioned this up at the top. So there, so if you don't trust your eyes, and this is a subconscious level, right? Maybe could be conscious, but mostly it's subconscious level, that your nervous system is like, okay, our eyes should be the most important sense. And actually, just to put a number on it, um, there is a tract of neurons, nerve cells that go from our frontal lobe, which we talked about in the first episode, down to our body, right? So for my moving my right side of my body, there are like a million axons or neurons, right? Nerve endings that go from for just my whole body on my right side. The optic nerve has as many neurons for just my left eye.

Speaker 2

Oh wow.

Speaker

So, yeah, so just as a quant quantitative way of demonstrating how right density, neural density is a sign or is an indicator of importance and necessary efficiency. And so that density of the optic nerve versus like the nerve that goes, it's like travels down our spinal cord. That's where we stop counting, um, or that tract. Uh, yeah. So kind of one one way to look at how important the eyes are. Um, but so we have that sense, we have proprioception, right? So, what is my skin feeling? What are my joints feeling? Um, my vestibular system, what am I hearing? What am I smelling? All these things. But if your visual system is flawed or deficient in some way, I'm gonna over-rely on something else to feel what I need to feel. Right. So, or I have to you, I have to think harder and less automatically about what I'm doing because this really important sense that's supposed to help me know how fast I'm moving, where am I going, what direction, et cetera, is not giving me enough information. I'm gonna have to take that information from somewhere else. Um this actually kind of the opposite happens with knee injuries. Like there's a lot of studies went on ACLs, and that one of the things that happens is that there's an overweighting of the visual uh sense over proprioceptive and uh yeah, proprioception. And so, because people are like watching their knee, they're watching their knee, they're watching their knee, do the job, watch your knee, your knee, all this. And so for months, they're now reuse, they are the weighting shifts to be over-reliant on their visual system to know what their knee is doing.

Speaker 1

Oh, interesting.

Speaker

Yeah, and so now their proprioception around their knee is deficient because it's like, oh, well, my eyes, which are so powerful, are giving me a good sense of where it is. And so now my like just this like unfortunate but automatic reweighting happens. And so what could happen is they re-injure their knee again, or something else happens on that leg because they have now, right? They've they just have an a mismatch or an imbalance of what should be giving them an idea of what the knee is doing. Yeah, they've reprogrammed themselves, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, they've rewired, right? In a and we can rewire in all kinds of ways, and including faulty ways. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Speaker 1

I love that. Thank you.

Speaker

Yeah.

Speaker 1

So uh the bigger picture here is that, you know, as we mentioned, the eyes are huge, play a huge role in your movement, whether you are recognizing it or not. And I mean, even let me just tell you what I think was fascinating for myself. I fascinated myself yesterday because I decided to play a game called wall ball. And this is a game where you bounce the ball on the wall and I put letters on my ball so that I have to read the letter when it's coming because I have a convergence insufficiency. So I was like, I'm gonna work on my convergence insufficiency. And so I was throwing the ball at the wall and then catching it, and I have to see the letter clearly and I shout it out before it gets to my hand. That's the game. So then I decide I'm gonna put my pirate patch on my good eye. So that I have to work on my own.

Speaker

Oh, dude, that gets so hard to do when I oh my goodness. Okay.

Speaker 1

So I I covered my right eye, which is my dominant eye, and I started working my left eye on this convergence exercise. Now, you don't think that this activity would, you know, impact my dancing, but this activity will impact my dancing, even though it looks nothing like dancing, because right now I'm working on reflexive movement. I'm also working on convergence, and um, I'm also, you know, hopefully developing a better sense of where I'm at in my space as I'm working on this skill. So I'm bouncing the ball on the wall, catching it with my one eye, my pirate patches on, and I decide I'm gonna catch it with my non-dominant hand.

Speaker 2

Oh no.

Speaker 1

And I did. I started catching it, but I had no idea how I was doing it because I decided to just let my body take over based on what my eye was learning about my movement. And this is not how we usually train in dance. Usually I would be coaching myself, like, grab it sooner, da-da-da. But my task was try to see the letter on the ball before it hits my hand. That was the only task I had. And somehow I was able to catch with my bad eye and my bad hand nice this, you know, tennis ball that I had written letters on. And this is so important to improving athleticism and activity like this. And if you're working with someone who's a high-performing athlete or a high performing dancer, having something like this, even though it seems like, how is that related? It is very related to creating a sense of safety for the brain and having the brain make quick decisions and reflexive decisions about movement, which are gonna save a lot of bad setups for turn, or you know, those are the skills that you actually want to have kick in when you're performing. And that's why, you know, when we say that brain-based movement or brain-based training is not always gonna look exactly like what your sport or your activity, if you're a dancer, it looks like, it is still very valuable because it is training the system to respond and re excuse me, respond and react and be, you know, in real time with you in your movement. And that is what high performers, you know, really high performers are so good at is being in the moment and staying in the moment and being able to perform at the highest level because they're so reflexive and they're reflexive to the environment. They know their their brain is processing the environment so quickly and be able being able to respond so quickly is very, very, very important to how you perform overall. Did you want to add to that?

