
Why athletes need a ‘quiet eye’ - clouddrover
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180627-is-quiet-eye-the-secret-to-success-for-athletes
======
jschwartzi
When I was taking driver's ed as a teenager the instructor showed us a video
that illustrated a driver's gaze from the first person as they drove using a
small circle. The difference between a skilled, competent driver and a student
was that the competent driver only fixated on things that were likely to
matter. So mostly their gaze was on the vehicle in front of them, followed by
any place that could hold moving objects and pedestrians, then briefly
signage. In contrast, novice drivers' gaze was all over the road, the signage,
pedestrians moving parallel to the road--in short they had no mental filter
for their attention.

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
Your eyes should be scanning at all times. Those 'experienced' drivers have
literal blind spots and are likely to enter a mental state akin to a sleep
state.

~~~
arkades
So what you’re saying is, learn from those most likely to get into car
accidents, rather than the least likely?

[https://article.images.consumerreports.org/prod/content/dam/...](https://article.images.consumerreports.org/prod/content/dam/cro/magazine-
articles/2012/October/Consumer%20Reports%20Dangerous%20Drivers%2010-12)

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
What an absurd strawman.

------
motohagiography
When you look at training and coaching as being instead of correcting or
perfecting skills and their signifiers, but as "how you learn to learn," in
that domain, a quiet eye is not an objective, but rather an _effect_ of
building skills on top of a set of underlying attitudes.

Goodhart's Law has been quoted a lot here recently, (re: measure becoming
target and ceasing to be good measure), but it applies here.

The more useful question is, "of what is a quiet eye the effect?"

At an elite competition level, the physical differences (and scores) between
athletes are so minor that success is more an effect of psychological habits
than the relative difference in diet and training regimens.

Watching very top athletes, they are usually calm and deliberate, which is the
effect of being in a zone where they are not intellectualizing or reacting to
events, but are instead, in a state I call accept-respond. There is a huge
aspect of ego suppression they can cultivate, where the y aren't distracted by
hypotheticals, counterfactuals, and in particular, expectations and
anticipations for how the immediate situation plays out, which delays their
ability to shorten their accept-respond loop.

The very existence of an "if this then that," thought in their mind is
performance inhibiting, because even that "if," statement needs to be negated
before they can respond. Bringing conditionals to the game only works when the
game plays out according to that conditional at the right time. At a learning
level, you can learn those conditionals as tactics, but you need to practice
them to where there is no conscious selection and evaluation of them when you
are performing.

IMHO, a quiet eye is the effect of how you related to your
trainer/coach/parent/teacher, and it's not incumbent on the student or athlete
to develop it, it is the sign of a good teacher.

~~~
Kuzutsukake
There's a video where an experienced pianist's eyes were tracked and compared
to a less experienced player's. The experienced person had much less eye
movement and displayed what might also be called a quiet eye. Both players
were already familiar with the piano piece, so there's a difference here when
compared to sports where there is an element of randomness (ex. tennis - is
the serve going to go left right?).

I'd be interested to see if there's a difference between the "ultimate" quiet
eye in procedural tasks (piano, free throw) vs tasks that have randomness
(returning a serve, saving a goal).

Perhaps one difference is in the accept-respond loop you mentioned, with the
procedural tasks being able to be reduced far greater than the random tasks.
Say if a random task was reduced too far, you might get something like
goalkeepers jumping in the wrong direction.

Piano video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVvY8KfXXgE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVvY8KfXXgE)

~~~
russh
Thanks for the link.

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JSeymourATL
This site has been designed primarily for researchers and their students
carrying out quiet eye (QE) studies in sport, medicine, law enforcement, the
military and other areas where a high degree of expertise is required. The
content is free and may be used for educational and research purposes. >
[http://www.quieteyesolutions.com/](http://www.quieteyesolutions.com/)

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tsumnia
I've been practicing martial art for just over a decade now, no means world
class, but one idiom I teach is "slow is smooth, smooth is fast", and
generally tell students to slow down. We (people) get worked up and excited
and anxious the second anything stressful happens. As we get worked up, we get
tunnel-vision and things like "wheel spinning" (trying anything without
consideration of if it helps) start. With music for example, if you try too
hard to go fast for the sake of speed rather than smooth, you start to trip
over your notes and it sounds worse than when you played one note at a time.

Mushin (as another poster wrote), mindfulness, breathing techniques - all they
focus on is calming ourselves down to that we can make better decisions. If
you can remain calm when everything on fire, you can think and react better.

My current research is inspired by athletes and other "physical" skills and
how it translates to a knowledge skill like Computer Science. Some of the
first steps in a physical skill is the creation of "smooth technique" \- not
fast, smooth. To get there takes time downing things slowly and methodically
until it becomes muscle memory. Does this mean that there is some positive
points to just drilling exercises? Obviously, only drilling without
understanding is not useful, but I think somewhere along the way western
education (or at least higher education) decided to not do as much drilling.

