> It may even lead to the mysterious ‘flow state’.
Sounds more like what is being described is flow...they're just looking at the way it presents in the eye
Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
51–60 of 73 posts
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#52I've experienced this phenomenon. While competing at powerlifting, my field of vision shrunk to just the platform I was on. I couldn't hear the crowd or my family cheering. It was an incredible, transcendent experience that I would liken to an out-of-body experience.
I credit the experience to the immense amount of visualization I went through in the two months leading up to competition. Every night I would visualize the entire day of the meet, every little detail of the whole process.
I also spent a lot of time reading Zen and the Art of Archery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417410, and absolutely used those techniques. The whole motion should be effortless and spontaneous, "like a dewdrop slipping off a leaf."
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#53When I was taking driver's ed as a teenager the instructor showed us a video that illustrated a driver's gaze from the first person as they drove using a small circle. The difference between a skilled, competent driver and a student was that the competent driver only fixated on things that were likely to matter. So mostly their gaze was on the vehicle in front of them, followed by any place that could hold moving obj…
Was that real eye tracking or a fake for pedagogical purpose?
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#54When I was taking driver's ed as a teenager the instructor showed us a video that illustrated a driver's gaze from the first person as they drove using a small circle. The difference between a skilled, competent driver and a student was that the competent driver only fixated on things that were likely to matter. So mostly their gaze was on the vehicle in front of them, followed by any place that could hold moving obj…
My driving instructor (in the car) is really against this. He talked about becoming fixated on the car in front of you and then lots can go wrong.
Mostly on car in front is not exclusively on car in front.
The car in front of you is by far the greatest risk to your safety that you can control. the car in back is a large risk but you have minimal control.
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#55I've been practicing martial art for just over a decade now, no means world class, but one idiom I teach is "slow is smooth, smooth is fast", and generally tell students to slow down. We (people) get worked up and excited and anxious the second anything stressful happens. As we get worked up, we get tunnel-vision and things like "wheel spinning" (trying anything without consideration of if it helps) start. With music…
Your post reminds me of a quip from A NASCAR champion driver who said "the way to fast lap times is to 'go slowly ... in a hurry.'"
Love that!
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#56When I was taking driver's ed as a teenager the instructor showed us a video that illustrated a driver's gaze from the first person as they drove using a small circle. The difference between a skilled, competent driver and a student was that the competent driver only fixated on things that were likely to matter. So mostly their gaze was on the vehicle in front of them, followed by any place that could hold moving obj…
Intriguing. A friend of mine just learnt how to drive very recently. He told me he was able to pick up driving much faster than an average person as he was able to apply the skill he developed in many years of playing Counter-Strike Global Offensive in driving: Instead of looking everywhere he would focus his attention on things that likely to matter and react to it like he was playing the first person shooter game.…
One study found that surgeons who regularly play video games are better at laparoscopic surgery.
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#57When I was taking driver's ed as a teenager the instructor showed us a video that illustrated a driver's gaze from the first person as they drove using a small circle. The difference between a skilled, competent driver and a student was that the competent driver only fixated on things that were likely to matter. So mostly their gaze was on the vehicle in front of them, followed by any place that could hold moving obj…
Fascinating comment. Makes me want to read random eye tracking studies.
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intriguing. A friend of mine just learnt how to drive very recently. He told me he was able to pick up driving much faster than an average person as he was able to apply the skill he developed in many years of playing Counter-Strike Global Offensive in driving: Instead of looking everywhere he would focus his attention on things that likely to matter and react to it like he was playing the first person shooter game.…
Will have to source it but there is a video game where you can play to win a chance to be a race car driver. One of the guys won the contest and then won the actual race with a real car. The skills apparently do translate [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2014/apr/07...
Note that GT Academy winners get extensive race driver training as part of their prize. I agree that the skills translate (somewhat), but people should be aware that he (the guy in the article) didn't go from playing Gran Turismo directly to racing an actual car and even then it took a while before he started to be competitive.
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#59this seems of a piece with open focus techniques.
https://www.amazon.com/Open-Focus-Brain-Harnessing-Power-Att...
Re: Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’
#60When you look at training and coaching as being instead of correcting or perfecting skills and their signifiers, but as "how you learn to learn," in that domain, a quiet eye is not an objective, but rather an effect of building skills on top of a set of underlying attitudes. Goodhart's Law has been quoted a lot here recently, (re: measure becoming target and ceasing to be good measure), but it applies here. The more…
There's a video where an experienced pianist's eyes were tracked and compared to a less experienced player's. The experienced person had much less eye movement and displayed what might also be called a quiet eye. Both players were already familiar with the piano piece, so there's a difference here when compared to sports where there is an element of randomness (ex. tennis - is the serve going to go left right?).
I'd be interested to see if there's a difference between the "ultimate" quiet eye in procedural tasks (piano, free throw) vs tasks that have randomness (returning a serve, saving a goal).
Perhaps one difference is in the accept-respond loop you mentioned, with the procedural tasks being able to be reduced far greater than the random tasks. Say if a random task was reduced too far, you might get something like goalkeepers jumping in the wrong direction.
Piano video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVvY8KfXXgE