By: Bailey Nyhof March 5, 2024
In an era where having physical prowess meets mental, athletes are turning towards video games not just for entertainment, but as a tool and a resource. Beyond the stereotype of video games being brain rotting, athletes are seeing many benefits from improved cognitive ability, enhanced decision-making, increased eye-hand coordination, faster reaction times, and most importantly a relief to get away from everything around them, while still arguably making them better in their realm of sports.
From the NBA and NFL to High school sports athletes are using and playing video games to their advantage both on the field and off.
Video games can bring teammates together while also improving their mental space “Players spend a lot of time working on our bodies but it’s equally important to have our mind operating on a high level… That’s exactly what NeuroTracker helps you do.” says ex NFL Falcons QB Matt Ryan.
Some of the unexpected and unseen benefits of using a program like the NeroTracker or IntelliGym can be seen off the field, in bigger sports where there are players from all around the world there is sometimes a language barrier, with video games there is no language barrier to have.
An unexpected benefit of these two programs and similar programs is the benefit of diagnosing concussions. “Basically, across the board, at any age, you have a 40 percent drop in your ability to do this [program] if you’re concussed. So [within minutes] you can tell, especially if you have a baseline if an individual is impaired,” says Brian Christie, a neuroscientist with both the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia.
Outside of the comradery of a team, is each individual player, and every player has varied personalities, although video games can help individual teammates come together, the biggest benefits are seen mentally. From improved selective attention, cognitive ability, increased attention span, working memory capacity, an improvement in eyesight, and hand-eye coordination, “Tests prior to the computer game intervention showed no major differences in the eyesight of the Trained and Untrained players. After two months of training, however, major differences were apparent—most notably, the Trained group notched a 31 percent improvement in their visual acuity. Some players’ eyesight improved to 20/7.5, meaning they could see things 20 feet away with the same clarity that an average person could see at seven and a half feet.” As well as “Of the 19 players involved in the original test, 11 played on the team the next season. Those players reduced their year-over-year strikeout percentage from 22.1 percent to 17.7 percent of their plate appearances, a much larger reduction than the average for the rest of the league (16 percent to 15.4 percent). The 11 Trained players also improved in the category of Runs Created (RC), defined as a “statistic that includes key components of both on-base and slugging percentage as a measure of overall batting performance.” The Trained players increased their RC per out from .140 to .188, compared to the league average for improvement of .140 to .151.” These results prove an increase in skill between the two groups of players, with these obvious results it leaves the question, why is every player not utilizing this?
After seeing the benefits of video games and games that are created to divulge in specific areas of improvement, the increase in mental cognitive function as well as the off-the-field aspects like team comradery, it proves that playing these games provides a benefit to some aspects.