The Effectivity of Stroboscopic Training on Anticipation Timing

INTRODUCTION Accurate and consistent anticipation timing (AT) is considered advantageous during dynamic reactive activities such as automobile driving, baseball batting, and basketball passing. Stroboscopic training has gained interest in the athletic community as a means of improving AT. The purpose of this study was to evaluate stroboscopic training effects on AT. METHODS Forty-four young adult optometry students served as subjects. Pre-training AT was measured at speeds of 10, 20 and 30 mph using the Bassin Anticipation Timer. Subjects were equally divided into an experimental group that trained with functional stroboscopic eyewear and a control group that trained with non-stroboscopic eyewear. Training consisted of 2 weeks of tennis ball catching: underhand tosses at 12 ft (3.7 m) for 10 min per day. Upon completion of training, subjects were immediately retested on AT and then tested again 24 hrs later. RESULTS Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that, after training, there was no significant change in AT accuracy for either group, but the experimental group did show significant improvement in consistency at 30 mph, and that the effect was maintained for 24 hrs. DISCUSSION Stroboscopic training did not improve AT accuracy in this study, possibly because of the relatively slow testing speeds used, the simple training activity, and/or the study population. However, it did demonstrate improved AT consistency at the fastest test speed, which was maintained post-training. Future research should consider stroboscopic training effects with speeds and activities more similar to those that an athlete would expect to encounter in his or her sport.