Visual Search Strategy in Judo Fighters during the Execution of the First Grip

Abstract

Visual search behaviour is believed to be very relevant for athlete performance, especially for sports requiring refined visuo-motor coordination skills. Modern coaches believe that optimal visuo-motor strategy may be part of advanced training programs. Gaze behaviour of expert and novice judo fighters was investigated while they were doing a real sport-specific task. The athletes were tested while they performed a first grip either in an attack or defence condition. The results showed that expert judo fighters use a search strategy involving fewer fixations of longer duration than their novice counterparts. Experts spent a greater percentage of their time fixating on lapel and face with respect to other areas of the scene. On the contrary, the most frequently fixed cue for novice group was the sleeve area. It can be concluded that experts orient their gaze in the middle of the scene, both in attack and in defence, in order to gather more information at once, perhaps using parafoveal vision.

Visual search strategy of soccer players according to different age groups

“…As part of the perceptive system, visual search strategy has been considered one of the most important aspects within the process of decision-making in sports domain 3 . Literature shows that there are differences on visual search strategies between players from different competitive levels in different sports, such as cricket 4 , judo 5 and soccer 6,7 . A study carried out by Vaeyens and colleagues 8 comparing visual search in soccer players of different skill levels found differences in performance.…”

Manifestations of symmetry and asymmetry of the peak torque produced by the muscles responsible for rotational movements among Judo competitors, representatives of the National Teams of Poland and Belgium

“…However, it will allow the competitor, feeling more self-assured as far as their performance during competition is con cerned. In case of high-ranked competitions with all the competitors representing similar levels of training, such apparently modest elements can help winning [20]. Increasingly, the re searchers dealing with this issue indicate the necessity of training actions aimed to eliminate asymmetry [21,22,23].…”

Eye tracking in high-performance sports: Evaluation of its application in expert athletes

“…However, despite a lack of studies, respectively a lack of knowledge about ideal gaze patterns (without considering that there might be no ideal gaze patterns at all) in expert athletes, various instructions regarding which gaze behavior is the most promising and how this specific gaze behavior can be applied in competitive situations can be found in different (mostly individual) sports. In modern concepts, optimal visuo-motor strategy is getting more and more a part of advanced training programs (e.g., Piras et al, 2014). Furthermore, there are rare study approaches which show that gaze behavior and thus respective anticipation efforts can be improved by having athletes learn another gaze behavior (e.g., Savelsbergh, van Gastel, & van Kampen, 2010).…”