Tuesday, February 24, 2009

How Good is Your Reaction Time?

Nation,

I'm looking forward to the Spring Shootout this weekend. If you haven't signed up.. do so immediately by e-mailing me at steven.trainorATgmail.com

I've been a little slow at the posts lately.. mostly because of the following
  1. Real work that pays
  2. The Spring Shootout
  3. CUPA stuff
  4. I've been reading a lot of stuff. in the hopes of being (more) interesting for the coming months of posts.
I recently submitted two articles to the upcoming spring edition of the Canadian Ultimate Magazine. One article is an updated Talking with Trainor interview of Andrew Lugsdin. The other article was a broad focus piece on the value of Indoor Ultimate in imrpoving one's reaction time.

I won't spoil the article, but I can give you a link that tests your reaction time and might get you thinking/interested in the concepts of bio-mechanics and how it can affect your game.

12 comments:

lank89 said...

0.24 seconds, got me a base hit

Unknown said...

07 HOME RUN!

Sport Management Steven said...

I consistently got in the 0.20-0.25 range.. lots of base hits.

As soon as I got my third homer (0.14 range for all of them) I quit! Too addictive!

Unknown said...

Not bad, but if you anticipate the pitch you can consistently hit it out of the park. My reaction time was 0.2 sec on average, but then I started anticipating the pitch and managed to get a time of 0.09 and 0.02 sec, then I quit ;)

Sport Management Steven said...

Hodge,

Regarding your strategy, that's improving your results, but not your true reaction time.

The idea behind these kinds of tests is to actually make you process information quicker (reaction time) and respond quicker (movement time).

Druski said...

True Steven, though Hodge's comment raises another good point... good anticipation is complementary to good reaction time and can in part compensate for it. Granted the test is a simplified and predictable example, but I think the broader concept is valid.

joelyb said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTeWtf_pW60

T1000 said...

The force is clearly strong with Hodge.

But sure enough, I think the pitches are following a binomial distribution clustered a little after 3sec (depending on your system clock). I think the random number generator sampling rate and probability of success are staying constant, which could cause that trend.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could reduce field sense to a set of probability distributions? One can always dream.

Me said...

Ok joelb... you want to play that game?
Guitar Hero.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5GpRJItqjw&feature=related

This? Kid may even be better!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLzoLFAxqpk&NR=1

joelyb said...

i posted that video to show the correct way of testing hand eye.

guitar hero is about repetition and muscle memory not hand eye.

sharpie said...

Joel...

Guitar hero is about guys that can't meet girls...

joelyb said...

haha i forgot to put that as well.