Stroboscopic Visual Training: a Pilot Study with Three Elite Youth Football Goalkeepers

Abstract

). The present pilot study is novel in SVT research in its inclusion of qualitative data collection methods and its use of participants. Three elite, youth football goalkeepers (EG) took part in a 7-week SVT programme, and their performance on 10 measures of visual and perceptual skills was compared with three matched control participants (CG). Individual, semistructured interviews were also conducted with the EG participants prior to the post-test. In general, there were no differences in the changes from pre-test to post-test and retention test between EG and CG participants in 9 of the 10 measures. EG participants did, however, show consistent improvements in visual response time at post-test and retention test, whilst the CG participants did not. Thematic analysis of the interview data identified three themes: (1) the belief that SVT improved visual and perceptual skills, notably Breactions^, Bjudgement^, and Bfocus^, (2) the belief that SVT improved on-field goalkeeping performance, and (3) that SVT was both effortful and enjoyable. The present study provides preliminary work with implications for coaching in football goalkeeping and should be expanded with future studies that utilise larger samples and measures of motor/sporting performance.

The effect of stroboscopic visual training on eye–hand coordination

“…Existing research using SVT has demonstrated an improvement in visual response [30]; visual cognition [20]; and performance anticipatory timing [19]. In the later study, participants performed a simple timing prediction task using a basin anticipation timer, and the SVT group was found to improve accuracy and more consistent timing estimates immediately after training, and 10 min later.…”

“…Recent research has investigated the use of SVT to improve sporting performance [2,[18][19][20][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. Overall, these studies have utilised differing training period lengths and time points for measurements of performance.…”

“…Under normal circumstances, we use continuous online information from vision, offering intermittent snapshots of the visual world forces performers to perform in these suboptimal conditions. In a more recent study, Wilkins, Nelson and Tweddle [30] conducted pilot study research with three elite youth football goalkeepers to determine if a longer prolonged exposure (10 h over a 7-week period) SVT protocol might have the potential to improve visual responses. Whilst findings suggested potential of improving visual response times, evidence for benefits for a range of other perceptual and visual skills including EHC was not found.…”

Reaction Time Improvements by Neural Bistability

“…If such training is done adequately, assessments [2,46] show that improvements may occur in nine tested abilities of students and stamina of the visual system. Positive results also appeared for toss-to-wall [46], baseball [2,13,47,48], basketball [49,50], cricket, football [9,51,52], fencing, frisbee [9], hockey [15,53], rugby [54], softball [55,56], tennis, table tennis [57], volleyball [49], and water-polo [49]. Outside of sports, improvements are known for motion sickness [58], older adults [59], and visually impaired youth [60].…”

Neurociencia y entrenamiento en el deporte de alto rendimiento

“…Dispositivo footbonaut y Helix los cuales son dispositivos específicos para el trabajo de visión periférica, precisión y agilidad mental en futbolistas (23)(24)(25)(26). Dispositivos de entrenamiento visual Impulse Strobe Glasses, Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobe Eyewear, I-ON Training Glasses, Eyeport, Dynavision D2 los cuales aumentan la capacidad cognitiva para la captación de estímulos visuales mejorando la velocidad de procesamiento entre la información visual y su reacción en campo de juego (27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37). Dispositivos Octopus Trainer y fitLight Trainer™ los cuales enfocan su trabajo en el entrenamiento de la velocidad de reacción y percepción visual aumentando la retroalimentación en campo de juego utilizando diferentes tipos de estímulos visuales (9,(38)(39)(40).…”