Lessons

Lesson Info

Personalizing Your Training Program Part 1

Get ready to start doing some assessments. All right, so what I'd like for you to do, I'm going to flip back to our summary sheet and so to some degree, this is a little bit of a test to the go. Do you guys remember how to do them? Um, so the snow in chart is this guy right here now, obviously, because we mention this yesterday in the studio, we don't really have space for us to do that test. I'm gonna have you guys go ahead and start with your multi size fun in every assessment, you do it, classes on and glasses off. All right, so what a life you to do is just start off with that, and you're not yet categorizing it into high performance or rehab. You're just getting a number. Everyone clear on that. So you gonna look at the chart? We glasses on how low can I read and make some notes on it? Like, if you can read down to number twelve but it's a little bit fuzzy, then that's what you want to know? Twelve that fuzzy. Okay, while they're starting to do that test, we can start doing questi...

on because we're going to be doing this for a while. That sounds great we have ah bunch lined up so I just want to send out a shout out and uh thank you, teo four eyes because they've just been really knocking out the question you know, the last two days eso are we supposed to cycle between the high performance and the rehab drills during one training session? Yes, it doesn't always have to work that way and I mean, let me just make sure that this is clear if I'm up I'm going in the office I suddenly get a call hey boss coming in um in twenty minutes we want todo a quick meeting and I we need you to present on x or y I'm not going to any rehab at that point I'm just gonna do a couple of my high performance drills if I have though dedicated times throughout the day where I'm just gonna be doing my vision training then yes, you would be cycling through a high performance drill in a rehab girl kind of at the same time great so they served two different purposes awesome, thank you and I just don't want teo just wanted a quick shout out to sandpiper sandpiper sick so thank you for your fantastic questions I think that this particular question falls into the this's very, very specific situation, so please we do ask that you consult your physician and please feel free to contact dr cobb directly through his website or he gave his phone number earlier and I'm sure they can go into a little bit more detail about how to help you out s so now I'm gonna switch to a question from grace man would it be a good idea to do these exercises before I go to bed and in the morning and if so in my bed laying down or sitting up in a chair and if we're doing such as such thing is eating would it be a good idea to do the exercises after that so our brains would be busy or when was the best time sorry that was that was three questions finding a lot of questions morning nights just fine right? If you get up right before you go to bed perfectly okay and that's a very interesting question about pre eating or post eating in many cases I would recommend post I won't get into the physiology of why but a lot of times you'll get a little bit bigger benefit if you do it after a meal a little bit better fuel a little bit more activation just from from julie. Great. Okay, all right, so you guys got through your multi size test? Yes. All right, you got your numbers awesome all right, now next is uh I'm sorry. Can I clarify one thing? Yes, sir. So with the assessment because you've been having us go back and assess after every single thing we do right but are you saying now if we just go if we just do an assessment like give ourselves a report card once a week that's adequate is that what you're saying no that's not what I'm saying but we are what we're doing right now is establishing baselines alright so that, um the way that this journal iwerks is like this as you go through your assessments I mentioned yesterday pick ones that you like because you khun do those every day so if you're enjoying the multi size font as an assessment then you can use that literally after every drill okay, but the main thing I'm trying to get you to do is give yourself a report cards so that at least once a week you test something that you're not testing regularly okay, I got it. Is that clear? Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. So next after the multi size font chart is distance vision okay? Do you guys remember how we said we were gonna do distance vision testing? No. All right, so this is one of the most. This is one of the simplest of all of the assessments I said if you live somewhere where you can walk out the front door and put a little mark on the sidewalk and look down the street and see a stop sign or see something else that you can potentially read you basically just do that go where my standing and is it clear it is very easy to assess now in this particular studio you guys have been using letters on the chart, right? So the main question becomes, um at what distance can I see my target clearly, for instance at my house like I said, if I walk out to the street I've got a little mark in the sidewalk and all that I have to do is stand there the same way I look down to the street I see my stop sign and that gives me a really clear indication of house my distance vision doing because if I'm awesome for my