Sports Vision Radio

Daniel M. Laby
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Sports
  • Updated Weekly

Welcome to the podcast where vision meets performance. Hosted by Dr. Daniel Laby, one of the world’s leading Sports Vision Specialists with over 30 years of experience working with professional, Olympic, and elite athletes across the globe. This show is designed for athletes, coaches, parents, and performance-minded professionals who want to understand how the visual system, what you see and how your brain processes it, directly impacts your ability to compete at the highest level. Each episode dives into the science and strategy behind visual performance: from reaction time and focus control, to decision-making speed, visual processing, and beyond. Whether you’re on the field, in the gym, or in the dugout, you’ll learn practical insights and cutting-edge methods to train your eyes and brain to work together, so you can play sharper, smarter, and faster. Because seeing clearly is just the beginning. This is about vision that wins!

  1. 1d ago

    You Can’t Test a Batter’s Eyes Without a Bat

    A new 2026 study in the journal Vision (Clutter & Fogt) put 15 baseball and softball batters through the same pitch, tracked two different ways: once with a real partial swing, once with no swing at all, just watching and verbally predicting where the ball would cross the plate. The pitches were identical in both conditions. The only thing that changed was whether the batter’s body was actually going to do something about it. The result: batters made far more predictive eye jumps (saccades) when just watching and guessing than when actually swinging, a statistically significant gap. Dr. Laby argues this isn’t a narrow footnote about saccade frequency. It’s evidence that the visual system itself changes strategy the instant it’s coupled to a real motor action, exactly the trap he’s warned about for years: mistaking a clean, passive vision screening for a measurement of how an athlete actually sees in competition. He connects the finding to his own decade-old experience eye-tracking MLB batters, to the Athletic Vision Pyramid from Eye of the Champion, and to a practical filter for evaluating any vision-training tool: is this task coupled to the real skill, or is it an isolated proxy for it? Episode Timestamps[00:00] The Argument That Finally Has Data[00:35] The 2026 Study — 15 Batters, Two Tasks, One Pitch[01:10] What a Saccade Is, and What It Means When the Eyes Jump[01:40] The Numbers — 53% vs. 39.7%[02:10] Why This Is the Whole Ballgame, Not a Footnote[02:45] The MLB Story — Ball-or-Strike vs. Actually Swinging[03:20] The Athletic Vision Pyramid — Where the Wiring Breaks[03:55] The Coupled-vs-Isolated Filter (and the Batting-Practice Question)[04:35] What’s Still Missing — Small Sample, Next Steps[05:15] The Eyes Are Part of the Decision In This Episode, You’ll LearnWhy a batter’s eyes track a pitch differently depending on whether a swing is actually comingWhat a saccade is, and why more of them means the eyes are guessing instead of trackingThe actual numbers from the 2026 Clutter & Fogt study: 53.0% predictive saccades when just watching vs. 39.7% when swingingWhy “coupled” (real action) vs. “uncoupled” (passive prediction) vision testing produces genuinely different data, not just a different framing of the same taskHow this connects to Dr. Laby’s own MLB eye-tracking work, where ball-or-strike judgment and actual swinging produced different eye and head behaviorWhy the Athletic Vision Pyramid means you can’t fully evaluate the top (execution) by only testing the middle (tracking) in isolationA practical filter for any vision-training program: is this drill coupled to the real skill, or a clean, isolated proxy for it? Helpful ResourcesSports Vision NYCConnect with Dr. Laby on InstagramPick Up a Copy of Eye of the ChampionDownload The Ultimate Sports Vision Guide for Athletes [FREE] Don’t forget to subscribe to Sports Vision Radio so you never miss an episode on the science of peak performance.

