Sports

The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

Vision training program at Cincinnati linked to hitting improvement, gets notice in majors

By: Joe Kay, The Associated Press

Posted: 05/24/2012 12:57 PM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 05/24/2012 5:19 PM

This photo made May 8, 2012 shows University of Cincinnati sophomore outfielder Justin Glass, right, working on a DynaVision visuomotor training device, while Dr. Joe Clark watches, in Cincinnati. It's one of several vision training exercises for the Bearcats, who significantly increased their team batting average last season. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

CINCINNATI - University of Cincinnati outfielder Justin Glass tosses a plastic, colored ball to infielder Joey Bielek, who's sitting a few feet away wearing strobe goggles that blind him for fractions of a second.

Catch the ball. Call out the colour. Do it again.

It seems to work.

The Bearcats baseball team implemented a comprehensive vision training program before last season and got surprisingly good results. The team batting average went up 34 points while hitting was down in the rest of the Big East because of the NCAA's switch to aluminum bats that react more like wooden ones.

"I think at first we were all kind of skeptical about it," said Glass, a sophomore who batted .366 this season. "No one really thinks about how I can improve my eyes by doing exercises like that. The first few times it was really weird. None of us was used to it. Our eyes were sore.

"But it's caught on and we're still doing it."

Doctors, trainers and coaches at the school credit the program that has players doing variations on a half-dozen vision training exercises several times a week. A few major league teams have taken notice and contacted the school, a sign that it could eventually filter up. Some big leaguers are already doing it on their own.

"I try and get an edge any way I can," Nationals switch-hitter Steve Lombardozzi said. "I'm big into vision training. To me, it's a no-brainer. The most important thing about hitting is you have to see the ball to hit. Any type of vision training you can do to help you see the ball, the more successful you're going to be."

Vision training is a hit-or-miss proposition in the majors. Some teams do no vision training with players, while others have some available. Others leave it up to players to do it on their own.

"It's been around a long time," said Pat Graman, the school's director of athletic training programs. "It's in the last few years that it's come up in sports."

The Air Force Academy has done vision training with its athletes for years, which is no surprise. Bearcats optometrist James Ellis attended a conference on vision training in Boston that sparked an interest, and spent time at the Air Force Academy seeing how they do it.

"I think it does work," Ellis said. "The most important thing to me is we're training the brain to process the information that the eye gives it faster. Once they process this all faster, it becomes second-nature."

Working with professor Joe Clark of the school's neurology department, they developed a comprehensive program and made it a regular part of the players' conditioning.

Players do exercises with various equipment for 20-30 minutes several times a week during the season and the off-season. The idea is to help them recognize the ball better when it leaves the pitcher's hand and starts its quick trip to the catcher's mitt. The ball's in the air for roughly 0.4 seconds, so the brain has to make a quick decision.

Players say they can pick up the spin of the ball better after they've done vision training. Lombardozzi uses his strobe goggles — recommended by the team's eye doctor in the off-season — virtually every day.

"I'll have somebody throw me balls and I'll track them with the strobes on," he said. "Then I take them off and track a couple more. Everything seems slower — not just the ball coming in, but the guy throwing the ball. His windup seems like it's in slow motion."

Cincinnati decided to approach it scientifically, measuring players' response times in various drills heading into the 2011 season. Then, the Bearcats measured the team's change on offence during the season.

The team batting average went up from .251 to .285 and the slugging percentage from .372 to .404. That was even more impressive considering that averages tended to drop because of the new bats — the Big East's combined average fell from .305 to .272, for instance.

The results were published by a scientific research journal that is peer-reviewed.

"No matter how you slice it with statistics, it kept coming out that it's a significant improvement," Clark said. "The other people that have done this, they didn't do it rigorously or scientifically enough to publish it."

Coach Brian Cleary thinks it has helped players recognize which type of pitch is coming.

"Any baseball person would tell you the sooner you can tell what the pitch is, the easier it is for the hitter to lay off it," said Cleary, who has been at Cincinnati for 16 seasons. "As you get higher up, the big league guys would say the sooner they know what it is, the sooner they can hit it. For our guys, most of what we're trying to do is get them to not swing at it."

The Bearcats' second season under the vision training program wasn't as successful, though that's more a function of the roster change. Cincinnati went 18-38 this year with a .265 team average.

Cleary didn't expect much out of the vision training program initially. The first-year results, along with his observations of how hitters approached at-bats, convinced him it's useful.

"With what I was seeing on the field, I knew there was something to this," Cleary said. "Then they back it up with (statistical) numbers. Some of the numbers they showed me, you go, 'Wow.' The numbers jump off the page.

"Even this year with having some of the difficulties, you look at it and say this is still paying off with some guys."

___

AP Sports Writers Jimmy Golen, John Marshall, Fred Goodall, Dave Skretta, Arnie Stapleton, Jon Krawczynski and Howard Fendrich contributed to this report.

___

Follow Joe Kay on Twitter: http://twitter.com/apjoekay

Factual inaccuracy? Something missing? Help improve our journalism.

Know about news? Share your story suggestions, photos and video.

Spelling error? Punctuation problem? Send us an email if you’ve found a typo.

More Sports

Undock

You can comment on most stories on winnipegfreepress.com. You can also agree or disagree with other comments. All you need to do is register and/or login and you can join the conversation and give your feedback.

Have Your Say

New to commenting? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions.

The Winnipeg Free Press does not necessarily endorse any of the views posted. By submitting your comment, you agree to our Terms and Conditions. These terms were revised effective April 16, 2010.