Hi everybody, Dr. Cobb here. Today, we’re going to be talking about improving peripheral vision, utilizing your TV, computer screen, or whatever.
I get lots of questions about peripheral vision. How do I improve it as an athlete? Does it matter as I walk through the world?
What I want you to remember about peripheral vision is that we have a horizontal field and we have a vertical field and we want to work on both. Today, we’re going to be looking at a very fast, easy thing that you can do at home with no gear, no equipment, to improve, in the beginning, particularly your horizontal field.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to use a TV or computer screen. The basic idea here is that we’re going to stand sideways to the screen. We’re then going to pick a visual target in front of us. I’m looking out my patio window at the moment. I have a visual target. So I’m going to keep my head still, I’m going to focus on that visual target. Now, what I will then do is I’ll breathe. I will relax and I will give myself some type of command that I will enact whenever the screen changes scenes. Depending on what you’re watching, whether it’s a sports show, you know, a sitcom, whatever, you’re going to get changes every one, to maybe three seconds. And, it is slightly unpredictable, which is very helpful for us. So in the original version of this, I normally have people say out loud the word “now”. So I’m here. I’m focused on my target and I’m waiting. Still waiting. Now. Okay. So again,
there’s no specific rhyme or reason. You’re just basically waiting for the television or movie or whatever to change to a different scene.
As I said, I like the unpredictable nature of this. You have to relax, you have to be patient. So at first, I have people say the word now
and then I usually have them enact some kind of motor command. That could be as simple as, move your left arm, move your right arm. Turn your head to look at the TV and then quickly go back to your visual target. All of these are quite useful. You can then march in place while you’re doing the same type of exercises.
In general, the goal is to do about two and a half minutes on the left side and then rotate and two and a half minutes on the right side. So you start to accumulate around 5 minutes a day of work on your horizontal fields. Now, in addition to being centered on the TV, I can also move further away so that I’m working right at the edge of my peripheral vision, which can also be extremely valuable over time. Give this a shot. Let me know how it goes.
