Quiet Eye & Deep Focus Improve Shot Making Accuracy
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| Johnny “Rocket” Demet taking aim at Hammer Heads |
I’ve just come across summaries of two related University of Florida studies that provide compelling evidence on how to improve one’s shot making ability in pool and in other self-paced sports that involve focusing on a target. Think foul shooting in basketball and putting in golf, along with darts, archery and target shooting. The key finding in each of these studies was that performance improved when outside influences could be blocked out and focus could be held on the target for several seconds.
Unlike in my previous article on improving performance with a preshot routine, where the research was done using foul shooting in basketball and applied analogously to pool, the research done in one of these two studies was actually done using pool players (the other was done using rifle shooters).
In the pool shooting study, done by Robert Singer, then chairman of the University of Florida’s Department of Exercise and Sports Sciences, and former graduate student Shane Frehlich, 24 pool players wore infrared eye-tracking devices that monitored their eye movement during the shot preparation phase, between getting down over the ball and actually shooting.
Half of the participants were casual players and the other half were highly skilled. The two differences in performance between the groups were that the highly skilled players made fewer eye movements switching their focus between the cue ball and the object ball, but they focused on those targets longer. Frehlich advised that this “quiet eye” phenomenon, i.e., shifting focus less frequently but for longer duration, was key to a player’s success. Singer stated it slightly differently when referring the more proficient shooters; “They’ve learned more economical and efficient visual search strategies.”
Pool players wore infrared eye-tracking devices that monitored their eye movements.
Four months later, on October 5, 1999, Assistant Professor Christoper Janelle, also of the University of Florida’s Department of Exercise and Sports Sciences, released his study done with 25 target shooters, 12 of whom were qualified as experts based on their competitions within the previous year. Janelle generalized his findings to any self-paced sports that involve focusing on a target.
As in Singer’s study on pool players, Janelle tracked quiet eye duration, the length of time between the final focus on the target and the actual shot. He also measured brain wave activity, comparing the activity of the two halves of the brain to each other.
The results both confirmed Singer’s earlier study and strengthened it. Experts wait longer to actually shoot once focusing on their targets. They had much higher levels of alpha waves in the left hemispheres of their brains, suppressing the analytical thought processes which can interrupt deep concentration. They do this much more effectively than those who performed less accurately.
“This is a very robust finding,” Janelle said. “This isn’t just about aiming, it’s about dwelling. You’re giving yourself a better chance to respond correctly if you look at the target longer and block out other mental reactions.”
The highly skilled players made fewer eye movements switching their focus between the cue ball and the object ball, but they focused on those targets longer.
The highly skilled shooters had quiet-eye periods of 12 seconds, contrasted with the 8 seconds of the lesser skilled shooters. The brain wave monitoring equipment also showed that for the highly skilled shooters, the alpha wave activity patterns were significantly different between the 2 brain hemispheres, but in the lesser skilled group there were no differences.
“This will give us a better approach to execute a specific shot,” said H.Q. Moody, the national shooting coach trainer for the National Rifle Association and a participant in Janelle’s study. “It’s something that we expected, but this is an important validation. Once the fundamentals are learned, then shooters can learn to use their brain in the correct way, and we’ll have something more specific to focus on in teaching.”
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6 Responses to “Quiet Eye & Deep Focus Improve Shot Making Accuracy”
Quiet Eye & Deep Focus significantly Improve Shot Making | Pool … - December 15th, 2008
[...] the original post here: Quiet Eye & Deep Focus significantly Improve Shot Making | Pool … [...]
killerq
- December 18th, 2008
Hi John, Just wanted to say what a Great blog you have going here. I hope you keep up the work and can reach alot of players who are as focused at getting better as we are.
This is a game of calming frustration if that makes sense. Mabey this will help those get betteer!!!!
Shane
- January 10th, 2009
Hi John,
Thank you for citing my research! The study you mention in this article was part of my dissertation work at UF. Since then, other research has confirmed the importance of the “quiet eye” in manual aiming tasks such as billards.
One thing I think it is important to mention about the study… when the highly-skilled players missed shots, it was because their quiet eye duration was significantly lower than when they successfully made their shots. Thus, the quiet eye duration not only differentiates the expert from the novice, but it also goes a long way in explaining why even the most expert of players miss their shots (especially shots they otherwise should have made).
Cheers!
Shane Frehlich
John Biddle
- January 11th, 2009
I’m happy to see you pop in for a visit. I’m especially happy to hear about the correlation between lower than expected performance and lack of quiet eye among the expert shooters. This is great stuff and points strongly to the value of your research. Keep up the great work, and if you have knowledge of other research you think we might be interested in, don’t hesitate to point me to it, or submit a guest post.
Thanks again for extending the conversation.
Steve Press
- March 26th, 2009
great article. Any ideas on how to work on developing a “quiet eye” for billiards. thanks
John Biddle
- March 28th, 2009
Steve, I don’t think it’s complicated, it just requires you to do it all the time. Learn to focus on the object ball for a couple of continuous seconds before you pull the trigger. Longer is OK, and might be useful when you begin this in earnest, just don’t get carried away. Best of luck with it, and come back and let us know if it helped you or not.
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