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How to Improve Hand Eye Coordination –
Learn Key Exercises for Developing Hand Eye Coordination and
Improve Your Athletic Performance
By Robert Rousseau
Most
of the articles you'll find regarding improving hand eye
coordination on the internet have everything to do with
young children simply because this skills is learned early
on. In other words, it's not easy to change once you get
older.
Not
easy and impossible are two distinctly different things,
however.
Along with this, here are some drills for athletic adults
and youngsters to consider when they desire to improve hand
eye coordination for the sake of sports performance.
Connect Four: Connect
Four is a game of visual planning and organization. The hand
part of hand eye coordination won't get much of a workout.
However, the eye part will and that can't hurt.
Focus near and far:
Quickly practice focusing on a near and then far object. Go
back and forth, back and forth.
Goalie: Have someone
try to throw a soft ball (like a nerf ball) by you into a
real or makeshift goal. The only catch? You have to stop the
ball with your hands. Depending on your performance, have
the thrower move closer or further away.
Have a catch with a catch:
Get a large wiffle ball, softball, or really any ball that's
light colored. Then write a bunch of letters on the ball
with a black marker. Next, find someone to have a catch
with. As each of you is about to catch the ball, call out
the last letter you see.
Have a catch with yourself:
One thing you can do to improve hand eye coordination is
throw a baseball up in the air repeatedly and catch it. The
same goes for any ball, including a football.
Raquet sports: Ever
play ping pong? Well, if you have then you know how much
that sport can improve your hand eye coordination. Have to
assume that raquetball is of the same ilk. Tennis too. In
other words, anytime you have to react to another person's
movement and a ball with your own hand, you're going to
improve hand eye coordination.
Speed bag drills:
Boxers have outstanding hand eye coordination simply because
if they didn't they'd be unconscious a whole heckuva lot of
the time. One thing they do to keep sharp is use the speed
bag. You can too.
Video games: Chris
Spielman, an outstanding former linebacker for the Detroit
Lions, once indicated that he sometimes would work on hand
eye coordination via video games. How often this occurred is
unclear. What we do know is that visual perception and motor
skills can be improved through the use of video games.
Wall ball: Stand in
front of a flat wall with a basketball. Then begin to throw
it against the wall and catch it. After you've warmed up
sufficiently, begin to throw it against the wall with only
one hand. Every time it bounces off the wall push it back
against the wall- without catching it- with the fingertips
of the same hand you threw it with. Then repeat with your
non- dominant hand.
And
finally:
Get involved in sports, period:
Virtually any sport from golf to baseball to karate will
improve hand eye coordination. In fact, probably nothing
will help to improve it more than a sport you attend
regularly, whether it be a town sports league or something
in a professional sense.
In
the end, like anything else, hand eye coordination has deep
roots to childhood. That said, change is possible, as is
improvement with practice. Therefore, the key is to know how
to practice and have the desire to do so.
Good luck |