typical mark and I can put ten, twelve, fifteen feet and still see with the same level of clarity that shows me that I've made some progress okay? And vice versa. Okay, so distant vision now in this class well, you guys were all using this chart for the most part although you were using the exit sign without the glasses on so you could do a very quick test um and go what letter on what line could I see clearly? And do you remember what you were able to see before p t clearly clearly and you were working on the p yeah, okay, awesome and I think you were working seven seven throw letters e yeah and then the last one we didn't blew your work in the team I got to the teo awesome the f d p l t c e o two more down we're down e l t c it would get glasses what's that you're correct those were all correct what's the uh that twenty thirteen from that distance but you're not a true just just reference yes adjust the reference so that would be the line that you can see clearly with the glasses on okay, so distance vision again you're picking a spot you're picking a target we're very very easy now brought string what is our base level assessment? Do I see the x x x y awesome now the other thing about the bronx spring though because you two were able to see it the next question becomes when I look away and come back how quickly does he x come back because what you will very often find with that string is that you'll be there you're looking at the bead you look away you come back and you have to go come on there it is so that one two second wait while your eyes readjust so that's what you would write down in your report card takes me two seconds when I look away to come back and get a clear x um mackenzie in your case your say I'm working on the red bead at about six inches and I'm getting a flicker perfect that's all that you need to know all right so you guys how you doing on your own report cards so far to get me to take a moment and do the brock string we're pretty comfortable knowing what your result with yeah I understand what you're s noise just I know what you're asking okay one telling seconds right because like I said we're actually doing this huh so when people doing it um so I'm gonna have you stand there and you were doing without your glasses glasses okay and again we're just doing this as an example so look at the green bead and x going in gotta necks yeah alright look up look up and back to the green oh my gosh oh my gosh x there you are wow that's that's what I'm talking so that was probably two or three seconds that's what you want to write down in your report all right awesome and one of the things about the stream guys watch me for one sec when I start testing myself I may find that hey I'm really good with this close one I can look away come back and it's immediately there but when I get down to the red bead way far away I may go okay I've got my why I look away come back wait, wait wait and there it is so the distance can also be something that you evaluate when you're doing your brock string test okay doing all right? Yeah, all right, now what we do is we're gonna go to now you're actually to get up and going to score yourselves on the hand eye chart okay, so you guys are gonna work together on this one? I'm gonna probably answer some questions while you guys were doing this um so the hand I charge this guy up here and what I want you to do is I want you to give yourself a score when we'll just dio we'll do thirty seconds for now rather than a minute so each one of you do thirty seconds um and maybe one of you can time that and you're going to just do the spoken version actually know what? Since I'm probably talking while I have you guys do the tapping version not speaking version that probably it will be less confusing eso you stand at a comfortable distance you guys come on up and work on that comfortable is just kind of like yet comfortable just where you can see it ok see where you can comfortably silver so you go thirty seconds cap tap said she didn't do that yesterday one of you want first over ok this time all right, so thirty seconds yeah all right nice and tall okay okay okay. So doctor we talked yesterday about with medical resource questions on the first one is mentioning it's an app for the ipad for training yeah so the first thing I'm gonna recommend if you if you're downloading the program get your vision charts from this class on the ipad you just you know, download the pdf because the convergence charges center actually often work even better ron the nice iphone or ipad screens es that would be one place to start there is another really cool website I don't know the owner but it's just I see dot or ge letter I and I think it's I hyphen see not or ge and if you go there there is a huge list of different eye exercises their charts that you can download there's a lot of different very cool uh kind of applications optical illusions all different stuff that will help you exercise your eyes so that would be another great place to start um now additional resource is going forward is I want also talk a little bit about some of the professional organizations you want to do that now or that sounds perfect yeah now's a good time yeah that's a good time okay, they're tapping away so we're in good shape so one of the big things that I want to point out is that there is a field of optometry ist who specialize