Tuesday, July 30, 2013

SPORTS VISION DONE RIGHT PART 3 (TRAINING FACILITY)

image: answers.com

There are 2 schools of thought in dealing with athletic training facilities when it comes to Sports Vision training; Individual training or blanket training. When dealing with an athletic training facility, you have to keep in mind that they make their money on training teams and individuals. Since the body is different than the brain, it needs constant training so these facilities have a built in clientele and market segment that keep coming back (so long as they are playing sports). Some go with the gym mentality of lets charge a small amount for a large organization but only expect 5% to actually take advantage of the training offered.

In what we call the "blanket training" method, a facility puts everyone in a group and does 1 maybe 2 sports vision drills. They do this to look like they are innovative, but in reality they are wasting the good majority of the athletes' time. That's not to say it doesn't work, because it does, but if you facility is doing this they are just trying to keep up with the competition without investing serious time into doing it right. In reality they're putting very little effort into actual sports vision training. It's the cheap way of doing vision training.

The other way these facilities implement Sports Vision training is through and individualized program. In a perfect world, the facility would hire someone just to train their athletes in Sports Vision, but most of these facilities are operating on a shoe string budget to begin with so what our facilities do is get their athletes to do a Sports Vision Assessment. When the athlete has an assessment they are in charge of keeping a folder with the assessment and bringing it to the facility. The company then separates 10-15 minutes at the beginning or end of the class (preferably the beginning) to dedicate specifically to Vision Training. With the assessment the facility knows what the athletes' strengths and weaknesses are. Drills are then given to each athlete to work on during their allotted time. This helps the athlete progress visually, but takes a little longer in terms of maxing out physiologically (6-9 months on average). Like I stated earlier, ideally the facility has someone that can train on an individual basis, but if not this second method of training is the next best thing.

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