Have you ever watched a movie where they are filming from the perspective of a person running and the camera is shaking all over the place and you can’t keep the scene in focus?
But then when they slow down it becomes clear again.
Why is that?
It’s because when they are moving slowly, your visual system can react to the input, but when they start to move faster, you need your vestibular system to keep things clear.
You aren’t the one running, you’re sitting on your couch watching. Your vestibular system isn’t getting that input, so you can’t keep the target in focus.
The vestibular system is vital to move and keep a target in focus.
If it’s not functioning at a high level we will compensate by slowing down in order to maintain awareness of our environment.
Repeated subconcussive exposures impact the vestibular system and limit the ability to move as fast as we want while keeping a target focus.
This creates a situation where we either slow down or push through- keeping our speed but losing control and target focus.
This doesn’t just apply to running.
Our vestibular system senses linear and angular acceleration and deceleration.
That means that side to side, up and down, pitching forward/back, spinning, and slipping is all sensed by our vestibular system.
Sometimes we don’t notice the subtle impacts of repeated subconcussive exposures because we don’t measure our speed in all the planes of movement.
Which is fine if we only move in a couple of planes.
But most of us don’t.
What I would recommend is to think about what your movement patterns are, and test to see how fast you can move in those planes while keeping a target in focus.
You might find that certain planes are much slower than others.