Speaker

No, that perfectly. I love how you said all of that. Um, oh, I realize I skipped the practical part. Oh, uh yeah. So yeah, how some just basic skills, like what how can you just start your basic vision training, right? So we've talked about episode, we're in episode three, episode one, we talked about smooth pursuits, right? Yeah. So this is just like like Nikki was saying, like when uh just tracking something that's moving, you can use your thumbnail, you can get a popsicle stick or carpenter's pencil, put a letter on it. Um, because the when you require your eyes to also focus on something and keep that thing in focus, that makes it a little bit harder. There's a little more work required. Um, so can you just track it smoothly? You can video yourself and see, right? You can work with one of us, or you can video yourself and see like what's happening when I do this. The target jumps saccades, so you would have two fixed targets. Um, they could be moving too. I've actually worked with tennis player where we made our saccade um while something was moving. Um, but like jump to one side, jump to the other. It's basically what we do when we read, right? You get to the end of one line and then you saccade your eyes to the left to focus on the next letter of the word or the next line. So saccade and then near far. So this thing we're talking about called accommodation, which is how quickly changing your lens to focus on something near and far. It's just called near and far. Do what it says. You look at maybe again a letter or your half moon on your thumbnail, and then focus on something that's at least several feet or a few meters away from you, and then you just switch back and forth. Um and just to start as a practice, like can you do each of those things for a minute?

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker

Right. That's like a and if if you fatigue after 15 seconds, that's a sign that your visual system needs a little work. Um, and you may, right, so you have to dose it, but as a result of doing this, you may very well see changes in your movement fairly quickly.

Speaker 1

Yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, because as we said, what the eyes don't do, often the head, there will be some kind of compensation to make up for what the eyes are not doing, whether that's um a protection mechanism shooting out or an extra head movement or uh changing maybe where your how your head sits on your neck. Um, you might actually kind of have some people that you notice that their head is maybe kind of turned to one direction a lot of times or tilted. And those are all indications that maybe there's some eye things that could be worked on that'll enhance the movement. And so we're jumping now into like the bigger picture. You know, the eyes are connected, as Yuka said, to the brain. They are huge as far as neural input. And whenever you have better input, you get better output. Um, it's connected to our vestibular system, which we will talk about later, but that is your inner ear, and it is the system that is very active in balancing our bodies in space. And so if you have something that's deficit, a deficit in the eyes, often you will see that the vestibular system could also use a boost. Um, and then Yuka, did you want to ask add anything or have any takeaways that you want to share at this point?

Speaker

Uh yeah, I can close it out. Uh yeah, so basically, unless you want to. I don't have anything to add. I'll let you close it out.

Speaker 1

Okay, well, yeah, just basically if you want better movement, you can start with the eyes. I mean, this morning I started my day by walking outside my uh home and starting my pencil push-ups while I was tanding, walking in sneakers, which, you know, I I would be better off barefoot, but I'm not going to walk around the neighborhood barefoot. Um, but I started just doing some pencil push-ups for my convergence as I walked out my out of my house this morning, and I immediately felt an improvement in the fluidity of my hips and my gait pattern as I was feeling a little bit of stiffness in my right hip this morning. And I had only done like 10 or 15 seconds when that kicked in, and that is how neurotraining works. It is such a fast response that um most people get. And so if you want better movement, it's great to start with the eyes. You'll usually get a boost, and as Yuka mentioned, spend a minute on four or five drills per day, and you should start to see your movement change simply by improving your eyes.

Speaker

Awesome. All right, so that is it for your vision. We'll come back and revisit this because this is again one of these things. There's so many layers, so many drills, so much information about the vision. But hopefully, yeah, you you get the idea why why we train the eyes. Um with that, yeah, we'll see you on the next episode. Or we'll you'll hear us, I guess you won't see us yet, on the next episode of Performance Rewired.

Speaker 2

Do it again. One more time, do it again. One more time, do it again. One more time, one more time, one more time, one more time, one more time.