Figure skating strength and conditioning expert Elizabeth Mullins shares how she uses BlazePods with her athletes to challenge eye-hand coordination. BlazePod is a training tool designed to improve hand-eye coordination through interactive drills that combine physical and cognitive challenges. It uses reactive lights to create engaging exercises that enhance athletes’ reaction times and decision-making skills during sports. Elizabeth notes that this kind of training is very engaging and “super fun.” She says, “It can be something that you prime yourself to prepare yourself for your training session or it could be a finisher at the end.”
There is a cognitive challenge here, and the reaction time is a combination of cognitive recognition and physical movement. Elizabeth has it set up as red light for right hand and green light for left hand, and even though she reviews this with the skater, the skater struggles a bit with which is which. The total drill time is 30 seconds.
There’s a level of frantic and chaotic overwhelm that can happen to an athlete in this kind of drill, and the goal is to get into a flow state where mistakes are forgotten instantly and the cognitive recognition feels like it happens automatically. Elizabeth says, “If I make a mistake I’m going to try not to have a verbal reaction to it or a physical reaction to it because as an athlete I want to train my ability to move on from mistakes.” After another attempt at the drill, Elizabeth has the skater take a short walk and focus on right-red, left green. She says, “Clear your mind out. So your mind has just clouds floating by.”
Next we get to see how this looks with a larger athlete who is an assistant helping Elizabeth. Being taller and having a wider reach is obviously an advantage. Here we also get to see how jarring a mistake can be to an athlete’s flow state. The goal is to get back to a flow state more quickly after mistakes and this is one of the benefits of this kind of training for figure skates (who all make mistakes).
