Sports Vision Training: 2-Part Article Series

Regardless of the age or skill level of the players at hand, there’s one constant that cannot be ignored: success in basketball comes down to simply making shots. The National Basketball League (NBA) has long been called the “make or miss league,” an adage that reflects on a number of different aspects of pro ball, but strikes home when it comes to shooting. Good shooting comes in many different forms: watch an NBA game and you will see a variety of shooting forms and techniques. While there is an underlying set of concrete fundamentals that all shooters must have, how they implement them can vary. Often overlooked by players and coaches alike, vision plays a substantial role in a shooter’s ability to put the ball in the basket.

“Athletes are always looking for anything that can give them a competitive edge. When asked when they perform at their best, all say that ‘the game slows down.’ In reality, it all starts with vision,” says NBA shooting guard Kareem Rush.

Sports Vision Training: 2-Part Article Series

We’ve all been there: articles on this, journals on that, a recommended blog post from a colleague sitting in your inbox. It’s a lot to take in, but important to ensure we’re broadening our horizons and learning new things helps improve the coaching, training, and education we impart to the athletes with whom we work. The problems are the gaps in those resources. There have been amazing strides made in certain aspects of athletics, particularly with respect to performance. Advancements in biomechanics, nutrition, sport psychology —all incredibly important— have been common of late, but they tend to leave out a significant contributor to performance: vision.

Our vision accounts for as much as 80% —some argue even more— of the sensory input our brains process during our day-to-day lives. But how many drills, exercises, or activities are specifically targeting an athlete’s vision? And how many are having any significant impact on the mental processes going on behind the scenes? Most only really consider their vision when something changes with it: players see things less clearly, experience double-vision or blurriness, or notice something just isn’t quite as it should be.

(2-Part Article Series) Sports Vision Training

Built on decades of research and technological innovation, Binovi is a neuro-visual performance testing and training platform combining dedicated hardware and software, expert knowledge, and data insights to test, analyze, track, and report on visual and cognitive performance. We’ve worked with vision care, occupational therapy, and sports vision specialists to develop the tools used in child development, rehabilitation, athletic training, and more. Using Binovi, these specialists are able to identify issues with key vision skills, assign personalized plans to help remedy those issues, and improve overall performance.