Training athlete cognition is the next frontier in mental performance. Cognition involves the way athletes see, decide, and execute on demand (Zaichkowsky & Peterson, 2018). In the second of a four-part series, this article will focus on the importance of sports vision and how athletes see the field, court, or course. How Important is Vision in Sports? Multiple studies revealed that elite athletes have better visual skills than the rest. Conventional wisdom tells that 20/20 vision is ideal, but that is far from the case when it comes to sport performance. Many sports put a tremendou ..read more

In simplest terms, “markerless tracking” is the ability to track the movement of human beings without instrumentation attached to the body.  Most traditional tracking technologies involve attaching reflective markers or 6DOF sensors (Inertial Measurement Units or electro magnetic sensors) to body segments to determine the position and orientation of the segment.  Markerless tracking would extract that information with less invasive methods using digital video. Instrumenting subjects is a problem on many levels.  Elite athletes are particularly sensitive to unusu ..read more

You are teaching a movement, your athlete ‘finds’ the perfect feel-good swing… The athlete knows it. You know it. The ball goes where you want…Everyone is happy! “Great, do it again…”  are the words coaches use right after an athlete experiences the sensation of “Doing it right.”  Coaches know that this repetition is the critical part of executing nearly identical movements that are necessary to encode a movement pattern – a skill or muscle memory).   It is the ‘memory’ part of ‘muscle memory’ that is required to encode a motor skill.  But… does it have to be the SAME mov ..read more

Coaches and athletes look for every legal edge over their competition. However, you may be putting too much emphasis on new innovations. Sleep is a foundation of human performance. It has the potential to fuel or wreck an athlete’s performance. It may not be flashy, but your athletes may not be getting the sleep they need to have an edge on and off the field. Counting Sheep Is An Athletic Advantage Why do the Boston Red  Sox have a “sleep room” in their club house at Fenway Park? Why do the Seattle Seahawks wear Readibands to monitor player’s sleep? And why do MLB starting pitchers trav ..read more

What Really Happens to Your Body When examines the head-to-toe effects of common behaviors, actions and habits in your everyday life. There are lots of convincing reasons people turn to running or jogging every day to stay active: You don’t need very much equipment, you burn a ton of calories and you reap the positive effects of being in nature (if you run outdoors). “Running is a full-body metabolic, weight-bearing workout, so the benefits are enormous,” Andrew Slane, running coach at Precision Run and Equinox group fitness instructor on Variis, tells LIVESTRONG.co ..read more

To shed pounds, you need to raise your heart rate and up the intensity. Here’s how. It’s a new year, once again, and for those who have put down ambitious fitness goals as a major-to-do of their year, new workout strategies might be afoot. Some of those should be the best workouts to lose weight. While much can be gained from distance runs or lifting weights, finding a good cardio routine to shed pounds is not always easy. For those who don’t have a home gym, running workouts to lose weight or track workouts for weight loss is a great way to go — they’re low-budget, compounding workouts that ..read more

Mental Training isn’t new to the world of elite performance. The Chicago Cubs hired Dr. Coleman Griffith in the 1950s. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point established a long-standing mental training program in the 1980s. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) maintains a staff of sport psychology trained professionals to help U.S. athletes excel on the world’s biggest stages. However, there is a new frontier that is transforming the game of athlete performance. Before we dive in let me give you a little background. The OODA Loop and Athlete Cognition U.S. Air Force Colonel Joh ..read more

They’re your last line of defense. They can make bad teams good and good teams great. The best ones can take over an entire game by themselves. There is no other athlete quite like the goalkeeper. In soccer, ice hockey, lacrosse, and field hockey, they’re the most important people on the pitch, rink, or field. The physical and mental demands of the position set them apart from their teammates–yet all too often, they don’t have a conditioning program that reflects those unique demands. To experience maximum performance benefits from training, goalies need to exercise differently than offensiv ..read more

Athletes make mental mistakes. Hitters swing at bad pitches. Gymnasts over rotate on tumbling passes. Point guards make bad passes. Linemen jump offsides. We might assume athletes aren’t focused but in reality they are too amped up.  Why Do Athletes Get Too Amped Up? Here are a few reasons your athletes get amped up beyond what is best for their best performance: Excess caffeine Expectations perceived to exceed ability Pressure from self or others Negative interpretation of nervous symptoms Over-energized Physical and cognitive stress Lack of confidence An Over-Amped Lineman An NC ..read more

The last couple of years for many of us has been a series of trying to make plans, only to have to throw them away in light of changing conditions outside of our control. We have had to learn how to re-shuffle our schedules, adopt new habits and routines, and re-prioritize our goals and behaviors to fit the moving targets of external demands on our time and energy. This goes for demands related to work, daily life, family & friends, as well as etching out a crevice of time somewhere for our own physical and mental training for health, fitness, and/or performance. My own training prioriti ..read more