in vision training and that those optometry star known as behavioral optometry ist they actually go to additional level of education and they have their own kind of college of development and so if you're looking for a vision professional who can do a lot of the evaluations khun do it in more death can also probably offer vision therapy within their their environment um you would want to look up in your local neck of the woods a behavioral optometry ist um now the one thing I recommend with that is also to be, uh cognizant of the fact that their primary specialty is going to be the eyes and vision training and kind of sum of stuff that I'm talking about in here is very important that when you go into a good vision in training environment, you can't forget about posture in other movement um and so that would be the one caveat going in is just make sure that the trainer that you're working with is also watching the rest of the body but that could be they could be enormously helpful because if you need lindsay you need contacts you need glasses in even temporarily to help you make some additional improvements they're very, very good so that would be a big, big thing I said to put in your contact list okay, no pun intended no point no no funny sorry do it that was last year okay. Yeah. Jenny, recommendations for speed reading. We talked about a very briefly yesterday s I have a friend. His name is jim quick, and he owns a company called quick learning kw kay. And he is a he he's phenomenally teaches a fantastic speed reading program. He understands the role that the eyes play. He also has an enormous he's, a fantastic teacher of memory. He's. One of those guys that'll stand up in a room of two hundred people in memorised everyone's name from the from the from the lectern. And he's learned how to do it so quick learning would be one of the very first places I would recommend. He's got some really amazing programs that are quite holistic and looking at the brain brain development. So that be a great place to start wonderful things. Okay. How'd you guys do good. Good. What with your number, you know, play guitars. Sixty one. Sixty one in thirty seconds. Nice. Alright, so that would be no, no, no, that was thirty seconds. He did a hundred twenty to one hundred twenty two in sixty. Okay. Yeah. That's really high that's. Awesome. Yeah. How do you know I did thirty eight sided seventy two. Okay, noah seventy six seventy six good. Yeah and I did thirty nine thirty nine so seventy eight so that would be right on the like right on the border of what we would expect now the one thing I will say about thirty seconds is this a little easier because the eye fatigue and the mental fatigue doesn't build up quite a fight so it's better to do it for a full minute it's typically better to do it for a full minute but for the purposes of this we're getting some number of written down alright so awesome now we could do foot I but I won't put you through that torture does everyone understand at least how to do the measurements? Yeah yeah alright now convergence divergence I'm gonna have you go ahead and pull out your convergence divergence chart and before we do actually you go ahead and just try it I want you to try just the convergence aspect not the divergence yet convergence means I'm gonna bring my eyes together I'm gonna try and cross him and remember what happens with this chart is hopefully when I look at it I have two circles that when I crossed my eyes a little bit they turn into four circles and then I bring two of them together and join them so at the end of this what I should see is a really clear red green circle so they're overlying one another and to other circles out of the side so I go from two, two four two three right in that middle circle should be three dimensional. All right? It should be very, very clear kind of popping out of the chart this one's probably gonna be maybe not doable for you for now but go ahead and try it, see what happens you can do with your glasses on even if you want to try. Okay. Yeah, I found when I tried that one earlier. Yes, this the stick really? It was like instant. Yeah, stick can be really, really helpful, so I'm gonna go through how to do that in just a minute. I was having these guys tests for now. Tove perfect. Yeah. Okay. Um, so you think that they were thanking us for the speed reading grissom great recommendations so s f x wants to know for contact lens wearers. What do you suggest? A ce faras thie exercise? It isn't practical to take them in and out all the time or leave them and that's a kind of a tricky one, isn't it? It's really? To be honest is not as practical it's not convenient to take the man out to do your vision work. Several people in our office actually wear contacts, and so what I generally get them to do is leave the contacts in during the course of the day. So what usually happens is morning and evening when they're taken before their contacts go in during the day. And when they come out at night, I try and have them do the kind of book ended session. So they do a couple sessions each day without the contacts and a couple sessions that you today with the contacts, send the the easiest recommendation aiken may cause it is a pain to take him in and out during the day. Great. Thank you. And here's a question. Are there any cross body exercise suggestions? They seem powerful. I've