Jeremy McGrath's Advantage?

How many of you remember watching Jeremy McGrath dominate Supercross? One thing that struck me about Jeremy was that he seemed to always know what was happening everywhere on the track. I remember some people commenting that he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. However, to me, it seemed like he had a super wide field of vision and very quick vision. He was aware of events (crashes, misplaced hay bails, etc.) well ahead of his position on the track. Therefore, when he came into a section of the track with problems, he was rarely caught off guard -- and therefore, he didn't lose much speed.

I personally believe that one of Jeremy's great advantages was that he had better vision than the average competitor. By better vision, I certainly don't mean that he could see 20/15 or 20/10 while most of his competitors were not seeing better than 20/20. I don't have any idea what Jeremy's visual acuity was compared to his competitors. I also don't think his visual acuity (i.e., the "20/20"-type measurement) is meaningful in this context.

I believe Jeremy's vision advantage was related to factors such as his ability to maintain focus, his ability to quickly change focus, his peripheral (side) vision, his (mental) field of view (think of a panoramic camera), his eyes's ability to deal with glare, and things like this. In addition, his vision advantage was probably based on good habits such as looking ahead and scanning the track.

When I learned to fly airplanes, I was taught how to scan the instrument panel. A VFR pilot should always be on the lookout for other aircraft in order to avoid mid-air collisions. Therefore, the pilot's attention needs to be on the sky outside the airplane. A pilot who needs to stare at each of the multitude instruments on the control panel inside the airplane will have his or her attention off of the sky far too long to be safe. Therefore, my flight instructor taught me a method for quickly scanning all the instruments in a very short period of time so I could get my eyes back on the sky almost immediately. I think Jeremy must have used a similar technique to scan the race track. I suspect that Ricky and Bubba and Chad are better than average at doing this as well.

Other racers comment on how they are amazed that these top guys are able to find obscure new lines during the middle of a race. I know that when I raced, I tended to get a sort of tunnel vision that made me focus on my line in the track and I was not cultivating awareness of new lines developing on the other side of the track, for example. I also had the bad habit of looking too close in front of where my bike was. I didn't look far enough ahead, especially early in my career. I would often come around a corner or over a jump and have to react instantly to avoid a collision with a downed rider. In motocross or supercross, those situation will come up. But I learned later in my racing career that the really good riders often saw the dangerous situations way before they were on top of them. And I think the ability to spot new lines across the track from your original line is a related skill. These are primarily vision skills.

People in the racing world have not yet focused enough attention on the fact that going fast depends so much on seeing well. It all comes down to fit eyes. Fit eyes are eyes that work really well at high speed athletic activities. This is a far different situation from reading letters on a black and white card under controlled lighting conditions and at a leisurely pace.

If your eyes are not fit enough, you can improve their fitness just like you can improve your cardiovascular fitness or your strength or your immune system functioning. In the old days, racers left their physical conditioning to chance. Today, the top guys all take physical training seriously -- and they should. But I believe virtually every racer is leaving their eye and vision fitness to chance.

Let's speculate for a moment. What if one of the guys who typically finishes off the podium has the riding skills and the physical fitness, but is missing the vision skills? Training to achieve fit eyes could put a racer like this on the podium.

If you don't believe me, try this simple test: ride with restricted vision. There are various ways you can restrict your vision and you can feel free to experiment with a variety of them. However, what you will find is that stuff seems to happen much faster. Going fast is harder. You have to react quicker. You have to spend more energy to go the same speed (or even a slower speed). And you can't adapt to changing track conditions nearly as well. With restricted vision, it feels like you are going faster, when you are not!

In contrast, with fit eyes, going fast is easier. Maintaining your speed the whole race is easier. Adapting to changing conditions is easier. You can go out and prove to yourself, in about 15 minutes of riding, that vision is a super important factor in your ability to go fast. With really fit eyes, trained for your sport, it feels like you are going slower, when you are actually going faster. You have more time to react and you are more relaxed. With fit eyes, not only can you go faster, but itis actually easier to go faster.

What you may not have recognized prior to finding FitEyes.com is that you can improve your vision and therefore, you can improve your speed. In the future, the top racers will work with vision coaches. Now that you "see" the future, why not give yourself an immediate competitive advantage by improving those aspects of your vision that will give you more fit eyes?

I plan to write additonal articles on this subject in the future, but the first important thing you should know right now is that improving your eye fitness is not about doing eye exercises. Eye exercises often produce eye strain. To have truly fit eyes you must change the vision habits you may have that produce eye strain. (Those habits are probably not the ones that first come to mind such as reading without enough light, using the computer, etc.) The habits that produce eye strain are usually mental at their root. Furthermore, Lasik-type eye surgery is probably the last thing you should consider. It may actually reduce your ultimate speed potential (even though it does have some benefits). But I'll try to write more about all these details in the future. Please let me know exactly what areas you would like to see me write about. Leave me some comments here and I'll try to base future articles on your comments.