Advanced Saccade Instructions

Saccades are eyes exercises where you rapidly move your eye focus between two points. This works the eye muscles, three different cranial nerves*, and the frontal cortex.

Download the Advanced Saccades charts. Print the last two pages. Hang them on a wall about 3 feet apart, with the center of the chart at eye level. Stand arm’s length from the wall. Looking straight ahead, without moving your head, focus your eyes back and forth from chart to chart reading each letter aloud starting with the top letter on the left chart, then the top letter on the right chart, then the second letter on the left chart, then the second letter on the right chart, etc. It is best to do this at a constant rhythm. There are several free metronome apps that you can download to your phone. Record your progress according to how many letters you can read in one minute. Typical scores are around 65 letters per minute. 100 letters per minute is a good goal.
For more challenge, try the same exercise with the Beginner Saccades sheets. Everything is identical except you will now be using symbols mixed in with your letters and numbers. The eye muscle and cranial nerve exercise is identical to the beginner drills, but the advanced charts increases the workout on the frontal cortex.
A good way to change the muscle and cranial nerve workout is to move the charts diagonal to each other. You can go all the way to vertical, with one chart on top of the other.

*  This exercise will work the oculomotor nerve, which controls the majority of the eye muscles, the trochlear nerve, which controls the superior oblique muscle, and the abducens nerve, which controls the lateral rectus muscle.