How to improve your hand-eye coordination
Hand-eye coordination is the synchronisation of visual stimuli with reactive hand movement. In other words, it’s the process where your eyes communicate with your hands to allow you to complete a task. Things like picking up a glass of water, reading and writing, or even playing a video game, are all instances where you use hand-eye coordination in your everyday life.
In sports, this process is much more important. It can help to improve your performance as a whole, and for professional athletes that play sports like basketball, football, and many others — excellent hand-eye coordination is key.
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What is hand-eye coordination?
Hand-eye coordination can be explained as the ability of your body to process information seen by the eyes and in response, guide your hands so that you can complete a task. Most relevant to racket and ball sports, hand-eye coordination plays a key role in an athlete’s performance. That’s because it’s important for sportspeople to be able to communicate quickly (reaction times) and efficiently (hand-eye coordination) during fast-paced game situations.
Hand-eye coordination test
Do you think you have good hand-eye coordination? Test it online here.
The aim of the game is to stop each of the footballs with a tap or click inside the green circle and on target. There are eight rounds altogether and they get faster each time. Have as many goes as you like and see how your results change.
Get the balls into the green circle and see how many shots you get on target
Your hand-eye coordination test score:
0/100
(Poor)
Progress
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What affects hand-eye coordination?
There are several factors that can affect your hand-eye coordination, some of which can be controlled and some of which can’t. These include age, neurological disorders and fatigue.
1. Age
As ever, age will affect your ability to carry out certain tasks or functions. As you get older, your body’s processes begin to slow down, and this includes the speed of communication between your eyes and hands. A 2000 study supported this when they compared the hand-eye coordination of people in their 20s and 30s to that of those in their 60s and 70s. It concluded that perceptual-motor (anything that involves the perception of something and then a voluntary movement) skills declined with age.1
2. Neurological disorders
Disorders that affect your brain’s function or your physical motor skills will do the same to your hand-eye coordination. In disorders such as multiple sclerosis and ataxia (a group of disorders that affect coordination, balance and speech), for example, some of the pathways in the brain are compromised meaning the communication from the eyes to the hands becomes slower.
3. Fatigue
When you’re tired, your body doesn’t function as efficiently as it could. And this applies to hand-eye coordination too. Fatigue makes it harder for accurate communication between the eyes and hands as the brain can’t process information at its usual speed.
Does your eyesight have an effect?
Any type of visual impairment is likely to affect hand-eye coordination, purely because it will impact your field of vision and how clearly you see things. That said, you don’t need perfect eyesight to have good hand-eye coordination.
Most of the time any issues with hand-eye coordination are predominantly problems with the brain’s communication with the rest of the body, and not so much an issue with the eyes themselves.
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Why is hand-eye coordination important in sport?
Hand-eye coordination in sport is crucial for anticipating other players’ decisions, reacting to them, and initiating your own action in response. This is the foundation to most competitive sports, which is why good hand-eye coordination is so important.
Tennis
When the tennis ball is approaching, a player must quickly analyse the speed and location the ball will reach them, and position themselves accordingly to be able to hit it. The player must also consider the racket placement so that the ball is returned as accurately as possible.
All these decisions involve the eyes communicating with the brain so that both the hands and body respond to the information correctly. Without this coordination, a player could hit the ball in the wrong direction or could even swing and miss it completely.
Basketball
Basketball requires the constant use of efficient hand-eye coordination to keep up with the game and remain one step ahead of the competition. This includes catching, passing, dribbling and shooting. In every instance, an error in coordination could result in losing possession, and potentially the game.
Football
You might be thinking that football doesn’t really require good hand-eye coordination as — well, the clue’s in the name — players use their feet, not their hands. But good coordination between the eyes and the whole body is still important.
Side-line throw-ins have to be quick and accurate, or players could risk giving away possession or losing out on an opportunity. Most importantly though, goalkeepers need excellent hand-eye coordination to watch the path of the ball and reaching to save goals.
Want to learn from the best? Keep up to date with how football legend Jimmy Bullard and our Best Worst Football team is getting on with their football training. Visit our YouTube Channel to watch the series
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How to improve your hand-eye coordination
There are several different games, drills and exercises that people (and athletes) can do to improve their hand-eye coordination in quick and fun ways.
Hand-eye coordination games and exercises
Exercising your eyes is a great start to improving your hand-eye coordination. For example, jump convergence. To do this choose two objects, one about an arm’s length away and the other 3-4 metres away. Focus your eyes on the far object — ensuring it is clear, then ‘jump’ your gaze to the close object and re-focus your eyes until this too becomes clear. Practice ‘jumping’ from close to far, making sure the objects are in focus before switching to the other. This exercise will help you focus your vision more easily on objects at different distances, allowing your body to accurately prepare a response.
One of the simplest practices for hand-eye coordination is throwing and catching. Grab a tennis ball, bean bag, or anything about that size that you don’t mind dropping. Start practising with short throws up, watching the ball and cupping your hands ready to catch. Progress to higher throws when you’re more confident or ask a friend to throw the ball to make it more unexpected. If there’s no one about, use a wall to bounce the ball off. Learning to juggle is a great next step once you’re up for it as it requires simultaneous hand-eye coordination.
If you’re looking for something to incorporate into your everyday life, playing video games is another option. Having to watch the screen and respond by pushing the correct controlled buttons is excellent practice.
During game situations you could try the research recommended technique known as ‘Quiet Eye’.2 This requires you to consciously fixate or track your gaze on an activity. Whether this is catching a ball or saving a penalty, the conscious effort to focus solely on one thing is said to improve your coordination and reaction times.
Hand-eye coordination drills
To improve your hand-eye coordination in the context of a specific sport, you can practice skill-based drills. For football, this would involve passing and kick-ups which can help to improve overall eye coordination. For goalies, the focus would be on practice saving penalties or goal attempts from different angles and distances.
If you think you’ve noticed a change in your vision, visit our eye conditions hub for more information, or book an appointment at your local store to get a professional opinion.
References
1. Jinhua Guan and Michael G. Wade, ‘The Effect of Aging on Adaptive Eye-Hand Coordination’, The Journal of Gerontology, (May 2000) Series B, 55:3 pp.151-162. Available online at: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/55/3/P151/607083?login-true [accessed 01/2022].
2. Joan Vickers, Joe Causer and Dan Vanhooren, ‘The Role of Quiet Eye Timing and Location in the Basketball Three-point Shot: A New Research Paradigm’, Online research article (October 2019). Available online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ fpsyg.2019.02424/full [accessed 01/2022].