What virtual reality can do for sport? A narrative review of the literature

Abstract

Background: The physical fitness of
athletes is well above the average of
normal people. In addition, the response
time has to be much better to reach the
championship level, therefore the training
demands have changed greatly over the
decades. Traditional exercise will always be
a fundamental factor in training, however,
new technologies have to be considered in
order to maximize their effectiveness. An
example of a technology is Virtual Reality
(VR), where the athlete's "awareness" to a
purpose-built world, where they can gain
experience and skills similar to the
conditions during the competition. The aim
of this narrative review was to determine
the utilization of VR in training of
competitive athletes. Methods: A literature
review using PubMed has been conducted
to examine the current state of the art in
the available literature using VR in the
aspect of competitive sports. For the
complete review 157 articles on the use of
VR in sports were identified, but no article
indicated competitive sports. After the
individual sports search, 6 articles were
adopted for this review of the literature.
Results: The presented research results
show positive results with the use of VR for
athletes on academic level. Not only do
they improve the response time in
decision-making during competitions, but
they also have the opportunity to learn
new schemes for use in competitions more
quickly. The presented articles describe the
performance of competitive athletes at the
academic championship level, so there is
still a lack of confirmed research on top
athletes in the available literature.
Conclusions: Based on the limited number of scientific articles available, it can be
assumed that the use of Virtual Reality has
a positive impact even on the development
of competitive athletes in order to achieve
the best possible performance and new