Hi everybody, Dr. Cobb of Z-Health. Today we’re going to show you a fun two minute challenge that will improve the most fundamental athletic skills in your body, using this cool little chart.
Hi guys. Today we’re going to talk about information that comes from our 9S Speed certification which is our advanced course that talks about how to be a faster athlete. Now, as a martial artist, personally, I love fast movers. I always have. I love watching sprinters. I love doing all that kind of stuff myself.
I have had a fascination with developing speed my entire life. Now, what has come out of that, however, is a much deeper appreciation for the neurology behind speed. If you look at a fast sprinter you go, well the dude’s just genetically blessed, and in some cases he is. There’s a lot that goes into that.
As an athlete who plays field sports, or martial artist, or whatever, we have to recognize that there are some fundamental things that everyone has to do as an athlete. Those fundamentals are see what’s happening, decide what it means, and then act on it. See, decide, and act. In our speed training course, yes we work on the fundamentals of sprinting, we look at a lot of revolutionary ways, if you want to call it that, to develop power.
The most important stuff that we actually talk about for most athletes is improving their ability to see, decide, and act.
What we’re going to do today is we’re going to give you a little chart. You can download it below this video.
This is a very simple what we call hand-eye coordination chart. I’m going to explain how it works. I’m going to show you the basics, and then from there I’m going to tell you about how we actually use it with a lot of our athletes. Simple.
You’re going to take your chart, and you’re going to put it up on the wall. Once it’s up on the wall, basically, you want it roughly eye level, particularly if you are in more of an athletic ready stance. From there, you can see when you look at it that it has lines and stars.
What we tell people in the beginning is if this was on the wall in front of you, and you see a star on the right hand side of the line, you tap your right leg. If you see a star on the left hand side of the line, tap your left leg. If the star is touching the line, you tap both. If you’re a drummer, it starts to look pretty good. It starts to get pretty fast, and in most cases, when people first start doing this hand-eye coordination chart, we time them for one minute. 60 seconds. We let them rest for a minute, and then we time them again.
Most people can be somewhere in the 90-100 in 10 or so changes per minute. You go all the way down and you restart and you keep going for a minute.
Now, what’s really cool about this is we call it a potentiator because what happens is it’s making you practice fundamental athletic skills. See something, decide what it means, is it on the left side, is it on the right side, is it touching, and then act on that. If it’s on the left side, tap my left leg. If it’s on the right side, tap my right leg. If it’s touching the line, tap both.
This is a regression, if you will, of your fundamental athletic skills. Once people start doing this, though, magic stuff starts to happen.
Very often, if you’re going to do some weight training in the gym, if you do this first, you’ll be stronger. If you’re going to play catch, you’ll catch better. Again, what we’re doing is we’re regressing the brain, we’re making it a little easier to practice fundamental athletic skills. When that happens, we tend to see all performances improve or increase.
If you’re going to use this, I’d say do it as part of your warm up, do it between sets, do it before your game. It’s very very cool to see something so simple create changes with people. We’ve seen improvements in vertical jump, believe it or not, between 3 and 5 inches just from using this one chart. That’s in people who are already really good. That may sound very strange because a lot of people go, that doesn’t make any sense.
I can’t do the neurology behind why that happens right now, but I want you to at least test it.
That’s version 1. Version 2 is where, for me, it starts to get really cool. This might be a little boring, tapping my legs over time. What we do with most of our athletes is we begin to make this work specific. I’m going to give you a fighting example because I work with a lot of fighters.
If I have a fighter and he has a chart up on the wall, I’ll say okay, what I want you to do is get into your fighting stance. If the star is on the left hand side, throw a jab. If it’s on the right hand side, throw a cross. If it’s touching a line, throw an uppercut. Now all the sudden he’s seeing, bam, bam, bam. He’s having to decide what he sees and create a motor response to that. Once again it’s a regression of the fundamental athletic skills. If I have a tennis player, very often I’ll use this to simulate being at the net where I’m doing a volley, a volley, and an overhead.
Lots and lots of different ways to creatively apply this very simple hand-eye coordination chart. Either as described, or in a more specific context. Give this a shot. I think you’re going to love it. If you find that your body responds really well to it, make sure to carry this chart around with you.
Use it as part of your warm ups, use it as part of your workouts, and use it as sports preparations. Fantastic and very fun tool.
