Examples of Hand & Eye Coordination

Dynamic tennis concept with female player holding ball and racke

An essential skill, hand-eye coordination involves your visual system coordinating what you see to guide the hands in a specific task. Different activities entail various degrees of coordination development; catching a ball requires a greater sense of coordination than pouring a glass of milk, for example. Improving your hand-eye coordination can make everyday and athletic movements easier.

Sports Skills

Along with being quick, strong and powerful, having a developed sense of hand-eye coordination can help you to excel in sports. Almost every sport requires hand-eye coordination, especially those that are ball-based. For example, contacting the ball with the racket in tennis when serving, returning a serve and hitting groundstrokes and volleys require hand-eye coordination. In baseball, pitching, catching and hitting all entail hand-eye coordination. Attempting to score a goal in hockey, which requires shooting with extreme accuracy, is also an example of hand-eye coordination.

Everyday Life

Many things that you do throughout your day that you probably don’t even think about require hand-eye coordination. Applying makeup, brushing your hair, pouring water into the coffee maker, writing and folding your clothes are all examples of simple tasks that use hand-eye coordination. Drills to improve hand-eye coordination can be borrowed from sports; the simple act of playing catch, horseshoes or handball can help you to develop a better sense of overall coordination.