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				A Quiet Eye Keep your eye on the ball? Research reveals how an athlete's gaze helps make the plays.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: At whatever level this is I play, I really love playing tennis-- for all the reasons that most people enjoy playing sports: the exercise, the competition, the rush that comes from pulling off a difficult play. But until now, the world of sports beyond tennis hasn't interested me much. Ah! And then we became intrigued by all the science and technology that's now being focused on sports and how that's not only improving performances, it's also offering a new window into how our bodies and brains work together. And as a result, I've been in some places I never expected to be: a basketball court, the golf links, a hockey rink, even behind the plate at a major-league baseball park. And you know what? It's been fascinating. Ready? Oh, yeah. ALDA: For instance, there's the question that has long intrigued the University of Calgary's Joan Vickers. Can you get, like, CNN on this? ALDA: Joan wondered where athletes look when they're playing their sport, so she devised a way to find out. Okay. VICKERS: So now, Alan, would you look at point one... ALDA: That black spot on the screen is where my gaze is resting. VICKERS: point four, point five... ALDA: The pupil of my eye is being tracked as it scans the target with the aid of the cameras and mirrors mounted on my head. VICKERS: and nine. Excellent. Okay, here I go. ALDA: Now, my experience with putting is limited to the miniature golf courses I play with my grandkids, which makes me a perfect subject for Joan Vickers, because she wants to know if there's a difference in where a rank amateur like me looks when I'm putting as compared to someone who sinks putts for a living. VICKERS: Notice how the... your gaze actually goes with the ball? Yeah. 95% of beginning golfers do that. ALDA: David Lindsay is a golfer who doesn't hit putts for a living but plays a pretty good amateur game. And he's been working with Joan for several years now. David has been taught by Joan to use his eyes the way she's discovered the experts do: to look steadily at the target for a second or two, then look back at the ball and let his gaze rest there before and even after the stroke. Your gaze is so steady before you hit. And it's very... it's as steady after you've made contact. I just... I want to see if there's a jump at the moment of impact, if your eye flicks unconsciously. ALDA: It's steady. It didn't jump at all. LINDSAY: When I'm doing it well, there's no question in my mind my putting improves dramatically. And when my putting is starting to... you know, go out the window type of thing, it's usually because my eye movements now are starting to become erratic and I'm not following the pattern that I've established. ALDA: So let's see if any of this helps me. For starters, I'm just going to try one steady look at the target before bringing my gaze back to the ball. It's really amazing. It really works. You know, I only tried to do one thing, although I was aware that there were two other things I wanted to do. Actually you changed a phenomenal number of things. ALDA: Oh, I did? It's amazing, actually. ALDA: By changing how I looked at the target-- one steady stare-- I'd stopped my gaze from jumping around. That obviously helped, but I'm still not holding quietly on the ball as I hit it. You're still really... Jumping a little. The club's coming through, the ball's coming through and your eye wants to go with it; and it does, it just takes off. But you have to resist that, because you want that really nice solid impact. Right. ALDA: This time I'm going to concentrate on looking at the ball with what Joan calls a "quiet eye"-- before and after hitting it. On my previous tries I'd never made more than three putts out of six attempts. This time, four under pressure. VICKERS: Did you stop thinking about the mechanics of the club? I don't know if I was ever aware of the mechanics of the club. Like what? What would be an example of that? Well, so many golfers are overwhelmed with the mechanics of their stance... Oh, no, you see... and where the club is moving... I wouldn't think about that because nobody ever told me how to do it, so... You're a free man? ( laughing ): Yeah. That's the other comment that we get, is that by stressing the focus all of a sudden, then you're not completely preoccupied with the mechanics of the stroke. Yes, I can see that. And that gives people more strategies, some more things that they can actually use in order to play better. If I do anything, I think about the cup sucking the ball in. ( laughing ): Marvelous. I have bizarre ways of getting the ball in there. That's excellent. ( both laugh ) ALDA: Joan Vickers believes her quiet-eye concept can help other athletes in pressure situations. For several seasons she's worked to improve the free-throw percentage of the University of Calgary's women's basketball team. The team's coach is Shawnee Harle. HARLE: In the first three, I want you to look right where the net goes through the little ring on the front of the rim. When you look up there, I want you to say "sight focus" and then you're going to shoot. Out loud? Yes, it all has to be out loud. All right? Yep. Nothing but net. Sight focus. ALDA: The "nothing but net" mantra is to settle the player down. Saying "sight focus" ensures her gaze is steady on the target for at least one second. Okay, good. One more. Nothing but net. Sight focus. HARLE: When I watched our players shoot I was amazed at how few of them actually even looked at the rim for probably any more than 200 to 300 milliseconds. We had shooters on our team that were looking at the top of the backboard, the bottom of the net, and completely unaware that they were doing that. This was before they studied the quiet-eye technique? Yes, before we gave them the training. Shawnee's team was shooting 54% when we started working with them. During that first season they improved 12% here in this experimental setting, but