seen it for eyes. Add patients and something called brain yoga. Do you know what it is about the cross body work that makes a difference? Wow. That becomes a very complicated neurology question. Okay, but cross patterning and working crossed the midline of the body is actually a pretty well known brain activation tool. You can see it in a lot of different systems. We do a lot of cross body work ourselves. Um, we think that a lot of this relates back to the fact that I could use a weird term as human beings. We're what are called contra lateral bipeds, someone I'm walking. My right leg and left arm work together and vice versa so when babies are learning to crawl one of the ways that we know that they're developing well is there actually figuring out how to do a cross crawl pattern? Esso in terms of building a huge repertoire of cross body exercises, I don't know that that's necessary but literally even just doing crawling exercises little exercises uh you confined in brain gym, which is a kind of a common place you see a lot of those exercises um those are good places to start, but the easy thing to do probably is just look, put cross crawl exercises into google and you'll see a bunch of different versions crop up. The main question was, why would they work? And like I said without getting some kind of complicated neurologic pass it's hard for me dio to definitively give you an answer on that, but simply put, whenever I take my right arm across it into the left side, uh kind of my visual space the this falls into the activation idea it tends to cause a higher level of activation both kind of throughout the brain as opposed to just more localized areas that's kind of simplest way I can put it was good, okay? All right, so were you able to converge it, saying you couldn't well, I can you know when it's right next to my nose just about my focus on the red thing then I'm then I in the distance I can detect three circles then it quickly disappears okay that's perfectly fine okay what about you converges easy because I spent my life looking this rice to my emergency v so I tried some diverge I could only get like the first two alright good you gotta score nothing right all right so you have some scores now can you demonstrate that ever divergence won again I forgot how you did that let me let me steal these guys you're all right this is what I want to do anyway because this is of all the exercises that I've shown you guys this tends to be the one that is most frustrating the other ones are fairly clear life look at the letter look at the letter yeah I'm frustrated this one could be it's all right um these could be frustrating so convergence I'm going to convert its first and once you gets come up so that you can actually watch what my eyes do because one of the things that I often find with this is that um if you don't know what movement the eyes are supposed to make it can be kind of challenging so I'm gonna have a couple of you come over here we'll do it toward kind of that camera right there all right but you want to be where you can see my eyes. All right, so I'm going to I don't usually use to stick, but I'll do it, so I'm gonna actually start with this these circles right here, okay, I'm gonna take this stick and I'm going to set it directly in the center of the circles. But you're you divergence down. I'm doing now I'm going to convert its first, all right? All right. I'm gonna be crossing my eyes, all right? So I'm gonna look at the stick and I'm going to slowly start bringing in toward my eyes now what you guys should see is that my eyes are coming together slightly right there. Okay, I now, khun, take the stick away. I've got a nice three dimensional circle right in the center. That's stable, that's stable. Well, okay. And that's the goal eventually, if I have it stable, I want to even be able to move the paper and keep the three circle and keep the three circles. Wow. Okay, so remember, this is kind of a coordination and control exercise, so the first thing you've got to be able to do is you gotta get both eyes working. So that'll be a little while for you right now remember we did pencil pushups and you're right I didn't want to come in one of the reasons you're having a hard time with this and having to have this so close is we're trying to get that right eye to move away all right that'll make it a lot easier doesn't mean it doesn't mean I'm hopeless for this I don't know I just have to keep the fact that you said hey, when it's right here I can actually see three yeah, it means that you can do it it's just gonna be a learning process all right? Okay, okay. Now probably the harder one to mentally visualize because most this khun visualize aren't look at the stick kind across my eyes the harder one is the looking beyond okay, now that the way that I don't we teach this is I flipped the paper over because remember the further apart they are the harder it's going to be to diverge and create that circle so I'm gonna take this I'm gonna start with a small circles here I'm gonna hold it up about eye level but watch what I do now I'm gonna bring it really really close and then I'm basically going to pretend that I'm looking at jim all right? Meaning I'm looking past the paper when I do that correctly I can also use my stick, I can put it here, I can look at the stick and start to move it away, and as I move it away and