How Athletes Hit the Fastball
To hit lightning-fast moving balls in baseball, tennis and cricket, athletes and coaches are increasingly employing training techniques that include virtual reality.
Doi: https: //doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00816-3
Commentary
It was described that batters on the Duke University baseball team spent the days before the game in virtual reality (VR) training, observing the pitches of their opponents' 3D avatars.
In virtual reality, batters are trained to quickly recognize strikes, balls, fastballs, and curveballs from the pitcher's pitches. It was stated that an element of sports such as baseball and cricket is that they are built to operate at the limits of human ability, so if you can recognize them faster, you can spend more time working on your movements.
Therefore, competitions such as baseball are considered to benefit from improved perceptual skills, although training depends on many factors including stroke mechanics, cardiovascular fitness and strength, and the ability to withstand the mental pressures of competition.
In psychology.
It has been explained that it takes at least 250 milliseconds for people to start moving after seeing a stimulus, and twice this reaction time is needed if they do not know the expected behavior. As a logical solution, predicting the arrival point and trajectory of a stimulus can reduce reaction time," said Abernethy.
Today's research shows that top competitors use three broad classes of information, of which the flight of the ball is understood to be the last.
First, players evaluate their opponents' most likely actions, given what they know about the state of play and their opponents' preferred tactics. Based on that information, the athlete can begin to prepare for the most likely potential scenarios.
Next, by observing the opponent's body movements prior to throwing the ball and extracting valuable information about where the player wants the ball to go, elite players have access to clues that novices may not be aware of.
This is what researchers found when they set up cameras where hitters and receivers were standing, filmed them hitting, and analyzed the results.
This is why "looking" at something is usually considered a passive act, but in order to visually track a fast-moving object, you need to move your eyes quickly and precisely.