it didn't show up in terms of that season of play. But the next year, what, you were, what, 13th or 14th in the nation that year. And then the next year they came second in the country and they had improved by 22%, which is unheard of. ALDA: What's happening in the brain when you do the quiet-eye thing? It seems to recognize how the body wants to really work. The mind wants to get it organized and the body wants to do it. But when you put those two things together, you're putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the whole system and it breaks down. It especially breaks down when a person is under stress. VICKERS: Okay, Alan. ALDA: And speaking of a person under stress... ( laughs ) Sorry about that. ( laughing ) Let's see if I can do that again. ALDA: The idea here is that during the quiet-eye moment, my brain is absorbing and organizing all the information it needs for taking the shot. Once my body starts the action itself, vision becomes irrelevant. In fact, according to Joan, trying to keep my eye on the hoop as I'm throwing is a harmful distraction. Boy, it's very hard to give up on it. ALDA: So, I did take my eye off it as soon as I started to shoot. VICKERS: That's what you're supposed to do. It builds up trust. Actually seeing this, I believe now that I only have to look at it two seconds and then I can let my body do what it does. Exactly. And it goes right in. I mean, it's amazing. It works. HARLE: That was sweet! I'm living proof it works. VICKERS Excellent. ALDA: Okay, good. HARLE: He's got a competitive streak! Yeah. VICKERS: Have we noticed! ( all laugh ) Well, that was really fun. Was it? Good. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, it's... You know what I love about it is, I mean, you do what all the scientists on this program do who we interview. You find a way to look at what people haven't looked at yet and to measure it. And you just lift up the carpet and you show what's under. And we've been walking on the carpet all our lives; we don't know what's under it. Then you just take a peek at it and all of a sudden we have a whole new way to look. And it's counterintuitive. One of the things that I was thinking about when you were shooting is that you've actually changed your technique from when you began. It's a much softer shot. Right? And David, in the golf, was saying the same thing. He's changed his mechanics of his stroke, but we don't teach that. We don't actually teach a change in technique... as much as we teach a change in focus and attention. You change the way you look and when you look, hmm? And that changes the way you do things. VICKERS: Right, and then you reconfigure your body yourself in order to suit that. ALDA: Knowing my love of tennis, Joan indulged me by setting up a version of a study she's done on return of serve in volleyball. What she's interested in is how the eye tracks the ball as it comes across the net. What she found is that good players don't try to follow the ball all the way. Instead they let the ball out of their sight once it gets close, and they hold their gaze steady while they hit it. This is the ball coming through here and you know you have to hit it there. VICKERS: Then you stabilize the gaze actually in front, but the point is you don't have your eye on the ball. I track it over to here, and leave it there and hit the ball. ALDA: Well, it's nice to know I've been doing something right. Take that! I'm ready. ALDA: We obviously couldn't come to Canada for a show on sports science without including hockey. MAN: How does it feel? Something like a hockey helmet? A little heavier, but... ALDA: Becky Kellar is one of a group of young women hockey players having their gaze tracked in the stadium that housed the 1998 Winter Olympic games. These players are Canada's best, training for the 2002 Winter Olympics. The idea here is to find out where Becky is looking when she's playing defense; what she's doing to read the situation in front of her as she and a teammate skate against two opponents. To me, everything happens so fast, I can barely see the puck. VICKERS: The best players are seeing things very soon, much earlier than we ever imagined-- what, on the order of two seconds-- two seconds earlier. And that's what's separating the really skilled players from the not so skilled. ALDA: A slow-motion replay of Becky's gaze shows her checking on the positions of all the players as well as the puck as the play comes toward her and she's deciding on her move. So now she has her. Now she has to step up and move on the other one. ALDA: Watching the replay with us is the coach of the Canadian national team, Danielle Sauvageau. You know, when I was wearing the helmet, I would be surprised sometimes to find out that I wasn't looking where I thought I had been looking. Do you find that with your players, too? Do they come and tell you, "I was looking at her, I was looking at her," and you'd say, "No, you weren't. Here's where you were looking." This is an excellent point because sometimes a player is going to say, "Yes, this is where I was looking" because they know this is where they should be looking, but with that kind of analysis, we can go back and say, "Well, no, see, you were looking at that." ALDA: It's really a tool, then, not just to improve a player's ability but to improve communication among all of you so that you understand the player's experience better. You really can see it through the player's eyes. Yes, sports science helps us coaches in today's way of coaching to understand a little bit more of the player and also for them to understand a little bit more, like, how it's all about. ALDA: Before we left Calgary, I asked to wear the helmet one last time. My question was this: How does a juggler-- even an amateur-- keep track of several objects at once? I always wondered where your eye was when you saw things peripherally and now I see that you can look at something and never move your eye and be aware of all this stuff happening peripherally. It's great. You have a... a vision into stuff that's happening that nobody ever saw before.

