Relieve your sore neck and shoulders in seconds
It’s Saturday. I’m driving down Morrissey blvd. Traffic is light.
It happens in slow motion. A squeal, tires on pavement. A blue sedan hops into traffic and directly into the path of the white van in front of me. It’s a cut off. The Sedan has a death wish. The van swerves, brakes and I’m about to smash into the Van’s rear end.
VISION IS A SKILL
I never thought vision could improve. I thought that the quality of your sight was a trick of fate. You either have good eye sight or you don’t.
I was wrong.
There are some components of vision that are inherited at birth. Some of us can see clearer than others. Such is life. As I grew older and my distance vision faded I resigned myself to thicker glasses like there was nothing I could do about it. To a large extent clarity is only correctible through corrective lenses or surgery. But your eyes move around in your head. That movement is controlled by muscles. Muscles can be trained.
Furthermore the quality of your eye movement can affect how you move. If you see better out of your left eye you may find your head tilting to the right as you bring that left eye further to the center. Near sighted people often squint, shrug the shoulders, and crane the neck forward to see things better. These postures can become more or less permanent if they are repeated day after day year after year.
Vision is very important to good movement and can make the difference between a good athlete and a great one. Adequate movement and fluid movement. Consider that the vision coach for the Carolina Hurricanes tested his entire team and then listed the scores from highest to lowest on a blackboard. Next to that he wrote the salaries of the players from highest to lowest. He could draw a straight line from high vision scores to high salaries. The players who could see best could play best. That gives new meaning to the Wayne Gretzky quote:
I’m willing to bet Wayne could see exactly where the puck was heading, at what speed, relative to his speed, without having to turn his head, better than anyone else. He could find the puck better, and faster and that played a role in his greatness.
Consider that all the members of the US Pan Am Baseball tested by the same Doctor above had the highest measurable vision clarity score (20/8). Pretty sure that lets you see the seams on the ball as it speeds to the plate at 100 mph. You can’t hit what you can’t see.
Consider a college football program that taught peripheral vision to it’s athletes and saw concussions fall from 30 to 1 over 2 years. The players’ blindsides got smaller; they could see the tough hits coming with enough time to protect themselves or move out of the way.
Consider the basketball or Soccer player who is described as ‘having eyes in the back of their head’; An aphorism for amazing peripheral vision skills.
I’ll do one more, and it’s personal. My senior season of Cross Country I was in the best shape of my life. I ran my 2nd fastest mile ever in the first mile of a 5 mile race. But I consistently underperformed. I raced maybe 6 times, and 4 of those races I got dry heaves or puked mid race and it effected my times and my confidence.
I thought I was a head case (well… more than usual).
I never considered it could be my vision.
Fast forward 15 years and I’m studying vision drills and their importance in movement and it dawns on me, Junior year I ran great but three times I nearly ran the wrong way (thank you to those who redirected me). My distance vision was, and is, terrible. Senior season I got contacts. Senior season I began to dry heave. I decided, years later, the reason I was dry heaving was because with my corrected vision I was overstimulated visually.
If only I could prove my theory.
A few years ago my friend Kim texts me. She is dry heaving or puking on almost every run. She doesn’t know what’s going on. I asked some questions about what she was eating, when she was eating. Nothing made sense. Then I asked her if she had begun wearing contacts or had lasik.
She had new contacts.
She didn’t wear them on the next run. No dry heave.
BOOM!
Long story short: vision effects movement.
Rounded shoulders and a stooped spine happen when we feel threatened. The hard portions of our body cover the soft ones.
For ages I have had a basic understanding of why this works. If you can see the world clearly your mind and body relax. If you can’t your body goes into threat posture. Threat posture rounds the shoulders forward and stoops the spine.
Another reason these work: If your eye muscles move well then you rely less on the neck and shoulders to position you to see. The neck and shoulders muscles aren’t overworked/strained.
Do you have a tight neck and shoulders that massage work, corrective exercise and stretching just won’t help? Perhaps you can fix yourself in seconds with some vision drills. I’ve seen some truly shocking improvements in neck/shoulder range of motion after doing just a simple set of 5 pencil pushups.
The skills to track objects, coordinate vision with movement, see peripherally, change focus from close to far away and back, follow objects without moving your head or neck, or just stare at objects can improve and the results can CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
If you have a stiff neck or limited range of motion in your shoulders take 2 minutes, watch these quick demos and see if you improve.
PENCIL PUSHUPS
NEAR/FAR DRILLS
EYE CIRCLES
MAYBE I’LL TRY OUT FOR THE BRUINS?
The stories of how much vision affects fluid movement has me thinking, ‘Maybe if I clean up my vision I can try out for the Bruins’. So for the past month I’ve been exercising my eyes muscles with the vision gym from Z Health. I take 20 minutes every day and follow along with 12 drills and 2 resets. Heading into my “workouts” I was aware that I had some problems/deficits. If I stand close to someone they often double and I have to adjust my stance or close one eye to see them clearly. This makes eye contact a chore sometimes. It was difficult to track objects without moving my head. I quickly lose focus on objects or the object immediately splits and I see two objects. My peripheral vision is good on the right side, non existent on the left.
Doing pencil Pushups. Feeling cute, might delete later. Kidding aside doing this exercise has really cleaned up some visual deficits I have.
I’ve been diligent. I do my drills every day. Over the past month my performance in almost every drill has improved. The objects I track split in two significantly less. I can change focus quicker. I was FINALLY able to see an image in a magic eye painting. My peripheral vision has improved significantly. I can stand close to someone without seeing them in stereo.
THE EFFECT ON PEOPLE WITH SHOULDER AND NECK TENSION
These drills have an amazing effect on clients with neck and shoulder tension. I’ve seen clients who can barely shift their neck two inches to either side improve their range and quality of Motion significantly with one simple drill.
Do them every day and you will be pleased with the results.
Fortunately I’ve never had any neck or shoulder issues worse than the occasional stiffness after a weird night’s sleep. The drills haven’t cleaned up any lingering issues for me. I have noticed my neck range motion is better, but truthfully, it wasn’t bad before.
So how to assess my personal value of doing vision drills?
DID THE DRILLS WORK?
I’m in the car. Morrissey Blvd.
The blue car cuts off the van.
Truth be told I saw the blue car cut off the van before it happened (peripheral vision training). I kept my eyes on that situation while I checked if there was another car to my left (peripheral vision again). I’m able to see the left hand lane without taking my eyes off the fast approaching van (eye switches). I judge the distance between myself and the van to be sufficient to allow me to stop (depth perception) but instead adjusted the path of the car without over correcting (depth perception/hand eye coordination/change in focus). I drove safely from the scene.
Or maybe it was fight or flight instincts. I’ll never know 100%. I believe my training helped.
CONCLUSION:
Vision is a skill. It can be trained and it can be improved. The drills are a tad monotonous but should I ever get neck tightness, shoulder pain, or a tryout with the Bruins I know I’m heading straight back to the vision gym.
