Tag: dr. michael peters

See to Play

About a month back I had the pleasure of reading a new book, See to Play: The Eyes of Advanced Athletes by Dr. Michael Peters, discussing the role of the visual system in athletics, as well as some easy at-home assessment and training techniques to assess specific visual qualities. I was really impressed with the content and user-friendly nature of the book. I strongly believe that a lot of players AND students have significant performance limitations based on visual limitations that are simply missed in traditional screening. I also believe that this information provides an alternative explanation to some of the postural, motor, and musculoskeletal issues we see commonly AND heavily influences symptoms and return to play times following a concussion. With all that said, I’m excited that I was able to get Dr. Peters to do an interview for us regarding the visual system and the role it plays and athletic performance. Without further adieu, Dr Peters…

Dr. Michael Peters

KN: Dr. Peters, thank you so much for taking the time to do the interview. This is an important topic that many athletes aren’t very well informed about! Before we dive in, can you briefly tell us a bit about yourself?

MP: I am an optometrist who has been in private practice since 1988. I was an athlete that was weeded out at the college football level because I could not see to play. Contact lenses did not work for me and glasses did not work for me. I made it my life’s mission to make sure this wouldn’t happen to other athletes. Through my experience, it appears 4 out of 10 athletes don’t make it to the professional level because of something wrong with their visual system.

Cam Ward demonstrating the importance of a well-tuned visual system.

I’ve been the team eye doctor for the Carolina Hurricanes since they moved from Hartford in 1997. I’m the team eye doctor for the Durham Bulls (AAA Tampa Rays), USA National Baseball Team, the Carolina Mudcats (A Cleveland Indians) and Carolina Rail Hawks. I’ve worked with athletes in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS.

KN: Given your experience working with NHL players, can you explain the role the visual system plays in hockey performance?

MP: Hockey is one of the fastest and potentially dangerous sports for our body. Our eyes are our first line defense from injury. Our bodies fight and flight mechanism is on high alert and this is the first role of vision. This is why learning proper gaze control is important. Hockey players need to use their peripheral vision to take in more and make sure that they are looking at the correct locations on the ice. Leaving you head on a swivel means you’re prone to looking at one place too long and you’re going to get a bad hit. Ryan Murphy’s hit last year is a good example. Here is a link to see that hit:

If his gaze was up and he looked to the wide side of the ice (not on the puck) this hit would have been avoided.

In my book, See To Play, I discuss the detailed vision zone. In my opinion, this is the most important trait for hockey players. The athletes with larger zones see more of the ice, see more of the play developing and can react to where things need to be on the ice to make the play.

Visual acuity is also very important because this affects reaction time. Athletes who don’t see clearly do not react as quickly or accurately.

KN: Interesting. With all of that in mind, what limitations do you see commonly?

MP: Athletes choose to see less clear than their genetic potential allows them. Athletes overlook vision. They think they see “good enough”. The problem with that thinking is that elite athletes see the best! They’re vision is awesome. This is because of a physical trait that they were gifted with or they were smart enough to get to the eye doctor early and often. Maximizing visual acuity insures athletes are allowing their eye hand coordination to develop to its fullest potential

Another limitation I find is that athletes don’t use their complete area of vision. The detailed vision zone is the most important visual trait for hockey athletes and through vision training, athletes can insure they are maximizing their genetic potential and not allowing this zone to shrink due to disuse. Chapter 3 in my book, See To Play, is dedicated to this topic.

KN: What visual system qualities may be overlooked in a typical eye exam?

MP: During routine eye exams, eye doctors test for visual acuity and eye health. We don’t normally test for an athlete’s detailed vision zone, their speed of focus and perception. Separate exams, known as sports vision exams, provide this extra testing to help fully evaluate athlete’s visual system.

KN: That has certainly been my experience. None of the youth and college athletes I’ve talked to are even aware that this type of testing is out there. It’s a shame given how crucial it is to their success.

Last, but certainly not least, what role does the visual system play in returning from injuries like concussions?

MP: The eyes take a picture and send it back to the brain to decipher it. Concussions can affect the part of the brain that is in charge of figuring out the picture the eyes have taken. Athletes with visual issues in their concussions will complain of blurred vision, dizziness, light sensitivity, decreased concentration, anxiety when walking into a crowd of people and motion sickness when driving or riding in a car.

Usually, these visual issues resolve with rest. For the athletes with lingering symptoms, we use vision training to help speed up recovery.

“I had a wonderful experience working with Dr. Peters while recovering from my concussion. His techniques are cutting edge and results-driven based on his professional experience with countless athletes. Dr. Peters’ ability to interpret and diagnose visual symptoms, along with the capacity to objectively measure one’s progress in recovering from those symptoms makes consulting Dr. Peters a priority for any brain injury.

How concussions can affect the visual system, and how the visual system interacts with cognitive and vestibular functions during concussion recovery is just beginning to be understood. Dr. Peters is no doubt a leader in that research and a developer of new therapeutic techniques based on its findings. As a professional athlete, and having recently recovered from concussion, I would consider any treatment plan that does not include dorsal stream visual therapy as incomplete.” – Jay Harrison, Carolina Hurricanes

KN: Dr. Peters, thank you for taking the time to provide some insight into the importance of the visual system. We greatly appreciate it!

For more information, check out SeeToPlay.com!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Pick up a copy of See To Play and try out the visual assessments at home!