  2. 1d ago

    You Can’t Test a Batter’s Eyes Without a Bat

    A new 2026 study in the journal Vision (Clutter & Fogt) put 15 baseball and softball batters through the same pitch, tracked two different ways: once with a real partial swing, once with no swing at all, just watching and verbally predicting where the ball would cross the plate. The pitches were identical in both conditions. The only thing that changed was whether the batter’s body was actually going to do something about it. The result: batters made far more predictive eye jumps (saccades) when just watching and guessing than when actually swinging, a statistically significant gap. Dr. Laby argues this isn’t a narrow footnote about saccade frequency. It’s evidence that the visual system itself changes strategy the instant it’s coupled to a real motor action, exactly the trap he’s warned about for years: mistaking a clean, passive vision screening for a measurement of how an athlete actually sees in competition. He connects the finding to his own decade-old experience eye-tracking MLB batters, to the Athletic Vision Pyramid from Eye of the Champion, and to a practical filter for evaluating any vision-training tool: is this task coupled to the real skill, or is it an isolated proxy for it? Episode Timestamps[00:00] The Argument That Finally Has Data[00:35] The 2026 Study — 15 Batters, Two Tasks, One Pitch[01:10] What a Saccade Is, and What It Means When the Eyes Jump[01:40] The Numbers — 53% vs. 39.7%[02:10] Why This Is the Whole Ballgame, Not a Footnote[02:45] The MLB Story — Ball-or-Strike vs. Actually Swinging[03:20] The Athletic Vision Pyramid — Where the Wiring Breaks[03:55] The Coupled-vs-Isolated Filter (and the Batting-Practice Question)[04:35] What’s Still Missing — Small Sample, Next Steps[05:15] The Eyes Are Part of the Decision In This Episode, You’ll LearnWhy a batter’s eyes track a pitch differently depending on whether a swing is actually comingWhat a saccade is, and why more of them means the eyes are guessing instead of trackingThe actual numbers from the 2026 Clutter & Fogt study: 53.0% predictive saccades when just watching vs. 39.7% when swingingWhy “coupled” (real action) vs. “uncoupled” (passive prediction) vision testing produces genuinely different data, not just a different framing of the same taskHow this connects to Dr. Laby’s own MLB eye-tracking work, where ball-or-strike judgment and actual swinging produced different eye and head behaviorWhy the Athletic Vision Pyramid means you can’t fully evaluate the top (execution) by only testing the middle (tracking) in isolationA practical filter for any vision-training program: is this drill coupled to the real skill, or a clean, isolated proxy for it? Helpful ResourcesSports Vision NYCConnect with Dr. Laby on InstagramPick Up a Copy of Eye of the ChampionDownload The Ultimate Sports Vision Guide for Athletes [FREE] Don’t forget to subscribe to Sports Vision Radio so you never miss an episode on the science of peak performance.

  3. Aug 12

    The Gap No One Is Talking About: Coaches Are Training Vision — But Don’t Know Why

    Seventy-three percent of coaches are now incorporating visual training into their programs — a number that should feel like a victory after thirty years of Dr. Laby making the case that vision is trainable and performance-critical. Instead, a new October 2025 study in Sports (Martinez-Perez et al., 2025) stops him short: across 155 coaches, mostly football and futsal coaches in Portugal, implementation rate had no statistically significant association with self-reported knowledge of sports vision. Coaches are doing it, but they can’t tell you why. The episode digs into the study’s most revealing finding — coaches rank reaction time as the single most important visual skill, ahead of hand-eye coordination and anticipation, with depth perception ranked near the bottom — and uses it to explain the Athletic Vision Pyramid from Eye of the Champion: reaction time sits at the apex, built entirely on a base of fundamental visual functions most training programs never touch. Dr. Laby argues coaches are already “ahead of the curve” on adoption; the real performance gains are locked behind understanding the how and the why, not just buying the tools. Episode Timestamps[00:00] The Celebration That Wasn’t — 73% Adoption, Zero Knowledge Link[00:30] The Study — 155 Coaches, Portugal, October 2025[00:55] The Reaction Time Paradox — What Coaches Rank First[01:20] Why Reaction Time Is a Visual-Perceptual Phenomenon, Not a Neuromuscular One[01:50] The Athletic Vision Pyramid — Base, Middle, Apex[02:20] You Can’t Train the Apex Without Building the Base[02:50] “Intuitively” — What Coaches Know Without a Framework[03:20] Strobe Glasses, Reaction Balls, and the Missing Framework[03:50] Why Assessment Has to Come Before Training[04:15] What the Survey Should Tell Coaches[04:40] Reaction Time Is the Output, Not the Input[05:00] The Door Is Open — Step Inside With a Plan In This Episode, You’ll LearnWhy 73% coach adoption of vision training is real progress — and why it still isn’t the win it looks likeWhat a 155-coach survey (Martinez-Perez et al., Sports, Oct. 2025) found about the gap between implementation and knowledgeWhy coaches rank reaction time as the top visual skill, and why that ranking gets the causality backwardsWhy reaction time in sport is a visual-perceptual phenomenon first, not primarily a neuromuscular oneHow the Athletic Vision Pyramid from Eye of the Champion explains why you can’t train the apex without building the baseWhy “intuitive” adoption — strobe glasses, reaction balls, light boards — stalls out without a framework or a baseline assessmentWhy assessment has to come before training, and what the Athletic Vision Testing System is built to solve Helpful ResourcesSports Vision NYCConnect with Dr. Laby on InstagramPick Up a Copy of Eye of the ChampionDownload The Ultimate Sports Vision Guide for Athletes [FREE] Don't forget to subscribe to Sports Vision Radio so you never miss an episode on the science of peak performance.