~~~
ddorian43
What martial art ?

~~~
tsumnia
Aikido and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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WhompingWindows
I didn't find this a convincing read. There may be good research about quiet
eye, I don't know personally, but how is it a revelation to say athletes and
experts focus very intently on one spot with their vision? This seems to
border on truism to me, why would a professional athlete need to look all
around to judge different parameters? Someone like Serena Williams has served
the ball millions of times, is she truly going to gain more information by
looking all around? Whereas, for a novice, it would be useful to look at the
service box, then back at the ball, then at your feet to ensure your stance is
good, then to your grip. So, is this expert effect simply a product of muscle
memory and intense focus?

~~~
lukeatuke
You are missing at least one point of the article --- that specifically
_training_ the "quiet eye" actually _improves_ performance.

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sreeramvenkat
This reminds me of story from Indian epic Mahabarata where Arjuna sees nothing
but the parrot's eye when aiming to hit the parrot .
[http://hindumythologyforgennext.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-
eye...](http://hindumythologyforgennext.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-eye-of-
bird.html?m=1)

------
bcbrown
I've experienced this phenomenon. While competing at powerlifting, my field of
vision shrunk to just the platform I was on. I couldn't hear the crowd or my
family cheering. It was an incredible, transcendent experience that I would
liken to an out-of-body experience.

I credit the experience to the immense amount of visualization I went through
in the two months leading up to competition. Every night I would visualize the
entire day of the meet, every little detail of the whole process.

I also spent a lot of time reading Zen and the Art of Archery:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417410),
and absolutely used those techniques. The whole motion should be effortless
and spontaneous, "like a dewdrop slipping off a leaf."

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russellbeattie
I like that the researcher had a couple personal experiences with the
proverbial "hot hand", as it made her convinced it was a real phenomenon and
to look at it more closely. Anyone who's had it happen to them remember the
moment whistfully, even decades later: You just can't seem to miss, your hand-
eye coordination is perfect, and for a short time you are performing at levels
way beyond normal. Then it goes away and you think, "If only!".

No idea whether "quiet eye" is the right answer or flow-state or just plain
old luck, but I love her motivation.

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crazygringo
This feels like the start of scientific insight into what is described in the
classic _Zen in the Art of Archery_. [1]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Archery-Eugen-
Herrigel/dp/037...](https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Archery-Eugen-
Herrigel/dp/0375705090)

------
hinkley
My own, albeit limited, experience is that quiet eye _is_ flow state.

I think the main problem here is that so many of us pick one field of endeavor
in our lives and we don’t spend enough time trying to excel at more than one
thing to notice that the feeling of being in the groove and kicking ass are
the same across a wide field of experiences and activities.

