Daniel Peterson's Blog, page 2

Learning From Ghosts - How AI And Machine Learning Are Changing Sports

It was an odd but effective analogy that the Manchester United players heard that day from their manager. “I remember going to see Andrea Bocelli, the opera singer. I had never been to a classical concert in my life. But I am watching this and thinking about the coordination and the teamwork, one starts and one stops, just fantastic. So I spoke to my players about the orchestra - how they are a perfect team.”

Sir Alex Ferguson, who won 38 trophies during his 26 years in charge at Old Trafford,...

How Our Eyes Actually Track A Fastball

There’s no argument that a baseball batter’s ability to track an incoming pitch is critical to hitting performance but it’s the details of how his eyes perform that task that researchers are still figuring out.

While previous studies have confirmed that expert hitters are better than novices at tracking a moving object, we still need to breakdown the process if we want to build better training tools for athletes. A study released this month in PLOS ONE took a big step to understanding this vi...

Repetition (And A Good Follow-Through) Is The Mother Of Skill

Coaches preach it endlessly, “Always finish with the correct follow-through.”  In baseball, football, tennis, golf, soccer or any sport requiring a skilled targeting movement, how your throw, swing or kick ends up can determine the ball’s speed and direction.  But how can something you do after contact with an object affect its motion? Once a quarterback lets go of the football, the position of his arm after release seems meaningless.  New research from the University of Cambridge has found...

Was Mental Fatigue To Blame For Messi's Miss at Copa America?

In perhaps a defining moment in his career, Lionel Messi missed his penalty kick at the end of  the 2016 Copa America Final. The soccer world asked how this iconic player, voted to be the best in the world five times, could blast the ball over the goal in such a crucial moment at a major tournament? Certainly, Messi had played in overtime games before and was able to handle the physical toll. However, the mental stress of the moment may have been too much for his world-class skill to take ov...

Teach Your Brain How To Hit That Curveball

This is the year. This is the season when you finally learn to hit that curveball. But better yet, you will be able to SEE the curveball right out of the pitcher’s hand and not be fooled. It’s not about the bat or your gloves or even your stance in the batter’s box. It’s about what’s under your helmet. From the split second your eyes pick up the ball’s spin and trajectory, your brain is performing multiple calculations and recognizing the slightest patterns so that you can consciously identi...

Catching Flies And Hitting Fastballs Have A Lot In Common

Most baseball coaches and a few parents have learned the futility of instructing a young batter to “keep their eye on the ball.” Studies have shown that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for human eyes to track the trajectory of the pitch all the way across the plate. Even at the slower speeds of Little League pitchers, the shorter distance to the plate forces batters to pick-up early cues of the ball’s flight and speed, then make predictions of where and when it will cross the plate....

How Peyton Manning Rebuilt His QB Brain

Photo Credit: Denver Post 

Back in 2013, before his recent retirement, before his second Super Bowl win, Peyton Manning wasn’t sure if he would ever play football again.  After surgeons removed the bulging cervical intervertebral disc in his neck, the pain was gone but then the rehab learning process was just beginning.  

Damage to the surrounding nerves along with new metal hardware now holding together the vertebrae above and below the injured area caused a communications disruption between...

Why Young Athletes Should Play Super Mario 3D Instead Of Angry Birds

Just about every parent has said it, “Stop wasting your day playing those video games! Get outside, run around, enjoy the fresh air.” It seems like obvious, logical advice for kids growing their brains and their bodies. While there is nothing wrong with playing outside, the claim that video games have no redeeming value is starting to be refuted by science. The latest example is a study by researchers at the University of California-Irvine that found that playing 3D video games actually impr...

Why 10,000 Hours Of Practice Isn't The Whole Story

Credit: Princeton University

Practice, practice, practice! That’s been the advice to young athletes for years but especially in the last decade as the road to 10,000 hours of deliberate practice became the accepted timeline to sports mastery.

Yet many research papers and anecdotal stories point out the many exceptions on both sides of the equation; kids with amazing skills at a young age, overnight teen sensations who just started playing a sport and twenty-somethings who are still trying to...

Reduced School Recess Time Actually Hurts Young Brains (And Math Scores)

In an interesting and frustrating Catch-22, school administrators, in an effort to raise standardized math test scores among their students, often decrease physical education and recess time to keep the kids in the classroom longer. 

However, several recent research studies have shown that students who are more fit perform better in school. So, reducing their opportunities to move and be active so they can spend more time learning math could indirectly be slowing down their learning. In fac...