Getting a grip on the resilience to blur: The impact of simulated vision loss on a visually guided combat sports interaction

How wide should you view to fight? Establishing the size of the visual field necessary for grip fighting in judo

“…To assess the relationship between VF loss and judo performance more directly, follow-up studies may attempt to simulate VF impairments and assess the impact of field loss on grip fighting performance, comparable to what we have done previously to assess the impact of VA loss on judo performance (Krabben et al, 2021). Based on the current results, a comparison of the impact of a 20, 30 or 40 degrees radius VF would seem a valid approach.…”

“…Grip fighting is therefore considered a crucial determinant of performance in judo (Calmet et al, 2010;Pierantozzi et al, 2009;Santos et al, 2015), but it is also arguably the most visually demanding aspect of the sport, especially before the first grip is made (Krabben, Ravensbergen et al, 2019;Piras et al, 2014). The results of our recent study suggested that grip fighting performance was resilient to substantial degrees of blur -more so than was previously required to qualify to compete -suggesting that the MIC for VA should be set to a more severe degree of impairment than the current requirement (Krabben et al, 2021).…”

“…To do so, we explored where in the VF the hands of the opponent were located during the grip fighting phase of judo. During a grip fighting exchange in judo, the athlete aims to take an advantageous grip on the opponent's jacket, whilst preventing the opponent from doing so (Krabben et al, 2021). Monitoring the position of the hands of the opponent is considered crucial to prevent the opponent from taking a grip, as well as to ensure their own attempts to take a grip will not be blocked by the opponent's hands (Pedro, 2019;Pierantozzi et al, 2009;Vater et al, 2020).…”

“…At the start of a grip fighting exchange, athletes approach each other with their hands held up and in front of their body (Pedro, 2019; see also Figure 1). During the grip fighting exchange, both athletes aim to achieve an advantageous grip on the jacket of the opposing player, whilst preventing the opponent from doing the same (Krabben et al, 2021). Presumably, monitoring the hands of the opponent is crucial for grip fighting performance (Piras et al, 2014;Vater et al, 2020).…”

“…To support the development of an evidence-based MIC for VI judo, we recently conducted a study that examined the impact of experimentally induced blurred vision on the performance of able-sighted judokas (Krabben et al, 2021). Performance was assessed using a series of grip-fighting tasks, where pairs of participants simultaneously fought to achieve a dominant two-handed grip on their opponent (while preventing the opponent from doing so themselves).…”