I even experienced it once in a yoga class. Last day the instructor had us do
some restorative excercises. Next think I know, I hit Flow. My first thought
was “uh oh, this could be addictive”, but with nothing to do with it, and
having only done it once, I never experienced it again. A pity though.
Sometimes you have a bug to fix and you just aren’t feeling it that day. Would
be nice to have more tools to get into that state.

~~~
scarecrowbob
"Would be nice to have more tools to get into that state."

I'm with you on this sentiment. But I feel like the point of a lot of
meditative and yogic practice is to give us those tools. At the very least,
that practice has made me feel that the process is learn-able and repeat-able.

I also agree that one issue is our narrow fields of endeavor. I play perform
music, ride mountain bike trails, write, program... all of these will allow me
to get into a flow state in one way or another. These flow states are all
similar, but require different triggers and processes.

What's been helpful to me is recognizing that ritual and paying close
attention to how / what I am thinking while I prepare and practice these
things all have similar modes.

In the last 6 months I've started doing a lot more yoga, and the ritualistic
nature of the practice has made that mental process a lot easier to observe.
So now I try and develop patterns in my practices: specific singing exercises,
a specific piano warmup, always having the same process for kitting out and
checking out the bike before a ride, trying to keep a similar schedule and
order for my workday, etc.

As to your comment about addiction, I've been doing a daily bit of kudalini
yoga for the last couple of months and although I am not sure of the mechanism
it evokes a psychedelic response in me (low-intensity visual hallucinations).
Putting aside the short-lived nature of that response, so far it's reminded me
of the patterns of addiction around those kinds of drugs: a) unless you do
something really too much, these aren't bad results, and b) when there are bad
results it's very easy to just say "clearly the aliens telling me to stop are
right, and I don't need to keep doing these kinds of things to my brain" and
move on to different mental exercises ;) . It's not like the times in my life
when I was drinking heavily out of a sense that it was a "good idea" (tm),
when in fact I was really being disfunctional.

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mar77i
Sorry when I'm going all-out nerd here, but isn't the quiet eye the exact
stance on war which is talked about over and over in Stephen King novels? I'm
thinking It, the Dark Tower series, the Talisman (plus sequel), all basically
revolve around the theme of the warrior getting more of that introverted kind
of alertness - as opposed to getting more fucked up by the confrontations
brought upon them - on every step into the madness that their task turns out
to be.

------
Havoc
> It may even lead to the mysterious ‘flow state’.

Sounds more like what is being described _is_ flow...they're just looking at
the way it presents in the eye

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euske
I remember reading that your subconscious is often more accurate than your
conscious part of the mind (it was one of the books from Ramachandran or
Oliver Sacks), so this makes some sense to me. Guess it's important to
deliberately "let it loose" to delegate some of your control to your
subconscious.

------
evo_9
This article reminded me of a great book I've read several times that deals
with sports performance: The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey.

Great read, I reread it frequently. Even if you aren't applying it to tennis
it's incredible useful information to be aware of.

------
vyas45
Anyone has thoughts on 'quiet eye' and programming in general. What is the
focus scope ?

~~~
justinzollars
When you are getting grilled by the support team, a VP and your boss about a
fire on production yet one can maintain a crystal clear focus - even writing
solid tests before deploying the hot fix.

------
z3t4
Some people perform better under pressure, but for someone else it might be
the opposite. The trick is to identify what makes you go into the zone. Then
trigger it with some imagination, or actually putting yourself in that kind of
situation.

------
ismail
You could also do online training if anyone is interested:
[http://eyegym.com/](http://eyegym.com/)

------
jpster
this seems of a piece with open focus techniques.

[https://www.amazon.com/Open-Focus-Brain-Harnessing-Power-
Att...](https://www.amazon.com/Open-Focus-Brain-Harnessing-Power-
Attention/dp/1590306120/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OsotDvMJmk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OsotDvMJmk)

------
Frye
Watch any professional skateboard video and you'll see plenty examples of this

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scarejunba
What are actions one can take to train this?

~~~
buserror
I'm not an expert, but I do competitive shotgun shooting -- one thing that I
find is essential is to... not blink, and have your eyes open.

Sounds funny, but it's part of my 'routine' as I wait for the clay disk to
appear; after all the stance bits etc etc, when I'm ready, I'm making sure to
open my eyes wide, defocus on where I expect the clay to 'appear' and then,
call "pull".

Then stuff happens that I'm not entirely aware off for the next 1/2s -- well,
until afterward. As soon as I 'see' a shadow of a clay everything happens and
I'm a bit of a 'passenger' until the shot is away. You see the clay in slow
motion as you mount the gun from your low holding position, while rotating,
and when it's on your shoulder as you rotate you do adjustments 'just so' and
shoot.

And it works a LOT better if you let the autopilot do it, if you try to
'measure' stuff, you'll miss, guaranteed.

Worst case is when the sun is in the way and you have to 'squint' and the
really worst case is when the clay goes from shadow to sunlight (or the other
way around) as you know your retina is going to be laggy.

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sanatgersappa
It's called Mushin. Google it.

~~~
tsumnia
While I agree about mushin, its always better to provide your reasoning rather
than telling someone to "Google it".

