(dramatic music)
- There's this moment in soccer
that's such high stakes.
It's called the penalty kick.
(crowd cheering)
- [Commentator] He's an expert penalty taker,
but when the pressure is on
the nerves jangle.
- [Kaylan] The ball is placed inside of the box,
12 yards from the goal.
It's just me and the kicker.
(clock ticking)
When the ball is shot,
I have to predict where the ball is going.
(dramatic music)
Will they kick it to the bottom right corner,
the top left corner,
or straight down the middle?
And on average, keepers have just a 30% chance
of stopping the ball,
but if I can improve my reaction time
by just a second or two,
I may have a better chance to win the game.
- [Narrator] Eye tracking technology is helping goalies
gain the edge over their competition,
and it's revealing something
about the brain we never knew before.
(dramatic music)
Keep your eye on the ball.
Anyone who has played sports has heard that over and over,
because tracking the pass, puck, rebound, or shot
is key to completing that action.
When you lose focus, you make mistakes.
So athletes are turning to eye tracking technology
to understand how to improve their focus,
because even the slightest improvements in reaction
can be the difference between being a hero
and being a zero.
- So eye tracking is literally tracking
the pupil of your eye,
about where it is orientated in space.
When you drill deeper,
what you're looking at is really the behavior of the eye.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] For any movement in sports,
you need to send information to the brain
about what to do and where to go.
Your eyes gather that information.
So if they can focus on the one thing that matters,
it's easier to react and decide where to move.
This tech works by using a near infrared light camera,
trained on your pupils' movements,
and overlays on video that captures what your focused on,
and for how long.
It's pretty simple,
but analyzing that and applying it to your game
can be more challenging.
For example, this heat map shows
where a player's eyes are focused the most.
It should be on the ball,
but oftentimes it's looking down the field
or to the sidelines.
So watching back where you're looking and for how long
can help a player train their gaze better,
so practice makes perfect.
- What we think is that you can get ahead of that
by training the eye as you're gaining that skill.
(upbeat percussion music)
What we've done at Fixation is find a new way to apply it.
When I was 16, I was blinded in my left eye,
as a goalkeeper.
I was in a walk through practice.
I wish it was a better story,
but really, it was just this freak accident.
And it can't process the light coming into the brain,
as my right eye does.
And I was from there on very interested
in how the eyes gather information for the brain
and use it during sports.
(upbeat percussion music)
- [Narrator] The science behind the tech shows
that it likely does improve how athletes play the game.
Research published in 2012
says although eye tracking in sports is typically thought
to improve the physical game of an athlete,
it actually reveals more about the cognitive thinking
and psychology of an athlete.
Researchers found that eye movement
is an involuntary action that's based on reaction.
So tracking eye movement can directly measure
the cognitive thought process in real time.
Understanding that flow of information
from the eyes to the brain and back again
is helping athletes have a better insight
into how their brain works,
and control actions, like gaze,
when they have just fractions of a second
for a make or break decision.
(upbeat percussion music)
- Feel okay?
- Mm-hmm.
(dramatic music)
- I'm Kaylan Marckese.
I am a professional goalkeeper and right now,
I'm in New Jersey to try and coach a little bit on the side.
(intense music)
Using the eye tracking as a goalkeeper is really helpful
because it'll help you learn how to find the ball faster.
(intense music)
The faster you can do that,
the more efficiently you can move
and try and hopefully make that save.
(intense music)
- And so what you'll notice you're doing.
- It's a compelling case.
So I wanted to try it out myself.
(upbeat music)
And full transparency, I'm not a soccer player.
I can't touch my toes.
So I strapped in to find out if it could tell me
how bad I am.
- [John] So this is right where you're looking.
These are your eyes.
- John had me start off with a toss catch drill,
just to get used to the system.
(upbeat music)
- Then lay down.
- Cool, I can do that.
(upbeat music)
Then came the real training.
(upbeat music)
This heat map is showing that I really am not focused
on the right thing.
And not surprisingly, my gaze is all over the place.
- What it's saying is overall of your sequences.
Do you see how much dispersion there is?
- [Narrator] Mm-hmm.
- Your eyes, even though you're trying to look at the ball,
are still darting around.
- Okay, so I'm not doing it right?
- Well, it just shows that you're a novice.
(upbeat music)
- Time to put what I learned to the test.
(upbeat music)
(net banging)
Ooh!
- That's a really good save.
(upbeat music)
(net banging)
(upbeat music)
- Did that go in?
- [Kaylan] Yep.
- Turns out my results in this limited test
didn't change much.
John says the real benefit
is using it over and over again in practice,
which is why it helps professional players like Kaylan.
(upbeat music)
- Anytime you're called in to touch the ball,
it's usually a make or break moment.
The pressure of being a goalkeeper
is something I really enjoy.
- Eye tracking is something that won't separate you
from the pack.
It's not very common right now.
You have so many people that are looking for the thing
that's gonna take them to the next level
and with gaze behavior,
not only is it so simple, but at the same time,
it's not well practiced, it's not well coached,
and we wanna solve that problem.
Thanks for watching our series, The Edge.
If you want to find out more about how technology
is changing the game, go to our website and
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