  4. Aug 5

    The Referee's Pupil, the Game's Truth

    The cleaner a sports vision experiment gets, the less it looks like the sport — a tension Dr. Laby has wrestled with for thirty years. A lab can control lighting down to the lux and measure fixations to the millisecond, but only by stripping away the crowd, the pressure, and the bodies crossing in front of you. A new 2025 study by Lozzi and colleagues takes a real swing at closing that gap. Researchers placed Pupil Labs Neon wearable eye trackers on four referees and four coaches during two live basketball games, then layered computer vision AI — YOLOv8N for player tracking and Segformer for uniform and team identification — on top of the raw gaze data. The headline finding: referees' pupils got larger during defensive evaluations, read as a sign of heavier cognitive load. But Dr. Laby argues the more important story is the tool itself — a moving target-of-interest system that can finally tell you which team a referee's eyes were on as players crossed, screened, and rotated, instead of asking whether gaze landed inside a fixed box on a screen. The episode walks through why the pupil finding needs replication, what confounds pupillometry in a real arena, and why combining eye and head movement data opens the door to role-specific visual profiles — the actual goal of the Sports Vision Pyramid. Episode Timestamps[00:00] The Lab Paradox — Cleaner Experiments, Less Like the Sport[00:43] The Lohse 2025 Study — Wearables on Live Referees[00:59] The Headline Finding — Pupils and Defensive Cognitive Load[01:17] The Real Story — Four Tools Working Together[01:28] Solving the Moving Target Problem[02:10] Why the Result Isn't the Final Word[02:33] The Confounds — Lighting, Arousal, Fatigue[03:07] What This Setup Actually Proves[03:37] Eye Movement vs. Head Movement[05:12] The Real Opportunity — Role-Specific Visual Profiles[05:43] Where Sports Vision Data Is Headed In This Episode, You'll LearnWhy the cleaner a lab experiment gets, the less it resembles the actual sport — and why that tension has defined 30 years of sports vision researchHow Lohse et al. (2025) combined Pupil Labs Neon wearable eye trackers with YOLOv8N and Segformer AI to track referee and coach gaze during two live basketball gamesThe headline finding: referees' pupils got larger during defensive evaluations, read as a sign of heavier cognitive load — and why that finding still needs replicationWhy pupil diameter is a real but noisy signal, confounded by lighting, arousal, and fatigue in a real arenaWhy this study's real contribution isn't the pupil finding — it's a moving target-of-interest system that finally makes gaze data trustworthy during live, fast-moving playHow combining eye movement and head movement data opens sharper questions about scanning strategy, peripheral awareness, and anticipationWhy the opportunity is role-specific visual profiles, not a single pupil-size performance score Helpful ResourcesSports Vision NYCConnect with Dr. Laby on InstagramPick Up a Copy of Eye of the ChampionDownload The Ultimate Sports Vision Guide for Athletes [FREE] Don't forget to subscribe to Sports Vision Radio so you never miss an episode on the science of peak performance.