				Brainy Putting It happens to the best of us. New insight into the physiology behind the all too familiar phenomenon of 'the choke.'
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: So what is this? What are you going to do to me? We're going to hook up some electrodes to your head, and we're going to look at the electrical activity in different parts of your brain, and they're going to be an indication of what state you're in. You play tennis, right? Yes. Do you play golf? No. You're going to play golf today. Well, I can tell you right now what state I'm in. ALDA: Here we go with the headgear again-- this time a brand new helmet designed to pick up my brain waves. Oh, this is a rubberized one. I've never had one like that, so I'm getting... A little softer. I know all the fashions in these caps. ( group laughing ) You do. That's a new one, isn't that right, Steve? This is probably nice for street wear. ALDA: Blinking-- one, two... ALDA: With my brain on-line, it's time to choose my putter. Well, this seems nice. I don't know what's good or not. ( chuckling ): Well, how would I know? CREWS: Feel. Feel, yes. Look and feel-- you got it. That seems nice. Is this part of it, picking your putter so I feel like I'm in touch with it? Always be in touch with your putter, folks, okay. Are you sure Tiger Woods started this way? Exactly this way. About seven. ALDA: As I make each putt, Debbie's asked me to rate how I feel about it on a scale of one to ten. That seems pretty good, like a seven or eight. Uh, another eight. Nice. Like a six. ALDA: We've come here to Arizona State University straight from Calgary and my quiet-eye training is paying off. CREWS: One, two, three, four, five... Pretty good, huh? ...six-- yeah. You know, what's... I mean, you've been keeping track, but... Six out of 20. but it feels like I ?got closer ? when I thought that... when I felt better about it, you know? There seemed to be a real correspondence there. And you smiled. And I smiled, huh? I smiled when-- before I shot? When you were getting ready. Oh, that's right, I started to notice that. I was starting to feel... In fact, I was starting to act... Toward the end, I was starting to get the feeling this doesn't make any difference. It's fun. I'm just playing. There's a hole and I'll just swing. I'll let the ball go in the hole. ALDA: It turns out that without realizing it, I'd been doing pretty much what Debbie's research suggests is the key to good putting-- getting the two halves of my brain in balance. CREWS: As you're getting ready and you're preparing and you're reading the line and you're making decisions, the left hemisphere, which is your analytic side, your verbal side, your self-talk, is going to be quite active. As you get closer and closer to actually moving the club, the left hemisphere must quiet. That's the consistent finding we've had through all the sports. It must quiet and in essence, the right hemisphere becomes a little more active. Right hemisphere is your rhythm, timing, balance, coordination, creativity, imagery. And so what you achieve in the last second before you move, which is where you're still focusing attention, you achieve a state of balance in essence between the two hemispheres. How about if I do it that way? ALDA: So the question is, how do you get your brain into a state of balance? Now, what's the idea, just to go back and forth? No, the idea is to balance. Oh, balance. Oh, balance. That isn't easy. Boy, that's impossible. Whoa! ALDA: Exactly what balancing my body has to do with balancing my brain isn't immediately obvious. But as I stop trying to figure out how to balance-- a left-brain activity-- and let my body take care of itself-- helped by a little right-brain imagery-- things get easier. No, I'm a cloud. Very good. Every time I think I'm a cloud, it balances. That's really weird. That's your imagery. That's excellent. You're done. I'm done. You're done. Very good. Okay, we're going to have you putt. Have me putt now? Yep. Okay, over down there by the hole. Um, eight. Beautiful. Also eight. ALDA: The EEG confirmed my brain was more balanced after balancing my body. Eight. And I'm giving better ratings to my putts. That felt good. Eight or nine. Now, that's a competitor. They always put the last one in the hole. That's true. ( wheel whirring ) ALDA: But Debbie isn't finished getting my brain into the right putting mode. Just as I'm getting used to the idea that relaxing and letting go is what's important, here I am on a stationary bicycle, getting all pumped up. 60 seconds. Okay, we don't give you much warm-down on this one. Putter. We're going to hook you in. It'll take a couple seconds for the signals to come in. We're on. ALDA: This time my EEG shows my brain is definitely revved up but crucially the extra activity zis still pretty well-balanced between the two hemispheres. It seemed like about a seven or an eight. Eight. Eight. That was a nice putt. That's in. 0My tape can't stop it. That's a nice putt. uUm, nine. Beautiful putt. And I knew it was nine before I saw it go in. Excellent. That was good, too. That was, like, nine. Beautiful. Last one in. That's right-- always the last one in. You should tell me that on every shot. But you know what? When we get your arousal state up, just like here if we say last putt and we get your arousal up, that means you have more activity to work with. If you focus it, which you did