EdLyons
Well-known member
When we step on a stand, are we seeing the same flight path as our friend or student?
We've all been in a squad where someone says "how did you break it there? I didn't even SEE it until it was there!"
In the same way that one particular colour of shooting lens will not be suitable for everyone, one individual's break point is not always going to be the best place for another to hit the clay.
We may be familiar with the "point your finger at an object, close an eye, does it jump?" test, however this is fundamentally flawed as not only does it depend on Eye Dominance (Eye Dominance and tests for it is a whole other article!) but also the amount of jump is proportional to our pupil distance (PD), i.e., the space between our two eyes, so for instance, two "Grade 1, Right Eye Dominant" shooters, one with a PD of 56 and another with a PD of 72, would see very different amounts of jump.
I can at this stage only hypothesise that they will also see very different amounts of leeed.
Inefficiency in the visual system can cause a person to read a target or a layout differently - a case in point in another sport is a Team GB basketball player I assessed who, when she was tired, was regularly hitting the rim of the hoop on her three point throws.
Whilst she had been told her vision was fine (20:20) nobody had assessed the way that her eyes were actually working to get to that point. (I should mention that 20:20 means that if you stand 20feet from a standard eye chart, you will see what a "normal" person sees - it actually denotes merely average vision. As shooters, it is advantageous to surpass this standard which is something I actively work on in clinic.)
It transpired that she had an eye muscle weakness that meant that when concentrating to focus, her eyes turned in - just a little - but enough to disrupt her depth perception, she was "seeing" the hoop in the wrong place, it was not where her eyes were telling her it was.
It is important to note that if this perception was fixed, she would of course train to hit the hoop in this position, but as it SHIFTED when she became fatigued, this is where the problem arose. A deeper assessment and fitting of some high performance contact lenses then reduced the fatigue and also enhanced her vision by two stages past 20:20 which, as an elite athlete, is where her vision needs to be.
I wonder if the shooters who say "I hate driven targets" would have a similar visual profile.
If a coach has a student that tends to drop form towards the latter stages of a shoot, it could be that there is a visual issue.
I am not saying that perfect eyes make the perfect shooter, otherwise I would've pipped Phil Grey's incredible 99 at Northampton last Sunday (well done Phil!)
We've all been in a squad where someone says "how did you break it there? I didn't even SEE it until it was there!"
In the same way that one particular colour of shooting lens will not be suitable for everyone, one individual's break point is not always going to be the best place for another to hit the clay.
We may be familiar with the "point your finger at an object, close an eye, does it jump?" test, however this is fundamentally flawed as not only does it depend on Eye Dominance (Eye Dominance and tests for it is a whole other article!) but also the amount of jump is proportional to our pupil distance (PD), i.e., the space between our two eyes, so for instance, two "Grade 1, Right Eye Dominant" shooters, one with a PD of 56 and another with a PD of 72, would see very different amounts of jump.
I can at this stage only hypothesise that they will also see very different amounts of leeed.
Inefficiency in the visual system can cause a person to read a target or a layout differently - a case in point in another sport is a Team GB basketball player I assessed who, when she was tired, was regularly hitting the rim of the hoop on her three point throws.
Whilst she had been told her vision was fine (20:20) nobody had assessed the way that her eyes were actually working to get to that point. (I should mention that 20:20 means that if you stand 20feet from a standard eye chart, you will see what a "normal" person sees - it actually denotes merely average vision. As shooters, it is advantageous to surpass this standard which is something I actively work on in clinic.)
It transpired that she had an eye muscle weakness that meant that when concentrating to focus, her eyes turned in - just a little - but enough to disrupt her depth perception, she was "seeing" the hoop in the wrong place, it was not where her eyes were telling her it was.
It is important to note that if this perception was fixed, she would of course train to hit the hoop in this position, but as it SHIFTED when she became fatigued, this is where the problem arose. A deeper assessment and fitting of some high performance contact lenses then reduced the fatigue and also enhanced her vision by two stages past 20:20 which, as an elite athlete, is where her vision needs to be.
I wonder if the shooters who say "I hate driven targets" would have a similar visual profile.
If a coach has a student that tends to drop form towards the latter stages of a shoot, it could be that there is a visual issue.
I am not saying that perfect eyes make the perfect shooter, otherwise I would've pipped Phil Grey's incredible 99 at Northampton last Sunday (well done Phil!)
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