Eye of the Champion: Unlocking the Hidden Vision Secrets of Elite Athletes

Discover how pro athletes use their eyes to gain milliseconds—and championships.

A Journey into the Visual Advantage

Heads up! Over the coming months, I'll be sharing insights from Eye of the Champion in bite-sized portions that will change how you think about vision and sports performance. These aren't your typical excerpts—they're designed to be a practical guide through the fascinating world where ophthalmology meets elite athletics.

Each installment will build on the last, taking you from the basic anatomy of how your eyes capture a 95-mph fastball to the complex brain processes that separate weekend warriors from world champions. 

Today, we start with the fundamentals, because like any strong foundation, understanding sports vision requires building from the ground up. By the time we're finished, you'll have the tools to think like a sports vision specialist and the knowledge to take your performance—or that of athletes you work with—to the next level. 

This week, we’re pulling powerful insights straight from the Introduction of my best-selling book Eye of the Champion — showing exactly how optimizing your vision can unlock peak sports performance. You’ll see how science, strategy, and split-second vision skills separate champions from the rest.

Read through to the end, or visit www.sportsvision.nyc for an exclusive offer on the complete book bundle so you can take your own game to the next level.

Let’s get started …

 Prediction

Heads up! This isn’t your typical book! Instead, it is intended to function as a guidebook to lead you through all the many ways vision is important to sports performance. Even better, it will also show how you can master your vision to help you perform at your best. Face it: you need your eyes to perform

well. I can’t think of a single sport that is played with a blindfold. Can you?

Our eyes and visual system are involved in every area of brain function. They even help us predict the future. We use our eyes to see what is happening in the present and—based on past experiences, as well as our knowledge of the situation—we can use our eyes to predict the future.

You can imagine that knowing what will happen in the future can be very helpful in all areas of our life. It’s especially important for sports performance. Seeing Ronaldo score a goal in total darkness after predicting its position really drives home the importance of this ability. Ronaldo only saw the foot strike the ball as it was passed to him. Immediately after that contact, the lights were turned off, and Ronaldo was still able

to predict the ball’s precise position and use his shoulder to intercept the ball and score the goal – an incredible example of prediction in sports.

Our eyes are the key to performance!

 In this book, you will learn the biology of the visual system, the areas of vision and brain function that are critical to sports performance, how to test them, and how to correct or enhance their function. The book is based on my professional experience of working with elite athletes across many sports, along with peer-reviewed publications in the scientific literature. It is distinct from other sources of information available on the Internet, social media, or YouTube—many of which are based on the inexperienced opinion of the author or on a small series of players whose results are not scientifically conclusive (or, for that matter, even believable). In short, they do not pass the smell test! 

Why I was able to write this book

With over 30 years of experience spread across almost a dozen professional sports championships, numerous peer-reviewed publications in scientific literature, and in-depth knowledge of the scientific approach gathered from my undergraduate training and my time in medical school, my residency, and fellowship, I am in an ideal position to present this information. Not only do I understand the many aspects that contribute to the field of sports vision, but I can properly evaluate the validity of new research as well as detect areas in other specialties that might be of value to the athlete in both their visual function and sports performance.

Great advances in technology

In the following chapters, we review many diverse facets, spanning many fields in medicine, neurology, statistics, and even electronics and computer science. All of these diverse facets play a role in your ability to perform at your natural best. Over the past 30 years, the equipment we have used has evolved incredibly. We started out with changing EPROM chips on motherboards in order to test vision at the elite level, but now, we are using head-mounted displays and virtual reality. The advancements in research, equipment, methods, and knowledge have evolved in a similar way as our mobile cell phones have transformed from the original brick mobile phones to the newer phones of today with folding screens—making testing and training much more valuable to every athlete.

Chapter overview

The first chapter lays out the case for sports vision by way of an overview and will demonstrate how vision is a necessity for the best sports performance, as well as how it can be tested and ultimately improved. Beginning with a definition, and through the use of true-to-life examples, you will come to appreciate how we test vision in sports (spoiler alert: we don’t use a typical Snellen eye chart). We’ll review what is expected in sports vision as well as the main purpose of the visual system, leading to optimal sports performance.