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Last night I got on a video call with a tennis pro from Texas whose player suffered a concussion which also resulted in occular nerve damage. That 15 year old is now mostly blind in their right eye. The injury is 18 months old, but this young man still has an opportunity to use great brain plasticity to maximize his existing visual abilities. With some concentrated effort he can improve how he sees, and reduce the 20 swings and misses out of 350 shots. We talked a while. This was inspired by his Facebook post. What amazes me on a daily basis is the propensity of coaches to offer advice before they even understand the problem. In fact, there was some advice given that could be considered dangerous. There were some possible satisfactory answers, but they could be hit and miss. Great coaches don't miss often. Mediocre coaches miss regularly, and because of the grace given by students, they don't understand that they have damaged their reputation. Some students take the miss personally and thus lose confidence.
Ultimately Cris needs to fully discover how his student sees, how good is the injured eye, and how to make best use of it. This morning I texted him to say "keep the frame with the peri feral vision as long as possible" and "find the level where the player makes 99% of the shots in the strings, increasing the challenge level until that drops to 95%, then dwell at that level until he returns to 99%.
See the call :
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Bill Patton has been in the Sports Coaching Industry for over 30 years, and has mastered his craft. He currently works with CEOs of Start Ups, High Ranking Military Leaders, The Winning Summit, Tennis Innovation Week, and BrainSports.Coach a new site that delivers cutting edge brain research. Bill’s mission is to give you the competitive edge by delivering fundamental, non-conventional, counter-intuitive, nuanced skills to take your game, coaching, learning and parenting to a new level. The main objectives of this blog is to give the very latest, most ignored, and opposing views of conventional wisdom, so that you won’t have to make the mistakes Bill formerly made in using his own supercomputer. Much has been about becoming 1% better, and Coach Patton is dedicated to his own constant improvement and yours. Get a FREE 20 minute Sports Brain Consultation.
Bill is the author of 12 books, formerly a certified tennis teaching professional for over 25 years, before now settling on the title Sports Neuroscientist. He has a B.S. Industrial Psychology, and written a Masters Thesis in Education.
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