Visual Skills and Playing Positions of Olympic Field Hockey Players

A Review of the Essential Visual Skills Required for Field Hockey: Beyond 20-20 Optometry

Context: Field hockey is a very technical and tactical sport, requiring immense levels of visual concentration on moving and stationary targets, which can improve visual and team performance. However, in literature, this area of specialty remains underutilized, with most studies seeking to improve physical and physiological performance. Essential visual skills cannot only be attributed to field hockey but to other ball-playing sports and activities of daily living, which allow humans to coexist. The essential visual skills reduce the propensity of making poor decisions, ill preparations, and the exclusion of potent and capable players. Objectives: This review novelly aims to not only compile a comprehensive list of essential visual skills for field hockey players but also to create a starting point for future studies to add to this list, to aid in player talent identification, and eventually create sport-specific visual exercise programs and testing batteries. Discussion: The skills identified in this review preface a platform for human performance professionals to include in their training regimens, with an intent to maximize performance and talent identification and to aid in the formulation of visuospatial test batteries. Even though this list is comprehensive, this is only a starting point for future research to find more visual skills that are essential to field hockey, as well as provide the opportunity to develop the performance of the visual skills of these athletes in ways that have not been done before.

Stereopsis in Sports: Visual Skills and Visuomotor Integration Models in Professional and Non-Professional Athletes

Visual skills in sport are considered relevant variables of athletic performance. However, data on the specific contribution of stereopsis-as the ability to perceive depth-in sport performance are still scarce and scattered in the literature. The aim of this review is therefore to take stock of the effects of stereopsis on the athletic performance, also looking at the training tools to improve visual abilities and potential differences in the visuomotor integration processes of professional and non-professional athletes. Dynamic stereopsis is mainly involved in catching or interceptive actions of ball sports, whereas strategic sports use different visual skills (peripheral and spatial vision) due to the sport-specific requirements. As expected, professional athletes show better visual skills as compared to non-professionals. However, both non-professional and professional athletes should train their visual skills by using sensory stations and light boards systems. Non-professional athletes use the visual inputs as the main method for programming motor gestures. In contrast, professional athletes integrate visual information with sport expertise, thus, they encode the match (or the athletic performance) through a more complex visuomotor integration system. Although studies on visual skills and stereopsis in sports still appear to be in their early stages, they show a large potential for both scientific knowledge and technical development.

Investigation into the dynamic visual acuity of skilled cricketers using a continuous motion task

BACKGROUND

Great demands are imposed upon the perceptual-motor system when undertaking ball-throwing and -hitting tasks including cricket. That is, performers must detect and resolve object details while on the move - something referred to as dynamic visual acuity (DVA). The present study aimed to investigate DVA in skilled cricketers and non-cricketers using a more immediate or real-time assessment.

METHODS

Skilled cricketers and non-cricketers had to detect the presence of the gap within a Landolt-C ring as it moved horizontally or vertically, while progressively increasing the size until the participants registered a response. Measures were taken as the mean (dynamic) minimum angle of resolution of the object size at the moment that participants correctly responded to the gap. Objects would move at either a high, medium or low velocity.

RESULTS

There was greater dynamic visual acuity in the skilled cricketers compared to non-cricketers (P<0.05). There was a reduced negative influence of object velocity on dynamic visual acuity in the skilled cricketers compared to non-cricketers (P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

We suggest these findings contribute to the growing evidence surrounding DVA within ball-throwing and -hitting sports, while making some assertions as to the implications for the cricket performance setting.

Vision and Visual History in Elite/Near-Elite-Level Cricketers and Rugby-League Players

BACKGROUND

The importance of optimal and/or superior vision for participation in high-level sports remains the subject of considerable clinical research interest. Here, we examine the vision and visual history of elite/near-elite cricketers and rugby-league players.

METHODS

Stereoacuity (TNO), colour vision, and distance (with/without pinhole) and near visual acuity (VA) were measured in two cricket squads (elite/international-level, female, n = 16; near-elite, male, n = 23) and one professional rugby-league squad (male, n = 20). Refractive error was determined, and details of any correction worn and visual history were recorded.

RESULTS

Overall, 63% had their last eye examination within 2 years. However, some had not had an eye examination for 5 years or had never had one (near-elite cricketers 30%; rugby-league players 15%; elite cricketers 6%). Comparing our results for all participants to published data for young, optimally corrected, non-sporting adults, distance VA was ~ 1 line of letters worse than expected. Adopting α = 0.01, the deficit in distance VA was significant, but only for elite cricketers (p < 0.001) (near-elite cricketers, p = 0.02; rugby-league players, p = 0.03). Near VA did not differ between subgroups or relative to published norms for young adults (p > 0.02 for all comparisons). On average, near stereoacuity was better than in young adults, but only in elite cricketers (p < 0.001; p = 0.03, near-elite cricketers; p = 0.47, rugby-league players). On-field visual issues were present in 27% of participants and mostly (in 75% of cases) comprised uncorrected ametropia. Some cricketers (near-elite 17.4%; elite 38%) wore refractive correction during play, but no rugby-league player did. Some individuals with prescribed correction choose not to wear it when playing.

CONCLUSIONS

Aside from near stereoacuity in elite cricketers, the basic visual abilities we measured were not better than equivalent, published data for optimally corrected adults; 20-25% exhibited sub-optimal vision, suggesting that the clearest possible vision might not be critical for participation at the highest levels in the sports of cricket or rugby league. Although vision could be improved in a sizeable proportion of our sample, the impact of correcting these, mostly subtle, refractive anomalies on playing performance is unknown.