Eyes on the Prize

    

    Jakub Dobes stands awkwardly in the shadows, as many big men without ego do. He's almost relieved to be quietly approached to talk about hockey. Once the subject is broached though, he's enthusiastic. In describing his training, he admits pro hockey is a year-round job.

    "I will say an hour to an hour-30 in the gym and on the ice 45 minutes to an hour. It's pretty much...I wouldn't say all year round. But 11 out of 12 months a year. It's pretty much. But it's so exciting. I love playing hockey." 

    Dobes exudes professionalism, encased in a shy, gentle humour.

    His teammates laugh at his "weird" warm-up routine, but it turns out, he's possibly more scientifically advanced than they are. 

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    Dr. Sara Hutchens is an optometrist in St.John's, Newfoundland. She's working on a project to determine whether goalie performance improves with specific eye training.

    “Vision is so much different than what we think of it as and how we work in the real world is different. And sport is a perfect example of that," she says. 

    Hutchens has worked with the Toronto Blue Jays, training the comparative vision of fielders and pitchers. 

    "What we test for a pitcher versus an infielder is going to be a little bit different," she explains. "So we're getting very much into contrast sensitivity. So we make the letters fade and figure out how light can they be and you still pick them up. Like, when you're looking at a pop fly ball, you know, is that going to blend into the clouds and they can't pick it up anymore?”

    Hutchens was used to baseball players; she was one herself. However, most of the young people who populate her waiting room were hockey kids.

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     "I want to see if there is a different performance measure that is correlated," she says. "So then if we do find a performance measure that is correlated with save percentage, that is something that is trainable.”

    Dobes welcomes that. He wants to get better, and if science can help him, he's all in. He's following Hutchens' advice.

    "I try to warm up my eyes before every game. Just movement," he says. "It's a muscle kind of. So it's like the same principal. You've just gotta warm them up. It's working."

    "Your vision is very important."

    Hutchens agrees:

    "So this is very much visual performance skills, which are different than your routine eye exam. In a routine eye exam, you're reading letters on a chart and everything is static and the world is dynamic and sport is dynamic," she says. "So we want to see how your visual system is performing under pressure in a high paced environment. So we're looking at things like your peripheral awareness, reaction time, eye tracking skills, also, you know, inhibition decision making in response to visual cues."    

    "You know, they don't think about training your vision and that is determining almost everything. 80% of what we take in is visual. So then, you know, they're thinking about how do I train my speed, my strength. But they have you think about vision in a different way."

    Jakub Dobes can see everything.