  5. Jul 29

    One Fixation Count, Two Opposite Answers

    Two meta-analyses asked the same question about visual search behavior and got opposite results — because the question was never sport-general to begin with. Summary For 30 years the field has argued about whether visual search behavior — where an athlete looks, how often, and for how long — actually separates elite performers from everyone else. Two meta-analyses now give the clearest answer yet, and it isn't the simple uniform story circulating this month. The 2022 Silva meta-analysis, covering team sports like soccer, basketball, and volleyball, found that fixation count did NOT reliably separate experts from novices. A 2026 systematic review of 26 studies and 611 athletes in individual sports — badminton, tennis, table tennis, karate, judo, boxing, fencing — found the opposite: fixation count separates experts from novices with a very large effect size. Elite individual-sport athletes scan less, hold fixations longer, and distribute their gaze across fewer locations. Dr. Laby explains why both findings are correct simultaneously: visual search behavior is task-specific, not sport-general. In chaotic many-body team environments, raw fixation count doesn't capture what separates a starter from a bench player. In one-on-one confrontations, an efficient, minimal, well-placed gaze pattern is one of the clearest fingerprints of expertise in the literature. The episode also flags an open question neither review answered: whether static visual acuity itself predicts who becomes elite — a harder question the field still owes itself. Episode Timestamps[00:00] 30 Years of Debate — What the Data Now Shows[00:21] The Silva 2022 Team Sport Meta-Analysis[00:37] Why Fixation Count Fails in Team Sports[01:00] The 2026 Individual Sports Meta-Analysis[01:35] Scanning Less, Looking Longer, Looking Smarter[02:03] Task-Specific, Not Sport-General[02:37] Why One-Size-Fits-All Testing Fails[02:57] The Open Question — Does Acuity Predict Elite Status?[03:57] The Sports Vision Pyramid Framework[04:23] The Real Story — Precision, Not Death of Static Testing In This Episode, You'll LearnWhy the 2022 Silva meta-analysis found that fixation count did NOT reliably separate experts from novices in team sports like soccer, basketball, and volleyballWhy the 2026 individual sports meta-analysis (26 studies, 611 athletes) found the exact opposite: fixation count separates experts from novices with a very large effect sizeThe plain-language finding: elite individual-sport athletes scan LESS, hold each fixation LONGER, and look in fewer, smarter placesWhy visual search behavior is task-specific, not sport-general — and what that means for testing designThe open question neither meta-analysis answered: whether static visual acuity itself predicts who becomes eliteWhy a one-size-fits-all eye chart or generic eye-tracking test misleads teams evaluating athletes across different sports Helpful ResourcesSports Vision NYCConnect with Dr. Laby on InstagramPick Up a Copy of Eye of the ChampionDownload The Ultimate Sports Vision Guide for Athletes [FREE] Don't forget to subscribe to Sports Vision Radio so you never miss an episode on the science of peak performance.

  6. Jul 22

    You Turn Before You See

    An athlete on defense, no one in front of them, and then, without hearing or consciously seeing anything, they turn. Coaches call it sports sense. Teammates say eyes in the back of the head. What's actually happening is more interesting: a part of the brain called the superior colliculus, a built-in motion detector, fires an automatic response before the conscious brain catches up. The amygdala checks whether it matters. Only after all of that does awareness arrive. You don't turn because you saw something; you turn, and then you see them. This episode breaks down the specialized neural network dedicated to reading other people, why the biggest threats and opportunities in sports show up at the edges of vision rather than dead ahead, and how mirror neurons and the Hebbian principle mean that everything an athlete watches, good technique or bad, gets encoded into their own nervous system. The takeaway: trust the automatic system, read first and confirm second, and choose viewing material as carefully as training reps. EPISODE TIMESTAMPS: [00:00] You Just Knew — The Setup[00:32] The Brain's Shortcut[01:01] The Superior Colliculus Fires First[01:25] You Turn, Then You See[01:48] The Network That Reads Other People[02:16] Threats and Opportunities Live at the Edges[02:48] The Yawn in the Film Room[03:13] Mirror Neurons — What You Watch, You Become[03:55] The Hebbian Principle and Film Study[04:21] Trust the Feeling — Read First, Confirm Second[04:50] The Bottom Line IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN: Why "eyes in the back of your head" is actually the superior colliculus firing an automatic response before conscious awareness catches upThe order of operations in your brain's threat-detection system: motion detector, amygdala check, then conscious recognitionWhy the biggest threats and opportunities in sports — the backdoor cut, the safety blitz, the weak-side shooter — show up at the edges of vision, not directly aheadHow mirror neurons encode whatever you watch, good technique or bad, whether you're actively training or just standing aroundWhy the Hebbian principle ("neurons that fire together, wire together") explains why film study works — and why your training environment matters as much as your repsWhy trusting the automatic system and moving before conscious certainty arrives is the difference between early and late HELPFUL RESOURCES: Sports Vision NYCConnect with Dr. Laby on InstagramPick Up a Copy of Eye of the ChampionDownload The Ultimate Sports Vision Guide for Athletes [FREE] 👉 Don't forget to subscribe to Sports Vision Radio so you never miss an episode on the science of peak performance.

  7. Jul 15

    Messi Didn't "See the Future." Here's What Actually Happened.

