In Kendo (Japanese fencing), “Enzan no Metsuke” is an important Waza (technique) that is applied by expert Kendo fighters. It involves looking at the opponent's eyes with “a gaze toward the far mountain,” taking in not only the opponent's face but also his or her whole body. Over the last few decades, a considerable number of studies on visual search behaviors in sport have been conducted. Yet, there are few articles that examine visual search behaviors in combat sports, such as martial arts. This study aimed to analyze the visual search strategies used by expert Kendo fighters through sparring practices to discuss what “Enzan no Metsuke” is under experimental, but natural (in situ), conditions. Ten experts, 10 novices, and one Shihan (a master of Kendo) participated in this study. The fighters wore a mobile eye tracker and faced a real opponent. They were instructed to do the following in five different sessions: prepare themselves, practice their offense and defense techniques, and fight in a real Shiai (match). The results indicated differences in the visual search strategies between the Shihan, experts, and novices. The Shihan and experts fixated on their opponent's eyes or head region most of the time and adopted a visual search strategy involving fewer fixations of longer duration. Conversely, novices set their eyes mainly on the opponent's Shinai (sword). Only the Shihan always looked at the opponent's eyes, even during the preparation, offense, and defense sessions. Shihan and experts set their “visual pivot” on the opponent's eyes quietly, even when the opponent tried to attack with the Shinai. Novices, however, moved their eyes up and down based on the influence of their opponent's movements. As these results indicate, novices tried to search for detailed information about their opponent and processed visual information depending on their focal vision, whereas Shihan and experts absorbed information not from their opponent's eyes but from their entire body by utilizing their peripheral vision; this means that Shihan and experts could see an opening or opportunity and react instantaneously by using “Enzan no Metsuke.”

In baseball, batters swing in response to a ball moving at high speed within a limited amount of time—about 0. 5 s. In order to make such movement possible, quick and accurate trajectory prediction followed by accurate swing motion with optimal body-eye coordination is considered essential, but the mechanisms involved are not clearly understood. The present study aims to clarify the strategies of eye and head movements adopted by elite baseball batters in actual game situations. In our experiment, six current professional baseball batters faced former professional baseball pitchers in a scenario close to a real game (i.e., without the batters informed about pitch type in advance). We measured eye movements with a wearable eye-tracker and head movements and bat trajectories with an optical motion capture system while the batters hit. In the eye movement measurements, contrary to previous studies, we found distinctive predictive saccades directed toward the predicted trajectory, of which the first saccades were initiated approximately 80–220 ms before impact for all participants. Predictive saccades were initiated significantly later when batters knew the types of pitch in advance compared to when they did not. We also found that the best three batters started predictive saccades significantly later and tended to have fewer gaze-ball errors than the other three batters. This result suggests that top batters spend slightly more time obtaining visual information by delaying the initiation of saccades. Furthermore, although all batters showed positive correlations between bat location and head direction at the time of impact, the better batters showed no correlation between bat location and gaze direction at that time. These results raise the possibility of differences in the coding process for the location of bat-ball contact; namely, that top batters might utilize head direction to encode impact locations.