I'm looking into the distance, the same thing had happens these split and they come together and create a third circle in the middle, so you're still you're seeing in your vision, you're seeing three circles correct. In both cases, I'm going to eventually see three circles in both cases, both of them should look three dimensional got it all right now there is a difference which I don't really want to talk to him about you about you read about it, but when I converge my eyes and I lined them up, the the three dimensional shape that appears is actually somewhat different than when I diverge. It's the divergence circle is usually bigger in the converted circles, usually smaller, ok, ok, because what can happen when you start doing this? You're not sure what your eyes are doing right now. You're looking at a get well, I've got three, but I don't know if I'm looking closer, looking far away, yeah, and that's why this is a really kind of ah, this is one that I want to spend some time with, it will help so much in controlling your eyes. Does that help kind of clarify it does that that that's very helpful. Okay, don't you guys try one more time the nuts and bolts you're pushing your focus out and pulling your eyeballs correct outwards for what you're doing diamond virgins alright, so give that one more shot and see if that changes uh either your ability to notice or see a change and control there you go much better. Yeah it's it's happening? I mean it's unstable but we're getting it now but I'm getting three images but it doesn't it doesn't stay but fine, but that means you can do it that's a starting point and eventually you'll be able to bring some stability to it. All right, good. And I and I do it by keeping my focus on this not not exactly what you have to do in the beginning and then the divergence would be flip it pen behind pencil behind look at the pencil, not the paper start to push it away and then just maintains an awareness that kind of got it awesome. So hee least now I know how to do it. Yeah that's the main thing is is learning how this is supposed to work, so that was very good, all right, you got to have one more assessment to do right and remember you're giving yourself report cards here and this is going to be stuff that you contract over the course of the coming months as you train, the last one that I want you to do is the near far he's, like I'm out. I want to do it. But what I like you guys to do is we'll go ahead and have you guys worked thirty seconds? Only. Now would you pull out the small chart he's. He folded it up for us. Okay, so for this one, you guys will work here again, and I'm gonna just push this back a little bit. Crash. Sorry. Now you gonna use this this chart in this chart, and if you remember, we walk bacchus, faras we comfortably can. And then we hold this at a distance at which we can see it. Now in the instructions. I know what we say. Hold it four to six inches from our face. But like we said, in your case, this may be your near that's. Ok? It doesn't matter. You're just you're just gonna work. So once you have it in position, you start. You read the small letter here, and then you switch your eyes and read the big letter back and forth, all right, you do that for thirty seconds, and you just count up your numbers. Okay good enough all right, so you gotta get the time one another and I'll let you guys play with it while you guys are doing that I'm gonna answer some more questions as they're coming in okay, I was a little um it's best if you do let me know before you start going answer there you go okay um yeah go ahead and just kind of whisper alright, perfect. That was a right answer so there is every other letter back and forth write one letter off the small card and then look at the big car correct? Okay, just back and for a small and big perfect I was a tiny bit confused on that yesterday. Okay. Um so what's the optimal distance on the convergence divergence chart full lock arms length they're pretty close, sir. And the way that you want to think about the convergence diver this chart is there actually isn't really an optimal distance basically that we start off with that shirt and we just hold it at a position in which we can get the action to occur that we want now generally speaking if your particular working on the divergence holding it closer to the face it's easier to understand what's supposed to happen right? So in the divergence I know we have people start maybe four to six inches away convergence normal reading distance okay, perfect and this one is from smooth and fast, I thought this was a really interesting question. What do you think about using weaker glasses while training? In other words, if somebody had an older prescription, what do you think about that? That is actually some of the behaviour optometry I've worked with her spoke with in the past, that's actually one of their preferred methods. Ok, so they basically say, listen, you've adapted to this higher prescription, we're needs a lower prescription and kind of a training capacity, so I think that's, uh, fairly well respected idea. Okay, great. Thank you so much. All right, so keep breathing any see any suggestions on exercises to improve maintaining eye contact, and I'm going to keep that I can't there's a lot of different things that come into that whole maintaining eye contact issue what I typically find