When even a millisecond counts
Rasmus Vestergaard Johansen is an 18-year-old Danish skeleton rider and top athlete, with the long-term goal of qualifying for the 2026 Winter Olympics, but he will try for the 2022 edition.
An elite athlete like Rasmus is interested in improving his results by milliseconds, because as a top athlete, every second counts, literally.
Rasmus has started a course with functional optometrist Thomas Kirkfeldt, where he will work on performance optimization.
The goal is to make him faster at perceiving and processing input, which would give him a competitive advantage.
Act and react
Rasmus will mainly work on his: reactivity, decoding, endurance, concentration and coordination.
The optimization of these areas will enable Rasmus to better maintain an overview in pressured situations, make faster and better decisions, and overall, become the best possible version of himself.
Rasmus gets his whole body going when he trains on the EYEBAB Softboard. Here you can see how he duels with his sister Nanna in the app Catch Me, where they work on reactivity, coordination and concentration.
The large EYEBAB Softboard is hugely engaging and motivating, as due to its huge format, it invites movement and action.
In the Catch Me app, Rasmus is instructed by Thomas Kirkfeldt to use his peripheral vision to its fullest potential when selecting the object being displayed.
“I can draw many direct parallels between my sport and the exercises I do through EYEBAB. For example, the app Contrast Finder, can help me get better at spotting details. I can use this, for example, when I drive down the ice channel. When I run through the track, I must be able to spot the small details in the ice, which can tell me how to best run a given curve. This can be relatively difficult to see.”
– Rasmus Vestergaard
EYEBAB on the go
Rasmus travels a lot, and has a very busy schedule. He is often away for several weeks at a time due to skeleton practice, which has some amazing training facilities in Germany. Therefore it is very valuable for him that he can access his EYEBAB activities online, on a tablet, computer or smartphone.
“Being a top athlete requires complete dedication, focus, discipline and concentration at all times. I feel like I’m using my free time more productively, when I’m able to spend it working on my self development. Suddenly my breaks feel more meaningful, less like work, and more like fun.”
– Rasmus Vestergård Johansen
Can you see it coming?
Here you can see an online session, where functional optometrist Thomas Kirkfeldt is instructing Rasmus on the use of some new apps. The EYEBAB app Match It, is explained in this video, where the functional optometrist is able to follow Rasmus’s performance during his app session. This app in particular works on the peripheral vision, concentration, and requires that Rasmus keeps his eyes focused on the center image, while trying to locate the identical object in the outer perimeters.
“Doing an individual sport doesn’t mean you can’t have a world class team behind the scenes. I’m fortunate to have EYEBAB as a part of mine. It’s always good to see the track from a different perspective in order to optimise your drive, and symbolically enough EYEBAB has an app called Racetrack that adds fuel to mine.”
– Rasmus Vestergaard
