We consider visual anticipation as part of biomechanics since it is an eyes’ movement we employ during our motions on snow.
We use visual anticipation to determine where to ski by orienting our gaze, utilizing it for environment recognition to take appropriate decisions. Vision consents body orientation in space, and then we can say that our body follows our eyes. If we are advanced skiers, we surely orient ourselves through an anticipatory visual strategy, setting a gaze towards the next direction change much before the end of the current turn.
Vision helps determine the stability reference by orienting our gaze towards the distant zone, so if we pay too much visual attention to an area just in front of our skis, this reference is reduced, being applied only when moving at low speed. For faster skiing, we need to increase our stability by setting our vision further forward. Also, skiing faster than our technical level increases the probability of perception mistakes so in this case, our visual anticipation is essential.
Anticipating helps to locate the target point, and this is done previously to our motor actions leading to the desired direction. Anticipating is searching for visual references that determine the execution of future actions adapting to incoming settings. As terrain and slope conditions constantly change, this function is critical, being considered as an essential mechanism to be trained.
The ability to anticipate the upcoming path is essential to determine what will happen in the near future and, if necessary, we may gradually modify it adapting it to the particular situation. If our future trajectory is not visually anticipated, then we must react to rectify it. According to this, it is observed that beginners usually tend to change direction without having a complete visual pattern of their surroundings, making them constantly adjust their path and speed because of not locating obstacles beforehand. Instead, expert skiers apply an opposite strategy by locating obstacles that must be avoided, adjusting the temporal component for efficient skiing.
Visual anticipation and spatiotemporal functions
Visual anticipation has two main functions: the spatiality function (anticipating “where”) and the temporal function (anticipating “when”). While using visual anticipation, we should not only evaluate the spatial component, i.e., the place where we will move; we should also estimate the temporal component in terms of the time it takes to move to that location or the time we need to avoid it.
It is also important to determine the temporal function of when to look. This aspect is related to planning the actions to be performed, which should be anticipated even more as our motion speed increases.
Visual anticipation and the expansion of the surroundings
Visually anticipating allows expanding the mountain environs in which we will be moving. Looking just the immediate space will limit visual detection to that space only. Expanding our visual field of the surroundings aims to detect relevant information points, being this an active exploration process. Visual anticipation should be oriented towards distant spaces at high speed and could be oriented to nearby spaces at reduced speed.
Visual anticipation and the environment layout
Visual anticipation is a proactive method to monitor the environment; this is, having an advanced knowledge of the surroundings that allows us predicting possible skiing destabilizing situations. It collaborates in the determination of slope and snow features, traffic conditions, slope easier/harder side, turn completion and/or initiation point, and fixed or mobile obstacles (other people or snowmobiles).
The visual perception of snow features is part of our action planning procedures when skiing. Looking at the snow we process its properties such as texture, contours, gloss, or shade and perceive these characteristics as heavy, light, fast, slow, easy, or difficult to ski it. While encountering the same snow type and detecting it by visual anticipation, our brain will process their features quicker, allowing to anticipate snow conditions and our action planning, decreasing our cognitive expenditure that entails analyzing it whenever observing it.
Visual anticipation and skier’s expectation
Expectations are brain states of previous informative situations references on which we presuppose the possibility of reappearance. To visually anticipate the environment is a requirement for our perceptual process since to perceive, we must first observe and expectation is included in this process which contributes to perception.
Our expectations guide the acquisition of visual information during visual anticipation. In an environment with constant properties, we will not need to continuously process its features. In addition, our expectations facilitate the interpretation of perceived visual information in the sense that it increases the speed of object detection located in a pertinent environment.
Visual anticipation and head movement
Not only our eyes move to different directions; it also does our head. The anticipatory head movement toward the direction we intend to go is a process developed in childhood so when starting to ski, it must be only applied to this particular way of motion by sliding.
Orienting our eyes and head towards the direction we intend to go is part of our turning actions’ mechanisms and is carried out prior to turn initiation with the objective of obtaining terrain information. Our head anticipates the direction change, staying on slight counter-rotation with our body during the greater part of the turn.
Visualization
Visualization is the cognitive process to generate anticipated visual detection of future trajectories. It is used, e.g., to visualize a path between trees, bumps, a slalom course or through congested areas. Unlike mental visualization, it is done with our eyes since it is a real-time application, being essential in dangerous situations and, if it fails, generally causes apprehension, body tension, and possible falls.
Some considerations about visual anticipation in different skiers
During actions anticipation, it is observed that the difference between beginner and expert skiers is that these last ones use visual anticipationto direct attention to identifying information, analyzing its meaning more effectively than the first ones.
The expert skier bases his visual anticipation skills even with partial or minimal information, is quick to organize and recognize signals, comparing them to past situations stored in memory. He tends to employ longer visual anticipation time but less long-term visual fixations into more information areas, while the beginner is prone to spend more time fixating his gaze on lower relevance stimulus.
In the racer’s case, as soon as he detaches gaze from the immediate gate toward the next one, his skiing will be more stable. This is why it is important that during our development process as skiers, the ability to visually anticipate needs to be systematically trained since it is a significant predictor.