beautifully on that putt, the ball goes in the hole. That's true for me on the stage, too. Before I go onstage, I do a lot of exercises... That's right. ...and the audience, of course, gets you up. You know, there's an excitement and you're... It's... it's very interesting that, uh, that extra charge you get helps you concentrate sometimes. ALDA: Debbie has got me tuned up just in time for one of those little surprises the producers of the show love to pull every now and then. Also invited to Debbie Crews' lab today is a real golfer-- LPGA Tournament Player Tina Tombs. It>'s luck.v How much of the game is putting, Tina? The older I get, the more I think that putting is... is basically all of the game. I mean, it comes down to hitting a drive. I mean, I don't think you have to think as much over a drive. At least I don't. I don't think as much over a tee shot as I do over a putt. ALDA: Tina's here to add her expert brain to Debbie's EEG data... Oh! ALDA: But also, I'm just now discovering, to put me under pressure and up the ante on my newfound putting skills. I think what we'll do now is we're going to go sets of five and... and we'll look at number of putts made and... and go back and forth and maybe put a little money on the condition. TOMBS: How many did you make? Oh, I don't remember. Oh, I don't remember. I have it right here, Tina. That's all right. That's all right. I'm so competitive it's just unbelievable. Everybody thinks I'm a nice guy. Is that the hole over there? It's a little thing we developed at the institute. ALDA: Debbie has done several studies on what golfers call "choking." And you get a dollar for every one you make. I know, I know. You're trying to make me nervous. ALDA: That's when anxiety about performing under pressure means your game falls apart. One for one, but you've never played? No. ALDA: Of course I was getting a little help from the special rules of this particular green. Two for two. Do we count that even though it's the speed? If it goes through. So I can belt it and even if it goes through, it's in? Can we have a little quiet on the golf course? Sorry, but I'm trying to get it in the hole. Do you know how many years I've devoted to this game? ALDA: It feels as though with my quiet eye and newly balanced brain at work and, most importantly, with low expectations, I can do no wrong. TOMBS: See now, I think that's a made putt. That was terrible. ALDA: Tina, who clearly should be beating the pants off me, is having a hard time. TOMBS: Get in. That's how hard I'm going to start hitting them. There it is. Beautiful. CREWS: She doesn't have a chance of getting the ball in the hole in the state that she's in because the state is having the perception that she should be beating and winning, uh, the match. What Alan's doing is he's looking at the hole, going there, coming back, getting to the bottom of his breath and go. His mechanics aren't anywhere near as solid as hers, but he's putting the ball in the hole. Are we done? Actually, you can just pay him. No, I'm just teasing. Now, here's the thing: You're... You have a lifetime of experience hitting real, you know, playing real golf. This is, uh, this is a toy thing that's all chaotic. I mean, you couldn't even, uh... It was different. All the bumps were different every couple of times you hit. It doesn't matter to me. All my whole experience in golf is on this stupid rug. You know, so... But you should play. ( group laughing ) If I could take this rug out to the golf course, I'd be great. Okay, step back. ALDA: Uh, if only... I almost fell over. ALDA: Once out on the driving range, my true golfing skills are quickly exposed. What... what... now what? ALDA: But even here, apparently, things aren't hopeless. The Arizona State research program that Debbie Crews is part of is best known in golfing circles for its work on imaging. The pro golfer Phil Mickelson ascribed a recent tour win at least in part to imaging techniques he'd learned here at ASU. CREWS: What we're going to do at this point is we're going to put an image in first of what you want to have happen. There's two things you can do. You can put an image of the ball flying-- landing in that target, okay? And that's going to prep everything to set up the motor program to perform. Then the other thing is you can put an image in of how you want to swing. Do you have any idea of how you swing? Of course not. I don't think so. So we're going to skip that one. ALDA: So here we go-- a little arousal... Add a pinch of imagery. There's the ball sailing into the target. Stir in a little brain balancing and for old times' sake, top it all off with a nice, quiet eye. CREWS: Yeah! Where was it? Just in front. Just in front. Beautiful! ALDA: But enough about me. The real reason we're here is to see Tina at work out here where it counts, while Debbie is actively monitoring her brain-- something that's never been done before. So it's really exciting. We're going to look for that state the same as we did before-- a second before-- and theoretically she gets very quiet, so we should be able to get the data. She's doing full swing outside into a target. And now we have the technology that we actually can go outside and do that. ALDA: And Tina, of course, now that she's where she belongs, drops the ball right into that impossibly small square in the middle of the target. ( group cheering ) Way to go! That's it. That was a 12. That's a 12.

