The Sports Gene

[iamshack]

Picked this up last night, haven't been able to put it down.

 

Explores/theorizes/explains why the most elite athletes are so much better than the rest of us.

 

Anyone else read this?

[Steve9347]

Just downloaded it - thanks for the head's up.

[iamshack]

One thing I found really interesting is that MLB hitters never actually "see" the ball as they hit it. In fact, it is humanly impossible to do so when the ball is traveling at rates commonly thrown at that level. What mlb hitters are doing is picking up visual cues from the pitcher, such as arm angle, shoulder movements, etc., and then identifying the type of pitch coming from maybe a milliseconds-long flash of where the seams are on the ball when the pitcher is releasing it, and then literally compiling a "database" in their brains of where that type of pitch, released at that angle and with that arm speed (or whatever other visual cues they are seeing) generally will end up crossing the hitting zone.

 

MLB hitters are literally able to predict where the ball will be, based on all this visual information, and a database of experience they have compiled over years of practice. This requires incredible vision - many baseball players have better than 20/15 or 20/10 vision, something that is incredibly rare in the general population (the physical limits of our vision is thought to be about 20/8), and also something that is rarely talked about.

[Iwritecode]

This was briefly talked about in another thread on here when it was discussed why MLB hitters can't hit a pitch from Jenny Finch.

 

They literally don't have the years of "data" to know where her pitches are going to end up when she throws them.

[southsider2k5]

One thing I found really interesting is that MLB hitters never actually "see" the ball as they hit it. In fact, it is humanly impossible to do so when the ball is traveling at rates commonly thrown at that level. What mlb hitters are doing is picking up visual cues from the pitcher, such as arm angle, shoulder movements, etc., and then identifying the type of pitch coming from maybe a milliseconds-long flash of where the seams are on the ball when the pitcher is releasing it, and then literally compiling a "database" in their brains of where that type of pitch, released at that angle and with that arm speed (or whatever other visual cues they are seeing) generally will end up crossing the hitting zone.

 

MLB hitters are literally able to predict where the ball will be, based on all this visual information, and a database of experience they have compiled over years of practice. This requires incredible vision - many baseball players have better than 20/15 or 20/10 vision, something that is incredibly rare in the general population (the physical limits of our vision is thought to be about 20/8), and also something that is rarely talked about.

 

And the more automatic the recall is, the better the player is. If there is a conscious thought process, the player generally fails. The legend of "over-thinking" is actually true.

[iamshack]

And the more automatic the recall is, the better the player is. If there is a conscious thought process, the player generally fails. The legend of "over-thinking" is actually true.

Yeah, there was one little snippet about how golfers can teach themselves to sing while they putt, occupying the cognitive parts of their brain and allowing themselves to "turn off" their brains...this has shown to actually improve ability to putt.