    The World Cup coverage couldn't stop talking about Almada and Messi "seeing the game before it happens." Broadcasters reached for neuroscience and a fair amount of magic to explain it. What they were actually describing were two completely separate cognitive layers — and the distinction matters because one is trainable with stroboscopic tools and the other is not. Two independent meta-analyses published in 2025 now agree: strobe training significantly improves reaction time and visual processing speed, but produces no significant effect on decision-making quality. Dr. Laby breaks down why this split maps directly onto the hardware/software framework from Eye of the Champion, walks through a Premier League protocol that got the architecture right by separating perceptual training from decision-making training, and makes the case that programs built on marketing rather than evidence are creating a false ceiling on player development. The prescription should match the problem, not the equipment available. EPISODE TIMESTAMPS: [00:00] Almada's Scan — Two Separate Systems[00:24] What Broadcasters Got Wrong[00:54] Two Meta-Analyses, One Finding[01:31] The Perceptual Layer vs. The Cognitive Layer[01:53] The Marketing Problem[02:35] What a Premier League Club Got Right[03:15] Hardware vs. Software[03:53] Write the Prescription for the Problem[04:21] The Standard the Evidence Requires IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN: Why Almada's pre-play scan and Messi's positioning represent two separate cognitive systems, not one act of "genius"How two independent 2025 meta-analyses reached the same conclusion: strobe training improves how fast you see, not how well you thinkWhy companies marketing strobe glasses as decision-making tools are making claims the evidence doesn't supportHow a Premier League protocol correctly separated perceptual training (shutter glasses for heading) from decision-making training (on-field scanning and tactical drills)The hardware/software framework for designing vision-integrated performance programsWhy the prescription should match the presenting complaint, not the equipment you have available HELPFUL RESOURCES: Sports Vision NYCConnect with Dr. Laby on InstagramPick Up a Copy of Eye of the ChampionDownload The Ultimate Sports Vision Guide for Athletes [FREE] 👉 Don't forget to subscribe to Sports Vision Radio so you never miss an episode on the science of peak performance.

  8. Jul 8

    The Quiet Eye Wins World Cups

    The United States faces Belgium in the Round of 16 of the 2026 FIFA World Cup — a rematch twelve years in the making. Dr. Laby uses the match as a lens to explore the single visual behavior that most consistently separates elite performers from everyone else under pressure: the Quiet Eye. Penalty conversion rates drop in high-stakes tournaments not because players forget how to kick, but because pressure changes gaze — it shortens fixation duration, scatters attention to irrelevant cues, and destabilizes the motor execution that follows. The episode explains why the distinction between eyesight and vision sits at the center of Eye of the Champion, breaks down the three specific gaze failures that emerge under pressure, examines what makes Thibaut Courtois's predictive gaze exceptional, and makes the case that Quiet Eye is not a fixed trait but a trainable skill. What looks like composure in decisive moments is often trained gaze selectivity — the elimination of everything nonessential from the visual field. EPISODE TIMESTAMPS: [00:00] USA vs. Belgium — History Repeats[00:35] Not Eyesight — Vision[01:38] The Penalty Problem[01:59] What Pressure Does to Gaze[02:29] Quiet Eye — The Final Fixation[03:03] Three Failures Under Pressure[03:36] What Courtois Does That Most Goalkeepers Can't[04:17] Quiet Eye Is Trainable[05:11] How to Watch the Match Differently[05:57] The Eye That Stays Quietest Wins IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN: Why the distinction between eyesight and vision is the most important concept in sports vision — and why seeing clearly is not enoughHow pressure changes gaze: the three specific failure modes that emerge in high-stakes penalty situationsWhat Quiet Eye is, how it works in both the penalty taker and the goalkeeper, and why fixation duration predicts conversionWhy Thibaut Courtois extracts pre-contact information from the kicker before the ball is struck — and how that predictive gaze sits at the top of the Sports Vision PyramidThat Quiet Eye is trainable, not fixed — and how the process works in clinical practiceHow to watch a World Cup match like a sports vision scientist HELPFUL RESOURCES: Sports Vision NYCConnect with Dr. Laby on InstagramPick Up a Copy of Eye of the ChampionDownload The Ultimate Sports Vision Guide for Athletes [FREE] 👉 Don't forget to subscribe to Sports Vision Radio so you never miss an episode on the science of peak performance.

See All (100)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Welcome to the podcast where vision meets performance. Hosted by Dr. Daniel Laby, one of the world’s leading Sports Vision Specialists with over 30 years of experience working with professional, Olympic, and elite athletes across the globe. This show is designed for athletes, coaches, parents, and performance-minded professionals who want to understand how the visual system, what you see and how your brain processes it, directly impacts your ability to compete at the highest level. Each episode dives into the science and strategy behind visual performance: from reaction time and focus control, to decision-making speed, visual processing, and beyond. Whether you’re on the field, in the gym, or in the dugout, you’ll learn practical insights and cutting-edge methods to train your eyes and brain to work together, so you can play sharper, smarter, and faster. Because seeing clearly is just the beginning. This is about vision that wins!

Information

  • Creator
    Daniel M. Laby
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Daniel M. Laby, MD
  • Show Website
    Sports Vision Radio