because I do work with some of our some of our advanced trainers, we put through a public speakers course that we put on and one of the main things I run into when people are having a hard time, quote unquote maintaining eye contact is they're actually trying to look at the human eye now, here's the issue when I look at you, naturally, what my eyes want to do is they want to bounce around your face. That's very normal our eyes actually move about more than three or four times per second when we're looking at another human this is stuff that we can actually track so what I normally recommend for professional speakers is if you're trying to do look at someone and maintain eye contact don't look at their eyes because when their eyes move you will want to move so I am typically tell people look at the bridge of the nose because if I'm looking at the bridge of the nose I'm a little less distracted by the facial features and what's going on and that could be a really effective simple tool okay, that sounds really great I never I never knew that you know for for what idea? So that's really good a question for me yeah are there any exercises at the gym that will help along with the I training that I might consider doing maybe the punching bag or you know the speed bag stuff like that? Yeah eddie actually anything that you do in the june that requires you to basically react to respond to something visually is typically gonna be helpful for developing visual skills. So if you look at what a typical boxer does working a speed bag, believe it or not jumping rope oh yeah uh skipping rope is a very underutilized exercise a lot of people quit they went, you know, do a treadmill because skipping ropes hard it is hard but the actual up and down motion that you get when you're skipping a road has it plays with your visual system and also plays with your inner ear. Okay, so almost any athlete I work with that's one of our basic basic exercises that I give them so yeah, if you want to think just a little bit more own lines what boxer does? You can find some really excellent exercises in the gym in boxing. Okay, great running around chasing chickens. I can yes, if you especially if you have the rocky music going in the back. Yes. Okay, you don't like my where you going with that? Awesome. Thank you. All right, how'd you guys do on survive? It was all right. He survived. Now he did great. Yeah, I I got twenty four, twenty four. Okay, that's that's counting book from both charts, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. What do you got? Forty two again, it's cheating because in music, you're looking ahead so I'm looking ahead. I'm moving my eyes, but I'm remembering where I'm going to go next and that's that is very typical, like what a lot of people figure out and doing all these charts, so we figured out our compensation strategies, right? How do I how do I sidestep some of my visual deficit. So it's not a big deal right now you're going how what? I normally do it. What would my score be? Can I improve it? So that's fine. How did you do, lidia? Eighteen good thing that's a starting point that starting from that would be a little low but that's the starting point today, there's lots of room to improve. Yeah, all right. So what you guys have done is you've given yourself a base of a report card going forward over the next nine, ten weeks. However long you're going to really kind of approach this, what I'm going to recommend, like I said, is that you pick one or two of these that you would like to evaluate daily the things that you enjoy and like I personally love the multi size font chart I carry it around and I love these convergence diver discharge because it was a really easy for me. It is very evident to me that when I do something well for ah high performance drill I go number two is really, really clear multi size fund and I can make out some letters on the one right that's cool. I was like that, um converges divergence if I do a good drill, so in general, guys, um my converges I can do the full chart very easily because I love to read and I'm kind of biased toward convergence divergence though for me is a little bit more challenging ride in here is where it starts to get tough and so if I do a good vision drill boom I'll be able to get up into these if I'm doing something that maybe I'm not responding as well to in any given day I don't see the improvement so those are kind of my go to how how this affect me today kind of drill snelling mult distance vision brock string near far particularly hand I those are things that I might test once a week once every three or four weeks so do not feel compelled to test them all the time but remember the basic here is that if you want to continue to see improvement you have to be tracking you reassessing okay now now that we have our basic report card I'm going to ask you what to do you think he would look at starting tomorrow like which ones do you think would be most fun for you clapping you know see you like this one yeah alright and as much as I didn't want to do it that the near far ok because relating to it most as a musician and patterns and it's it's cool okay so those air to you you might want to revisit that you're talking about assessments for exercise assessments right now, like, if you're going to start tomorrow doing exercises, what would you like to assess on a regular basis?