				Baseball Tech Missile-tracking technology help umps refine their skills, plus physicists search for the elusive 'sweet spot.'
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: Last baseball season, the Boston Red Sox were kind enough to let me spend a little time behind the plate... Strike one. ...trying my hand at what is surely one of the toughest jobs in baseball. That's a strike, huh? That was a strike. ALDA: What I'd find most alarming about the job is that you can't second-guess yourself, although plenty of other people do. That was outside the zone, wasn't it? CATCHER: That's a strike. Was that a strike? No kidding. Jeez, no, I... I would talk it over. I mean, don't we want to arrive at consensus here? We don't want to be, like, dictatorial, you know? ALDA: It's clearly time for a review of the strike zone, courtesy of baseball buff Paul Baim. From the hollow just below his knee... Oh, the... down there. okay, to about... to about here. ALDA: Paul Baim is also an engineer in an aerospace company whose specialty is tracking fast-moving objects-- usually things like missiles, but more recently baseballs. ( Alda chuckling ) BAIM: Now, where was that? Looked outside to me. ALDA: Looked outside to me. I'm just watching out for my life here. ALDA: Paul's been workingwith the company that has brought pitch tracking to television, allowing viewers a 3-D graphical view of where a pitch goes and at least a good approximation of the strike zone. It gives TV watchers yet another way to second-guess umpires. Whoa! Hey, that... that dropped in, didn't it? Yeah, that's a definite strike. This guy's doing better and better. And he's not hitting me hardly at all. ALDA: But the current commerciasystem isn't accurate enough-- especially in defining the top and bottom of the strike zone-- to be useful to umpires themselves. BAIM: No one else in the park hasas good a view of the pitch as the umpire does. And so there's really no opportunity for umpires to get any sort of feedback on what they're doing that's objective. They get lots of feedback, but most of it isn't pretty. It's kind of instantaneous, too. ALDA: So Paul Baim set out to give umpires some objective and almost instantaneous feedback by upgrading the pitch tracker already installed in major-league ball parks like Fenway. One of the interesting things about Fenway is that because it's a very old ball park and everything here is pretty much set in its ways, is finding locations for the cameras that would, number one, not get in anybody's way and number two, get the job done that we need to get done. ALDA: So where are they? Well, we have... the pair of high camerasthat actually track the ball are located up in the rafters and you can see there is a pair of cameras up there above the first base line. A pair of identical cameras are up in the rafters up off the third base line. So from the time the pitch leaves the mound here, what's happening? What we do is we concentrate on a piece of that corridor that the ball travels through, with the cameras running continuously. And what the system does is it automatically determines when a ball-sized, ball-shaped object traveling in the right direction at about a reasonable speed enters the field of view. And at that point, the system says, "Well, this is probably a pitch." ALDA: These images show both the predicted and the actual path of the ball on its way to the plate. A graphic is constructed from the images showing the ball's flight from different viewpoints. The cameras stop tracking the ball where the batter might interfere with the image, which raises an obvious question. ALDA: If the cameras can't take a picture of the ball for the last three or four feet, how are you able to give us a picture here of what happens to the ball, like when it drops off sharply and that kind of thing? Well, what we do is we use a model of the physics of a baseball in flight and apply that to the data that we actually measure. And that lets us extrapolate the path of the ball for those last three or four feet very accurately. The system is accurate to within essentially about an inch and a quarter in the sense of the commercial system. And in the case of the umpires' system, it's accurate to about half an inch. ALDA: The trickiest thing to measure accurately is the top and bottom of the strike zone. Because it's set by the batter's height and stance, it's different for every pitch. The new system uses two additional cameras, located in the dugouts, to take qa snapshot of the batter just after the pitch is thrown. This snapshot is used to define the strike zone as the pitch crosses the plate a few tenths of a second later.