The Valley is a sports town from the major teams to Spring Training teams that call the desert home.
Professional athletes wow the crowds with their incredible physical feats and we love it. We buy tickets and we cheer.
“There's a physics and psychology component…”
Physics and psychology? I thought it was all just entertainment.
“Scientifically, it's not the case…”
Although he’s retired from teaching, former ASU professor Richard Hinrichs loves analyzing the biomechanics of sports.
“It becomes a health issue, an enjoyment issue and a life satisfaction issue.”
He believes that by studying the habits of professional athletes, the rest of us mere mortals can benefit big time.
“If it can help us be more active through more years of our life, that's the goal.”
From hitting the links to just living a healthier life, longer, we can make the most of our bodies by learning to perform at a higher level.
High performance and a high-tech future thanks to sports science, says ASU Psychology professor Mike McBeath.
And so much depends on our perception.
“It feels obvious...It feels obvious…” I said as I was trying out some of the perception exercises.
“We're trying to figure out how to make things fit your value system and your ways of thinking and not overwhelm your cognitive capacity,” McBeath told me.
The way athletes process information could help program the robots of the future. These gentlemen built a robot that can catch a baseball but the primary focus isn’t to play with an artificially intelligent friend.
It’s all about learning what athletes know to program the AI assistants that will help make our lives easier. Sports for the masses…now that’s something to cheer about.
