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Why Soccer Players Are Training in the Dark


Sports science company Okkulo has shown that its specially lit training environment can improve players’ visual-motor skills—and a growing number of sports are starting to test it out.

I am trialling Okkulo’s technology at Thorp Arch in West Yorkshire, a $6 million sports facility that serves as base camp for one of England’s top soccer clubs—Leeds United. Compared to the control group, on average players using the Okkulo system found that their recognition time was enhanced by almost 60 percent, allowing them to identify relevant activity faster among crowded fields. He contacted a scientist who’d written a paper on seeing movement in the dark—and who, by pure chance, lived only 20 minutes down the road—and by the end of the afternoon the pair were scheming on how this might relate to sports training, over a cup of tea.

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