Sensory Training- the Blue Ocean of Sports Conditioning

We just spent four days on the campus of Nike's world headquarters where we trained on the research and utilization of a new product.  The campus is unbelievable and the team working on this new product was second to none.

Nike has launch a new product called Nike Sparq Vapor Strobes, essentially this is a very high tech pair of glasses that "blink" at various tempos to disrupt vision and force our athletes to use "their minds eye" to track the ball and enhance reaction time.  The results of this new product have been nothing short of extraordinary.  Research from Duke University showed major improvements in the following categories:

1. The ability to process subtle motions (imagine a running back cutting and faking).  This information is so subtle and so quick that it is hard to detect, let alone react and respond.  The Strobes enhanced this cabability.

2. Predicting the timing of a moving object.  Imagine an outfielder trying to run down a deep fly ball, head bouncing up and down as they run and trying to get to the place where they can make the catch by judging the speed and height of the ball.  The Nike Sparq Vapor Strobe training improved this ability.

3. Maintaining fleeting information in memory (rear view mirror analogy).  Consider a soccer goalie who needs to be aware of where offensive players are on both sides of the field.  Having the ability to recall this information makes a good goalie great in any sport (hockey, lacrosse, soccer, field hockey, water polo, etc).   The results of the Duke study showed 10 percent overall boost in maintaining this information.  Essentially, we are training the brain to interpret information it receives from the eyes quicker!  How cool is that!?             

Here is a quote from a Duke Basketball player, "When I am wearing the Strobes its like a hand in my face.  When I take them off I feel wide open."

So, does it work.  No doubt.  Just consider if two athletes are basically the same physically, the one who processes sports information more quickly through their eyes (which is 80 percent of the information provided in athletics) will get to more balls, make more tackles, etc, than the athlete of equal physical capabilities.  We are using this in-season to fine tune the senses pregame and annually to make these sensory adaptations stick all year round!  

Athletic Republic- Frontenac, is one of the first to have this product available for retail sale and incorporated it into our training programs.  If you have an athlete that is struggling to anticipate on defense, or react with a quick first step, or make solid contact with a baseball, this could be the answer!  I trained my children on it for the first time on Sunday and saw some immediate improvements in catching and hitting. 

Free session for anyone who wants to experience this new innovation that will catch the sports training world by storm!  Please email daleh@nutriformance.com for more information.  We will be hosting a free parents and coaches clinic in the upcoming weeks, please email me if you would like to receive the clinic dates.