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This Week in Hockey Strength and Conditioning

I hope you’ve had a great week. It’s been a bit of a change of pace here as our nights have slowed down because a lot of our kids are away at camps or vacations. The downtime has been great to dive a little deeper into some of the manual therapy work I’ve been learning over the last few weeks. Never a dull moment!

I have a few exciting posts coming up in the next couple of weeks so stay tuned for those. This past week was also a bit of change as I featured primarily the work of other people. It was probably a welcomed changed if you’ve been reading my ramblings for the last several months! Check out what you’ve been missing in the world of Hockey Strength and Conditioning.

We’ve also added some new content at our Hockey Strength and Conditioning membership site.

Darryl Nelson added a video of an exercise he uses with his players that have an upper body injury that prevents them from doing cleans. I really like the concept here, and it will likely be something I use in the future. I may tweak the performance of it slightly more so it’s more of a traditional clean movement (e.g. bar/weight path), but tough to say without really having tried it.

Click here to watch the video >> 1-Arm Cleans

I added a new article on the visual system based on information I’ve primarily learned from Pete Friesen with the Hurricanes and the book “See to Play” from Dr. Michael Peters, who is an optometrist that works with the Hurricanes (among other teams). I’m excited that Dr. Peters has agreed to do an interview for us in the near future as his book was PACKED with really valuable, interesting information that I think will benefit all of you. In the meantime, this article introduces a few concepts of how the complexities of the visual system can affect performance and recommends a couple great resources to find more information.

Click here to read the article >> Looking Deeper Into the Visual System

Speaking of Coach Friesen, we also added a notice about the 2012 Friesen PhysioFitness Summit. I had a great time at this a few years back and took a lot of notes. Unfortunately, the majority of my continuing education and travel schedule is booked for the rest of the year so I won’t be able to make it, but I highly recommend you make the attempt if you’re a fitness or rehab professional.

Click here for more information >> Friesen PhysioFitness Summit

Also, you can check out the recap article I wrote about a few of the major topics I learned at the one I attended!

Click here to read >> Friesen Physio-Fitness Summit Recap

We have a few good forum discussions going that are worth checking out as well. When you log in, make sure you check out:

Programming Questions
Conditioning
Psoas Specific Work
Volume Control

Sean Skahan, Darryl Nelson, and Mike Potenza have provided a ton of great feedback to the members that have asked questions and I’ve learned quite a bit from both our members and the exchange with Sean, Darryl and Mike.

That’s a wrap for today. As always, if you aren’t a member yet, I encourage you to try out Hockey Strength and Conditioning for a week. It’ll only cost $1, and if it’s not the best buck you’ve ever spent, I’ll personally refund you!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Vision Training for Hockey

As I mentioned on Monday, I was recently invited by Carolina Hurricanes long-time Strength and Conditioning Coach Pete Friesen to attend the Friesen Physio-Fitness Summit. While I thought all the presentations were informative, one that really stuck out to me was from Dr. Michael Peters, OD. Dr. Peters spoke about the importance of vision in elite level athletics. Intuitively, it makes sense that vision is important to high level performance. After all, if you can’t see, it’s going to be nearly impossible for you to react to the play around you (this is what makes blind individuals playing sports so remarkable!).

Chicks dig blind athletes.

Performance Implications
With that said, vision plays a more profound role in our performance and more people suffer from vision impairments than we may realize. For starters, Dr. Peters pointed out that “ideal” vision is not 20/20 like most people believe, but 20/8. For people with uncorrected vision less than 20/20 (more on this in a second), this discrepancy becomes increasingly relevant. This is especially true in light of the fact that roughly 25% of your vision feeds into other systems, such as the vestibular system. In other words, the clarity at which we view the world drives performance through other mechanisms that affect our perception of balance, internal and external movement, and overall awareness of our surroundings.

Somewhat astoundingly, Dr. Peters noted that over 60% of the US population ages 18-25 needs correction. The take home message here was that, as a population, we need to start taking a more proactive role in protecting our vision. This starts with getting it checked regularly, starting at a young age.

See. Glasses aren’t so bad.

Vision Training for Hockey
From a training standpoint, Dr. Peters alluded to a couple different ways of improving vision for sports. The first was “to point your eyes where you’re aiming.” At Endeavor, we started encouraging our athletes to do this with our medicine ball throws. We cue them to pick a spot on the wall and throw the ball as hard as you can at that spot (using specific techniques that we teach). This reinforces great habits that will positively impact passing and shooting accuracy.

For all athletes, we also cue “eyes first” on all transitional speed work. This helps get the athlete in the habit of looking at where they want to go before they start in that direction. This is a simple, but extremely important habit. Unexpected obstacles in sports are a common factor in injuries. As an example, think of a player cutting back with the puck (without looking) directly into an oncoming opponent’s shoulder (concussion!).

Dr. Peters also discussed the importance of visualization in athletics. For those of you that are unfamiliar, visualization refers to mentally playing a movie of yourself performing a certain skill, set of skills, or living through a competition. The idea is to visualize yourself being successful, which will help reinforce your ability to be successful in real life. Many high level athletes have been doing this for decades, but Dr. Peters pointed out a pretty unique idea. He mentioned that it may be more effective to visualize yourself being successful from both a 1st and 3rd person vantage point. In other words, picture yourself being successful through your eyes and through the eyes of someone watching from the stands/sidelines.

Take Home Message
In the pursuit of on-ice excellence, every helpful piece of information counts. To this extent, vision training is drastically overlooked by most athletes. Getting your vision checked on a regular basis, and following the training techniques discussed above will undoubtedly help improve your performance.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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