Vision Training For Skateboarding

Skateboarding is a sport which requires high levels of body control, coordination, and quick reaction times. Additionally, skateboarding is generally done on hard surfaces, so improving key skills can not only help overall performance, but may also help avoid injury.

Table of Contents

Core Visual Skills
Secondary Visual Skills
Summary
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Sports vision training is customized training that gives athletes a major edge against the competition by improving the specific visual skills needed for the position and sport that they play.

Core Visual Skills

While there are a number of vision skills that are important for skateboarders, some are more crucial to performance than others.

Core vision skills for skateboarders include:

Hand-Eye-Foot-Body Coordination: There is a great deal of coordination required to be done while moving if a skateboarder hopes to pull off the best tricks. Improving this vision skill is a no-brainer for anyone seeking to improve their performance.
Visual Distance Calculation: Skateboarding often involves moving over extended distances and in making precise jumps, improving one’s visual distance calculation will help a skateboarder better make the jumps he/she goes for.
Anticipation Timing: This vision skill helps one better utilize visual input to make sure that timing is right when taking an action. In skateboarding, where there is often little time to decide to commit to a move, those extra moments can be crucial.
Depth Perception: As with any sport that involves movement in various different directions, and jumping, superior depth perception is a major advantage for a competitive skateboarder.

Secondary Visual Skills

Secondary visual skills for skateboarders aren’t necessarily any less important than core visual skills, though they are not quite as central to what is needed for a skateboarder to be successful.

Balance and Proprioception: While many might not realize it, balance is a visual skill, and especially for skateboarding, improving one’s ability to balance while on the skateboard can yield major benefits. Additionally, improving one’s proprioception, which enables an athlete to know where the body is in space, is also extremely helpful for skateboarders when performing moves that involved them going airborne.
Visualization: The ability to visualize oneself successfully completing an action, such as making a skateboard jump, is incredibly helpful for anyone seeking to compete at the highest levels. Improving this skill will help a skateboarder be able to better commit to the move, and thus increase his ability to make it.

Summary

Sports vision training is a customized form of training that enhances athletes' specific visual skills for their sport and position, giving them a competitive advantage. In skateboarding, core visual skills include hand-eye-foot-body coordination for executing tricks, visual distance calculation for precise jumps, anticipation timing for optimal decision-making, and depth perception for movement and jumping. Secondary visual skills like balance and proprioception are important for maintaining stability on the skateboard, while visualization skills help skateboarders mentally prepare and commit to their moves.

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