The earliest visual responses occur at a substantially longer latency (about 80msec) compared to vestibular responses (about 14msec). [1]
This isn’t to diminish the importance of the visual system, but rather emphasize the importance of optimizing your vestibular system to enhance your performance.
If you are visually dependent on your movement control and situational awareness, you are losing out on a system that provides responses that are 5x faster than visual responses.
Unfortunately, your vestibular system is particularly vulnerable to both blast and sound waves. [2,3]
Which, as a tactical athlete, you have a lot of exposure to.
That’s why it is extremely important to not just know about the vestibular system, but to train it.
Here are some articles that go into training the vestibular system:
Training angular/linear acceleration/deceleration.
References:
- Herdman SJ, Clendaniel RA. (2014). Vestibular Rehabilitation, 4e. McGraw Hill.
- Ertugrul, S., Soylemez, E., & Gurel, T. (2021). Effectiveness of hearing protection apparatus in preventing noise induced vestibular loss. International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 1-10.
- Sandlin, D. S. (2018). Mechanisms of Vestibular Deficits Induced by Blast Overpressure via the Ear Canal in Rats (Doctoral dissertation, University of Mississippi Medical Center).