Can You Have Control Over Time?

When we teach new students our system, they're just gobsmacked with how simple it is and how the brain will take care of all the stuff that they've been trying to take care of.

But several things have to happen in a sequence for that to happen.

The first and most important thing is you have to see the bird coming to the barrel. It has to be coming to you because if it's coming to you, the brain can then predict where it's going to be. 

“Vision, along with other senses, provides information to the central nervous system to allow a prediction of what is coming next. Time is the only dimension we cannot control. Prediction is our best effort at controlling the time variable. Any disorder that affects our visual ability will make it more difficult to predict an event in the time domain.”
- Dr. Dan Laby

We use prediction constantly to interact with our surroundings. Now, when these guys say “time is the only dimension we cannot control,” they're working with baseball hitters. So, there's a fixed time when the ball leaves the pitcher's hand to where it crosses the plate and the ball and the bat are going opposite directions. You can't control how fast that ball appears because the ball and the bat are going opposite directions.

Move over to shotgun shooting where the bird and the barrel are now going the same direction. As you're matching the speed of the target, the target appears to slow down and the background disappears. So, in our game, because the bird and the barrel are going the same speed, we can control the time dimension. We have we have total control over time.

Our central nervous system still provides information on a prediction of what's coming next. It's like the dots in the graph. It knows where the target's going to be.

 This is an adapted excerpt from the February 2025 Coaching Hour podcast. You can hear it in full - along with more than 20 years of archives in audio and written form - with your Knowledge Vault membership.