Training Gaze Behavior in Sport

This chapter provides an overview of how we can train gaze behavior to improve performance in sport. The authors discuss training of aiming-related gaze behavior, training anticipation-related gaze behavior, and training gaze anchors and visual pivots. Each of these types of training can be relevant to different sports or the different tasks within a sport. The authors provide a literature review of each of the aforementioned types of training, explain their importance, and provide valuable information to practitioners who work with athletes. For example, in aiming tasks (e.g., shooting free-throw shots in basketball), training a specific gaze behavior known as the quiet eye can aid expert performance, expedite skill acquisition, and develop skills that are anxiety-resilient. Moreover, in interceptive tasks (e.g., returning a badminton service), anticipatory ability can be improved by training athletes to better pick up and utilize the most pertinent environmental information (e.g., servers’ movements). Finally, research shows the importance of peripheral vision in dynamic and time-constrained tasks that require the monitoring of multiple stimuli (e.g., defensive actions in martial arts), suggesting that training optimal gaze anchors or visual pivots could improve performance.